Shatter Proofing Your Business

Scott Reib is the Senior Attorney at Reib Law, a full-service law firm with over 20 years of experience in business law and estate planning. As a Zig Ziglar Small Business Lawyer and a Ziglar Legacy Certified Trainer, he helps business owners, entrepreneurs, and coaches implement structure, growth, and protection strategies. Scott has represented clients in contested probate and guardianships and complex ancillary litigation.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Who is Scott Reib, and what are his qualifications as a lawyer?
The seven components of a steady, predictable business
How to establish a board of advisors
When should you develop a recurring revenue model?
Case studies of successful recurring revenue systems
Strategies for pricing your services

In this episode…

If the economy suddenly collapses, will your business be protected? How can you safeguard your company against uncertainties?

Business lawyer Scott Reib stresses that to build a sustainable and robust organization, you must develop a sturdy foundation to manage operations consistently. This entails establishing a trusted board of advisors that includes key players like an accountant, a lawyer, a banker, and a coach. These professionals should be high-performing and willing to collaborate. You should also develop a recurring revenue model based on your service structures and ideal clients.

In this episode of The Guts and Glory Show, Luis Scott hosts Scott Reib, the Senior Attorney at Reib Law, to discuss how to shatterproof your business for the future. Scott explains how to price your services, his qualifications as a lawyer, and the strategies for developing a predictable business model.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by 8 Figure Firm.

Co-founded by Luis Scott and Seth Bader of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, 8 Figure Firm helps transform your law firm into a seven-figure or even eight-figure firm.

After their own law firm scaled from $3.5 million to $30 million in annual revenue in just two years, Luis and Seth started 8 Figure Firm to share their strategies and help other law firms achieve exponential growth.

Visit www.8figurefirm.com to receive a consult 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 hang 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 a man. 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 0:38

Hey, guys, welcome to The Guts and Glory Show a show dedicated to helping you learn just a little bit more so that you can be bigger and better than you were before. And we’re very excited to have Scott Reib, who is here to talk to us about shatter proofing your business. And I know there’s a lot of you out there right now who are very scared about the future. You’re scared about the sustainability of your business, you’re scared about what happens to my law firm if there’s a downturn in the economy. And I think Scott’s going to help us navigate that. And we’re going to dive into the recurring revenue model as well for law firms, which I think is a huge, huge win if you are in a practice area where you can have recurring revenue models. So with that, Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott Reib 1:21

Louis, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be on Guts and Glory and share a little bit of information. Absolutely.

Luis Scott 1:26

Absolutely. Now, I would love to hear a little bit of your background. But as you know, most people, they want to just dive right into the nugget. So just give me that that 32nd pitch like who are you? And why are you qualified to talk about shatterproof in your business?

Scott Reib 1:43

You know, I’m a 27 year lawyer, I’ve the last w two I received was in 97. I’ve been an owner in some way of a law firm ever since I’ve litigated about every kind of case you can and figured out about 11 years ago that I was tired of getting people out of trouble, it’d been really expensive for them and then being unhappy. And instead I wanted to figure out how to keep them out of trouble and help them build businesses that are shatterproof, that will bend and not break. And we do that through our access plan, which is a subscription service.

Luis Scott 2:14

That’s awesome. Now one of the things that that you talk about is that there are essentially seven strategies to shatterproof in your business. And I know that what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs, and you’ve probably dealt with this in the last 20 years as an entrepreneur yourself is that many people don’t know how to set up predictability in their business. And so talk to me about the seven strategies. And maybe you don’t have to give it all away right now. But tell me, You know what, to maybe all seven, like, how is it that a person creates a business that they can have confidence will not break? Yeah,

Scott Reib 2:49

so it all comes back to the foundation, if you build anything, the foundation really matters. And so with, you would think lawyers would all get that, right. And we’d know how to set it up, set everything up. And we don’t really know some of us weren’t trained to do that. So you need to have the right entity structure in place to be that base foundation for whatever business you’re doing. Professional Services, building, whatever you’re doing. That’s that’s strategy one. And sometimes you need to have multiple entities like maybe you own the building you’re using for your business or practice, you don’t want to have that inside your operating entity, you want that to be in its own company, leasing the space to your operating units to your law firm. Right. So that’s a kind of a foundational piece. The next big thing is I think you need to have what I call a board of advisors are some key players that everyone that is own, your own, your business needs to have access to and have solid relationships with. The first thing you need. is I mean, an accountant. Right, the game of business, the way you know, where you keep score is money and accounts are the scorekeepers. So you need to have one that’s willing to enter into a relationship with you help you understand how the numbers work, Bill to read financial statements, understand what they mean, and what to do with them, help them strategize with you on how to keep more of what you’re making, and plan for the future. Right. So you need that person on your board. You also need to have a lawyer that is entrepreneurial, that understands an entrepreneurial spirit that understands that you’re going to take risk, and isn’t going to kill every deal you tried to do. But help you minimize that risk and help you move forward. Right, and they need to have some way of charging you that is predictable, and it’s affordable, and that won’t keep you from accessing them. Right. And the billable hour is horrible for that in that way. Because if you if every time you call them, email them text them, you think you’re gonna get billed for that. You tend to not do it, you’ll google it, flip a coin, call a friend do anything to call your lawyer because of that model and so really, you’re busy on your business side for just information and small transactions. You need to have something set up in advance that’s that’s that’s a known no own entity that you don’t have to worry about big bills coming, right. And then you need to have an insurance guy or gal, you’d have someone that’s like, knows what you’re doing has really reviewed it. And it said, here’s all the insurance policies, you can have to cover all the risks that you have. And then you’re like, great, I can’t afford all that. But you prioritize it and start knocking those down as you can. Because as, as the listeners know, we can build all kinds of legal protection, we could have good contracts, things still happen, that you need to have insurance coverage, so that they’ll come someone will come and defend you and you’re not paying dollar one. So you need to have that good insurance broker relationship. The next thing you need is a banker, not a bank, where there’s a bank on every corner anymore, you need a banker, that you’ve got their number in your favorites on your cell phone, and they’ve got you on the their cell phone. And if you need something, you can text them and get it, maybe you need to make make it write a check now and make the deposit in the morning, you need to have that relationship, they can set up your lines of credit so that you’re ready for if some reason you need to make payroll and you don’t have the cash flow this week to do it, it’s already set up, that doesn’t happen that you have a banking relationship. So you need to have that. And last but not least, if you need to have a coach, and it may be different coaches for different seasons, you may have a coach for a specific thing you’re trying to do. But you’d have someone that’s helping you set some goals, and then accountability steps to meet those goals and then holding you accountable. And they because they can see things from a different perspective, and you need that person. Otherwise, it’s gonna be very lonely, running law firms and small businesses and you kind of get in an echo chamber. And it’s, it’s hard to make what I call exponential growth, where you really climb the mountain top at a rapid speed unless you have someone really helping you. You in our pre call, you talked about the my team, the Dallas Cowboys, you don’t, you don’t have a 12 and five season, unless you’ve got a coach, you have to have someone that helps you be excellent on a regular basis. Now, my cowboys let me down every year at the end. But they really didn’t they do some good things to through the season. It’s because they’ve had solid coaching, holding them accountable. And if you want to be a champion in business, you got to do the same thing. I will

Luis Scott 7:19

say that at least they let you down at the end of the season, at the beginning of the season, because the the Atlanta Falcons, they just let you know, in game two, we’re going to screw up this year, so don’t even have any aspirations for us. But I actually, you know, I agree with you greatly on the coaching thing. And not because I’m a coach myself, but really because I know what coaching has done for me and how it’s unlocked incredible shortcuts in my life. And we think that many times when we’re working with people who are looking for coaches, they’re looking for a reason to cut the costs. Instead of seeing the value that exists in having the coach. Yes, the coach may cost 1000 5000 10,000. But they may unlock 1,000,002 million, 3 million, we need to stop worrying about the cost, and start thinking about the value add on looking for coaches. Now I wanted to say one funny thing about about the Google search, because that’s how I used to search when I was in law school. It’s like that’s, that’s how you shepardize was using it. That’s how you started off. Now, interesting thing about the board of advisors, you mentioned, this is the process of you know, Shadow proofing. And all of the positions that you mentioned in your board of advisors were paid people, right? We’re talking about the banker or the lawyer, the insurance person, is there room in creating a business where you have a board of advisors that are unpaid? And if so, if you recommend that how would you find those people? And if you don’t recommend that, why would you not recommend an unpaid board of advisors?

Scott Reib 9:02

Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s, I think it’s easier said than done. But it will come down to networking. And you would just have to really level up your networking and find people that have some key skills or knowledge or knowledge that you don’t have, they may be a few steps ahead of where you want to go. But they say you are the average of the five people you hang out with. So yeah, if you could find three to five really new entrepreneurs that are really performing at a high level, that are willing to kind of be volunteer mentors on a board for you and I don’t know meet quarterly, whether it’s by the zoom or if you take them to dinner or flying in for a meeting. It would be great. I think. I just think it could be very difficult to accomplish. But if you can do it, that’d be great. That’s what the key the advisors that I’m talking about. They all have some financial incentive and working together, and nothing motivates people like money. And so it seems like it’s in their best interest to do that. And I’ve just found as being on that team for a lot of people that I meet a lot of great, great other service professionals and we work, figure out who you work well together. And some people I’d rather not work with. But we’re able to accomplish things behind the scenes, even sometimes for for the client, and then give them solutions instead of them being a part of this endless discussion about what’s the best way to set this up or handle this tax situation or this legal structure, or insurance all gets done in the backend. And then here’s the solution, you pick, Mr. Entrepreneur. And so that’s worked real well. But if you could do the other, I think it’d be awesome. Yeah,

Luis Scott 10:44

I think one of the and I appreciate that. You mentioned that it’s difficult because I get asked that question. And the problem is that really good advisors, really good mentors are busy. They don’t really have a lot of time on their schedule, to dedicate to someone on an ongoing basis. And so if you’re lucky enough to find someone, that would be great. But I guess I guess your point is, yes, you may, it’d be great to find them. But really find the people who are financially invested in your business and make that the standard. And that’s how you create that shatterproof mentality.

Scott Reib 11:21

Yeah, I think the other thing might naturally happen. As you go to events, as you kind of level up your game, you may meet some people that volunteer to fill those positions and help you in a mentor way. But most of the people you want to do probably already have coaching programs and things they’re already doing that are high ticket, and they really can’t just say here, I’m going to give this to you for free. That’s not fair to them or to other people. So I think it’s a great idea. I just don’t, I wouldn’t focus a lot of energy on it, I think if I was trying to grow my business. Absolutely.

Luis Scott 11:57

Now, let’s get into the recurring revenue model. Because this is what you specialize in. This is what you help business owners and law firms create? Who’s the best candidate for creating a recurring revenue model? Like how do you know that your business or your law firm is primed for that type of that type of system?

Scott Reib 12:18

You know, it’s a so if you’re if your business or law firm is seeing people on a repeat basis, or some service or product, that that’s something you want to think about, is there some way that I can turn that into recurring revenue, where instead of just paying for it, every time they come in, we’re spreading those payments out over time, and they get more value for what than what they were before, right, you’re not just reselling the same thing, you’re adding more value in packaging it differently. But it works really well for business advice and transactions. For sure, I’ve seen it work in a state planning. Sometimes it’s a small bolt on to flat fee package where they pay you a monthly or quarterly fee to have access to you for questions. And for updates as they go. I’ve seen it work. Those would be the two main areas, I think real estate practice that could work that’d be very similar to the business of seeing where they’ve set up packages for like real estate investors, where they’re doing all their great and all their docs for their deals and all that stuff. So those are kind of the main areas and obviously personal injury doesn’t work and it’s contingency, bankruptcy people. I mean, I you Well, I tell you, I have seen it work on the creditor side of bankruptcy, where if for banks and things like that, and people that have a lot of claims in bankruptcy court, then you could set up a package. I’ve talked to litigators before that have done it, it’s generally on the business side. And they’ll set up some sort of a monthly package for people that are doing a lot of litigation. It’s news and not really big litigation. You know, it’s let’s say it’s cases that are 100,000 or less, and they’re finding a monthly instead of charging them a billion by the hour, they’re charging kind of a monthly maintenance fee for that while the case is active. And then it’s a higher fee. When it’s a for me, the mediation trial, etc. And so those are kind of the ones that are just kind of, we see I see a lot of people doing, but you just got to get creative and figure out what what is your what problem isn’t being addressed right now in the market, or what service is being delivered in a way that’s just inefficient. For the buyer. I kind of if I started building mine in 2012, I really was a little early. The they had the market had a problem but they weren’t aware of the problem. So you really kind of need that the your customer or client to be aware that they have this problem before they’re going to be really anxious to buy it. And so I had to kind of build the market for what I was selling but in order to sell it. Now people are much more Where of pay, there’s general counsel services on a subscription basis that can help my business. And so I have people searching now. But before it was all me, I had to create the need and then ended sell it. Yeah,

Luis Scott 15:12

I think I mean, until you, you’ve heard of the concept, it seems odd to pay a lawyer every month, when you don’t know when you’re going to use them. But I think as you go in business, you know, as I progressed in business, and I realized that we were spending 3040 $50,000 A year anyway, on a lawyer, why not just create that in monthly installments, get the most out of it, they add added value to you. And everybody wins in that in that scenario, as it relates to your model? What kind of success? Could a person see out of your model? Like? are? Are we talking about people building million dollar recurring revenue models, multi million dollars? Like, what are we seeing with this recurring model? What’s what’s the what’s the limit?

Scott Reib 15:58

Yeah, I don’t know where the limit is yet. But you can, I’ve done seven figures with it. And I think that I think that it’s just a matter of how much how high you want to scale it, right? Because at some point, everything requires work. And so by building a subscription model, that again, at some point, everything requires work. There’s no free rides, I’ve changed the work I do. But I no longer have to keep track of my time and build for two days every month trying to send out bills and collect, I no longer have accounts receivable. And so I’ve traded some work. But now I have to work on as we’re scaling this to 100 Plus members, I have to build systems and things that make it more efficient for us to deliver the service so that I can keep right keep profit margins built in otherwise, we’re just running cash through and cash back out. So you have to make sure that you can do that. And that’s work. And then I have to hire more professionals to help some people would just like to generate $500,000 of annual revenue through subscription that only takes them and maybe one virtual paralegal, and they’re happy with that for a long time. Because that’s not a lot of work, or it’s work they’re just comfortable doing. But you could I think this thing will scale. As far as I mean, especially if you’re in a very populated area, or have multiple licenses, it’s, it’d be very easy to scale it to eight figures. But it would take you translate the right way to say it, but get you to what gets you to $1 million in annual sales for subscription model won’t take you to 2 million. It’s a different skill set.

Luis Scott 17:37

Absolutely. Now, when you’re when you’re talking about what, because there’s got to be somebody listening to this, who’s starting off, I get a lot of like new law firm owners, listening to my show, and then they send me a message and they say, Hey, I’m not, you know, big enough to work with you guys. But I love the book or something like that. These guys that are just starting off what you’re saying as in your model, you could essentially build a half a million dollar income minus a paralegal working, what 10 hours a week, 15 hours a week on this recurring revenue model. Is that is that kind of the concept?

Scott Reib 18:14

That’s right. Wow. Yep, very easily.

Luis Scott 18:16

This is come through your your service, it’s called access plan. How when somebody joins access plan, what is it that you are doing for them that’s causing them to be able to create this model? Like? Are you showing them how to market it? Are you showing them how to sell it? Or are you showing them? How to operate it? What is the what is access plan? Do?

Scott Reib 18:40

You know the access plan is my subscription that I offer to small business owners? The the revenue accelerator is what we teach lawyers if they want to build their own. And we you know, it starts with kind of talking about vision and what what do you want to do? What do you Who do you want to work with? Like I love working with speakers, trainers, coaches, because they’re having a huge positive impact on the world, helping people change their lives and build legacies. So if I help them, then my reach is exponential? Yes. I want to spend I want to work with those people. If you want to figure out who do you want to spend time with. Because if you’re going to be successful in this recurring model, you’re going to be building relationships with people and you want to build those with people that you’d like hanging out with. So that’s kind of the first thing is who do we want to who we want to work with? Then you can look at what do they need, and build, they start building from there, then it’s how do we want to deliver the service? Do we want to use a face to face are we using? Are we using Zoom? What kind of technology are we using? Then you figure out what’s the you know, what’s our price point? How are we going to build them? Is there gonna be monthly? Is it going to be annuals will be quarterly? And then what are those? What’s the price per payment? And and then am I going to deliver this service where I’m doing all the work? Or am I going to be subbing out some of the work and then what systems am I going to use to manage the project because you really really, once you start the subscription model, you kind of become a project management firm will open 1000 projects in 2024. Wow. And I’ll do that with the with three full time employees and some a few contractors.

Luis Scott 20:18

What I’m hearing is very, very high profitability. Yeah,

Scott Reib 20:23

that’s what it sounds like. Yeah. Now, if you price your right, right, the trick is you got to price it to where you were, it’s highly profitable. But it’s still a price point that business owners are like, okay, seeing that come out of their bank every month. So

Luis Scott 20:35

let’s talk about pricing. Because this is a this is a very good question. Even for people who are not in the in the revenue model, or a recurring revenue model. I work with lawyers all the time, and they come in and they tell me, my price for this following service is a flat fee of $2,000. And I, and I go, you’re insane. Like it takes you 1015 hours to just do that work? How do you help people develop their price point? Like, what do you have like a strategy for helping people develop a price point for their service?

Scott Reib 21:08

Yeah, I try to I try to stay away from the out of the hours analogy and comparison, because we don’t want to be trading dollars and hours, at least I don’t know anymore. Because to do that my rates really high. And it’s just, it’s just no fun. So I want to figure out what’s the value of what I’m providing the client. And so you start building the value stack of here’s all the things, you know, when maybe it’s they want they want to they’re buying or selling a business? And so it’s a business purchase or acquisition package, what are you? What are you? What are they getting out of that? Well, you know, I just talked to some people that are going to be selling their business for $8 million dollars in this is going to be their retirement. And so it’s there’s this huge value of the effort, they have to get through this process efficiently in a way that they’re protected at the end, and that they get their $8 million. So that’s if they understand the value of what you’re what you’re getting them from protection, that’s a 15 $20,000 package. They might if you just look at the documents when it’s done. Just the paper is not worth it to 20,000. But the knowledge that you have to walk them through that and make them feel good about the situation and have a peace of mind and security that they’ve signed the right things that you’ve asked the right questions of the other side of the business broker, things they don’t know to ask. That’s, that’s what the value they’re buying. And you have to package the price accordingly. And that’s it’s, it can be it can be very hard. That’s why so many lawyers will underprice their packages, just because they lack the confidence in the value that they actually are providing.

Luis Scott 22:48

I love that you said confidence because I was hoping you would say that because I do think pricing requires you to have the belief that you’re worth that price, that you’re delivering that level of value and that level of service. And I think that’s absolutely right. What would be the one thing as we as we go on the homestretch here, what would be the one thing thing you would tell someone, if they were interested in starting a recurring revenue model, what’s the first thing they need to do?

Scott Reib 23:15

The first thing they need to do is figure out who they want to work with. That’s the most important thing, you’ve got to know who you want to work with. You can’t work with everybody. So figure it out. A good book for that is Michael Ports, Book Yourself Solid. And he talks about his red red rope policy, and you’ve got to figure out who you’re gonna let inside that red rope. Because if you build this model, then you’re going to be spending a lot of time with these people. And you don’t want to do that, again, with people that you don’t want spend time with. So really focus on that. And once you figure out who it is you want to work with finding the problems that they need, they need you to solve, that’s much easier. So that’s where you start. And then we just start building it out. And some of it’s not a science, it’s a little bit of an art. And so you’re no, you can’t be married to the plan, you create month one. Because my month six, you may go, wow, I’ve learned a lot selling that I need to adjust it. And then you make some adjustments, and you go back and sell it. And the other thing I would probably do, especially if I was taking a practice that has already existed to the head clients, I would call the existing clients and say, Hey, I’m thinking about switching to a subscription model. I’m thinking the price point would be about $2,000 per month, I’m just making numbers up. Would that be of interest to you if it contained this, this this and start asking the people that you’re already working with? Would they be interested in doing that? Before you go the trouble of building it?

Luis Scott 24:44

Absolutely. I mean, I think asking you’re asking your clients what their needs are is a great strategy for figuring out whether the service that you want to provide as a good a good service and so I love that advice. Scott, thanks for being on the show. If somebody wanted to know how to shatterproof Your business or start this recurring revenue model they wanted to work with you figure out how to do their own axis plan in their business or law firm, how would they be able to reach you?

Scott Reib 25:10

You can reach me on Instagram at theScottreib. Or go to our website, which is Reiblaw.com reiblaw.com/GutsandGlory. And I’ll set up a page right there where they can actually book a session with me for 20 minutes to talk about your business or adding on recurring revenue, which whatever you want to talk about. And we’ll see what what I what I would think you should do what the best strategy is. You can also download a free ebook on that page. And we just want to help you guys move forward with making your businesses shatterproof so they’ll bend and not break. Awesome.

Luis Scott 25:46

Well, thank you for that link. And thank you for being on the show. And if anyone wants to know how to shatterproof your business, create recurring revenue, contact Scott right now you’ll be able to get on the fast track to developing the business of your dreams without having to work your entire life into the ground. So thank you for joining us. You’ve been listening to The Guts and Glory Show.

Outro 26:11

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 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.

Shatter Proofing Your Business

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