Luis Scott is the Owner of 8 Figure Firm, which provides consulting services and insider knowledge to national law firms. He has helped hundreds of law firms in the US reach multiple seven figures in revenue in less than two years. As a former lawyer, Luis has received numerous awards and accolades, including Super Lawyers’ “Rising Star,” The National Trial Lawyers Association’s “Top 40 Lawyers Under 40,” and the American Institute of Legal Counsel’s “10 Best Attorneys in 2017” for workers’ compensation.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [2:15] The importance of ongoing leadership training and development
- [4:50] How allowing team members to fail builds confidence and resilience
- [6:45] Why patience is essential for building a thriving organization
In this episode…
Despite initial traction, many businesses plateau in their growth, leaving leaders frustrated and unsure of the next step. It’s often not a lack of effort or resources but something deeper that holds them back. How can leadership development catalyze the next growth stage?
Leadership training expert Luis Scott offers a six-part framework for building leaders. He stresses the importance of ongoing training, mentorship, and allowing leaders to learn through failure. Emotional intelligence and repetition reinforce leadership values, and real growth takes time, often up to a decade. Entrepreneurs can achieve sustainable business growth by consistently investing in their people.
In today’s episode of The Guts and Glory Show, Luis Scott, Managing Partner of 8 Figure Firm, talks about intentional leadership development. He shares how to nurture emerging leaders, the power of mentorship and coaching, and why emotional intelligence is critical.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Luis Scott: LinkedIn | Website
- 8 Figure Firm
Quotable Moments:
- “Leadership becomes the most important part of your business, and without proper leadership, you are not going to grow.”
- “Most people require that you work with them to become better leaders.”
- “Mentorship and coaching is how you show a genuine interest in the person, in the individual.”
- “If you want to be great… they have to fail.”
- “It takes 10 years to become an overnight success. I think it’s the same way with leadership.”
Action Steps:
- Provide ongoing leadership training and development: Most people don’t naturally upskill, so consistent training helps build essential leadership competencies. Structured development empowers future leaders to take initiative and grow within the organization.
- Offer personalized mentorship and coaching: Mentorship goes beyond training by fostering genuine relationships that support emotional and professional growth. This builds trust and accelerates a leader’s ability to handle complex situations.
- Create safe opportunities for failure: Allowing team members to fail without harsh consequences encourages risk-taking and builds resilience. These experiences are critical for developing problem-solving and confidence in future leaders.
- Train leaders in emotional intelligence: Leaders who manage their emotions well and understand others are more equipped to build strong teams. Emotional intelligence is crucial for navigating tension and fostering a positive work culture.
- Reinforce leadership principles through repetition: Repeating core values and expectations ensures consistency and long-term retention across the team. Leaders who internalize repeated messaging are more likely to model the behavior expected of them.
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by 8 Figure Firm.
Founded by Luis Scott, 8 Figure Firm helps transform your law firm into a seven-figure or even eight-figure firm.
After spending years searching for the ideal law firm consulting program, Luis started 8 Figure Firm to use his hands-on experience to help other law firms achieve exponential growth.
Visit www.8figurefirm.com to receive a consultation call and start scaling your business today.
Episode Transcript
Intro: 00:01
Get ready to be amazed. Get ready to be transformed. Get ready to believe. It is possible you’re entering the growth zone on The Guts and Glory Show with your host, Luis Scott.
Luis Scott: 00:19
Hey, guys, this is Luis. Welcome to The Guts and Glory Show, and I am excited to continue our series about solving the leadership crisis. Because honestly, this is the one thing that is holding people back. And in session one, we talked about how to acquire leaders and what what it meant to be a leader and the importance of leadership. And we discussed some some statistics on how leadership is a real problem.
You have leaders who are overwhelmed, who are feeling like they can’t lead, and then you have people who are being led who said that they don’t trust or believe in the leadership of their company. And so this can be the make or break situation. Recently, I was talking to a law firm owner and had been in business for 40 years and had been generating the same revenue for years and years for decades. Had never reached eight figures. Not not that reaching eight figures has to be the goal for everyone, but when we discussed why the business was in that position, it all came down to leadership.
And so it’s easy to grow your business for, for, for for a good amount. Right. Like you can grow it two, three, four, 5 million on grit alone. And there’s some people that believe you can grow it even bigger than that on grit alone. But but definitely three or 4 or 5 million on grit alone.
But at some point, leadership becomes the most important part of your business. And without proper leadership, you are not going to be able to grow and definitely not going to be able to sustain the growth in your business. And so in session one, we talked about how to acquire leaders. Today I want to talk about how to build leaders. So let’s suppose that you have an up and coming leader.
They’re they’re brand new. And you want to build this person you want this person to be with you for a while. You want them to feel like they can continue to grow with you. And a lot of times we used to have this running joke where when somebody said that they wanted to grow with us, what they really meant was they wanted to make more money and not necessarily grow in themselves. But you want to teach people to grow up themselves and grow with you, and you want to teach them that they can grow with you.
And so how do you build these leaders so that they desire to be with you and to grow with you? There’s there’s six things. And one of these things I already know you’re absolutely going to hate. So you want to go ahead and and just hold on tight because one of these things is, is the reason we don’t spend our time building leaders. And so I’m saving that one for last so that you so you listen through.
The first one is that you have to have ongoing leadership training and development. Leaders do not develop themselves. There’s this book called the Upskilling Prerogative or Upskilling. I can’t remember the name of the book. I’ll put it in the show notes.
But in in this book it talks about how only 20% of people actually develop themselves. They upskill themselves. Most people require that you work with them to to become better leaders. And so as a business owner, as a leader, it is your your in your best interest. And it’s important that you commit to ongoing leadership training and development for your team.
You should be providing opportunities for people to grow. You should be providing resources for people to grow because they are not going to do it by themselves or for themselves for the most part. And so I think number one is, is if you want to build leaders, you need to have that leadership training and development. And one of the things that I used to do is I, I had a leadership lunch and learn. We did it once a month.
I also hosted a book club for our leaders finding ways to develop people. And we had a budget that was that was set aside for our leaders to go to individualized training. So finding ways to do that is really important. The second thing is mentorship and coaching. And this is different than training and development.
Training and development is how do you build somebody on their on their skill set to being a leader? I think mentorship and coaching is how do you show a genuine interest in the person, in the individual where where you have a a real desire to help them grow? I think that a lot of times we train and develop, but we don’t really care enough about our teams. We don’t care to mentor them, to show them why the email that they sent was too harsh, or the way that they communicated or text was was not appropriate. We just want them to get it right.
We want them to do it right, and we don’t want to really invest in them doing it right. And so I think that mentorship and coaching is a really, really important part to building leaders. And so now you have this training and development program which is helping them upskill. And then you’re mentoring them and coaching them and helping them walk and navigate through the difficult parts of leadership. And that is helping build this leader.
Number three, you have to provide opportunities for them to fail. We we all too often don’t want our team members to fail. But if you want to be great, if you if you want to have a great company, and if you want them to be great, they have to fail. Some of the greatest lessons that I ever learned in my entire life was a result of me personally failing, of me personally falling down, of me personally missing the mark. And if you don’t give that opportunity to your leaders, it’s going to be hard for them to build the confidence that they need to know that when they fail, they can overcome that, because that is part of becoming a leader is knowing that when I fail, I can overcome that failure.
I can overcome that setback. I can overcome that barrier. Barrier. So providing opportunities for failure. Number four emotional intelligence training.
There’s too many leaders out there that are overwhelmed, aggravated, annoyed by their team, and they don’t understand how to read the room. They don’t they don’t know how to develop themselves emotionally. They don’t know. They don’t know how to respond to tough and tense situations, and providing opportunities for them to emotionally develop is a really good place to build your leaders. Number five is repetition.
You have to tell your leaders things over and over and over and over again. I have a philosophy. It was written in my book, The New Leadership Paradigm, where I talk about love and grace. When I work with my leaders, I repeat those two words over and over again it’s you. If you want to be a leader in my organization, you have to show love.
You have to show show grace. You have to lead with love and show grace. Meaning, you have to care for the individual, and you have to be willing to allow them to make mistakes and not come down on them so hard that they lose their confidence in their ability to lead. And so repeating your philosophy over and over is really important. I had a member of the team the other day said, I don’t think that the team understands the following things.
And and he was speaking to me about something specific. And I said, well, you know, you have. Did you did you train them? Did you talk to them? Did you walk them through, did you repeat it?
And he said, it’s common sense. And my response is response? There’s nothing common sense. It’s only common sense to the person who’s communicating it. But but you have to understand that a lot of times people, because of their point of reference or their background, they don’t interpret things the same way.
And so we have to repeat, repeat, repeat. And the last one, I told you at the end I was going to say one that that you were going to hate. And I promise you, you’re going to hate this one. Because when I work with leaders and we’ve worked with almost 200 law firms nationwide and hundreds and hundreds of leaders, this is the one that they hate the most. And that is it takes time to build your leaders.
You have to be willing to put in the time. I think on average, when I when I’ve talked to leaders or or I’ve read about leaders building themselves, it feels like it’s almost a decade. You’ve heard that before. It takes ten years to become an overnight success. I think it’s the same way with leadership.
It takes time. And so if you’re going to build leaders, you have to be committed for the long haul. It’s going to take time to do this. And if you want an organization that thrives, you have to be willing to do this or hire people who are willing to do this for your team. And so we’ve talked about acquiring in session one.
We’ve talked about now building in session two. And if you want to build your leaders you need that ongoing training and development. You need mentorship and coaching. You need to provide opportunities for failure. You have to show them how to be more emotionally intelligent.
Repeat, repeat, repeat and then give it a little bit of time or maybe a lot of time, and you’ll build leaders that will completely change your organization. That’s what you want is a business that runs on its own. So thank you guys. You’ve been listening to The Guts and Glory Show.
Outro: 08:49
You’ve been listening to The Guts and Glory Show for more and to learn more about Luis, hit the website at Luisscottjr.com for consulting opportunities. Hit 8figurefirm.com. That’s the 8figurefirm.com. We hope you’ve enjoyed the show.
Make sure to like, rate and review and we’ll see you next time on The Guts and Glory Show.
