In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Tyson Mutrux discuss:
- The importance of cultivating the right mindset for professional growth
- Building and scaling a law firm through strategic hiring and systematized operations
- The power of networking and targeted referrals in developing a legal practice
- Utilizing peer groups, coaching, and mentorship as tools for continuous improvement
Key Takeaways:
- Mindset is the number one limiting factor for lawyers—without overcoming mental barriers, no strategy will work, even with a step-by-step million-dollar blueprint.
- Many law firms suffer from cash flow problems because lawyers pull too much money from the business too early, preventing reinvestment and sustainable growth.
- Effective hiring requires a thorough, systematized process—using tools like Zoho Recruit and strategies like “topgrading” ensures better long-term talent fit and retention.
- Networking should be laser-focused—meeting with professionals who are in a direct position to send targeted referrals, like volume PI firms or chiropractors, yields better ROI than general networking.
“You can ruin a good hire just by having bad processes or no processes.” — Tyson Mutrux
Got a challenge growing your law practice? Email me at [email protected] with your toughest question, and I’ll answer it live on the show—anonymously, just using your first name!
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Episode References:
Modern Wisdom Podcast by Chris Williamson: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549
About Tyson Mutrux: Tyson Mutrux is the owner and managing partner of Mutrux Firm LLC, a personal injury law firm based in St. Louis and Columbia, MO. He is also the co-founder and owner of Maximum Lawyer, a community where law firm owners connect, collaborate, and grow their firms.
Connect with Tyson Mutrux:
Website: http://www.maximumlawyer.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tysonmutrux/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/maximum-lawyer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/maximumlawyer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maximumlawyer/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, before we get to the show, wanna give you one final teaser that a big announcement is happening tomorrow, May 2nd. So you’re gonna want to keep your eyes open on LinkedIn. And all over the internet for what I’m gonna be putting out there. It’s gonna be pretty amazing. So hang tight and enjoy the show
Narrator: you are listening to be that lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author, and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results Now. Here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody. Welcome. It’s Steve Fretzin and this is the Be That Lawyer podcast. I am so happy that you’re here today to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. As you guys know, this show is all about helping you to be your best lawyer self. And I’m gonna continue to bring on amazing guests like [00:01:00] I have today in Tyson to help you guys learn everything you need to know about being a successful lawyer.
Tyson, how’s it going man?
Tyson Mutrux: I am doing great a little bit under the gun today. As we were talking before we had, you had say a little bit of break, but otherwise no, it’s been a great day. It’s start off grade. I went to the gym and got measured and down to 10.3% body fat. So I’m like 0.4% because I wanna be under 10%.
So hit okay. And what hap and what happens under
Steve Fretzin: 10%?
Tyson Mutrux: Do you put on like a superhero outfit? What happens then? Have you been talking to my wife? Because she said we, ’cause we went to lunch today. She goes, so what after that? And I said, I don’t know. I don’t know. I said, 3%. And I was just joking. I was like, you’ve won the fat game.
Congratulations. I don’t know. I said, I guess just maintain, I guess that’s what I want, but All right. That’s good. It was funny. She said the exact same thing you did, but that’s, I’m trying to keep my fat
Steve Fretzin: between 20 and 50% so that way I can, when the grid goes down and all of the thin people are starving, I’ll be working off this fat [00:02:00] for months.
Tyson Mutrux: Listen, I think you have a good chance of being able to accomplish that if you really want to. So
Steve Fretzin: well listen, you gotta plan ahead with all the crazy stuff going on in the world right now. You never know what’s gonna happen.
Tyson Mutrux: That is right. That’s a good answer for it. There we go. All
Steve Fretzin: right. See, sometimes I have a good answer.
Hey, and let’s talk about the quote of the show today. I, we start the show this way and we have for a number of years and just enjoy hearing what people’s favorite quotes are and why. And so you’ve got a rising tide lifts all boats. And that’s a pretty common one, but I think, but it’s always unique.
Not because of the quote, but because of what you make of it. So welcome to the show, Tyson, and tell us a little bit about why that’s your
Tyson Mutrux: quote of the show. It’s probably, it’s not the most philosophical quote in the world. That’s not a big deal at all. I. It’s something I think about quite a bit. So when we started Maximum Lawyer, that was the the idea where and it’s the philosophy that we’ve lived by the entire time.
Just there are plenty of cases for everybody. We can all help each other out. It’s a much better profession whenever we are, kind to each other. Yes, we can be, someone that litigates cases. [00:03:00] It can get contentious, but at the end of the day, for the most part, we’re able to get along and, not be jerks to each other.
It really comes from that, and I, the, obviously the quote’s been around for a long time, but the full, the whole idea behind it, my dad has always been that way and even to the point where it frustrated me growing up. It’s dad, like what? They’re taking advantage of you almost a thing where I’ve come to realize, by helping other people, you can really just.
It’ll come full circle ultimately is what happens. That’s the idea. Buying the Go-Giver is a great book. But no, I just, I think it’s great. It’s a much better, happier life whenever we are all are working on this together.
Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and I don’t think it means you have to share all of your, secrets and secret sauce with everybody, but I think it means being kind, being polite, understanding that.
Look, even if we’re competitors or we do things similar to each other, there is plenty of business we can, be cordial. I think, my father, the late great Larry, the lawyer, made it a point of befriending his opponents in court because you never know [00:04:00] when you might, have a conflict or you never know if you meet a great lawyer that might be someone that you can refer to, a friend that you know you shouldn’t be working with.
That type of thing.
Tyson Mutrux: I think it’s a, if I were a defense attorney an insurance defense attorney, I would befriend every plaintiff’s lawyer there is, because it is gonna be much easier to get cases resolved much easier. I would just, and so I, you can look at the, it’s funny, you can look at the more effective ones, and there are some that are really aggressive, that are really effective too.
But to me, the most aggressive or most effective ones are the ones that are, they do have, that, they have a more of a, we’re in this together sort of philosophy.
Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Hey, everybody, you’re listening to Tyson, who is the. Owner of Maximum Lawyer and I’d love for you to share people. Look, I think you have a very solid brand.
People around the world know you and know your group, but share where you started and how you led into it. And we could, keep it to a few minutes. I think people deserve to hear how you got into this. Not only building your own thing, but also how others.
Tyson Mutrux: Yeah, it’s, I’ll do my best to make it a short one.
’cause I tend to drag this one out, but it’s a, so Jim [00:05:00] Hacking and I, we started this together back in 2016, so we’ve been doing a really long time where he was actually an adjunct professor at St. Louis University and we, he ended up, he and I ended up becoming friends and then afterwards we stayed in touch.
We always, had these business discussions, what about this and what about that, what do you think about this? And it was. To the point where we were like, let’s start recording these things. We had all kinda started, we call it the Culver’s conversation. We ran into each other at Culver’s and it was, and we talked all the time, but then there was like this point where we had not seen each other for maybe a couple months or talked to each other for a couple months, and we were like, you know what?
Let’s do this. And so we started maximum Lawyer based on the Culver’s conversation. And then we’ve just been doing it ever since where we, we hit. We started by trying to have, really cool guests and we brought on a bunch of, law firm owners and it’s grown from there where everyone’s I call it, crowdsourcing, where we’re all sharing good information and sharing.
Sometimes we’re not always sharing our best. I think, [00:06:00] although I do think it’s completely fine if you wanna share your secrets ’cause most people aren’t gonna use them. The, even your, you could share your best stuff and very few people are actually going to implement. You have to actually take action on ’em.
But, so I think it’s completely fine to share all your best stuff. I wish people would take action on every single thing, but they don’t. But but it kinda, it’s, it started from that and it grew and then we had, we started a Facebook group with it, and then we had a conference and then it’s grown into the Guild where we have orderly masterminds and it’s it is organically grown and grown where we don’t run ads.
We don’t do that. I think that’s what’s cool thing about, it’s just been this like organic thing that’s grown over the years.
Steve Fretzin: Yeah, that’s really, exciting and I think, you know what lawyers miss is the opportunity to, crowdsource and mastermind and round table and get information from people who have made the mistakes that they don’t wanna make.
We all want to try to shortcut, what it takes to get from here to there. Whether it’s, business development, marketing, you go out and you spend $25,000 on. Marketing only to [00:07:00] realize what a big mistake that was. If I had only spoken to someone or asked a question, it might have saved me all that pain and money.
I love that you’re doing that. Let’s talk about what you consider to be with your trained year. The top challenges that lawyers are having in developing books of business, developing and scaling their law practices. What are you seeing as the key barriers. I
Tyson Mutrux: never really thought this at the beginning.
I never thought that this would be true, but it ultimately, I think it is the number one. And I wonder what your thoughts are on this too. I think the number one limiting factor is mindset. I think that if. I think a lot of people, including myself, especially when I started I would put these restrictions on myself.
You can’t do this or you can’t do that. Or, I like to talk about how, I remember whenever I was younger and thinking about how much, how I felt like $30,000 a year. It was like a million dollars. It just seemed like so much money to me. And that’s just part of that mindset where you, that is part of that limiting mindset where you’re like.
You don’t even [00:08:00] know. It’s a limiting mindset. You don’t even realize it. But I started working with Jason Sell, which actually I’ve got an appointment with him after you and I have our, after we do this, but the. He has done a really good job of kind of opening me up to thinking bigger. And so I think if there’s like number one, there’s other things when I, when it comes to actually running a business, but I can tell you, and you know this too, after talked to hundreds of lawyers on the show and thousands of lawyers overall.
I could give you the actual recipe to a million dollars, right? I could hand it to you and say, if you do every one of these things on this checklist, you’ll make a million dollars, right? I could do that. You could probably do that too, but if you can’t get over the mindset component of it, it doesn’t matter.
It won’t, it does not matter. You won’t actually implement those things. You just won’t take action on it. And that’s, it comes from, what about this? What about this? But I’m different. And if you can’t get past that hurdle there doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters.
Steve Fretzin: Yeah. You [00:09:00] have perfectionist attorneys, you have risk averse attorneys.
You have, I’ll just figure it out myself, attorneys, and. I call it head trash because it’s just all that junk that piles up in your head of the way that you think about things. And to your point, I don’t think you can accomplish your goals or accomplish your dreams and live the life you live. If you have all that head trash.
I.
Tyson Mutrux: I like the way, I like the head trash. I’m gonna borrow that. That’s really good. No, yeah, it, and like I said, I didn’t think that, I never like growing up, that was like a, I would’ve thought that was really ridiculous. And, but the reality is that once I started actually opening my mind to, oh, I can do these bigger things.
And if you would’ve told me when I first started, like what my overhead would be today, I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve been like, there’s no way. And I. Not that I’m not preaching that overhead’s a good thing. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying that we have to have a big revenue to support our overhead and the like, what [00:10:00] we built is because I’ve actually opened my mind to it as opposed to thinking small like I was.
Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Sometimes I’ll ask my lawyer clients, would you pay a million dollars for a website? And they all just look shocked. They’re like, I won’t spend 10,000 or 20,000 on the website, let alone a million. And what they fail to ask and eventually come around to ask is, alright, what is it gonna get me?
What is it? What, what’s the value of it and what’s the ROI and what’s it gonna do for me? And that’s just, that’s one example. But I think sometimes we’re afraid, or lawyers are afraid. We’re all afraid. In some way or another to change or to make an investment or to try something new.
That’s scary because we have the way that we’ve always done it.
Tyson Mutrux: The risk aversion. I think that’s another part of it too. Or you get this a lot where the people are afraid to hire ’cause they’re so worried about the cost. And what if I don’t get any clients? It is a lot of the what ifs. Yeah. And acting out fear.
And so what they’re really doing is they’re making these decisions off of fear as opposed to actually [00:11:00] making logical decisions that. That will actually improve their life because you, you can stay stuck in your current situation. If you don’t do anything, that’s fine. You can keep doing that. But if it’s not working for you, then the, then you need to change something.
You’re gonna have to take some sort of action. Your fears are gonna more, they’re more likely to come true if you don’t take action than if you actually do take action.
Steve Fretzin: So we’ve got mindset as the number one barrier for lawyers to achieve what they want to achieve and to live the life they wanna live.
What else are you seeing out there and hearing out there that is a limiting factor for them?
Tyson Mutrux: It’s funny ’cause I’m torn between a couple things. One, I’ll probably go with.
Steve Fretzin: Throw ’em all out and I’ll, I’ll support it.
Tyson Mutrux: Yeah. So probably number two. It’s probably a close second to number one, like the top three are pretty closely tied together, but cash flow problems where they’re draining all the money outta the business.
That is a big one where every time a case comes in, you just take all the money for your personal stash [00:12:00] and you’re not it. What it does is it just starves the business so you’ll never be able to grow it. Which then leads into the third one, which is hiring and you’re hiring too late. But then also.
You have no plan for your hiring. So every time you hire someone, you, there is no training. And if they leave you, you’re ready to, you’re not ready to actually hire another person. You. So there is zero like hiring process. You hire the first person that you like during the interview process, which like we have a really long hiring process intentionally.
It’s something we tweak, it’s, we tweak it just like we tweak getting cases like we, we tweak it and just, or just like the way we manage cases. And then I think the other big one there’s, I mean you can list a lot of ’em, but then I think the other big one is just, I. Lack of processes When you hire, ’cause you can ruin a good hire just by having bad processes or no processes, but bad processes are probably better than no processes, as is my guess.
Because there is no roadmap, no one [00:13:00] knows what to do. So they get frustrated and they leave, which then increases turnover. So there’s a lot of problems with that. I think those are the top three. And then you can also get into not having a client funnel, your client funnel is terrible where again, you don’t have any plan, kinda like you don’t have any plan for hiring. You’ve got, you have no plan for your actual client funnel. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin: I think one of the things I talk about with lawyers and ask about is, what’s your support structure? What’s your processes? What’s your organization, what’s your systems?
Because I’m talking business development with them, and we know that’s important. It was in the top four that you just mentioned, that funnel and pipeline and all that, but what does more business coming in mean? It means, more work. And who’s doing that work? You don’t have the hire or you do have the hire, but that hire isn’t on the same page as you.
And there’s all that. So I think I would agree with you that all of those are important, but my take is that without having the software, the process, the SOPs, right? Standard operating procedures, the things that you’re gonna need to set up to effectively recruit, hire, train, [00:14:00] and sustain and retain.
A person, an associate, whatever it might be, you’re gonna find yourself in a bit of a pickle.
Tyson Mutrux: Yeah. So I flew to Atlanta on Monday and I did a, actually flew on Sunday night, but I, we did interviews all day at a studio in Atlanta on Monday and I was talking to one of the attorneys and what she, it was interesting ’cause she started, she actually put a bunch of money into the business at the beginning.
It’s, and she started the way you would normally start an actual company. I think it’s funny how lawyers. Do it completely different. They kinda do it backwards where we start with one person just us and then we grow from there. So we don’t start with any processes or anything else.
But she started by, she had an actual team when she started ’cause she had put money into the business, so she actually had plenty of money to spend on hiring. But then she also had like processes in place, which was like such a different way and. What we, and so if you, in a perfect world, I think that’s what you would do and you would start with a bunch of systems, a bunch of processes.
You’d have money to find everything you’re wanting to do for your [00:15:00] marketing, your employees. I think that’s the right way of doing it. If you’re real, if you held me down, is there, what’s the right way? That’s the right way. The more realistic way is that we generally start the way I said, and then we’re having to build some of the boat as we’re sailing.
Yeah. With proven
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Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fretzin in as the, I’m the host of the Be That Lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law of practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling, chasing, or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice.
Just head over to Fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you, and let’s make this your breakout year. [00:16:00] I was talking to a new friend who’s wants to get into coaching. She’s doing it just as a friend to people, and she wants to do it as like a full-time business. And she asked me like, what was the number one thing that prepared you for going into your own coaching business and being successful?
And I said, quite frankly, it was having a coach myself that showed me not only the system that he was teaching and showed me a lot of things that made me successful, but then when I decided to be a coach, I leveraged. The content, the materials, the process to try to understand how I was gonna build a business, what were the secrets that, allowed me to start to, bring in the first few clients and build that out and be successful right off the bat, versus having to figure it out for six months or a year.
And I feel like that’s where a lot of lawyers are, is there just like going out on their own and then figuring it out for six months or a year and hoping that it works and maybe they bring some clients. So there’s a buffer. But ultimately I just don’t, I’m not saying hire a coach, like that’s the answer.
But there are, to your point, [00:17:00] earlier, peer advisory groups, there’s books, there’s videos, there’s things that you need to, mentors that you need to bring in, and it takes a village. I.
Tyson Mutrux: Yeah. So that’s the way, like I guess that’s kinda the way Max lawyer’s been, where pe it is like a place to go to, to get information and share information.
And I, so I do agree though, where you get some sort of guidance and it’s funny ’cause I was, I can’t remember who I was talking to, but I use Jason Cell, he’s my coach, but I use him a lot differently than some other people might use their coaches. Like sometimes you get a coach where like. These are the nuts and bolts of running a law firm.
Here’s how you do it. He’s more of a mindset to keep me unstuck. And we do talk, here’s that we talk about process quite a bit, but it’s just a different, it’s just a different way. I use them more as like a sounding board for stuff like that. But you are right. Having someone to go and that’s one of the mistakes people make ’cause they don’t.
Ask for help, and then by the time that they know that they need to ask, they realize they need to ask for help. Actually, they probably realize it early, but by the time they actually, it’s like desperate. It’s like just too late. There’s [00:18:00] nothing they can do. Like to actually. Build up what they need to from where they are, what position, so then they end up going, shutting down their law firm and going to work for someone, which is, I just hate that situation.
Yeah, but asking for help, there’s plenty of people in this profession that are there to actually help and give you at least some roadmap to get where you need to be. Now there are definitely, there’s people that definitely know what they’re doing that are more advanced, that can give you more advanced, but a lot of people just start, not just need, like a basic framework is what they need.
Steve Fretzin: Okay, so let’s go into that, like the, what are three sort of tips of for lawyers that want to either scale their originations, their book of business or scale their law practice? And I’m happy to join in and share in these answers. But you mentioned, right off the bat, the last thing you mentioned was the, having some kind of plan.
I work with lawyers on a business development plan. It’s not the, and I can help them with a business plan, but I don’t think it’s gonna be the same plan you’re talking about with regards to process, [00:19:00] procedures, operations, finance, like all the different elements of what needs to happen for a business to run successfully.
Tyson Mutrux: So like where you wanna know, like where to start when it comes to building the book of business?
Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Yeah, that, or, I know where that is, but yeah, share your thoughts on it. I’ve got lots of thoughts on this.
Tyson Mutrux: Because I, if I were to just be thrown into a city, some random city, the first thing I would do, I would immediately start networking.
I would immediately start, I. Talking to, and it doesn’t matter what practice area it is, but I do personal injury. And so what I would do is I would meet with, and I would just do this all day, every day until I started generating business. And then I would start to kind of balance that from there.
And then there’s other things that are more advanced that I would start doing. But from there, but to start, I would start with that where especially when you’re first starting out, you have a lot more time to do things like this than you do as you start to generate business. But I would. We talk to other attorneys, other I would start with a bunch of injury attorneys, especially the volume firms.
I would say, listen, I’m willing to take your dog cases. I’m [00:20:00] willing to take those cases. ’cause there are some value in some of those lower end cases when it comes to PI cases. But like firms like us, we don’t want those cases we have, those will just slow us down. But they have value, right?
There’s definitely value to them. And so that’s where I would start. You can do that from any different profession. And I would like thinking about, or any other niche, I would definitely talk to chiropractors, other doctors, anything that potentially would refer me cases, I would start with that just
Steve Fretzin: But I wanna stop you there because what you’re saying is important.
You’re saying get out and network and hustle and make that your full-time job. Yep. But you didn’t stop there. The other thing that you shared that’s so critical, and I think lawyers sometimes miss the boat on, is you’re also saying, Hey, I’m meeting with targeted. People I’m meeting with other PI firms that are doing more advanced cases.
I’m meeting with chiropractors, I’m meeting with other lawyers that maybe work on the plaintiff’s side. Like you’re not saying I’m gonna go out and meet with everyone. The Avon lady, the local Amway person, the local, brick layer, right? You’re [00:21:00] meeting with targeted folks that actually have the ability to refer you.
Tyson Mutrux: Yes. That’s a good point. And I, some of the things you said made me chuckle. ’cause there was a, I was in BNI for a while. It was a while ago, so we
Steve Fretzin: all were,
Tyson Mutrux: yeah. And did I make money from BNI? Yes. I got referrals from it. But Jim, so my former co-host. Jim, ’cause Jim he hung up the microphone last year because he was just, he wanted to focus just on his firm.
But it was funny because he’s an immigration attorney and we joked about this all the time, where he, they had the red light, green light, yellow light system. He was the only person in the entire that chapter that had all green lights and didn’t get one referral an entire year. Not one. Wow. And so it was so interesting where I was probably all yellows and reds and I was get, I was getting referrals, but the thing is though, is that the time investment was, oh my gosh.
Ridiculous. If it’s a weekly morning
Steve Fretzin: meeting. Exactly. You have to go like an hour and a half for, a year weekly.
Tyson Mutrux: Totally. I did learn that yes, they, [00:22:00] these have to be more targeted. I am limited on time. These have to be more targeted. And so yes, you have to, although I think BNI is a fine organization, you’ll, you get cases if you really work the system well, unless you’re an immigration lawyer, apparently.
’cause that, I think that’s a hard one to refer to. But otherwise, yeah, totally. You have to, they have to be targeted. Anytime you’re doing any sort of marketing, it does need to be targeted. Yeah. Without a doubt. But, so
Steve Fretzin: for people starting off, okay, networking is one way to go. The one that, the other one that I would add is, how have you consider, so you’re saying a new city, which leads me to believe that you don’t know any, you’re trying to focus on that city.
However, a lot of people are running national things these days. So maybe it’s friends, family, classmates, other people you worked with at other jobs, and maybe creating a master list of the people you know that could. Point you in a better direction or refer you to somebody or give you matters or do their estate plan or whatever it might be too.
That might be a little, that might be an in addition to the networking.
Tyson Mutrux: I was using [00:23:00] that sort of as a silly scenario where like how effective referrals are. Yeah. Like it’s still, it is still an extremely effective and you can do it pretty quickly too. It’s one of those things that can quickly generate cases for you as a, and sometimes not, sometimes it’s more of a long-term play when it comes to referrals.
But either way, they’re both really effective. But you are right though, where if you’re most likely gonna be starting a firm in an area that you’re from or that you’ve lived at for a while, and you are going to. Try to start in those areas the ones that can refer you the best.
Absolutely. And you’re gonna have your contact list and all that. That’s for sure. I, without it out. So you’re right. You definitely want to, I just wanna use that as sort. No, I mean
Steve Fretzin: there’s, yeah, we’re just building off of each other in an effort to just continue to give out great information.
And let’s wrap up with one final sort of business development. Strategy or tactical, actionable thing that you could give to people listening that wanna, build what they build from what they have.
Tyson Mutrux: Interesting. So anything I can do, anything I want market, it could be anything you [00:24:00] want.
Steve Fretzin: Yes. We have no limits here on the Be That Lawyer podcast.
Tyson Mutrux: Okay. So if I were you for, so I’m assuming that many of your listeners have been, they’ve been practicing for a little bit. They’re all not all brand new, but doesn’t matter. This applies to everybody. Work on. Actually build out an entire hiring process, and I want you to actually think about it from just like you would think about leads.
Okay. Just like you, you think about leads. So we have automated emails, we have automated text messages. We have, they’re all based on different sequences We have. Everything goes into an actual, it’s like a CRM for our hiring. It’s called Zoho Recruit. And so we’re at, we manage all of those, all of the data, all of the information goes into recruit.
So we are able to track it, keep track of these different candidates when they cycle, cycle back. ’cause you know you have people that are just applying to any job all the time. You can see where we’ve already rejected them before. They’re never gonna be a candidate that we’re gonna wanna hire all these things.
You actually build out the entire process and I cannot tell [00:25:00] you how effective that has been and. I’ll throw this book out there. Top grading? If you want to hire like the best talent. Really focused on top grading. So we plugged that into, so you have, make sure you have a job scorecard, but whenever you’re hiring people, you go through and you already have these ads ready to go.
Job ads ready to go for if you do lose a person and you’re, you should always be kinda hiring. But that’s another topic that we can talk about later, but. The, but having some sort of process, when you’re doing those initial interviews and doing those initial calls and those assessments, you’re always, you’re talking to the candidate, you’re mentioning the job scorecard, so they know what their expectations are going forward.
But you have this whole process, right? You have the whole process built out that’s gonna prevent you from having that temptation of hiring too quickly. Because that’s a big problem that people have. But then you’re gonna be hiring some candidates. So if I were to tell anybody to do anything when it comes to like systems and processes.
Past the marketing stuff? Is that Yeah, without doubt.
Steve Fretzin: No, I love that. And it’s so critical, the idea that we’re gonna hire, ’cause we, oh, I like this person, or they’re like me. I think they, they think [00:26:00] like me, I should hire this person. And you haven’t put them through the interview fully or you have multiple interviews, you haven’t, there’s just so many different things you can do to, hire slow, fire quick is a saying, but.
To make it that process similar to to your point, a sales process. You don’t wanna rush into business with people that could be crazy. Or can’t pay you or whatever. So we have to qualify new business and we have to qualify potential hires and the brain and the heart need to both be involved in that process and most cases they’re not.
Tyson Mutrux: Yeah. The one of the best defenses to protect you in the future when it comes to like just. Making clients angry or not getting work done or whatever it may be, is like having some sort of process to really filter out the BA best can bad candidates and get the absolute best candidates because, and with that, make sure you’re paying a good salary.
Yeah, that’s something it took me a while to figure out yeah, you wanna be out, you wanna be paying more than the market rate, so you’re attracting the best talent. And then. Because there, the old adage I’m sure you’ve probably heard about this before, is that, and I know a lot of people don’t like to [00:27:00] call them a employees all I get that, but the A players, they can do three times the work of a B player and a C player.
Like it. They’re, the difference is so much anybody that’s hired an A player, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Yeah. They do so much more work. The productivity is so much higher and. You’re actually saving money because you’re paying more money for that one employee, but they’re doing triple the work.
It’s the first time I hired an A player, I’m like, holy crap, I should have been doing this a long time ago. People are
Steve Fretzin: stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. In that scenario. Absolutely. Yeah. Hey man, listen, this has been great. So many great suggestions, ideas, tactical, actionable things you’re given to people today.
I appreciate that. One of my favorite podcasts. Listen to it basically every day, and I think you’re the same as Modern Wisdom. Can you talk about why you love that podcast so much?
Tyson Mutrux: Yeah. I was telling you before so one, I just I like the topics that Chris Williamson has, but the, I love his questions.
I just absolutely love his questions. He takes, he’ll take something that. Is pretty complicated. And [00:28:00] he’ll ask the simplest question and it’s wow, that’s such a beautiful way of putting it. And so the, just the things that they cover lots of, it’s really, it’s kinda everywhere from it’s.
Health to mindset stuff, but it’s it’s a lot of everything between, it’s different from like a Huberman where like he’s, sometimes he’ll get into the science. It’s not do this and this, but he has this really cool guess. And I don’t know, just I, it’s such a weird thing, but I love the way he asks questions.
His questions are so fantastic that it really gets to the heart of what they want to talk about, and that’s why I love it so much. Yeah. It’s good for the listener because you’re not having to list and wade through a bunch of chaff to get to the good stuff. Yeah. So how would I rate with my questions compared to Chris?
I, here’s the, had longer. If we had longer, I definitely you know what? You are like a, just below Chris. Oh, all all right. That’s fair.
Steve Fretzin: That’s fair. Very good question
Tyson Mutrux: though.
Steve Fretzin: Alright, listen, I appreciate you being on the show and sharing your wisdom and let’s take a moment and thank our.
Wonderful sponsors the Law Hurt Podcast, and of course our friends over at [00:29:00] PIM Con gonna be running a quality program in October. You check that out, I think they’re gonna start selling tickets or they’re already started selling tickets. ’cause this is gonna air in April. So I’ll set there. Tyson, if people wanna learn more about you, they want learn more about the maximum lawyer, the groups you run, what are the best ways for them
Tyson Mutrux: to search you out?
Probably the easiest way to go to maximum lawyer.com or max law guild.com. Those are probably the easiest ones. And we have quarterly events every year or so every quarter? Every quarter, yeah. So we have I didn’t wanna say quarterly events every quarter, but the it sounded redundant when it was gonna come out, but the, yeah.
So if you’re anybody’s interested in that, max law events.com. We are, and I’d love for you to come out to this. We have Max Law Con, we’re bringing it back this year. It’s gonna be in October in Nashville, so it’d be awesome. Oh,
Steve Fretzin: Nashville’s fun. Yeah.
Tyson Mutrux: Yeah. So it’d be a lot of fun. So it’d be awesome if you came out, we’d get to hang out with each other.
Steve Fretzin: Listen, that doesn’t sound that bad to me. I think my son might be doing a week down there making guitars in the summer as a kind of a summer fun thing to do. So
Tyson Mutrux: That sounds awesome.
Steve Fretzin: Yeah. My wife and I are trying to figure out if we’re gonna go with [00:30:00] him or let him have his own adventure, but Awesome man.
I love that. And thanks again man. This has been a long time coming. I’m just so happy that you’re on the show and. Just that we’re getting to meet each other and I do want to talk more about about planes with you maybe at a separate time. But I’m gonna send you the link to my plane crash story so you can hear more about that.
But
Tyson Mutrux: I definitely wanna talk about that. But hey, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. It’s fun. Like I told you, I, I just, I enjoy doing this, so anytime you wanna chat. Even I’ll shoot you my cell phone number. We can hang out and talk anytime you want.
Steve Fretzin: I love it. All right, thank you man, and thanks everybody for hanging out with Tyson and I for a little bit today on the Be That Lawyer podcast.
We are here for your listening pleasure help you be that lawyer. Confident, organized, in a skilled rainmaker. Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well. We will talk again very soon.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website Fretzin.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest [00:31:00] legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.