[00:00:00] Brian Glass: what has worked for us most recently as a referral marketing piece was going to chiropractors and asking them for business. And most personal injury firms, the way that they approach this is you get a high volume of calls coming in and you route them all to one chiropractor.
[00:00:16] Brian Glass: And then at a certain point, the chiropractor starts sending you cases back and it becomes reciprocal. I don’t have that high volume of cases coming in. So I went looking for what problems the chiropractors have that I can try to solve. What do they not like about personal injury lawyers? Well, they don’t like that we don’t communicate very well that the cases take too long to settle and that when they do settle, we are telling the chiropractor, you need to reduce your bill by one third or by one half.
[00:00:44] [00:01:00]
[00:01:13] Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I’m your host Jonathan Hawkins and this week we’ve got a special guest. We’ve got Brian Glass Some of you maybe many of you have heard of him He does a couple things. He’s got a personal injury firm up in Virginia, and he also has I’ll let him explain it, but basically a mastermind type program for lawyers So Brian, why don’t you
[00:01:40] Jonathan Hawkins: introduce yourself tell us about your practice?
[00:01:42] Jonathan Hawkins: Tell us where you are, how many attorneys, how many staff, that kind of stuff.
[00:01:47] Brian Glass: Jonathan, thanks for having me. Am I the first actually not founding partner that you’ve had on the show?
[00:01:51] Jonathan Hawkins: Yes. And maybe the last I’m trying to keep it the founders.
[00:01:58] Brian Glass: You’re good. You don’t have to change the name. [00:02:00] Yeah. So, so I’m Brian glass. I practice law in Northern Virginia with my dad, Ben who was on this show just a couple of episodes back. We’ve got five lawyers in the firm. We do two things. We do Auto accident cases in Virginia you know, with a handful of other personal injury, but our wheelhouse is auto accidents.
[00:02:18] Brian Glass: And then my dad and one of the lawyers here represent people who are disabled in our nationwide long term. disability practice. We have five lawyers total, three on the auto accident side, two on the ERISA LTD side. I think we have about 12 staff members. I mean, it changes kind of by the week because we’re, we keep adding VAs.
[00:02:38] Brian Glass: So we’re growing in that regard. We’re on the lookout for another local paralegal here. And that’s the practice. The business has been around for about 25. 30 years. I joined it in 2019 after practicing. I sometimes I say all my own away from my dad for the first 10 years of my career, kind of growing my [00:03:00] own way of doing auto accident cases, my own network of friends.
[00:03:03] Brian Glass: And then I joined his practice in 2019 to grow the portfolio of injury cases and we’re having fun.
[00:03:10] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. It’s interesting when I ask people how many people they have nowadays, it’s, do you count VAs or not? You start counting VAs and people have these huge teams. And we’ll get in some of that in a little while, but you mentioned your partners with your dad. So, you know, I had, I guess a few weeks ago, two sisters that practice together. I’m not sure I’ve had a son that practices with his dad. So what’s that like from your perspective?
[00:03:36] Brian Glass: So it’s really good from our perspective. What I think we do really well is the division of labor. You know, when I joined in 2019, he still kind of had his hands in some injury cases. We were closing down a medical malpractice. Practice really because the risk profile in Virginia doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
[00:03:57] Brian Glass: We have a cap that’s somewhere around two and a half million dollars. [00:04:00] It costs you well into the six figures to try one of those cases. And because there’s a cap, none of the cases ever settle. So, you know, we got away from that risk profile of cases. And and he hung on to a couple of our larger injury cases.
[00:04:14] Brian Glass: But really, since 2021, one. Hasn’t been involved at all in the injury side, and I’m not involved in the long term disability side, except that I, you know, kind of read and give some comments on some of the briefs that we have. So I think that is helpful that we each stay in our own lane. The other thing that we do pretty well is we’ve been running on EOS since maybe 2020.
[00:04:36] Brian Glass: He’s the visionary. I’m the integrator. And I think we both recognize that the other one is really good at things that maybe we’re not so good at. So I’m pretty good at numbers and figuring out average case value, where our case is actually coming from and looking at data. And he hates all of that stuff.
[00:04:52] Brian Glass: And he is really good at culture building and relationships. And that’s not really my strong suit. So we’re [00:05:00] complimentary of each other in that way. We haven’t had any major blow ups yet. And yeah, you know, so, so my story really is, you know, 10, 11 years ago he was 60, I was 30 and my, the practice that I was at was kind of going through a couple of transitions.
[00:05:18] Brian Glass: And I guess not 10 years ago, five years ago, five, six years ago. And, you know, we kind of looked at each other and we’re like, well, we don’t practice like during this phase, we don’t get together and start working together at this phase that might never happen. So that’s how it came together. It never was something that we really discussed as I came out of law school, but we just, you know, hit this window of time where it made sense.
[00:05:38] Brian Glass: For both of us, they were expanding into some new office space. My firm was decided not to expand on. It just made sense to come over. So it’s been good.
[00:05:47] Jonathan Hawkins: You know, you mentioned sort of complimentary skill sets, whether it’s a family member or not. I think that’s really important for a partnership to really thrive. So, so that’s good. You don’t have to get into the details, but my understanding [00:06:00] is that, When you came in you guys did some sort of transaction at some point you got maybe evaluation and you did some kind of transaction.
[00:06:08] Jonathan Hawkins: Could you maybe hit some of the high points of that? About how you guys went into that
[00:06:14] Brian Glass: Yeah. Well, I didn’t know you at the time. Which was a problem because it’s really hard to find information on how law firms come together. Right. How do people form a partnership in a law firm? And maybe that’s because, you know, there’s a hundred different ways to bring people together and to structure a partnership, whether it’s equity, non equity, you know, bonus structure, like whatever.
[00:06:38] Brian Glass: And so we were trying to kind of on our own cobble together. What does this look like for me bringing some business to a firm that had an established IP, you know, furniture. All of that stuff and at the same time, you know, because it is a father son relationship, not going out and like taking out [00:07:00] a line of credit with the bank and giving him a lump sum payment.
[00:07:04] Brian Glass: So we’re trying to figure out like, what does that look like? And there really was not at the time, a whole lot of publicly available information for how law firms. There’s a ton on how medical practices do it. So that really was our model. I started looking at, there’s a bunch of websites that describe how does a young doctor buy into a medical practice?
[00:07:25] Brian Glass: And so we had kind of on paper what we wanted it to look like. We had a rough evaluation for what the practice was probably worth. Which in hindsight. You know, maybe it was right. Maybe it wasn’t right on one hand. We have a single event, auto accident practice. On the other hand, the long term disability space becomes a continuing revenue stream, because once we get somebody back on claim, now that monthly check is coming through the office.
[00:07:49] Brian Glass: So that’s a monthly recurring revenue model. And so we had an idea for what the case, what the firm was probably worth. And we just kind of set a number and and then we engaged lawyers and [00:08:00] the lawyers made it much more complicated and difficult than it ever needed to be. We spent probably 15 or 20, 000 between the two of us papering this deal that we were like, we could shake hands and.
[00:08:12] Brian Glass: And then what we ended up doing was we just reduced my salary because we were in S corp and had to, the profits had to be divided 50, 50, we just reduced my salary by what the buy in would have been. I brought some cash to the table and then, you know, by the time that the revenue, but by the time that salary discrepancy Made up 50 percent of the value that we’d agreed on of the business.
[00:08:35] Brian Glass: We just said, okay, now we’re 50,
[00:08:37] Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. You know, you’re right. There’s not a whole lot out there about law firms and the transactions maybe that’ll change over the coming years, but you know, I think it’s cool that You Despite father son relationship that you guys went through this exercise the way you did. I think that’s important versus just sort of stepping into it.
[00:08:56] Jonathan Hawkins: So, so that’s cool. So we got a lot to
[00:08:59] Jonathan Hawkins: cover. [00:09:00] Go
[00:09:00] Brian Glass: but I’ll tell you, like, if are we doing it again, I would have, we would do it differently, I think, because you know, I think there’s some value to each having your own entity that then is partnered. For tax reasons, like, you know, there’s some tax things that I want to do in terms of paying my kids licensing fees and things like that that I can’t do in this structure that I’m in now.
[00:09:21] Brian Glass: And as we were going, you know, we had our idea of what we wanted it to look like, and I’ve learned a little bit sense. But nobody really explained like, Hey, here’s the three different ways. To do this, the lawyers that we talked to at least approached it as though it were any other, you know, You know, business transaction.
[00:09:37] Brian Glass: And I dunno, you know, I would think differently about it if I were doing it again.
[00:09:41] Jonathan Hawkins: You know that’s you bring up a question a good point, so I’m dealing with this seems like almost every week A lot of accountants go out there, and they say s corp s corp And there are a ton of limitations it might work In the early days, but pretty quickly, if a [00:10:00] firm grows and it starts adding owners, it starts to break and it limits the things you can do.
[00:10:05] Jonathan Hawkins: One of which you just sort of mentioned, because you can’t have an entity own shares in an escort. It has to be an individual, for example. So I don’t know you can convert, so there’s still time if you want, but that would open up that possibility for you.
[00:10:20] Brian Glass: And that’s the other kind of lesson that we learned is we would have been beneficial to have everybody in the same room at the same time. Both lawyers and the CPA and us, and just say like, here’s what we’re trying to do, make it happen. Right. But the lawyers. We’re so, you know, listen there’s ethical rules about talking to the other guy’s client and blah, blah, blah, at the end of the day, we’re like, it’s father, son.
[00:10:44] Brian Glass: I want to do this in the least onerous way paper wise and the most beneficial, you know, way. Tax way. And so we were getting advice from the lawyers and taking it back to CPA was saying, you can’t do this. And then we’re coming back to the lawyers. So, [00:11:00] so yeah, it you know, I would, if I were doing it again, I would get the whole team together, almost like in a mediation and and try to walk out with a term sheet.
[00:11:08] Jonathan Hawkins: Great idea. If you’re out there thinking about it, listen to that. So, so yeah, so let’s move on. So, I’ve got a ton I want to cover. There’s no way we’re going to get through it all. But you know, one thing that you are particularly good at is marketing. So, I want to talk a little bit about that. And we’ll get into your role with great legal marketing too which is sort of the mastermind slash, marketing group, lawyer marketing group, but by virtue of just your experience and then your involvement there, you’ve seen a lot of stuff done by a lot of different people and a lot of different firm types and economic models. So, I don’t know if you can distill it down to three, but let’s say I’m a new, fairly young, I’m trying to get my firm off the ground. What would be your top sort of three pieces of advice on the marketing side?[00:12:00]
[00:12:00] Brian Glass: Yeah. So it’s funny. And thank you for mentioning a great legal marketing. Because I forgot to do that in the introduction. So, my dad and I also run a coaching and consulting and mastermind program for solo and small law firm owners called great legal marketing. We had a mastermind call yesterday with Colin Rahm in South Carolina, who’s going out, he’s starting his own firm by the time this episode is live, his firm will be up and running in Charleston and we’re having this exact conversation.
[00:12:26] Brian Glass: It’s like, whoop. If you were going back and restarting your firm, what would you do in the first 30 days? Marketing wise? Number one, make sure that you get a CRM, right? And your CRM is different than your case management software, because when you’re starting, you might not even need case management software.
[00:12:43] Brian Glass: If you’re a true solo, like you probably don’t need something that’s assigning tasks. You need some kind of matter management, so you don’t miss touches, the limitations and other deadlines. But if you’re a true solo, you probably don’t need a full blown thing. What you do need is a good CRM that’ll maintain your [00:13:00] contact list and that you can then segment, right?
[00:13:03] Brian Glass: Because at a certain point, you’re probably going to want to do email marketing or newsletter marketing or at least like track where your cases are coming from. And. If you have a good list of everybody who you know and have a relationship with, now you can segment it off when you go and do email marketing to, okay, I’m going to send one email to my list of current and former clients.
[00:13:25] Brian Glass: I’m going to send a different email to my set of referral sources. And then you might, you know, you might want to send something to everybody. So getting a good CRM is. Is the first step that I would take. And you might want to play around with four or five of them, right? They’ll almost all give you a free trial.
[00:13:40] Brian Glass: My sense is there’s not one that’s really better than the other. It’s really what’s best for your firm, right? You might want it to have text functionality. You might not care if it has text functionality. You may need it to do certain things in terms of like keeping up with LinkedIn. There are some that will do that.
[00:13:58] Brian Glass: There are some that won’t. So you [00:14:00] play around with a couple of those and figure out which one is the best for you. But invest early in a good CRM. Second thing I would do is referral marketing, right? If I were starting on my own and. You know, assuming I’m not a law student just coming out, assuming I’m leaving a firm and going to start my own thing I would spend all of my marketing dollars on lunch and dinner, right.
[00:14:21] Brian Glass: With lawyers and whoever else might refer you a case. So thinking about whatever your practice area is, who are the other professionals that service your clients? For me, that looks like chiropractors, small physical therapy offices. Auto insurance brokers tow truck drivers, right? Tow yard, tow lot guys.
[00:14:42] Brian Glass: We’ve at various points in the past created custom cards for the tow truck drivers that in their name, right? Give, Hey, let me take this. Marketing liability off your books. I’ll make your card and it’s just going to have a QR code for us on the back of it. So we’ve done things like that, but thinking about how can [00:15:00] you get in front of other people that are servicing your clients so that they can then remember you and kick back to you, right?
[00:15:06] Brian Glass: That’s a better spend. I think in the early days than any kind of digital marketing outside of like Have a basic website
[00:15:13] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
[00:15:14] Brian Glass: because when somebody refers a potential client to you, that person’s going to look and make sure that you have a website. And if they’re under the age of 40, they’re probably going to look on social media and make sure that you exist there.
[00:15:25] Brian Glass: So, you know, I view those kinds of things, not as. The social media, at least not as like direct marketing attribution things, but people check their trust clues to make sure that you’re there. And then the third thing that I was do is get good at one channel of client acquisition. Maybe it’s referrals, maybe it’s something on social media, but I wouldn’t do like Instagram, Tik TOK, LinkedIn, Facebook Google LSAs, Google pay per click, like just pick one and get good at it.
[00:15:57] Brian Glass: And after you’re good at that one, to the point where now [00:16:00] you can off offload that to somebody else, maybe it’s a VA, maybe it’s a marketing assistant in house. Then you can move on to the next one. I think so many young lawyers and new law firm owners try to do everything. And if you try to become an expert at everything, you end up not being very good at anything.
[00:16:16] Brian Glass: So those are the three. So CRM spend all your early marketing dollars on referrals instead of digital, and then pick one channel and get good at it. Yeah,
[00:16:26] Jonathan Hawkins: a LinkedIn post or if I heard it on your podcast or whatever, but you were talking about recently, you gave a talk at maybe a marketing, a lawyer marketing event, and someone came up to you and said, Oh, that doesn’t work. And I think the post was something to the effect of, well, have you tried it?
[00:16:41] Jonathan Hawkins: If you hadn’t tried it, you don’t know, or, you know, just cause it doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. I can’t remember exactly but yeah, talk about that a little bit.
[00:16:48] Brian Glass: He didn’t come up to me afterwards. He raised his hand in the middle of the event and told me I was
[00:16:52] Jonathan Hawkins: Even better.
[00:16:54] Brian Glass: So, you know, I’ve what has worked for us most recently as a referral [00:17:00] marketing piece was going to chiropractors and asking them for business. And most personal injury firms, the way that they approach this is you get a high volume of calls coming in and you route them all to one chiropractor.
[00:17:12] Brian Glass: And then at a certain point, the chiropractor starts sending you cases back and it becomes reciprocal. I don’t have that high volume of cases coming in. So I went looking for what problems the chiropractors have that I can try to solve. What do they not like about personal injury lawyers? Well, they don’t like that we don’t communicate very well that the cases take too long to settle and that when they do settle, we are telling the chiropractor, you need to reduce your bill by one third or by one half.
[00:17:40] Brian Glass: And we aren’t showing them the settlement statement, the breakdown of what happened with all the insurance money that came in. And so the pitch that I made in this presentation was, here’s what we’re doing with chiropractors is I’m explaining to them all the things that lawyers do to screw chiropractors that maybe, you know, about, maybe you don’t know about, but I’m explaining why I’m a better [00:18:00] mousetrap for you as a referral source.
[00:18:01] Brian Glass: And so this guy And he raises his hand and he said, well, the first time a chiropractor ever asked me for a settlement statement, I would be the last time I ever sent him a case. I said, well, that, yeah, great. So like, maybe this isn’t the maybe this isn’t the marketing piece for you. I said, but you know, you’re the reason that this thing works.
[00:18:19] Brian Glass: Right. Because there’s a whole lot of guys out there like you. He says, well, there’s a lot more guys like me than they are like you. And I said, yeah, no, exactly. Right. And but that’s back Jonathan to like making sure that you’re, you are philosophically aligned with your marketing. I mean, especially as an injury lawyer there’s all kinds of lead gen things you could do from buying leads off these stupid Facebook ads that are telling people, you know, even if you haven’t been hurt, like a lawyer will evaluate your case and tell you what it’s worth.
[00:18:49] Brian Glass: There are lawyers that like playing in that sandbox for whatever reason. I, we’ve. We’ve tried it and the message has never matched what the prospective [00:19:00] client thought it was. And so it wasn’t a good fit for us. But you know, whatever marketing initiative you’re going to just cause it works for somebody else or doesn’t work for somebody else.
[00:19:09] Brian Glass: It doesn’t mean the same is going to be true for you.
[00:19:12] Jonathan Hawkins: And you know, sometimes if everybody is zigging, then you should zag and maybe that’s where the magic is. So,
[00:19:19] Brian Glass: You, yeah, well, the magic is there if you zag and you’re
[00:19:22] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, well, that’s true. That’s true. You may have to
[00:19:24] Jonathan Hawkins: do a lot of zagging and experimentation to find the right one. But yeah. Alright, so yeah, so, so let’s talk about growing a law firm.
[00:19:33] Jonathan Hawkins: You know, my, I may be wrong on this, but my attitude is that in terms of scaling or growing a firm, getting the clients might be the easier part. And, You know, from my own experience talking to others, it’s really the hiring of your team to service the clients that is really a challenge and it’s finding the right people, you know, recruiting them over and then retaining them. And I know we’ve talked about this a little bit and I [00:20:00] know you’ve had, you know, some experiences maybe you want to share about, you know, The hire is very quickly not working out, but you know, what’s your experience in terms of, you know, growing your team and what’s your approach there?
[00:20:14] Brian Glass: you know, the first thing I would say is. That there’s phases, right? There’s phases where getting the clients is really hard. And then you kind of figure it out. And then, you know, I, and I would say really up until about, at least in an injury firm, until about a million dollars in revenue, like getting the clients, that’s the thing you need to focus on.
[00:20:32] Brian Glass: And then when you hit a million, Demonstrates that, you know, how to get clients, you know, how to market, you know, you know, how to figure out where your cases are coming from, put more dollars there, get more cases from there, sign them. Right. But beyond that, yeah, it is people. And once you’ve mastered how client attraction now you’ve got to master People attraction and that’s hard.
[00:20:57] Brian Glass: And the thing is, you know, most [00:21:00] people, I think default to people just don’t want to work, right. Or people don’t want to work hard. And I think it’s really just that people don’t want to work for you or good people don’t want to work for you. And. And so it’s turning the mirror back and saying like, who do I need to become in order to attract not only clients, but in order to attract top talent in my area.
[00:21:19] Brian Glass: Cause that really is what you’re looking for. You know, so many of us when we’re looking to hire a new person, we default to Indeed. Well, who’s looking on Indeed? It’s people that don’t have jobs or it’s people that hate the job that they’re in, that are looking on Indeed. We, and we’ve been there and we’re there right now.
[00:21:36] Brian Glass: We’re like, we’re trying to hire a paralegal right now. It’s challenging to find somebody out there and it’s really hard to find somebody out there when you haven’t been looking. And so we hire for a culture and for core values fit first. And we feel like we can train everything else. You know, because what we do really isn’t, it’s not rocket science.
[00:21:58] Brian Glass: The collection of medical [00:22:00] records, the talking to clients, and it’s a lot of soft skills stuff. It’s really not all that hard. And so if you’re willing to learn and you have a good attitude, we can train you to do it. But it is, it’s hard to sift through. A stack of resumes on Indeed or on any other job site to find those people who have good attitudes and are willing to work hard.
[00:22:19] Brian Glass: And I haven’t found a good way to screen those people in any kind of interview or hiring process. So when somebody comes on with us, the first 90 days is a probationary period, right? Any point during the first 90 days, we can say goodbye to you. You could say goodbye to us just because it’s not a good fit.
[00:22:34] Brian Glass: And we try to be really diligent and militant about that. And like on day 88, 89 90, if I wouldn’t emphatically rehire you, if you’re still a project, you’re not going to be a good fit. So that’s number one, you know, number two is like, I’ve never rarely met anybody who regrets hiring ahead of where they should be or could be.
[00:22:57] Brian Glass: And so. We know it’s happened to us [00:23:00] twice in the last year where we had somebody that we knew in our world a defense lawyer in one case and a paralegal in another case who they were unhappy with their job. They were going to leave at some point their job. We didn’t have the workload for them, but we made it work because you know, when a good, strong B plus a player goes onto the market, they go quickly and there aren’t that many of them.
[00:23:26] Brian Glass: And so, you know, if you have those people in your world, like figure out how to attract them and how to bring them in and then like, you’re good at case attraction. So you can go and market and get new cases and you can find stuff for them to work on. Especially like if I were in an hourly practice and I could solve the cashflow issue just by getting another case in the door.
[00:23:46] Brian Glass: And, you know, maybe you have a 60 day backlog of that. That’s a problem you could solve. Injury firm is a little different because every new case doesn’t turn into money for nine to 12 months. But we ask our team to always [00:24:00] be on the lookout for somebody who’s on the other end of the phone who sounds unhappy, but otherwise like seems like they do a pretty good job.
[00:24:07] Brian Glass: And so we’ve pulled paralegals. We’ve pulled defense lawyers out of situations where, you know, we knew that they were a good lawyer. And we wanted them on the team.
[00:24:16] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, you know, I agree with that. And my experience is that good people are hard to find. And then they’re hard to convince to come and leave where they are and come. And it’s a lot of times it’s a timing thing. So my attitude has become. I’m always looking. And if I find the right person, you know, I’m immediately like they’re on the list and it may, and that still may take a year. But at least you’ve got the person. And then if they’re ready, like you said, you almost have to create a space because you may not get that opportunity again. And you know, I get it for some people that can be scary. You’re like, I don’t have the work. How am I going to afford it? But I think you’ll probably find the work.
[00:24:54] Jonathan Hawkins: There’s plenty to do. There’s always plenty to do. And I think probably open up your plate to go [00:25:00] get more work. So I think that’s cool.
[00:25:03] Brian Glass: It, yeah, it is scary because you know, a fully loaded package for lawyers is probably 180 to 250 right between salary and bonuses and benefits and bar dues and CLE is like, that’s a big nut. But if you believe in your ability to generate cases and you and if you’re a founder, like if you’re a founding partner, right, if you’re the owner of a firm then really your job is to go out and hunt and find cases and find people.
[00:25:31] Brian Glass: And if you can do those two things and you can find attorneys that can do the work, then the math is going to work out.
[00:25:39] Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s, that’s a good segue.
[00:25:40]
[00:25:53] Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk about your role at the firm. We’ve talked about this a little bit, but you know, in terms [00:26:00] of client work versus On the firm or other type work, you know, where are you now? And where were you and where do you want to be? You know, how many case, how heavy is your caseload?
[00:26:13] Brian Glass: So today I am primarily responsible probably for less than 15 cases. It’s probably less than 10. And I spend, you know, maybe 10, 20 percent of my time working on those cases and the rest of it is on client attraction training the team. And we have a weekly case meeting where we go over the high value cases.
[00:26:39] Brian Glass: We go through the cases that are potential new cases, and we go through the ones that are kind of in the early stage, like where strategy can be applied. Either finding more insurance money, making sure the client has made their way to the right doctors and the right specialists. And then, you know, as we get later in a case, making sure that we’ve done what we needed to do in terms of purchasing medical [00:27:00] illustrations, identifying all the pockets of insurance money, that kind of thing.
[00:27:03] Brian Glass: So, so very little of my time now is spent on cases. I would like it probably to be less like in my ideal world, I would be talking to some new clients at the beginning of a case, I would be working only on cases that have a six figure fee potential, but I would never be the one, you know, primarily doing the client handling for that anymore.
[00:27:27] Brian Glass: Just, you know, did that for a long time. And I don’t identify it as one of those things that I really enjoy doing. You know, one of the things that we talk about in GLM and in U S is this delegate and elevate quadrant, right? Like, your job is to focus only on the things that really you’re exceptional at, and that you’re really excited to work on when you get out of bed in the morning, right?
[00:27:51] Brian Glass: Everything else can be outsourced to somebody else. Some of it should be the stuff that you are not good at and that you don’t like doing, like you have to get that off your plate as soon as possible. [00:28:00] The stuff that’s hard to let go of is the stuff that you. Are really good at, but it drags you down.
[00:28:07] Brian Glass: Right. But you have to get rid of that too, because that’s the stuff that sits on your desk. Right. And everybody’s got the file that’s been there for three months and you haven’t touched it and you know that you should, and you look at it every Monday and you’re like, Oh, I can wait. Right. And so finding people that can take care of those for you is really important.
[00:28:25] Brian Glass: My job is to. Is to kind of grow the next generation of leaders, focus on our highest dollar per hour work and figure out where our cases are coming from and how can we get more of them.
[00:28:39] Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I feel like there are lawyers out there that, that say they want to get away from the legal work. I hear it a lot. I mean, there’s some that love the legal work. I get it. But the ones that want to get out of it. They say that, but they never do anything or they’re very slow. I feel like you have to take affirmative, conscious steps to actually make that happen because otherwise you’re just going to keep getting [00:29:00] sucked into the cases.
[00:29:01] Jonathan Hawkins: So what sorts of things or what sorts of advice do you have for those that want to try to make the shift act to actually make it
[00:29:07] Brian Glass: Yeah, you know what? And this will sound maybe funny. Um, Ryan Serhant, the guy from million dollar listing New York. He’s got a book called big money energy. And in that book, he talks about his own evolution as a realtor, where as he was kind of coming up the ladder in New York, at one point he was doing Let’s see.
[00:29:27] Brian Glass: I’m going to screw this up. Well, I don’t know exactly what the hierarchy is, but he was doing a rental renter side rental agreements. He was taking people and helping them find places. And then he got booked as a listing agent for rentals. All of a sudden he was like, guess what? I don’t do any of the rental side stuff now on.
[00:29:43] Brian Glass: I’m only a listing agent. And then he got his first buyer’s side contract and he said, I don’t do rentals anymore. I am only a buyer’s agent. And then he got his first sales and I don’t do that anymore. I’m only this and and so the quicker that you can move up the ladder and I [00:30:00] adopted that in 2021, maybe, so I don’t do chiropractic.
[00:30:05] Brian Glass: I won’t work actually in the case on a chiropractor case anymore. I only do fracture cases. I don’t do fracture cases anymore. I only do surgical cases. I don’t do, you know, so the quicker that you can move up that ladder, the better, and you just have to. You have to be really militant about saying this is who I am and either, you know, have somebody in your organization who can handle the other cases or have a referral source that you can send those lower level cases to that’s going to send you some money back.
[00:30:36] Brian Glass: But if you don’t constantly think about how do I lever up my effective dollar per hour rate. You’re always going to be, you know, below where you want to be. And listen, there’s nothing wrong with being an operator and doing the work. If that’s what you want to do. Right. But I’ve got a friend that’s been telling me for five years, he’s going to hire somebody as soon as he gets to a financial place where he [00:31:00] can hire somebody.
[00:31:01] Brian Glass: And you know, like just do it.
[00:31:04] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. That goes back, that circles back to the hiring thing. You just got it. You just got to do it. So let’s shift. So, you know, nowadays everybody is talking about virtual assistants, executive assistants. And I think there is a distinction between the two you mentioned
[00:31:17] Jonathan Hawkins: virtual earlier, but I know you also use an executive assistant in EA. So maybe. Tell us what in your mind the difference is. And then I really want to focus on your use of the EA and how you figured out how to use them and maybe some tips for others that, that, that are thinking about it, myself included.
[00:31:37] Brian Glass: Yeah. He taught me how to use him is the thing.
[00:31:39] Jonathan Hawkins: There you go. Yeah.
[00:31:46] Brian Glass: We’ve had them do intake. We’ve had them do back office medical records collection. We’ve had them do video production for YouTube or for our social media. And I have landed on this.
[00:31:59] Brian Glass: I, we [00:32:00] just brought our intake back in house because I want somebody who can run down the hallway screaming like their hair is on fire when a good case is on the phone. And you don’t, if there’s a way to do that with the VA, we never figured it out. And the other thing is like, Again, back to the auto accident practice, if somebody calls and they are talking about an intersection that’s in Fairfax, Virginia, they kind of expect the person that the Fairfax, Virginia law firm to know where that intersection is.
[00:32:29] Brian Glass: And so, and that doesn’t happen with the VA. So we brought intake back in house. VAs are really good at back of office stuff. So my, all of our medical records collection, that’s done in the Philippines. Now, all of our video and social media production is done in the Philippines now. And and you asked about EA.
[00:32:46] Brian Glass: So I have an EA who is virtual. He’s in the Philippines. But he really has trained me. He’s from a company where he was trained for 45 days on how to, you know, be an executive assistant before they brought him on for me, he’s highly [00:33:00] trained in the use of AI, and so he’ll do things like. Feed five of my emails into an AI bot and create a GPT for me.
[00:33:10] Brian Glass: And now he can write emails in my voice. So I tell him, you know, Hey, communicate to Jonathan that I want him to come on the podcast. And he writes a, an email. It’s like, Hey dude, I have this podcast. Do you want to come on? Right. It sounds exactly like me. It’s scary. But the thing is, I didn’t know how to train him because I never had an executive assistant.
[00:33:28] Brian Glass: I had legal assistants and paralegals who also were never really professionally trained by anybody other than me. And so this company, it’s called Athena trained him. He’s trained me. They have a whole playbook for the first hundred days of our working together, we have facilitated meetings with his supervisor.
[00:33:49] Brian Glass: He’s got an executive coach of his own through them, where if he has a problem before he comes to me, he goes and asks them about how to, how do I use this program or this software or [00:34:00] whatever? So that’s been really good. It’s And I think of it like when I first got him, I had a team member who’s no longer with us anymore who said, so are you not going to do anything anymore?
[00:34:08] Brian Glass: Cause you’re going to have the EA do anything, do everything. By the way, she wasn’t a great culture fit, but, uh, but it’s not been like that at all. I’m doing way more now. It’s just higher dollar per hour stuff because I’m not bogged down in my email. We are
[00:34:22] Jonathan Hawkins: So how many, how long have you been with the EA now? Have you passed the a hundred day mark? Okay, so are you far enough in to be at the point where you’re like, I can’t believe I managed my life without this guy? Have you gotten to that point?
[00:34:41] Brian Glass: No, I, you know, I can, no, my memory is long enough that I can remember, you know, being in emails. The biggest thing for me is it’s stay, I’m staying out of emails. I don’t have outlook open all the time. If something urgent comes in, he sends me a message on WhatsApp and lets me know, but I everything else otherwise is sorted [00:35:00] into reply this week or reply today.
[00:35:02] Brian Glass: And I just. Go in at the end of the day and reply to him. It’s also helped with travel stuff. He helps me book book flights, book, you know, Ubers, whatever. And and meeting prep is really cool too. If I’m going to meet a new doctor for the first time or going to give a presentation, like he’ll give me a dossier on the rest of the panelists.
[00:35:20] Brian Glass: So that’s kind of cool.
[00:35:21] Jonathan Hawkins: Nice. All
[00:35:23] Brian Glass: I’m still learning how to best use him. You know, one of the things that we’re doing is he’s doing some of my podcast production. I’m not sure that’s the best use of his time. But I think. You know, we’ll get to a place where he learns the process and then we just find another VA, you know, at a lower hourly rate.
[00:35:39] Brian Glass: And then he teaches that person.
[00:35:41] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, EA is on my list I’ll get there at some point, so I’ll be asking you more about that, I think,
[00:35:46] Jonathan Hawkins: but so let’s shift
[00:35:47] Brian Glass: I’ll send you my referral link.
[00:35:48] Jonathan Hawkins: there, it, yeah, exactly. So let’s talk about great legal marketing. You mentioned a little bit earlier, but I want to dive into that. I want you to, you know, tell us really what it is, what the structure is.
[00:35:58] Jonathan Hawkins: I know there’s lots of different [00:36:00] ways people can participate in it, so, so tell us about it. Thank you.
[00:36:04] Brian Glass: Yeah. So we are a coaching consulting and mastermind group for solo and small law firm owners. What the hell does that mean? Right. So the basic structure of the main membership group is on a monthly basis. We put out a journal. With us and with other industry experts, I’m staying on the cutting edge of AI lead acquisition social media, things like that.
[00:36:28] Brian Glass: We have a curriculum that comes out once a month. Next month we’re talking about, actually this month we’re talking about hiring, firing and talent retention, right? We have a group implementation call middle of the month. And then people have access to us for questions. At the upper levels, we have two mastermind groups and you’re in one of them.
[00:36:44] Brian Glass: They, we meet four times a year for two days in our office in Fairfax. And his lawyers all over the country. And we, you know, we, it started really as a personal injury group is how to acquire better, more personal injury clients. And it’s grown to anybody who’s in kind of a consumer [00:37:00] facing business, because the problems are basically all the same.
[00:37:03] Brian Glass: It’s how do you get cases? How do you manage people? And it comes, it’s like I said, it’s in cycles. What problem you have right now? And the format of those meetings is basically 45 minute hot seat. So Jonathan, you get up and you say, here’s what’s going right in my firm. Here’s a resource that we discovered that I want to share with the group.
[00:37:21] Brian Glass: And then here’s a problem that I’m and 95 percent of the time. There’s somebody else in the room that’s already solved that problem and has anticipated the next problem. So that I think is the real value of a mastermind group is it’s, you’re paying for speed of solution and then for, you know, answers the questions that you didn’t even know that you had.
[00:37:45] Brian Glass: The example that I give is that another mastermind that I’m in, you know, we have a short term rental and I was explaining to somebody, well, I have the short term rental, but I don’t get, Like depreciation benefits because I don’t have a ton of other passive income. And they explained some tax rule that [00:38:00] allows you to depreciate the short term asset against your W2 and K one income.
[00:38:04] Brian Glass: It’s like, oh, okay, this, the group just paid for itself for the next seven years. So I didn’t even know that was, you know, an issue that I had, but somebody spotted it for me. And I think it’s a, you know, being in a mastermind group, whether it’s ours or in another any other group is a real accelerant to the learning curve.
[00:38:19] Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve gotten a ton out of it. I mean, every session in the two day sessions, I come away with a ton of notes. I know when we met, I guess a month or so ago, the presentation by your marketing director was dynamite. I mean, I really, I was asking so many questions. I think she, she got sick of me, but it was really impressive what you guys are doing and the evolution of it and it was, you know, I learned a ton I decided not to follow up with her cause I didn’t want to bother her anymore but yeah,
[00:38:47] Brian Glass: Oh, you should. She would love that.
[00:38:49] Jonathan Hawkins: but yeah, you know, I’m with you, there’s a ton of stuff that if I had not been there, I never would have seen it, would not have even known. About it. So, huge benefit [00:39:00] for that. So if anybody was interested, how would they find you or great local marketing? What’s the best way to define you on that?
[00:39:06] Brian Glass: Well, you can just reach out to me if you want to find me on LinkedIn and shoot me a DM. That’s one way, you know, the other thing, the best entry point for somebody in our ecosystem is to come out to our summit. It’s going to be in Phoenix, Arizona this year from October 3rd through the fifth.
[00:39:20] Brian Glass: You know, there, listen, there are. Legal conferences every other week. Now there’s tons of them. What I have noticed is that you see a lot of the same players at a lot of the conference at most of the big name conferences. And if you go to those, there’s a lot of stuff about how do you spend, what’s the best use of my 50, 000 promoting a Tik TOK video?
[00:39:45] Brian Glass: How do I stop spending so much money on TV advertising and convert it to OTT advertising? And I’ve gone to those and been like, wow, those guys are light years ahead of where I am. Right. [00:40:00] There are fewer conferences that are like ours, like our niche where we are really good at helping lawyers is taking them from, you know, the 500, 000 in revenue mark to about 5 million.
[00:40:14] Brian Glass: If you’re doing more than 5 million in revenue, you probably need to be at a bigger room. And we’re happy that we helped you get there, but it’s time for you to move on because we don’t have, you know, the kind of the capacity to, or frankly, the know how right to teach you how to do TV marketing and high volume intake and high throughput cases like that.
[00:40:34] Brian Glass: But we’re really good at adding a zero if you’re doing about 500, 000 in revenue.
[00:40:39] Jonathan Hawkins: yeah, so, so let’s move it on. So let’s talk about your podcast a little bit too. So you’ve got a podcast. I know you recently sort of changed the name, so you’ve been doing it a long time, but I guess the, with the new name that rebrand, I guess it’s a little
[00:40:51] Jonathan Hawkins: different, so tell us about the podcast and what’s, you know, what is it?
[00:40:55] Jonathan Hawkins: Well, who’s it for? What are you
[00:40:57] Jonathan Hawkins: trying to get out there with your podcast?[00:41:00]
[00:41:00] Brian Glass: Yeah. So my show is called life beyond the briefs. It used to be called time freedom for lawyers because when I started it, it was a, you know, it was documenting my journey from working to replacing all of my income with passive income from investment properties. And you know, kind of along the way, what happened is that I built a job in a firm that I like showing up at.
[00:41:23] Brian Glass: Right. And so I don’t necessarily want to have. Time freedom. I’m still working on passive income and having stuff that shows up, you know, even when I’m not working. But really it became like, how do you build the kind of life that you actually enjoy? Right. As a lawyer, which I don’t know, depending on who you listen to, lawyers either complain too much or we are.
[00:41:44] Brian Glass: Depressed, anxious alcoholics who get divorced, right? I don’t know that statistically it’s any harder than any other job or any more stressful than any other job, but we certainly act like it is. And so my show is about how to [00:42:00] number one, how to build a great practice, but number two, how to have a great life.
[00:42:03] Brian Glass: So I talked to other lawyers. I talked to SEO guys. I talked to practice management people, but I also interviewed a lot of people who are doing cool things outside of the law from. From a guy that’s running a hotel and a bourbon spirits in business to to a guy who there’s a there’s a guy who’s a roofing, runs a roofing business in Texas, but from the beach in Costa Rica to a guy in Australia who is running a 50 K every day in the month of November.
[00:42:32] Brian Glass: Like I just try to find cool people with interesting stories and give them a vehicle to tell those stories.
[00:42:37] Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ll listen to your podcast every week, so, and I encourage everybody to go check it out. So, Life Beyond the Briefs that’s a good one. So, you mentioned sort of, you know, how stressed out all the lawyers are. I’ve noticed recently some of your posts, I guess, is it still Attorney Wellness Week or whatever? I’m seeing a few of
[00:42:53] Jonathan Hawkins: those.
[00:42:54] Brian Glass: day. One more day.
[00:42:55] Jonathan Hawkins: Yes. I know you have a lot to say about that. So, so yeah, [00:43:00] let’s hear it.
[00:43:02] Brian Glass: Yeah. With the caveat that I never worked in a big firm and that I never worked 70 or 80 hours a week. I think that most of the wellness advice that’s coming down from state bar organizations, from the Institute for Lawyer Wellbeing, who is running Lawyer Wellness Week is absolute crap. Like Thursday’s Tip of the day was don’t be a jerk.
[00:43:32] Brian Glass: Monday was get a lot of steps in and another day was stretch at your desk. And I’m like, no, it’s like, get outside
[00:43:40] Jonathan Hawkins: You can never leave your desk, Brian. You cannot leave.
[00:43:45] Brian Glass: I think. And I think it’s well meaning, but I think it’s because they never they never allow themselves to think that life could be some other way. That life does not have to be billing 2, 200 [00:44:00] hours a year, right?
[00:44:01] Brian Glass: That you can work only with clients that you like only with staff that you like, and only on cases that interest you. Like if I’m doing it. There’s a lot of other people that could do it too. So, and my beef with wellness week is like, none of it is about building a better business. And if you built the kind of business that you could step away from at night to have dinner with your family or go on vacation and not have to answer emails, you would feel a whole lot healthier, wealthier, and happy and well, right?
[00:44:39] Brian Glass: Like that, it solves that problem. So, and I don’t mean to. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of wellness stuff about substance abuse support and yes, people need that, right? You can’t focus on diet, sleep, health, steps, and not drinking if you hate showing up to work on [00:45:00] Monday. It makes it very hard.
[00:45:02] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. I feel
[00:45:02] Jonathan Hawkins: like,
[00:45:03] Brian Glass: The first problem to be solved is how do I create a place that I don’t hate showing up to on Monday and look forward to leaving on Friday?
[00:45:10] Jonathan Hawkins: yeah, I feel like the solution is, the problem is structural and the solution has to be in the structural place, not the cosmetic, which is, you know, stretch at your desk kind of stuff. You know, if you don’t change, like you said, the lifestyle and the firm, the way you’re working, stretching, it’s not going to really do much for you.
[00:45:31] Brian Glass: Which, which is not, you know, some of the advice is like, get a cat, right? Which is half joking. There’s a woman, there’s a paralegal in our office who fosters cats and brings in cats. Like
[00:45:42] Jonathan Hawkins: I
[00:45:42] Jonathan Hawkins: guess they suggest
[00:45:44] Brian Glass: So, built.
[00:45:44] Jonathan Hawkins: They suggest cats over dogs because you can leave a cat alone for. 20
[00:45:49] Jonathan Hawkins: hours a day while you’re at your desk, you know,
[00:45:52] Brian Glass: But the cats, that just happens to be the vehicle. Right. But the principle is have the kind of the life and work at the kind of place that [00:46:00] allows you to pursue those. Interests of your own. You like, she likes fostering animals. Sometimes it’s guinea pigs. Sometimes it’s rabbits. Sometimes it’s cats.
[00:46:08] Brian Glass: So we let her bring them in. She’s got a little cardboard box and a cage on these little baby two week old cats. They’re very cute. And then she takes them home.
[00:46:17] Jonathan Hawkins: so, okay, so let’s you know, we talked about legal masterminds and legal groups and there are a lot of options out there. I know lawyers just hear about those all the time. And I think, you know, you got to find the one that’s right for you. But there are also other options that are not. And I know you mentioned one earlier.
[00:46:33] Jonathan Hawkins: I think this might be the one you’re talking about, but it’s called GoBundance. So tell me about that, how you found it and what’s, what do you do there?
[00:46:42] Brian Glass: Yeah. So go abundance. Um, the tagline has kind of changed over the last couple of years, but it used to be tribe of healthy, wealthy, generous men who choose to live epic lives. And, you know, I found it three or four years ago at a time in my life where. I [00:47:00] was still chasing this. Like, how do I just make enough money that I can invest it and have enough passive income that I don’t have to work anymore.
[00:47:07] Brian Glass: And what appealed to me about this is it’s a, it’s all entrepreneurial, high net worth, healthy guys. And I’m like, that’s cool. This is a tribe I want to be a part of. And what happens as you’re in that. Growth stage is that you tend to outgrow a lot of your friends. Like the guys that you went to high school and college and even law school with you just you can’t have the same conversations.
[00:47:31] Brian Glass: And so this gives you the opportunity to hang out with people that are interested in personal development interested in becoming the best version of themselves. And so, so that, that was that. And so I joined and. It’s interesting because the draw is like real estate and passive investment and more money and being rich.
[00:47:50] Brian Glass: But that’s the really why you stay is the community and the drive to become a better version of yourself. And we spend more time Jonathan talking about being a better father, being a better husband than [00:48:00] anything else. And so I’m in a group we call them pods, a group with a bunch of guys from across the country.
[00:48:07] Brian Glass: We talk every Tuesday night at nine o’clock for an hour. And we were going over one of the guys, we call it a one sheet. Like, what are your goals for the year? What are you trying to accomplish? And and here’s where it gets really helpful is you find these misalignments with what you say you and what your activity is.
[00:48:28] Brian Glass: And it’s good to have people in your life that will tell you that what you’re saying is bullshit. I, what I really want is to find a relationship where you’re spending all your money, all your time working on two jobs and flying around the country. Looking at. I will really be happy when my net worth is doubled and I make 25, 000 a month in passive income.
[00:48:49] Brian Glass: Like, okay, right now you’re making 21. If you just hang out for another year or two, like the government is going to put more money into the system and you’re going to inflate your way to 25, 000. So [00:49:00] you don’t actually have to do any of that. And having another 5 million in on paper is it’s not going to make you any happier.
[00:49:08] Brian Glass: So we went down the rabbit hole with one of the guys the other night about like, you’ve got all these goals on paper, but then you’re saying what you really want to be held accountable for is finding a true loving relationship. Like you needed to strike 25, 30, 40 percent of this list. Stop worrying about that stuff.
[00:49:27] Brian Glass: And put some goals on there that are aligned with the thing that you say you really want. And so that has been a really powerful set of relationships in my life to have other people who, who will call you on, you’ve been complaining about this for four months, like either stop complaining about that relationship or go and have a hard conversation and fix it.
[00:49:50] Brian Glass: And most people will just let you complain.
[00:49:52] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. So I think for people out there that that are looking for more than just a [00:50:00] business group, you know, something like GoBundance might be, I’m sure there are others out there, but you know,
[00:50:05] Brian Glass: Yeah, there’s others as EO, YPO, YPO. Vistage there’s others, right. But find a group of people that won’t just listen to you complain.
[00:50:14] Jonathan Hawkins: And folks, it’ll call you on your bullshit. So we all need that.
[00:50:17] Jonathan Hawkins: We all need that. So we’ve been going for a while, but there is another topic I definitely want to talk to you about. So, you know, I’m a big believer in a vision both with your firm and maybe free of life. I think without it it’s, you’ve got no sort of guidepost to guide you where you’re going and you just sort of drift around.
[00:50:36] Jonathan Hawkins: So, but a lot of people talk about vision, but, you’ve talked a lot about what you call the vivid vision that’s based on sort of the Cameron Herald book. So you know, tell us about that, what it is and you know, how have you used it and maybe how has, you know, have you changed over the years?
[00:50:55] Brian Glass: So, so vivid vision is a book by Cameron Herald. It is a, [00:51:00] it is about setting a better set of goals for your life, honestly. You know, most people set new year’s resolutions or. 90 day goals or whatever, without thinking very far ahead about, is this thing getting me any closer to where I actually want to be?
[00:51:13] Brian Glass: And so the premise of that book is you should go somewhere tranquil, beach, lake, whatever, and and write down what your perfect day looks like, what your perfect month looks like as vividly as you can, right? Hence the name without thinking about how you’re going to get there because your brain will give you all the reasons that you can’t do the things that you Want to do or have the things that you want to have, like, just write down exactly what perfect is to you three years from now, because the three year time horizon is, he says, it’s kind of the perfect window, like.
[00:51:48] Brian Glass: In one year, you can’t make large changes to your life. And in 10 years, a whole bunch of external stuff might happen to you that might derail you. So three years is kind of that sweet spot. And craft this [00:52:00] into a narrative format that you can share with other people. And that book really is about writing that for your company.
[00:52:07] Brian Glass: So you could do it for your law firm. Here’s what I want our staffing to look like our marketing. Here’s how our finances work. Here’s what our office space looks and feels like. But I also, I do it for my life, right? Here’s what I, here’s what I want my family’s vacations to look like. Here’s what I want my relationship with my wife to be like and then from there, especially as a law firm owner, as a founding partner, your job is not to make all of those things happen.
[00:52:31] Brian Glass: It’s to share a vision with the team. That’s exciting enough for them that they will help you make them happen, or they’ll select this isn’t the place for me, right? Because that it’s, you have now created a powerful Pole that they can either be aligned with or not aligned with. And this is back to like the hiring and the firing.
[00:52:51] Brian Glass: And should I stay conversations? Like the more that you can get people to identify early on, that they are misaligned with where you want your organization to go, the better you will [00:53:00] be. And so I’ve written, you know, over the years I’ve written two, I think one, maybe four years ago. And I updated it about two years ago and I’ve got on my list now.
[00:53:09] Brian Glass: Like I need to update it again because things change priorities shift. And but it gives you something to run at. That’s not what’s directly in front of you. It’s not like the next 90 day and it’s not even the next one year thing that’s directly in front of you. It, and it gives you permission to dream and think a little bit bigger.
[00:53:28] Brian Glass: So yeah, I recommend that book to a lot of people. Especially at the beginning of your. Your personal growth and development journey? Like, just broadening the horizon of of what might be possible?
[00:53:40] Jonathan Hawkins: You know, you mentioned, you know, it’s sort of two benefits. One obviously is for yourself. You get it out and really. You let yourself go and say, all right, this is what I want. But the other piece is you let everybody else know. And that’s part of the vivid vision, part of it, vividly describing it.
[00:53:56] Jonathan Hawkins: So other people, it gets out of your head [00:54:00] and it’s something they can see and either buy into, you know, hop on the right on the bus or not. And if you cannot get it out for others to see, then there’s no way they’ll ever know what the vision is. Right.
[00:54:11] Brian Glass: Yes. And that step is scary. For two reasons. Number one, like it, it might make some people quit . Some people might say, I don’t wanna be on that bus. But number two, it’s also like you’re sharing. Here’s sharing goals with other people is powerful, but it’s scary because they might say why the hell do you want that?
[00:54:35] Brian Glass: Or what makes you think you can do that? And listen, at the end of the day, anybody that says like, what makes you think you can do or deserve. That it’s probably not somebody you want to spend a whole lot of time to. So it identifies people you need to shave some time off of. But it’s, the ego is scary to share that with other people.
[00:54:56] Brian Glass: So yes you should write it. You should share it [00:55:00] with people, but that’s the scary part.
[00:55:02] Jonathan Hawkins: And you’re right. You know, people will say it cannot be done. You cannot do it. You’ll be hearing the naysayers will come out and can’t do it. So you got to be able to turn that off and say, yes, it can and keep going. So, so let me ask you briefly, what’s the vision for your firm and for your life if you’re willing to share as of today,
[00:55:23] Brian Glass: Yeah, I was afraid you might ask that
[00:55:24] Jonathan Hawkins: May, 2020, you don’t have to share it
[00:55:26] Jonathan Hawkins: all, maybe a couple of pieces.
[00:55:29] Brian Glass: say that again.
[00:55:30] Jonathan Hawkins: You don’t have to share it all,
[00:55:31] Jonathan Hawkins: but
[00:55:32] Brian Glass: No. So the vision for the law firm is that are. Auto accident practice will be the premier auto accident practice in Virginia. Which, you know, I’ve got three lawyers right now, so we’re not close to that.
[00:55:45] Brian Glass: The vision for the long term disability practice is that it is in the conversation as one of the premier disability firms in the country. We can do that in any state. It’s a federal practice. So there’s no state boundaries. That’s a high [00:56:00] hurdle, right? So saying those things. And I shared them with the hero group last time you were in town and people were like, well, how would you even know if you were the, I think dominant player is the phrase that we, how would you know when you were the dominant player?
[00:56:12] Brian Glass: And I, you know, I think people know, if I asked you, who’s the dominant player in personal injury, you probably would say Morgan and Morgan. Right? And so I, I just want to be in that conversation for injury in Virginia for disability nationwide. And then, you know, I got to tell you the the vision for my life is harder.
[00:56:31] Brian Glass: I’ve got three young boys and I, we are so bogged down in the day to day. We have sports six days a week right now. And it’s hard to travel because There’s sports all the time. You don’t want to deprive them of those opportunities. And then when there aren’t sports, you just want to relax in your own home sometimes.
[00:56:49] Brian Glass: So that is harder. I took a page out of, I know you just have Marco Brown on he’s got this 300 list. So I just started crafting that like, what are [00:57:00] 300? Big things that I want to do. Most of them right now are travel things. I like going with the family to different places and doing cool stuff.
[00:57:09] Brian Glass: So vision of my life. So that like number one family, right. Be involved in whatever the kids want me to be involved in. Number two, I like talking to lawyers. I like having a little bit of a thought leader voice, which I think I have both on podcasts and on LinkedIn. I enjoy that stage stuff.
[00:57:25] Brian Glass: And then, you know, the freedom to do what you want, when you want, with who you want for as long as you want, because you’ve set up systems and processes in your firm that other people could run and are happy to run because you provided a great place for them to work. So that’s, I think those are the three pillars right now.
[00:57:41] Brian Glass: And of course that changes. And then, you know, there’s what, it’s funny. Cause what I didn’t say is any fitness stuff, right? Five years ago, I would have told you running ultra marathons and Spartan races. But none of that is really on my list this year.
[00:57:55] Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I think that’s a good vision. You know, at some point when your boys get a little bit older, you may be [00:58:00] traveling and doing sports, so you may
[00:58:02] Jonathan Hawkins: do both if they get on those
[00:58:04] Jonathan Hawkins: travel
[00:58:04] Brian Glass: a different beast. Yeah.
[00:58:06] Jonathan Hawkins: that’s intense stuff
[00:58:07] Jonathan Hawkins: there. Well, cool. So, thank you for your time. I know we’ve been going at it for awhile, so, you know, if people want to find you, what’s the best way to find you and get in touch with you?
[00:58:16] Brian Glass: LinkedIn, I’m probably most active among all other social media as the Brian glass or check it out life beyond the briefs.
[00:58:24] Jonathan Hawkins: Awesome. Well, thanks, Brian. That’s been great.
[00:58:27] Brian Glass: All right, man. I appreciate it. That was fun.
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