442. AMMA — Why Being the Smartest Person in the Room is a Business Failure

My goal is to come into a room with our leadership team and be the lowest IQ person in that room. I don't need to tell everyone on the boss who cares, let's just win. I'm Michael Mogul, founder and CEO of Crisp, the nation's number one law from Growth Company. I've built my business through practice, not theory. Crisp started which is $500 to my name and has grown to over 8 figures in revenue over the last few years. Earning a spot on the ink 500 lists of the fastest growing private companies in America. Our approach has been to take everything we've learned about generating massive growth within our own organization and help the country's most ambitious and committed law firm owners do the same for theirs. In each episode of this podcast I sit down with innovative market leaders from the legal industry and beyond to learn from those who thrive in the face of adversity, challenge the status quo and define what it means to be a true game changer. This is Jessica, head of coaching strategy at Chris and today we're flipping the script for another special edition episode to get Michael's take on, how to transition away from networking commitments that lack applicable value, integrating new leadership into existing systems without losing strategic control, and how to exercise your authority as a firm owner without devaluing your team's input. If you have immensely talented people and you start telling them what to do and you start micromanaging them, I'm not going to be innovative, I'm not going to be creative like why, right? I'm not allowed to be anyway and you get a fraction of the value that what that person could provide. That's coming up on the Game Changing Attorney podcast. Hello another AMMA. Another AMMA? Those of you that are watching this so most people listen to the podcast but we also have the video version on Spotify and on YouTube. But if you're watching this you'll see we're all dolled up today. Not in the usual t-shirt. Quiet luxury. No brand names, the labels here but it's because we filmed our new hire bios today. Because we're new hires. Well it's the bios. We filmed updated bios. If you go to our website you will see I think it's on the our about us page. Everybody has a bio where you have fun facts about people and I noticed that we had an updated ours in a number of years and I was looking like 12 years old this thing because probably like like 2012 bio. Johnny drama from from on to Raj were. If anyone remembers that show which was an incredible show on HBO but Johnny drama had like his head shot that he would go around and whatever he was trying to get picked up and show business he like sure his head shot but his head shot was from like when he started his career and now he was like I think it was like in a 40s or 50s but the head shot was from his 20s so that's what I felt like my new hire bio was like so we we filmed new ones and these are always like fun questions it's like fun facts of like what's what's something you can eat every single day and never get tired of what would you say what would you think I would say and nerds clusters as a good guess anything sweet is always a good guess however I said cupcakes cupcakes yeah yeah I said I was like you're the most basic I said steak and sweets this is meal days like a steak and sweet potatoes every you could literally eat that every day yeah yeah all you needs an air fryer correct what does an air fryer do by the way and you I don't cook like there's this I think it just moves air around I think it's just I think it's just a convection oven right yeah I think so right because I think it's like an air fryer right it's like it's a fryer but without you know the oil and it's supposed to be like clean and healthy but I think it's just a convection oven well someone could fact check I think that's what it is all right so then okay there's another question something along the lines of a bucket list item bucket list item yeah yeah what was your bucket list item full distance Iron Man well we'll see we're working on it we're working on that one what about you uh to take the girls to both the motherlands so to Russia and to Vietnam however there's a few barriers to that at the current moment one of those being their um palettes one of them is not so sophisticated oh yeah well the oldest oldest will try new foods yeah but that you know it's the funny thing to me about the youngest Misha is that when we were in Mexico she said I tried new foods and it was just like she always eats like bread and crackers she's just tried new bread it was a new bread and she was so proud of herself trying new foods yesterday was funny I got home and she said daddy the windows are broken and I'm like what right what yeah so she's like the windows are broken and and then she runs like we run to the playroom and she's like made the whole thing up but if she's basically acting like a superhero he's like we have to save them like who we saving you know there's like the ladybugs yes so and then the uh the other question was um what's the craziest thing that's ever happened to you and I mean somebody answered like there's some big some crazy answers like one person said they were in witness protection I'm not gonna elaborate on that but when I heard that I was like stop rolling the footage I gotta hear this story like that's incredible yeah what was what was the crazy thing that's ever happened to you well I said it happened to me but it really happened for me and that would be the 2022 Mercedes Benz game changer something oh yeah oh yeah yeah they have the super bowl summit yeah that's that was definitely that was definitely up there I gave an answer because I was sitting there maybe it was more like a meta answer I was like man this all this like the fact that I talked about just you know when we started the business 2012 500 dollars to my name first generation immigrant coming here originally back in 1990 like English was in my first language like it et cetera getting to the point we could start the business and then growing it to this point and like being where we are with the team that we have the clients that we have I mean that's the crazy thing that's ever happened to me like I never saw that coming in the original plan was like buy a you know buy a camera take pictures of plants and flowers and have like a nice hobby you know that I have for my lifetime and then you know obviously we've we've scaled well beyond that so okay all right well if you're interested in and learning more about us or other members of the crisp team you can check out all of the new hire bios all hundred plus of them and fun facts about every crisp team member on the christwebsite at crisp.co but this is the aim of may let's shift gears we answer your questions you guys submit the questions you text us at 404 5 317691 it is a real number that we see you see every single question comes in I know you compiled the questions and if you were tuning in for the very first time we do several types of episodes on this podcast we've got the interview format one-on-one we have a guest that comes on it's a podcast we've had some phenomenal guests and then some that I'm actually really come forward to episodes we've already recorded but we'll be launching in the coming weeks and then we got the on-corditions those are episodes that we have done previously that we kind of bring back some of the most popular episodes you get a chance to really listen to like like David Gogans we had John Maxwell and like I mean just some really really incredible episodes we've had over the years but this is the aim of may so let's get to the questions Jessica what what do we have this week all right we will jump right in with question number one hey Michael I've been pretty consistent about attending my local bar association gathering and honestly I'm getting nothing out of them anymore I'm wondering if I should stop going I enjoy the networking aspect and the group is pretty good about sharing their problems and advice but most of it feels like it doesn't apply to my specific situation when it's my turn I update them on what's going well but I don't really have problems I need their help with my challenges are too unique to my market and practice area should I just quit going it depends what you're looking to get out of it I mean if the goal is networking I mean maybe I don't know like yeah if you feel like that you're the challenges you're experiencing are very unique to the level of practice that you're at and what you're doing I think you're just maybe in the wrong room you just got to find a room that's more aligned with with where you're at or where you're going I think that's the you know we have the saying crisp that you want to always make your future greater than your past and you want to surround yourself with people who remind you more of where you're going than where you've been so it this I mean again it's it's so important to find the right room and we talk about this at the game changer summit so the the last few that we've done have been invitation only the crisp members only last year was members only this year will be members only and we talk about this in the sense that it's not just about who's in the room it's about who's not in the room and just to ensure that you have you know something we're talking about in our you know our Q1 workshops is truth seeking groups and the importance of surrounding yourself with people that aren't just there to to provide you with comfort but really can help to challenge you to grow right so this is and this is the danger with you know I'm going to kind of go off on a tangent here because this is like a simple answer right this is kind of like I mean respectfully this is kind of like a boring question right you're you're going to a thing that's not serving you you're not getting value from it but you have certain you know things that you need you just probably have to relocate yourself to another room that can provide you with said value right they're looking for validation that that's it right so don't beat yourself up you can outgrow things a lot of the called happy hour because everybody's miserable right that's I mean that's that's nothing right but I think there's this idea that when people talk about support because I think this is probably more interesting question kind of make a one up from you know for myself maybe for the people listening what is support really and just around yourself people who support you because there's sometimes family and friends who love you and they like what love is and what support is can be two very different things so love is is that if you are feeling down they'll tell you it's no big deal you should relax you should take it easy don't worry about it or you have an idea they're like that's a great idea you should absolutely do that like this is because they love you what you want to hear they tell you what you want to hear exactly exactly it's like AI like when you're talking to AI and you like to ask some question absolutely that's great idea exactly what you should be thinking right and that's not really helpful because because it's just confirmation bias. Alternatively, the people who truly, truly support you, and again, I'm trying to distinguish between love and support because sometimes there's unconditional love, and people tell you what you want to hear because they don't want to hurt you. They don't want to hurt your feelings. But if you're in, let's say a so-called Truth Seeking Group, which is it could be a mastermind, it could just be certain mentors that you call upon, they will tell you what you need to hear, which is sometimes tough love, but ultimately is what helps you get you to where you're trying to go. It helps identify blind spots, things you might not be seeing. So whenever I'm speaking to a mentor, my question is always like, where am I wrong? Like, what am I not seeing here? Because I'm not interested in where I'm right, and I mean, I don't need you to yes me. I want to know, I'm trying to be better, right? For me, the goal is not to feel better, the goal is to get better. So if the goal is to get better, then you can surround yourself with truth-seeking groups where the most important priority is making progress, and you want to have a certain level of dissent, and within the groups, so you have different perspectives, and that way it's not just everybody saying, yeah, that's awesome, you should totally do that, right? Go buy all those NFTs, go buy Bitcoin, you should totally invest in crypto, but you know, so anyway, I digress, but my point is, is that the most important thing you can do if your goal is to advance in your career, certainly, but also I would say, I would argue personally as well, is to just find the right room. And then the other piece of this is somebody, some engineer did a study on this, on, I think I saw it on X the other day, and this is like the most nerdy thing ever, where, and I'm not even saying you should do this, this is a terrible idea, but they created like a data set of all the relationships that they had, and they basically deduced that it was very difficult to add new relationships, given the time it would take to ramp up new people, and because it's like, you know, you've got your core group of people, and it's very hard to add new friends, because you only have a limited amount of time that you want to spend with people, right? So if you add people to that, sometimes that's going to take away from other people that you could be spending time with, or the things you could be doing, spending time with your family, your kids, et cetera, so it's very difficult to expand peer groups in that way. But I highly recommend a mastermind mentor, coach, something like that, absolutely. - All right, question number two, Michael, I'm at my wits end. I recently hired a managing partner to help me with our day-to-day legal operations, but I feel like she just does not understand the business. She keeps trying to change our systems based on what she says was successful in her past experiences, but I have to stay involved because she doesn't fully understand these changes won't work at our firm. She's capable at executing tasks, but when it comes to strategic operational decisions, I need to be in the room because I have contact she doesn't have. She seems frustrated that I override some of her suggestions, but isn't that my job as CEO? I feel like if I completely step back, things won't be done the way they should be. - I have a question. What's your hire? - Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you hired somebody, and then when they came in to do things, you didn't have confidence in them doing things, and you didn't trust them, and ultimately you're finding yourself having to micromanage them. So my question is, again, I'm just kind of looking at from the other side, why did you hire this person? Like, if you find yourself in a situation where you're questioning every, like the judgment of a leader in terms of everything that they are doing, but you hired this person specifically to help you with the things that you're questioning their judgment on, then it sounds like there might be just a misalignment of fit or misalignment of expectations, perhaps. - Yeah. - I mean, that's all I can think here, just from the standpoint that if you're unhappy with how she's doing things or the decisions that she's making or feeling that she doesn't have enough contacts or she's doing things like the way she did things previously, then why didn't, this seems like questions during an interview that you would ask to gain confidence of saying, like, I mean, the idea of hiring somebody to join your practice oftentimes is to solve a problem, right? So it's just essentially they're coming in with a certain level of expertise or capability that you don't have, that by hiring this person, they can bring that expertise to your firm and you could grow. But if you're hiring somebody in a leadership role and then you're telling them what to do, then they're not really a leader and I kind of begs the question of, like, what were the expectations when you hired them? - Correct. - So I don't know. I think that deserves a conversation, like aligning on expectations, but if you just don't trust this person, you don't have confidence in what they're doing, and yet you expect them to be doing the things that they're doing, it probably not the right fit. - Yeah, it's funny, you heard that, 'cause that's why I said there's a lot to unpack. There's that side of it, the other side that I read and that also was like, are you just getting in the way? - Yeah. - Like, maybe this person does actually know what they're doing and you just won't let go and you won't get out of the way. - Absolutely, that could also be true. - Yeah. - So if, let's say to everything I just said, if the person that asked this question is saying, why hire them because they had success based on where they came from as another law firm and they brought them in, and it's like, okay, if you did hire them for their experience, then why would you not allow them to apply their experience? - Correct. - That's the way I would look at it, right? So like, if you made the decision, you say, "Hey, this person's gonna help level us up based on XYZ that they did previously, they come in and you're not letting them do anything," then they can be successful either. So you gotta figure out which one it is, right? Either you hired this person, or they had no experience, and no capability that you needed, and obviously you're micromanaging them, and it's like, I don't know why you hired them, or they did have those things, and you're not empowering them to be able to actually make decisions in act. - Right, there's a major problem either way. All right, to close this out today with question number three, I have an MI, the ASL situation. I hired a senior attorney who specializes in a very niche practice area. He's good at his work, and we've been practicing about the same amount of time, but I find myself continually frustrated with his pushback on my decisions on case strategy. I finally just told him that I'm the owner, and should always have final say on how we handle cases. Now he's been less vocal in meetings, and I'm wondering if he's checked out, or if he's finally learned to trust my judgment. Should I be concerned? I want input from my team, but at the end of the day, I need people who align with my vision, not question it constantly. I hear two things again on this. - Yeah, it's the same guy as the question again, right? So it's very similar to the last question. It's, I understand, and I say this as I get owner, founder of a business, that this is your baby, and you're used to things being done a certain way, and you wanna make sure that, you know, I'm compromised certain standards. At the same time, you really have to, these to me seem like more of like personal situations to where you gotta figure out where your goals are. - Yes. - And if your goals are to do everything the way you want them done, and you wanna be the one doing them, then you can stay small. If your goal is to grow in scale, then that's going to take a team, and it's going to take taking some help. Taking some help means that sometimes, people who are providing the help are going to make mistakes, and sometimes they're going to be wrong, but that's no different than the fact that, not every decision you make is right, and you also make mistakes. So it's ultimately, if you wanna grow in scale, you have to take the help, and if you're hiring people to provide the help, and you're not allowing them to help, then they're not able to be very valuable to you, and it's probably not a good use of money. - Correct. - But I sense that these again are challenges with delegation, and challenges with delegating authority, because if you say, "I'm the boss," if you have to assert yourself, I mean, look, my goal coming into meetings is like, "It's funny, I was saying this didn't do higher bios, "but I don't think it's gonna make the cut." And they're like, "What's something unique about you?" And I said, "I'm a fucking idiot." And my goal is to come into a room, and with our leadership team, and be the lowest IQ person in that room. I don't need to tell everyone on the boss, who cares, let's just win. - Right. - I don't need to remind people I'm important I am or anything like that. Like, I don't look at you, you work for me, like, that's just so silly. - I hate that mindset. - How could you get to where you're going? And I've said this before, I got to a certain point on my own, and that was the limit of how far, like my grit, work ethic, et cetera, could take me. Everything else, probably past a million in revenue, has been thanks to an amazing team. So, I don't look at it as these people work for me, I look at it as, "I work with these people." It's completely the opposite. Like, if you could achieve your vision on your own, then why do you need them? But the reality of it is as you can't. So, these people are helping to make that vision a reality, and make all the good things that you have in your life, is not thanks to your efforts, is thanks to the efforts of a lot of people who come in every single day and help to make that real. So, if you're doing one of these things, you're reaffirming, like, "I'm the boss," or whatever. Now, that being said, sometimes you do have to exercise judgment, and depending on the scale of a decision, you don't want to have like a one-way door, where if this decision ends up being the wrong one, that you could wipe the whole practice out, yeah, you want to step in, whether there's something like that, or it's compromising some firm standard, or ethical standard, or something like that, of course. For the most part, I think people should be able to do, 90 plus percent of their decisions that are in line with their accountabilities on their own without necessarily having to consult you for every decision. I mean, we did a previous MMA, we talked about the fact that leaders can be, especially like founders can be a bit of a bottleneck when everything has to go through you, and I've experienced this myself. Like, I used to be very, very bad at this. Everything, I would sign off on font sizes, whatever shirt would look like, there's certain things I still do, just because I enjoy it, but at the same time, I mean, let's take a summit, for example. I mean, there's probably over a thousand decisions that go into that, and it used to be, I'd sign off on all one thousand. - And the one. - But at the last summit, I probably signed off on maybe 10 max 20 out of the thousand, and everything else came together, and it was great, probably the best one we ever did. But my point is, is just that, you gotta let people do their job. And if you let people do their job, and they can't do their job, well, maybe they're not the right person, or maybe you didn't develop them properly, or they're not clear what the expectations are, but usually the reason why somebody's not performing is because they don't have autonomy, they don't have clarity, or you're not letting them do their job. So it's very, rarely due to lack of capability. Sometimes, but again, not as common. So in this type of situation, it's like you hired an attorney in a very niche, to practice area to help you like kind of come in and level up the firm. Well, I mean, if you hire them for their expertise, why not let them exercise their expertise? Yeah. They most people don't want to work for the guy who's like, I'm the boss. And yeah, and if you do that too many times, they're going to be like, one, you're like, how they checked out. What I've learned is that if you have immensely talented people and you start telling them what to do and you start micromanaging them, they do check out because they're like, dude, I can put my brain on rest mode, right? You know, like, you know, like a video game console, you put it to sleep, you know, we're not using it. Awesome. But right, but they do that because they're like, look, this person is going to dictate every single thing I'm supposed to do. So now I'm not going to think I'm not going to think I'm not going to like be innovative, not going to be creative like why? Right? I'm not allowed to be anyway. And you get a fraction of the value that what that person could provide. So I think you think too much of yourself. And I think we as leaders need to think less of ourselves. Oftentimes we as leaders think far too much of ourselves. And if you think a little bit less of yourself and a little bit more, of all the people around you who helped to make that vision of reality, you'll be a lot more successful. You'll be a lot more grateful. And I read something along the lines of, this is actually today where the happiest people are the ones that find things to be happy about. And the most grateful people otherwise to find things to be grateful about. Like just whatever it is, I woke up today. I'm eating cottage cheese and I like the taste of cottage cheese. Like whatever it is. Yeah. And it's like seeking out things and people to be grateful for. And when you have that type of mindset, like I think those types of leaders that people like to work with. Absolutely. All right. We'll see you next time. Until next time. You've been listening to the Game Changing Attorney podcast with Michael Mogul. If you found this episode valuable, here are three free ways that we can help you grow your law firm. Number one, download the first chapter of Michael's book, absolutely free at gamechangingatourney.com. Number two, you can shoot Michael a text at 404-531-7691 and ask him any question you'd like. You might just hear the answer on the next episode. And finally, number three, if you can leave this podcast a five star review, it will help us gain access to more influential thought leaders and bring their lessons learned here to you. For more information on this episode, see the show notes in your podcast app or visit legalpodcast.com.