Kayla Grayson is the COO of Viles & Beckman, LLC, a personal injury law firm. In her role, she leverages her 17 years of Navy leadership experience to scale the firm and cultivate a culture of excellence. With 14 years of experience in the legal field, Kayla has held various positions, including Legal Assistant, Case Manager, and Paralegal. She is also a Founding Board Member of the Viles & Beckman Foundation, a nonprofit organization that inspires positive change in Southwest Florida by fostering growth, education, and engagement.
Brandon Dawson is a Founder Member of the Thumbs Up Guys at Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward, LLC, a personal injury law firm where he practices general civil litigation, including workers’ compensation, automobile accidents, and other serious injuries. As a strategic thinker and innovator, Brandon manages the firm’s growth and marketing initiatives. He has spent the past decade disputing with insurance companies on behalf of injured individuals.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How to introduce technology to legal teams
- Kayla Grayson shares how she implemented technology to solve a core issue within her firm
- How has automation enhanced Brandon Dawson’s firm?
- Leveraging vehicles for outdoor marketing and data for precise targeting
- Three to five data points every law firm should collect
- Technology strategies to optimize business operations
- The importance of data transparency
- Building a firm in 2024: key takeaways
In this episode…
Law firms are often slow to adopt new technology, with many accustomed to manual operations. Yet with technology tools advancing rapidly, firms must keep pace. What tools can you leverage in your business, and how can you obtain buy-in from your team?
Automation is one of the most influential tools law firms can use to streamline operations. Retrieving and processing records and other forms of legal discovery is an arduous process, so industry changemaker Kayla Grayson has implemented an automation tool that lowered her firm’s average retrieval time from 58 to 22 days. Marketing is another pain point for law firms, so legal leader Brandon Dawson automates campaigns and data collection for precise targeting. Rather than rolling out new technology without obtaining buy-in, Kayla and Brandon recommend identifying your team’s key issues and demonstrating how these tools can solve them.
In today’s episode of The Guts and Glory Show, Luis Scott travels to Austin to interview Kayla Grayson of Viles & Beckman, LLC and Brandon Dawson of Miller, Dawson, Sigel & Ward, LLC. They discuss how law firms can grow using technology. The pair also share three to five data points law firms should collect, how to build a firm in 2024, and the significance of data transparency.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Luis Scott: Website | LinkedIn
- 8 Figure Firm
- Kayla Grayson on LinkedIn
- Viles & Beckman, LLC
- Brandon Dawson on LinkedIn
- Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward, LLC
- Arctrieval
- Litify
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
Luis Scott 0:00
There is a reason why I can run two companies still go to date night every week, still hanging out with my kids still go to the lake in the boat, still take a vacation, still do all my emails, still do all my PowerPoint press. There’s a reason for that. Because when I’m in the zone, I’m in the zone.
Intro 0:18
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 0:39
All right, welcome back. Welcome back. If you want to donate to the 8 Figure rescue, there’s going to be a bucket at the back of the room. So be sure to donate. Today I am pleased to have two of our members talking about tech in a law firm. And it’s one thing to talk about the the theory of technology or the you know, the concept of of chat GPT it’s another thing to see it in practice. And so I have Kayla and Brandon, who work in firms across the country, South Carolina and in Florida. And they’ve done some really cool things in their firm and I invited them to help us better understand how we can use these tools for our firms and actually create that edge that we’re looking for. So with that, let’s welcome Kayla and Brandon. I’d like to start off by asking them to tell us a little bit about their firms. Okay, let’s you can Yeah.
Kayla Grayson 1:39
I’m from Viles & Beckman, I’m the COO there. We are a personal injury in Fort Myers, Florida. So we do predominantly motor vehicle accident, but we do you prep premises and product liability cases as well.
Luis Scott 1:51
And tell us a little bit about the size of your firm and like how many employees do you guys have? We’re
Kayla Grayson 1:56
currently at 38 employees. We have five attorneys and then the rest staff. Okay, awesome. Yeah,
Brandon Dawson 2:05
Brandon Dawson with Miller Dawson, Sigal & Ward. It’s a mouthful. So we we are better known as the Thumbs Up Guys in Charleston, South Carolina. We started in 2018, with just the four of us and have grown to about 40. Team members, we got 14 attorneys practice in the personal injury area. It’s 80% PII about 20%. Comp. And so yeah, that’s,
Luis Scott 2:27
that’s where we are awesome. Well, before we get into the technology, the technology you guys are using, I love to know, how do you guys introduce technology to your team? Because I think that’s one of the biggest concerns is that, and we heard this in in in a hot seat session, that there’s maybe some dinosaurs out there who don’t want to take technology. So what are you guys doing to improve technology? Brandon?
Brandon Dawson 2:46
Yeah, I think that’s such a great question, Luis, because I can tell you how not to do it. And one of the times we tried to implement and it really it was on me trying to kind of force a product on the team and just kind of rolled it out without getting buy in, right. And I believed in it, but I didn’t have the team’s buy in on how, you know, K status was going to help and it was going to make things so great. Right. And so, you know, I think the lesson learned there was you have to have buy in from everybody. So talk to your attorneys, in your case managers, your team say, you know, what are the pain points here, instead of guessing that and thinking that, you know, I think that really is the first thing is find out what your pain points are. And then when you go to implement it, you know, have that conversation with them, you know, once you roll it out, and that you’ve gotten buy in beforehand, Hey, how can we make this better? Right? A lot of these products, you can tailor we’re in the process of implementing even up demand. So it’s like aI demands. And you know, we’ve started it with buy in, we then are the attorneys are kind of running it now. But we want to get into the case managers, we’re constantly communicating with even up I mean, I’m on Zoom calls with them saying, hey, like, this isn’t right. Can you do this? And you know, they’re also kind of at that startup mode. They’re like, yeah, we’re working on that. And okay, we can get you this. So I think it’s that constant communication and getting buy in,
Luis Scott 4:06
I think that’s huge. Yeah,
Kayla Grayson 4:08
everything that you talked about involving them. So making them feel like this isn’t a top down decision. But this is a decision that you’re leading them into, really helps with the buy in. And then the constant feedback, we’re also implementing even up right now. And we started a pilot program where two case managers out of each pod are participating in it. And they’re going to be our champions. So they’re going to be the ones that after they go through the pilot program, they can get other people on board and say, Hey, I’ve already done this and this works for us. So highly recommend a pilot program.
Luis Scott 4:42
So you implemented something that we talked about yesterday has probably made and or saved you millions of dollars and I wanted people to hear this, because it was a combination of technology and vas, which is a hot topic for many people. I’d love for you to start by telling us what was the problem that you saw in The firm. And then what did you guys do to resolve that issue?
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Kayla Grayson 5:03
Yeah, I think every PII attorney in the room can probably say that medical records retrieval is a hot issue. And so that was my biggest issue that I was trying to solve is how do we get records in faster? How do we make this more efficient? And how do I do it with the less or less cost. And so I was intrigued, or I was invited to look at architecture evil, which is a software system and is not a records retrieval service that you typically see. What this is, is, it’s a software company that has automated the follow up of all of your records retrieval. And it’s a platform that basically you send the request in, and you send it out. And then on day three, assigns a follow up on day 10, it sends a follow up Monday, whatever you set it at, and then it runs off of the HIPAA individual right of access law. So the request is actually coming from your client, they signed a form allowing you to use their digital signature for records retrieval. And on day 30, they got a final warning saying you’re about to be fined if you don’t provide these records, you are in violation. 31 day they get a notice of violation on the 35th day, my team files a notice of violation. And usually on day 36, you get a call from the director of compliance with the hospital or whatnot, saying, Please, you know, please retract this, I’ll send you the records right now, it has been a game changer for our company, we went from an average of 58 days retrieving records to 22 days, we implemented in July, and 30 days later in August, you immediately started seeing our revenue numbers, climb and climb and climb. Because we were settling cases faster. It took our time on desk from 322 days down to 270 days.
Luis Scott 7:04
Everybody hear that?
Kayla Grayson 7:06
That’s huge. It was a game changer. So the software, of course, was wonderful. But it was who’s going to do this. And is it just another platform. And so I worked with our travel and we built out an integration with file vines. So now we have a records retrieval tab that the case manager goes in, fills out five quick slots saying this is the provider that I need. These are the dates or date range that I need. And it says Send to arc travel, the two platforms talk to each other. We hired virtual assistants to come in and process those records request. And so they go into our retrieval, they process the request and then their job really is just to monitor the portals, pay the invoices, download the records, and bring them into the portal. What we found is that is so efficient that we actually had more time on our hands for our virtual assistants. And so we’re able to and we’re currently doing this as we’re offloading a lot of the administrative tasks that the case managers are bogged down with to the legal assistants or virtual assistants. So that not only are they handling records retrieval, now they’re also handling other things, allowing our case managers to really focus on the client experience negotiation, and ultimately handle more cases. And
Luis Scott 8:25
there were some additional things because you had in your records department, three or four employees, they were I hate to use the word replace, but they were replaced by vas. Last VA, so to VAs instead of three or four employees at a cheaper costs, a higher rate of retrieval, a shorter period of time and time on desk, which led to millions of dollars.
Kayla Grayson 8:46
Yeah. And we actually were able to take our medical records supervisor who quite frankly, that’s a mundane job, and she was getting tired of it anyway. And we were able to turn her or move her to a department that we really had a need. And she is thriving in that department. And that’s actually resulting in a lot more client reviews because she’s in the closings department. So she’s getting to sit down and close out cases with clients and get those reviews and testimonials. Awesome.
Luis Scott 9:13
Brandon, what is what has technology done for your firm? You know, you started five years ago, you mentioned this, but have grown very, very fast. So how have you leveraged technology? Yeah,
Brandon Dawson 9:23
in that same vein, we we use a record collection company and that was a pain point we had very early on and the four of us were going to the mailbox and faxing or mailing the record request of somewhere in Florida and and they tell you though, we changed the mailbox, and we didn’t even tell you and you’re like oh great, you know, so we actually use automated record collection, kind of the same sort of idea that to go roll it again. But that makes it so much easier for us on that side of things that was huge for us to be able to get off the ground and not spin our wheels, doing kind of those mundane tasks, right. So you know anything we can automate it is always been a big, a big driver for our decisions. So it’s like, hey, is this something we can automate? If so then let’s work on doing that. So drip campaigns are another area that we’ve done a lot automation. And, you know, depending on what status they are, if they’re a current client, we built out journeys, now they’re getting videos that got filmed once, right. And these clients are having a better client experience because of you know, we’re utilizing technology to do stuff like that.
Luis Scott 10:26
What automation platforms are you guys using to create these kinds of automations? Because we’re
Brandon Dawson 10:32
on solidify, which is on Salesforce, we use marketing cloud. You know, there’s obviously a lot out there. But that worked best for us because they were, you know, it’s never I was talking to a guy who works for Salesforce us on the airport on the way here. And I was like, Yeah, you know, marketing cloud and Salesforce. He’s like, Yeah, we sell it like it works seamlessly. But there’s, there’s some kinks in there, like, yeah, definitely. So it’s never as easy as it should be. And admittedly, I was the one trying to kind of get it all implemented. And we ended up hiring a marketing director who’s a hell of a lot smarter than I am. And he took that and ran with it, because it was it was a heavy lift. But yeah, that’s who marketing clouds one. You know, there’s there’s so many different platforms. That’s probably the biggest one that we utilize right now. And then a lot of the I was talking with Ross yesterday, our marketing director, with a lot of the apps I said, reusing these these Oh, yeah, there was one on there that he was like, Oh, this one looks cool. So yeah, having somebody in your team that loves that. I mean, I am I’m listening to podcasts. I’m always trying to find new stuff and find somebody else in your team to that loves that. Right. And you know, you can kind of build off of that. And obviously, Brandon gave us a great, great backdrop for what we can implement. So you know, I would say if you can just pick one or two things, right. I mean, using chat GBT to respond to Google reviews. Right? You know, I think Stacy was using it to respond to an email. I’ve done that before. And it had people go, Kyle’s a really nice email. You’re right. I’m like, Yeah, you’re welcome. Right. So you know, I think there’s so many different tools you can use out there. Well,
Luis Scott 12:05
one of the benefits of like using chat GBT specifically for emails is that it makes it a much more eloquent email. And and it takes the creative part that you have to like rewrite your email multiple times. It just instantaneously does it for us. I think that’s huge.
Brandon Dawson 12:21
That’s exactly right. I think a lot of times that can be kind of short, my emails, not because I’m trying to be a jerk. I just am to the point. And then use chat GBT. And you’re like, Oh, that was much. They’re gonna receive it better. It’s a lot more well written. It’s more eloquent. You look smarter, too. Yeah.
Luis Scott 12:35
Well, there’s one of the apps is called AI writer. So if you guys haven’t downloaded AI writer, it has prompts and one of the prompts in there is, can you make this not sound so mean? And then you, and then you put what you want to write, and it like, changes it? So it doesn’t sound mean, right? Because that’s like, that’s an important thing in communication. So you’re doing something else, Kayla, in marketing, and this is, to me, this was fascinating when I found out about it, and it’s in it’s an outdoor marketing, using individual vehicles. So tell people about that. Because I think a lot of people are unaware of how technology is changing even the outdoor marketing space. Yeah,
Kayla Grayson 13:15
it’s really fascinating. So we use wrapped rideshare cars like Lyft, Uber, they get paid extra to wrap, wrap their vehicle with our logo, and, and that sort of thing. And I think everybody’s heard of Carver ties, I did a bunch of research and found a company called rapa phi. I’m not endorsing them by any means. But that’s where we use. And their technology was fascinating to me, because they can drive by somebody, and they get the mobile ID of your cell phone if it’s in the car. And then every week,
Luis Scott 13:50
again, they drive by you, they drive by the car,
Kayla Grayson 13:55
and it captures the mobile ID of any cell phones in the area, like that are within a certain vicinity. And I get weekly reports that we can now use with those ideas to target them on social media ads, pay per click that sort of stuff for our branding campaigns. So it’s literally we are everywhere, oh, in their eyes. So and their technology allows them to you know, one of the major pain points of grabbed rideshares is you can’t to like you can’t control where they are. And with rapa phi, you’re actually able to they don’t get paid unless they’re in your target market. So you get a heat map and it shows how many miles were driven in your market, how many miles were out. And so the drivers actually have are incentivized to ride around within your target market. We also do swarm events. So every time that there’s an event in our area, they will swarm that event with 15 to 20 cars so that we are just circling the event After five hours, and that’s all they see as well. So back then. So
Luis Scott 15:03
if you guys want privacy, just know it doesn’t exist. Because the these cars are if you’re standing on the side of the road, or in an Uber or in a lift going to the airport, it’s collecting your data. And then that you can use that data to retarget, the person with never having ever seen the person met the person or anything, it’s just completely active. So for those of you who are looking into outdoor marketing, or ask the question is rapa phi, a solution? Because you can capture so much data with this particular method, which is crazy scary all in one. So what are you doing with marketing?
Brandon Dawson 15:40
Yeah, I mean, in that same vein, I think OTT is another area, you can take all that same data and you know, now you’re seeing, you know, Netflix is having a paid subscription model, right, Amazon is having a paid subscription model. So you can use that same data to target there as well. So with Google Promax, I mean, that’s kind of in that same vein, right? You’re getting that data and you’re pumping it back into it. One of the things that we’re doing with with PPC ads is funneling that data that Google ID into liquifies, into the CRM, and then it knows whether or not we sign that case, right? So it’s coming in as a lead that we turn it down, and we sign it right. And then it’s pulling that back to Google and saying, Hey, this matter was when they signed up. So whatever the Google Analytics on that Google ID are, we want more of those, and we want less of these other ones. And so it’s this machine learning where Google is now going to be serving up better ads to more of our target audience, ideally, reducing our cost per acquisition cost per click. So that’s one of the things we’re doing another one on the privacy side, I think you and I’ve talked a little bit about this as Wisp. And you know, it’s crazy after show anybody who’s interested about it, but it basically you scan a code, click a link, and it takes you to a text message. And as soon as soon as you kind of opt in and you send a text message or say, Hey, you want my contact info? Yeah, hit send, it then pulls your data from that all of a sudden now co Luis Scott, oh, he lives it, you know, 4582, you know, Green Acres lane, here’s his email, and you’re like, I didn’t give you any of that. You’re like, no, that’s part of like what you can grab from people these days. So that’s something we’re looking at adding to our mix. You know, potentially at local games, right giveaways, put up that barcode where they can scan it to, we’re trying to get more of that data so that we can utilize that in, whether it be social media ads, just, you know, everyday newsletters, anything like that. So I think we’re definitely in a world where data is king, right? And Brandon was saying that it was data as the gold. Yeah. So the more more data we can get, the better and then But then you have to utilize it right. And I think that’s what you’re doing such a great job at is is turning that into actionable steps? Well, yeah, we’re using that data to then go get a more optimal target market in our social media world.
Luis Scott 18:02
And I think capturing a lot of this data also circumventing the anti soliciting rules, right? Because in the past, you couldn’t solicit. But now you don’t have to solicit you grab their data, and then you you feed them ads on the internet, and it’s not soliciting. So you’re completely free of that issue. In terms of data, because you were saying collecting data was so so critical. What would you say are the top three to five data points that every firm should be collecting
Brandon Dawson 18:29
on an individual? Or just in general, just
Luis Scott 18:33
in general, as a as a law firm?
Brandon Dawson 18:35
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we’re looking at, you know, building that client avatar, so you obviously, you know, as a really basic level, you know, is it a male? Is it a female, when, when are they born, so you have their age, you know, you’ve got to know where they’re, if you can write what’s their address, right. So that’s developing kind of that that heat map of, you know, that is our client avatar there, you know, usually between 30 and 60, and they skew 55 to 45, male, female, and they live in these areas. Right? So when you’re building out, maybe you’re looking to open another office, your Google business profile needs to be in that that city center over there. You know, I think that if you’re looking at kind of building that client avatar, you know, that’s certainly something we’ve talked, you know, at length about, you know, what I love to nerd out on on the cost per acquisition side. So looking at that with with your, with your marketing, you know, intake, I think the biggest thing there that, you know, you’ve got to have an intake dashboard. And you know, the first question that anybody should ask themselves is, you know, do I sign it what’s my want rate and then what’s my conversion rate? And if you don’t know those two numbers, you’ve got a good problem that you can solve but you can you can find so much lost revenue in that by going alright, well, gosh, my warrant rates so low How can I get that higher? Oh, yes, I’m guilty. I convert every case I want, right. I love that. You’re like yeah, Sure you do. Right. And and I think I might have said that at one point in time, and then you look at it. And it’s, you know, I think last year, we were at 95 and a half percent. And that was phenomenal, right. But we’ve worked really, really hard at that. And so, you know, those are some of the some of the things that we’re looking at on that side. And, you know, now there’s some AI that will go through and look at the transcripts of calls, when you’re training your people and saying, Hey, here’s what here’s what they did wrong here. Here’s what you how you can coach them to be better. So
Kayla Grayson 20:31
that’s their call
Brandon Dawson 20:32
rail. Yeah,
Luis Scott 20:34
I don’t know, I don’t know if you guys got the email yesterday that call rail sent out, they now can transcribe any language and translate it for you. So if you have a call in Spanish, it’ll translate the transcription to English for you through call rail. So if any of you guys who have call rail that just I just saw the email yesterday, that’s,
Brandon Dawson 20:54
that’s really cool. I haven’t seen that. Yeah, it they’re constantly putting out stuff there. So if I want to audit a call, you know, it’s nice to look through those transcripts. And then to get that kind of AI generated, shortened version of that, but I think that’s an area where, again, you can constantly use AI and all these different different areas. So finding vendors and platforms that that utilize AI are so important. Yeah, I think, you know, lithified does a good job five lines and a tremendous job of implementing AI. So you make sure you’re partnering with people who have that same mindset, right? You know, I heard some people are still on needles, and I remember needles, right? But you know, you gotta get off of that, you know, you’re gonna get left behind because needles isn’t, isn’t growing, they’re not up to up to speed with where everybody else is. So that’s like going to the f1 race, and you’re showing up in, you know, your 1972 Pinto, right, you’re gonna get left behind eventually, no matter how good of a driver, you are, for sure.
Luis Scott 21:47
What are you collecting, and what’s been the most useful for you in terms of data?
Kayla Grayson 21:52
From a marketing standpoint, and just overall, just overall, our main, we’re also building out our client avatar, and really figuring out the demographics, we’re getting ready to open up a new office in q4 Q one next year. And so we’re really looking at that data at cost. Cost per acquisition is huge. Retention or retention rate is the big one for us is sales are our conversion rate might be high. But how many of those cases are we terminating within 30 days is sales is just selling. And so we’re looking at that our average fee per case is another big one our time on desk I mentioned. So we’re really kind of and then time, you know, from settlement to closing? Are we just leaving the client behind the date of settlement? And just kind of letting the reduction say, Are we actually moving that to closings, for the client experience, but also for revenue projections? And that sort of thing? How
Luis Scott 22:57
have you leverage technology to optimize the operations of the business? Like, is there anything that you’ve done that has helped you streamline operations, I know, we talked about our travel, but anything else that you feel like,
Kayla Grayson 23:13
though, we are getting ready to implement like aI fields, and that sort of thing, we talked about even up demands? We’re really moving that. So we’re actually starting our pilot on and actually Monday. And that we’re looking at data right now to get a baseline. And then in, you know, three months, we’re going to look and see how much time was saved here? Is this worthwhile to move forward? The client costs, do you know, is our clients asking too many questions about the client own costs that we’re advancing and that sort of thing. So data, we’re always looking at to, especially when you’re implementing new technologies, and when you’re doing a pilot is looking at the baseline data? And then at the end of the pilot, was this really successful? Is this something that’s worth moving forward? And then also, how productive are employees on it, we’ve made several mistakes, implementing a software that I thought was going to be great and top level, I was like, This is gonna be awesome. And then you look at it and you get a 15% buy in, because employees are just like, this is just another platform. This isn’t useful to me. And so really looking at that data of is this a worthwhile investment? Is this going to move forward with me? Or is it just fixing the current problem and not thinking futuristic?
Luis Scott 24:33
Do you believe that everybody in the business should have the same access to data that you have at the top level leaders? Because I think this is a question that people have when it comes to revenue numbers to production numbers. Where do you guys fall in that area? Should they have all the information or should they be shielded and why?
Brandon Dawson 24:52
I were very big on transparency. I do think at the same time, it’s some people don’t have that same business acumen that we do, and they will see, oh, you want to do $10 million in revenue, you must make $10 million. You’re like, no, no, there’s there’s a lot of expenses there. And, and then outside of, you know, your p&l, you know, there’s hidden costs, too, right? There’s things that are not on the p&l, you know, I’m sure many people in here have, you know, high six, seven, figure eight figure client costs advance, right. And so those are things that are off the books, and you know, they don’t necessarily see that, nor do you want to sit down, explain that to everybody. I think the way that we try to be transparent in with our team is one, say, hey, you know, here’s how many cases we want to close, here’s how many cases we want to sign up. Here’s, you know, what our average fee goal is, if they want to, like work the math backwards, they can see what our goals are doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s actually what we’re going to do, hopefully, hopefully, we exceed it. But you know, sometimes you set goals, to try to get really close to them. And the other side is setting those career pathways, right? And saying, Hey, here’s where you can, you can get to in our firm, we want you to succeed, we want you to make as much money as you possibly can or or maybe it’s you want to spend more time with your family. Right? And, you know, give them what they want. Pay them well treat them right. And and I think that’s where maybe you’ll have a better buy in from your team than just saying here are all the numbers. I don’t think necessarily everybody wants to know that. And so yeah, I think that side of it, you always want to be as transparent as possible. I don’t think you trying to hide the ball is a good idea at all. Because then you get people saying, oh, you know what’s going on, you know, they’re they come up with that will fill in the blanks, right. And usually what they fill it in with is far from the truth. So I think you have to be mindful of both sides of that.
Kayla Grayson 26:51
Yeah, Transparency is key. This year was the first year that at our vision day, we actually laid out the numbers, but you have like a fine line of boring people with data, and then just connecting the dots, so they know these goals and just come out of nowhere. And so we actually put up a pie chart to say, you know, here’s where we landed last year, here’s where our expenditures were. And you can see, you know, 40% goes to our team, this is our investment in you. And this is what we’re investing here and there. And we did the same thing for our goals. So if we hit our goal this year, this is how much we’re investing in you. And that it, I got so much positive feedback on that they were like they they said it gave them an insight to know like I showed a graph of our net new and I said this is where my projected net new was of the year. And this is where i i allotted that I was going to need to hire, and this is the actual and it was within like 2% accuracy. And you know, I said I projected that we’re going to need 17 people by this date, we hired that 17. So we grew, it was 30% last year in Team 30% in revenue this year. And so I showed them and they’re like, I guess it just connected the dots. And they really, really appreciated it. All of the feedback that I got was now I know why you push me for this. Now I know why you push me for that. So I do think transparency is key. But it’s also a fine line of, they’re not going to understand. So you almost have to pick the key points and explain this is why our goal is this and this is how we’re going to get there.
Luis Scott 28:33
Give us one parting thought each of what you think the audience needs to take away as it relates to building a firm in 2024 Hit us with your best shot.
Brandon Dawson 28:45
So what you should take away. You know, I think if anybody here you gotta believe in yourself first and foremost. You know, obviously, we’ve got a lot of law firm owners here. And so you know, I think the biggest thing outside of all the technical stuff we’ve talked about is is belief in yourself. Having you know that mentality like failure is not an option. And that you going out there and marketing and providing great service for clients. And I know there’s somebody said that they really didn’t have an ad budget. You know, I’d say you’re doing your clients a disservice you’re doing the community a disservice by not letting them know how great you are. So, you know, if anything, care about your people market like crazy and have fun while you’re doing it, right? because life’s too short. So that’s kinda where I’d leave it.
Kayla Grayson 29:35
Okay, well, I love that. It is so easy to come to these things and leave with all of these tools that you want to implement, like go back to your team and I want to CRM I want this I want that. I’ve made the mistake of trying to do too much all at once, and it drives down your team it drives it causes stress on you the business everything. Find out what your major pain points are and just choose one or two things to focus on, bring back to your team, and create a plan. I know a lot of law firm owners tend to be quickstarts. You know, give it to your implementer and create a plan and don’t expect it to be done tomorrow, but understand that the plan is going to be the best part to implement and get the buy in to actually succeed. Absolutely awesome.
Brandon Dawson 30:26
Yeah, I was gonna say, if you’re looking at gotta leave in here, and how I approach it right, is you’re usually going to have 100 ideas you wrote down, right. And I think kind of that time boxing, but on a bigger scale here is go have all the ideas, right? And then sort them and, you know, ABC A’s, you know, we have to be to be great C’s, you know, maybe later down the line, and then get with your your team and say, Hey, out of these, do you agree, they let’s get alignment on these. And let’s pick, you know, two or three things. But it’s okay to have 50 ideas when you walk out of here. But it’s also okay to know that you’re not going to implement 50 things. Right. And that’s, I think the best way to do it is write them all down, organize them and then say, well, is this something I can implement in a week? You know, the heat map? Right? I think that’s, that’s super easy. I mean, I think somebody’s turned it on in a day. Right? Yeah. So you know, that might be really impactful. And you can do it very quickly. On the other hand, you know, setting up the connection with marketing cloud, that took us 12 months, right, that’s a much bigger lift, you know, moving from needles to solidify file line, that’s a really heavy lift. So organize them to not only in impact, but time, right. And if you have something that’s really impactful that you can implement really quickly, well, that’s this should be the top of your list, right? Get that done now, and then look at some of the other things say is it really impactful, but it’s going to take forever, and then maybe you have something that’s it’s going to help but we can also implement it super quickly, maybe we put that a little higher up as well. So those are some of the ways I look at implementing things when I when I lead a conference.
Luis Scott 31:58
And the secret is you only have to implement one thing to make a million dollars. That’s that’s the that’s the beauty of it. So with that, that he has for being on I appreciate your, your your answering these questions. I love to open up the floor. Does anybody have any questions for them about any of the apps that they mentioned any of the strategies that they’ve mentioned? Or any general questions about it? We have a wait till they come up.
Guest Speaker 1 32:25
I have a question about I loved what you were talking about, about the the pilot program and testing and seeing, hey, is this really worth investing in? Before we do a whole rollout? When you’re working with various software vendors on those pilot programs? Are they allowing you to have a couple of users for a certain period of time to do that test? Are they forcing you to commit to a long term contract out of the gate?
Kayla Grayson 32:56
They want the sale. So if I tell them this, I don’t make a decision without a pilot program. I mean, I had a vendor literally change their entire pricing model. Because I said this won’t work for me. I’m really interested in your program, but this is not going to work for me. And they they went back and change that. So you know, I think leveraging that and knowing that you’re talking with salespeople and whatnot, they they have the ability to do it.
Guest Speaker 2 33:23
Hey, Kayla, Could you spell the name of the app that you use for medical records? You said it? Yeah,
Kayla Grayson 33:29
absolutely. It’s Arc Trieval. So Arc Trieval. And I’m happy to I have my laptop. So I’m happy to show anybody who wants to after this or on the next break, how it kind of works with file buying or anything like that. Thank you.
Guest Speaker 3 33:52
Brandon, I live in your wonderful state of South Carolina love it. You mentioned something it came out. So fascinating. Catch all of it Salesforce liquify, something like that, or is it solidify? What was that?
Brandon Dawson 34:04
Yeah. So we use Liquify. That’s our CRM and it’s built on the Salesforce platform. And so that’s, that’s our CRM, it’s, I think originally was developed by Morgan Morgan. I think they recently sold a good portion of it to private equity. So they’ve gotten they’ve got a little more difficult to deal with. But great product, I would say it’s probably it’s for if you will really want to grow your firm. It’s not for smaller firms. I would say probably, you know, we implemented it with I think seven users and they were like, What are you doing and we had to beg and plead with them to let us implement it, but we also had a vision to grow. And so you know, I think the bigger you are, the better that platform is we were we were between letter phi and Paul vine. I mean, and I think they both have a lot of a lot of great things solidify is a much, much higher Have your build out then valve and valve on out of the box is a hell of a lot better than what if i What if I you, you can spend a ton of money. I mean, I’ve heard horror stories, I mean, six figures, like hundreds of 1000s of dollars building solidify. And so I didn’t realize how heavy of a lift it was, we did it early on, because we knew with you know, six, seven of us at the time, that it would be easier to implement and grow into. But I also think if I had known what a pain in the ass it was going to be, I probably would have stuck with Bob, I’m glad we didn’t, you know, we’re happy where we are. But you know, Sunday’s kind of a fortunate accident in that regard. So
Guest Speaker 4 35:39
anyone else liquefy ate all our profits, this talk to me about where to buy if
Luis Scott 35:43
you’re gonna it’s, it is a multi six figure investment. It is
Guest Speaker 4 35:53
a multi six figure investment. And it’s not just money. It’s staff time. It’s ongoing management, it’s but I think ultimately when you get it working, right, it’s worth it. Because what you can do, I would agree with that. But you have to know what you’re doing going in. So
Brandon Dawson 36:09
yeah, super customizable to that it’s more customizable than fall behind but fall bite out of the box 1000s. And involved ones continue to grow. And they’re doing a lot of great things.
Guest Speaker 4 36:17
Yeah, for great things. I want to know about rapa phi, though I kind of googled it while we were sitting here. And I you know, just kind of pricing like front end since I got you here in front of all of us. And that sounds really fascinating front end investment on that getting into utilizing something, not something like wrapped by but rapa phi specifically,
Kayla Grayson 36:37
yeah, again, going back to sales, you can negotiate. And the best time to hit them as end of quarter end of year, we hit them at the end of the quarter. And we’re actually able to waive all of our production, you pay like a production fee to get the car wrapped. Other than that, you just pay, you know, weekly or monthly fee, or we we paid six months in advance. But really the only initial production costs is is getting the car wrapped, which is pretty minimal. I think it ranges between 500 to 1500. Depending on per car, depending on if you’re doing a full wrap or a partial wrap or that sort of thing. The only ongoing monthly fee is is the rate that they you know that they’re charging you for that it’s really, I think we’re I mean, I’ll have to look offline, just because I don’t want to enter anything out. But it’s relatively I mean, depending on how many cars you’re gonna get, of course, it’s relatively reasonable. We contacted
Luis Scott 37:47
them after she gave me the information and the pricing is like very fluid, it’s like, it depends on the geographic location, how many miles are they going to drive? How many cars are going to have? What types of rap you’re gonna have? So their pricing was like, all over the place. You Yeah, there was like a lot, a lot of consideration. So I don’t, I don’t think that they’re even when when when I was talking to them, they were like, we can’t it’s not like every car is this amount. And therefore if you have 10 It’s this amount. It was like if you have 20 We can do a little discount here. And then if the geographic location smaller we can so it’s you have to really talk to them but they were suit their customer service is really great when I call them. So
Guest Speaker 4 38:26
is it a comparative to billboards is a similar investment or is it like, Hey, this is,
Kayla Grayson 38:31
you know, going similar? Yeah, it’s pretty similar. And you’re right there customer service is wonderful. The one thing that you run into a lot, especially being a personal injury firm is sometimes you will get people to call up and say you somebody from your firm just drove past me and they weren’t driving right or that sort of thing. I will say we’ve, we worked for the company before rapa phi and we we had a lot of those complaints. We since implementing rapa phi, we’ve only had one of them and they immediately pulled that driver off the road and replaced it with another driver within a week at no charge to us. So they’re very responsive to that and their customer service is phenomenal. I mean, their reporting dashboard, I can pull it up and look you know and see exactly where everybody’s driving the number of miles everything and grab that retargeting data anytime that I want.
Luis Scott 39:32
Thank you. Anyone else?
Brandon Dawson 39:36
I’ll just add something on the on the retargeting in that I we have not done this yet. But in conversations with some of the TV stations and Adams reps to the billboard reps, the billboards are also able to capture that data. I think they’re doing it through other third party apps so I think aren’t like your Chick fil A app right? I know Luis loves this Chick fil A. They’re tracking where You are and what billboards are going by. And then they’re able to grab that data and say, All right, well, Luis is driving by here, then they can get that additional data and start retargeting you on your phone as well you can then put up the billboards knowing that hey, Luis is driving this route. So I mean it’s just it’s it like you said there is no privacy like they know everything about you. And you even if you live under a rock, they know what rock and the type of dirt that’s there. Yeah, I mean, so they know everything and if you want to find more you know about somebody you know, ask right ask ask the reps that you know ratify it your Billboard at your TV at your radio. I mean, it’s crazy what they have behind the scenes,
Luis Scott 40:42
you can get privacy. You just need a flip phone so we can go back to the flip phone. You’re good to go. So give it up. Kayla Brandon, guys. Thanks. All right.
Outro 40:54
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 8figurefirm.com. That’s the number 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
