394. How to Grow Without Losing Culture (Or Your Sanity) with Varghese Summersett

(upbeat music) - One of the early decisions we had to make was a very conscious choice to stay where we were or to grow. And it had to be intentional because if we just kept doing what we were doing, we were going to grow. - That's Benson Vargis and Anna Somerset of Vargis Somerset. - The ambition just kind of took over us. Like no, we were created to be challenged and we were created to grow and we were created to be ambitious. And so, that's the path that we took. (upbeat music) - 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 with just $500 to my name and has grown to over eight 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. I sat down with Anna and Benson to discuss why taking a client-centered approach leads to transformational growth, how leveraging technology can free up your team and become a competitive advantage and how running a firm with your spouse requires radical candor and a shared vision. Being married and knowing each other for as long as we have, we have the advantage of being able to really speak freely. And sometimes freely means it's very direct. - Purple punch to the face. (laughing) - It almost feels like it, but because we think differently, but we always know we're rowing in the same direction. Whatever Anna's telling me, it's coming from a place where she wants us to succeed. That's coming up on the Game Changing Gets Ready podcast. (upbeat music) Before we begin today's episode, I wanna remind you that we aren't beholden to any sponsors or run any ads on this podcast. This allows us to present all of our episodes raw and unfiltered. I'm not gonna push any mate to order meal services on you or try to save you any money on your car insurance. That being said, I have one small request. If you receive any value from this podcast, please give it a five-star review. Pay the fee so we can keep this podcast free. Anna and Benson, welcome to the podcast. - Thank you. - Glad to meet you. - Thanks for having us. - We're very excited. This is probably our first four person podcast in person. This is amazing. This is like the spouses. - I know. - It's a good double date. - It is. - It is. - Where's the wine? - One could argue this space was built for this episode. - Yeah. - Exactly. - That's a good deal. - We've always had four mics. - We have. - We've never used all for the exact same time. So. - The inauguration. - We've known each other for a while. - You guys built a phenomenal, phenomenal practice. We were just talking about this scene before we started recording parents, kids, and I'm sure we'll talk about all that. For those that are listening, if you could speak to, I guess your origin story, if you will. With each of you, how'd you guys come together? What led to starting the firm? I know there's a lot of little different pieces here, but Benson, let's start with you. - Sure. Anna and I met at the District Attorney's Office. We were both prosecutors together. We'd been there about four years. Each tried about 100 cases and realized there really was a ceiling at the time for how far you could go as a prosecutor with speed. Being who I am, I said, hey, I'd like to have limitless opportunity. I'm thinking about starting mom practice with Anna's help. I planned for a year on how to step out and start our practice together and develop what. - We skipped all the juicy stuff. - Yeah. - Wow, let's take it away. - Well, in terms of our origin, relationally, he was actually working for, I was working for Judicial Staff Council. He was working for a district judge and the Judicial Staff Council was supposed to advise the judges. And so they had introduced us both as interns, essentially, as each other's competition for the first job that would be opening as a prosecutor. And we were under a hiring freeze 'cause this was recession '09. And we were waiting and waiting and waiting for that position to open. And finally, one opened. We both interviewed for it. And he got it. And miraculously, I got one two weeks later, we started at the same time. I saw him walking down the sidewalk. I was waving like a lunatic 'cause I was like, somebody I recognized, somebody I know. And that's how we first met. It was really as competition. - The way she usually tells the story, she adds another detail which is, she got another job before this DA spot came open. And she came to my office to tell me that she got the job. And she claims, I had a pencil in my hand that I snapped. He did, he was very sad. - Because I was so frustrated that my competition had beat me in getting this successfully. - And I thought it was 'cause he was in love with me. But that was not the reason. He was upset that I got a job first. - The competition eventually bloomed into romance. - But your origin starts so much better than when you back to the roller plantation. - So I grew up elementary school here in the United States in Texas. And my parents believed I was wayward youth. And that was them being first generation, American seeing me get in school yard strabbles. Not doing as well academically as they'd hoped. And in their mind, I was definitely gonna become a gang member. That's where my life is going. So they said-- - You can imagine like little Benson being like, this is a school yard, right? - Right, well they were convinced. - So the immigrant bring goes, yes. - To this problem was to send me back to, sometimes I'll joke and say the motherland. So they send me back to India. Initially to go to boarding school that didn't work out well for me and within two weeks I begged to go live with my grandparents. I lived with them and we lived on a rubber plantation. And so a rubber plantation is what it sounds like. They're acres and acres of trees. You tap the rubber trees, get the latex. And so either the latex or what we did, we would turn it into rubber sheets and sell it. Well, by about 10th grade my grandparents thought, Benson's doing pretty good. He can probably handle this on his own. Let him run the rubber plantation. And my dad having the wisdom of this is a safe experiment. It doesn't really matter if he makes a success of this or not. It'll be a good time for him to learn. They entrusted me with the rubber plantation. And I didn't know the first thing about running a rubber plantation. And I was taken advantage of financially every way you could imagine. And I ran that rubber plantation into the ground. But in essentially destroying that rubber plantation and having to figure out, well, what do I have to do differently to make this work, which was to learn from others to study the market to know when to tap, to know how much labor a person should do when you give them a day's wage. I learned all those things essentially the hard way. But that's also given me the freedom to say, I can be an entrepreneur, I've been through tough times. And if you go on with the mindset of your willing to learn, there's really nothing you can't accomplish. So that's probably what gave me the gumption to say, look, everyone's selling me the market and this is true. Everyone told me the market was bad. Gone on were the days in Texas where you could go from being a prosecutor to this great litigator and personal injury because torque reform had already happened in Texas. So everyone said, don't do this. You have a great government job. But, you know, I had this wild hair of I can start something and I've got someone who thinks very differently than I do, but is so encouraging and helping me plan this that it could be done. - Were you guys together when you opened the firm? - Great. - Oh, different together. - We were not engaged or married yet. - Okay. - Which if you can imagine the dinner conversations with my parents around that. - You're going to go into business with this man, you're kind of dating? - Yep. - Yep. - But I think we had already decided and had worked together for four years already as prosecutors and tried some pretty big cases together that we worked really well together. So regardless of what happened romantically, we knew that the synergy was there for the business relationship to be successful. Well, my parents were wise too, is once you're around him this much and doing all of these hard things together and finding success together, you will end up getting married. Is this a person you want to marry? And turns out it was. - So we joke working together as like dog years. - Yeah, I was rollin' by seven. - Right? I know, by the time we got married, I mean, we've only been married seven years, you know, which doesn't sound like a lot of time, but the things that we've been through relationally in business and outside of business, I feel like it's like a 50 year relationship. - Very similar. - Yeah, this year we're eight years married for us, so it's very similar, yeah. - She's being nice. So the truth is, I was pursuing her for many years and it took many attempts to convince her that I was the one. But as she said, especially trying cases together, we knew whether she was romantically interested in me or thought I was no good. We worked really well together and that's always been true. - Yeah. So that idea you have about never quitting, there's no failure, you can't overcome, also applied to me. - Yeah, I guess so. - Never give up. - So I'm curious, in terms of like what led to the inception of the practice, I know you get some seed money, right? Wasn't a whole lot at the time, but just what led you guys to just going off on your own and saying, let's do this thing and what was day one like? When I was at the District Attorney's Office, the office was so good no one was leaving. So the only way to promote up was for people to leave and because we had a good administration, no one left. That was frustrating. Being always ranked number one or number two each year and yet not living up. So opportunity is what was calling. But as I studied the market, one of the things that I noticed was there were attorneys who were good at getting outcomes. No one was talking about the client journey and no one was thinking about the client journey. This is hard to imagine just 11 years ago, ago people were still advertising in the yellow pages as well. So there was a very traditional model of how law firms were marketed. There was a very traditional sense of will you come here and you entrust me with your problem. I'll give you a great outcome. Very little thought about the months or years that it takes to get to that outcome. So we saw that as something we could do differently. And there was this moment where I went to the dentist and I realized the dentist was probably sending me automated follow-ups, but they were effective and needed automated follow-ups. I was thinking to myself, why are we in legal so far behind? So all of these things kind of came together and start this idea of I'm going to start a law firm. What was day one like? The truth is - Vincent staring at the phone waiting for it to ring. That's right. The truth is in the beginning you have so much time and you are waiting for the phone to ring. What we did during that time was writing content to give people information, which at the time at least in North Texas was not the norm. It was exceptional to say the thing that I've worked for, which is to understand the law and be able to tell people about the law how it applies to their case or facts, can be given. We believed in the democratization of information. And that really helped us at the beginning. So I stared at the phone, but while I was staring at the phone, I was doing the things to eventually make the phone ring. I joined a little over six months later. Even though we had been planning to go into business together, I was kind of like, you start prefect concept. I'll come later. But we had spent about a year leading up to actually hanging the proverbial shingle planning, whether that was creating content or coming up with strategies or evaluating the market and figuring out what our business model was going to be and what it was going to look like. And then he went out and really put in that sweat equity of learning all the things that I think people when they initially open a practice will pay other vendors a lot of money to figure out like, oh, quick fix. You can get me leads. Great. Here's $5,000. Here's $10,000. When you don't have that money, when you're starting with $9,000 to cover everything, you have to learn it yourself. So it was that necessity built in with he's kind of a lifelong learner and I've called him that for a long time. He loves learning new things and he loves mastering new skills before he'll even consider using somebody outside to delegate to and so we really utilize that time to figure out how to do this on our own. And the first thing we did once we found some success with that was to bring in what we would call legitimizers, which are attorneys who were better at the legal job than we were, who had better name recognition, who had decades worth of reputation built because we were just five year baby lawyers, like who was going to call and say, I would like Anna Somerset to try my case and that ended up being an incredible move for us. Yeah. How would you describe like the dynamic between the two of you? Obviously you work together prior to starting the firm, but just in terms of skill sets, unique abilities, how would you describe that? I think before we did print and Colby through Chris, we didn't have a way to really define how different we were and how those personalities would sometimes clash or sometimes work well together, but I'm a quick start, meaning that I'm okay with it being 80% right as long as it's done, let's just keep moving speed, you know, means so much more than perfection. And Benson is a high, you know, fact finder and a high follow through. And so he wants to know all of the information before he makes a decision. So as you can imagine when faced with a problem, sometimes we are really competing in how we would address it. As we've worked together more, we've given each other kind of these areas of influence. Like these are the things that have done quickly and not perfectly would benefit the firm. These are the things that have to be done really well and be really thorough in order to benefit the firm. And so those kind of became our sphere of influence, if you will. And we kind of have a lot of autonomy in that space. And then when it comes to big decisions, we're making those decisions together. But ultimately, as the Managing Partner, he gets the final say so. And that means like steam coming out of my ears, like it can't be right. But I've really grown to really trust his decision making and come to appreciate the fact that I'm not the one who has that ultimate responsibility. Yeah. What would she say? You know, being married and knowing each other for as long as we have, we have the advantage of being able to really speak freely. Purple punch to the face. It almost feels like it. But because we think differently, but we always know we're growing in the same direction. Whatever Anne is telling me, it's coming from a place where she wants us to succeed. Of course, not every law firm can have partners that are married. But that idea of you're in this together, you're growing in the same direction has to be the foundation of how you make decisions together. The other aspect of having very different roles, which we do within the firm, I'm more the visionary, you're much more working with the executioner. We've adopted this above and below the water line philosophy of if there are things happening above the water line on the ship, you get attacked, that's not going to sink the ship. Below the water line something happens, it's going to sink the ship. So what I've tried to do over time is start focusing only on the things that are below the water line. Those are the only things I need to get to my desk because we did not want a situation where decisions were not being made because I'm the fact finder and I want to make sure every box is checked. And Anne needs the ability to lead teams and move quickly. So we've come up with that and I think that's worked well. At the beginning of this year, Anne said, okay, you write down all the things that you have to have final say. I need a list. And she said, they're going to be five. Like whatever five you want to have. But it's actually worked out beautifully. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they'll ask me why wasn't I consulted on this. I'm like, it's not on your top five. That's what I just had to move in it. I get some things done. What we're in the early years and getting the early stages, what were some of the biggest challenges that you had to overcome? Things you didn't anticipate in the firm that you look back on now. I mean, perhaps you would have approached different names, but we're pivotal points in the firm growing. One of the most memorable phrases I've heard from an employee is something that I've used going forward, which is sometimes a person that takes you to first is not the person that takes you to third or gets you home. There were people who were critical to that initial growth, who then when we grew, we're uncomfortable with what we had ground to. Because there is something really valuable and special about being a five person team that you can't replicate exactly at 30 people or now 70 plus people. And so those people who loved that part of it realized, hey, this isn't the best place for me. It's not because I don't love any or Benson. It's that I love being in that smaller environment. And that's what I crave. So I don't know that I would have changed anything, but you have to open yourself up to that that you may have great people in your organization, who you will continue to refer cases to or support through their careers. But they're going to go on and do different things because that's what's best for them. And we as a firm have to say, yes, sometimes growing to the point that we've grown means giving up some things, right? I may not know everyone's dogs names now, right? There's, I mean, I care any less for them. It's just a function of how many people we have. And just being okay with that. Well, and I think to one of the early decisions we had to make out to say it was about year four, was a very conscious choice to stay where we were or to grow. And it had to be intentional, because if we just kept doing what we were doing, we were going to grow. And so we had to decide, are we comfortable with that, are we comfortable with what our life looks like, you know, running a 20% team or a 30% team? And we had just had our second son, so our middle child, and spent several months talking about, you know, what does this look like? Are we taking the bumpers off and doing this thing? Are we going to kind of cozy down and be comfortable with this beautiful life that we've built? And ultimately, I think for both of us, because we both have threes, the ambition just kind of took over. It's like, no, we were created to be challenged and we were created to grow and we were created to be ambitious. And so that's the path that we took, but not everybody, you know, joins you on that path. Yeah, Michael and I will often say, who got you here won't get you there, right? And that's okay. Like to your point, it's okay. I think when you even said about like, okay, I don't know everyone's dog's name or anything. And that was really hard for me, as we grew, because I had, we know hired every person forever. And then I just remember planning team outings. And when you're small, you're like, I'm going to plan it around everyone. So everyone can go. And then I just remember as we got bigger, and I was like, well, Michael, like, all these people can't go. And he's like, we're past that. Like, there's not going to be a time anymore where everyone can go. So that was kind of a hard thing for me to transition to as well. How would you guys describe the culture of the firm today? Well, I think the culture of the firm is really centered around a growth mindset. And that is not just professionally speaking, you know, growing to be better lawyers to pursue better cases, to pursue justice for our clients, but also growing personally. And that doesn't just mean growing personally at your skill set. It can be growing personally outside of work. And so there's a lot of focus on the family unit, the friend unit. There's a lot of focus on how we communicate. Just being able to identify and self reflect on things that we're we got that we need assistance with. And then the firm providing resources to help our team build out those skill sets, I think, has been really a valuable part of the firm because people know when they stay here, they will grow here in all aspects of their life. And why? all aspects of their life become better. Having the growth mindset was so integral to who we are now that it is the only time we've changed our core values, which change our core values to specifically list that out. We're very focused on what we call our firm family and the extended family in addition to getting great outcomes and really provided that unparalleled service that we talked about initially. But the reason we highlighted the growth mindset is we started recognizing those things that are necessary to be successful as a part of our firm. And I grew with everything I said in terms of it's so much more than this idea that the firm is growing. We're also constantly changing. One of the things we talked about on the flight over here as we asked ourselves a very similar question was all of our people are constantly being challenged not as I'm challenging you as a person that we want to know the process that you're using. And we're challenging the process to see if we could do that process better. And we're always doing that. And it's like we focus on one division to the next and the one process to the next. But we believe that's the way we stay ahead and really distinguish ourselves from everyone else and ultimately clients benefit from our improved processes. Why no everybody talks about having SOPs right down your processes, have a standard operating procedure. I don't think a lot of people though sit down and say show me it right show me how you're doing it. And as you sit down and watch people execute the SOPs you realize that's not right or that's not what it says or that's not the most efficient way to do it. We need to rewrite that. And always questioning why are we doing it that way? Is that the best way? Is there a better way? Have we thought about this? And sometimes it's met with some pushback because people feel like they're always being challenged. And we always say we're not challenging people, we're challenging the process. And that's been integral to that growth mindset being part of our core values and the culture of the firm. And speaking of people what you're hiring, what do you look for? What are certain types of traits or just I heard you guys describe the team and the attorneys as elite? What makes them that? Well I will tell you there are several days in my life where I know my life took a different course one of those days and I'm not just saying this because you're sitting here but was listening to you just get talk about the hiring funnel. By the next week we had adopted our own version of the hiring funnel because what we were able to do before that session that workshop was we were hiring based on people we knew in the community and we could do that when we were small and when we were in one practice area. As we grew that became harder and harder to do. I'll say still today every attorney we've hired was an attorney we knew of or knew very well. But when we started talking about staff those came in from a variety of different places and having a hiring funnel where you're in at the very outset looking for people who are actually interested in working for a Vargie Somerset as opposed anywhere who read and follow instructions are passionate about what they're doing and their why centers around people. That helps us get to the right candidates and we've had very little turn over. It's not just that we have great people even talking to other law firm owners or attrition rate is very low and I think that has to do a lot with the hiring funnel and just not letting the need in the moment overtake the need to get the right person and that's so tempting to do because your team is asking you for help and you know the pressure that they're under especially if you lost a person and now everyone's scrambling to pick up their work just reminding them that we want the right person not just a person. When I think something else that's really important to the legal team specifically is not just being compassionate and empathetic and being able to connect with people on a human level. It also is understanding that because we keep a very low caseload compared to other lawyers and we do that on purpose that the expectation is that this would be hand holding the entire way through because we're trying to transform their journey through the legal system and not just ultimately get the best result which I think our teams do get excellent results but building that trust throughout the entire relationship requires somebody who's an excellent communicator and not just in the written word and not just in front of a jury but in casual conversation somebody who truly cares about the people that they're working with and part of that relationship aspect I think is necessary and everybody who comes to work. Now the one you've added recently is technology and being adept to how quickly technology changes and Benson started loft which is a law firm case management software several years ago and the firm has been at the front of that development because we've been using it and at times that's very difficult it's very challenging because you're talking about new technology that's doing new things there's a ton of AI adoption they are a ton of automation adoption and some of our staff that we've worked with for a long time really struggled with integrating into new tech and so he brought that in as part of the hiring funnel now like what is your level of comfortability with technology you know walk me through what you know about AI what tools do you use why do you use them just to make sure that you're getting somebody who has that mindset you know to shift with the change in technology yeah I love I don't think you talked earlier about the client journey and the importance of that I'd love if you guys could speak to some of the specifics of what you do that's unique in terms of the client experience is this different from other firms I mean I'll even start just you have been even listening to this podcast is just go to your website like that in itself is a unique experience it's just it's not like your traditional website especially when you go on your phone by location by practice area you've got the AI assistant like if you can speak to someone that stuff well I'll start with the website to give credit where credit is due the website you're looking at is a result of the last intensive I was at where we all talked about what AI could do and I'm not one to write down a bunch of ideas and say that sounds great again probably within two weeks using AI we rebuilt all of our website to do one thing which is if a visitor comes to our website to get them to where they want to be if you were able to look at the website two weeks prior or the day that I came to the intensive you know there was a menu with 50 items on it under each drop down and yes maybe you could find things bigger picture though we are always trying to get into the mindset of the person that has come to us whether it's going back to day one when I was trying to think about what is a mom whose son just got arrested trying to get the answers for it to am and putting that freely on the website to if a client signs up with us based on the type of case they have the court that they're in they're going to get very specific messages from us to use an example if you have a family court setting you're going to get automated messages and of course they're going to look personalized to the client but you're going to get messages about what court you're in what this judge expects how to dress for court you're going to get a YouTube video about the specific issue that you're about to face so oftentimes in family a lot that's temporary orders well what are temporary orders what should you be providing your attorney so we're using video we're using automated messages and so within the first week to two weeks they're getting so much information from us that is paced but customized to what their needs are it's very unique because we know from talking to many other attorneys and hiring other attorneys that typically what happens again is you hire and maybe the day before hearing you're going to get a phone call about what to expect so two weeks went by expand that out to however long a case takes so it's just a lot of intention behind what is this client uniquely facing and how do we answer those questions yeah i think a lot of it has to do with really tailoring the process to the specific need i think a lot of firms do a good job of touch points you would talk a lot about like every two weeks do a touch point put in their birthday wish him happy birthday you know send a card we of course do all the big stuff like you send a client box at the end congratulating them on the you know result and you send a letter on the anniversary of their loved ones passing to just memorialize that and those big touch points are important but i think what people are really looking for to overcome the anxiety they have of going through the legal process is somebody to set expectations and to send very early and so the whole process for each of our different practice areas because we do have three and each different type of case within that practice area all has their own automation they all have their own workflow for the information somebody's going to receive over the pendency of a case and so i think tailoring it is what really makes our client journey quite unique to other law firms that are maybe already doing a very good job with the touch points but they're just not specific enough to really be helpful as much as we talk about the automated workflows that we've built through loft i don't want to leave the impression that we're leaving out personal contact but what we are doing is setting a floor for every case where we know at a minimum this has happened and what we're telling our folks is we want you to do the things that you're best at making those personal connections we want you to come on top of that and not be bogged down by the administrative things so it's not just a higher level of contact the contact that is happening is much more meaningful what it's been interesting you know i've had some staff say well what i i used to do all this stuff manually so now what do i do and i was like that's a great question what are you going to do with your time because it needs to be replaced with something if you want to stay here and they get to do the flourish on top which is not just get better at their craft be more thorough in cases get better results results, be more efficient, less time on desk, but also in that personal contact with clients, because there are some things that AI can't replace, and that's one of them. Let's talk about the practice areas, like I know three practice areas now, what led to the expansion from one to the next and so on, and obviously the firm has grown, and events that you mentioned over 70 plus team members now, you guys are eight figure year, you hit the ink 5000, like just, you know, all the awards, even got an award, I think I saw it as a best place for, uh, working parents. That's right. We know how important that is. Yes, that's it. Yes. Yeah, I think that one's been four years running. We're super proud of that one. That's right up there. There are things 5000 for us. Essentially, what's driven the expansion? You know, you told us not to. You really do not expand. Yeah. I understand there's a lot of value in that advice, which is until you have really accomplished success in one space, don't divert your attention. I think what we came down to is that our niche wasn't just going to be in a practice area. It wasn't going to be in this very specific type of law practice. It was going to be maybe in a city, right? Maybe our niche was going to be Fort Worth. Maybe our niche was going to be the client journey. Maybe our niche was going to be the best known lawyers in the area. And I think where people make the mistake is they think, well, if I expanded the other practice areas, I need to learn a new practice. You don't. You just hire the experts who are out there, bring them in and have them run and so what we ended up doing is having three different divisions, none of which we personally run, right? We're hiring people who are extremely senior, more senior than we are and we've got 16 years under our belt with our licenses, but to run those divisions. And so because they are separated as divisions, they provide a very clear message to our clients that our family lawyers practice family law, our criminal lawyers practice criminal law, our personal injury lawyers practice personal injury and wrongful death. There is no crossover. But once they're in that ecosystem and they get the taste of what it's like to have somebody care about your case from start to finish and we extend that relationship past the conclusion of case, they stay in that ecosystem. And it is common for individuals who have criminal defense issues to also have family law issues that need to be addressed. And the collaboration between our teams to be able to keep that all under house and you know, one place has really been valuable. What would you say? No, I agree. This idea of niching down makes sense. And I will say one of the things we realized when we got to about 10 attorneys in criminal is that in criminal in primarily Fort Worth, that was about as big as things we're going to get. So when we started looking at where do we grow? We could grow geographically, which we have done and we could grow into practice areas. Another inflection point in my life was one of the summits where there was a lot of discussion around not working in the practice, but working on the practice. And at the time, it seemed impossible for me to contemplate and I both stepping out of our day to day active lawyer roles. I mean, we were going to dock it every morning. We had our own caseloads. It was our life. And I thought to myself, to get the kind of people we need to run a division, ultimately multiple divisions, the amount of money we're going to spend, the amount of money we're going to be losing, losing what unquote, because we're not handling cases. And again, lawyer ego, well, people are come into hire of our yeast and some are set. Things are really going to go downhill. And we made massive investments into getting the right people over time. And it has paid off exceptionally. But it is a leap of faith. And our focus now is of course on maximizing what we're doing. Someone asked us today, when are you opening your fifth office? I said, I really want to make sure that we are saturating completely the first four offices that we have before I start looking at office number five. And it's not because there's not temptation. New Mexico is a great opportunity for us. It's a border, a state with phenomenal personal injury outcomes because we have better juries, better courts of appeal. But you have to temper that with understanding, make the most of what you've got first and then move on. I love the dig into that mindset. What led to that shift of just essentially saying like, yes, this is going to cost a lot of money. We could be potentially in quote, losing money if we're not the ones working up these cases. No one could do it as good as we can. Kind of essentially moving from working in the business, working on the business. It's a leap of faith, but it is one of the things that has been so valuable in our journey with Chris is being in the room with folks who have gone down that path. And they say, look, it worked. And hopefully people hearing this will understand that there are others who have preceded you, right? This is as novel as it may be to you in the moment, the concept has already been proven. And it's really a question of, can you make the most of that time? If you hesitate on that second question, then maybe you shouldn't do the first, right? Will you have to be willing to maximize every moment? And for us outside of our time with our family, it is go, go, go, maximize every moment. And that's the mindset you have to have to say, I'm going to start working on the practice and not in the practice. If you're thinking on the practice means sitting on a beach that I don't think that's going to work out, right? Well, and I think to the first question really is, is that what you want? And I think that there are a lot of people who want to have a successful business. They want to make a lot of money. They want to have massive impact on their community, but they want to be the trial lawyer. And you have to want to or be willing to put that aside, even if it's temporarily, because I've known some wild success stories of people who have run the business and then come back around once they have their C suite built out and now they're trying big bad cases again. And it feels awesome to put on that white hat. But you have to decide is that what you want to do? And it's okay if it's not, then go find somebody who can, because you have to put as much energy into running the business as you do into practicing law. And I think for us, there was a bit of a morning process there. We've got egos. I mean, I was an excellent trial lawyer. He was an excellent trial lawyer. And I think given time, we would have been one of the greats. But we had to put that aside in order to make this investment, because this is something we were uniquely gifted at. And there were other trial lawyers out there, we could find to come in and kind of better that position. So those are the two questions I think people have to ask themselves first is what do they want to do? But if you want to grow your business, you are okay with outsourcing the talent behind the legal team, then you'll never regret and you'll always wish you done it sooner, switching over and spending time working on it. And during this whole period, I mean, let's talk like I switched gears a little bit talking about the personal side of all of this and raising a family and you've got three kids and you've also got this growing business like, how do you, I don't know if balance is the right word, but essentially how do you juggle the two? Well, first of all, we invest heavily in drywall, like in spackling. We have three boys and they are feral. And there is not a clean service in our house that they have not met with a meat cleaver or, you know, something else, dramatic. So it is a ton of energy. It's a ton of energy to come home to. It's a ton of energy to wake up. I don't know what time your kids wake up, ours wake up way out of the alarm 530 in the morning. Okay. And they're like ready to go. Oh, yes. And we don't want to change any of that because we're mourning people too. Right. Come on. Let's get on with our day. But you are starting at a level 10 at 530 in the morning. And it is wild to think you get in the car and you breathe a sigh of relief because you're like, okay, the kids are in school. I totally. I'm not aware of that moment now. I'm now relaxing on my way to work, which is wild. Yes. Right. And that moment in the garage. I understand that moment. And I don't know until you, you know, have your first child as a working mother. If you can really say, I've decided I'm going to go back to work or I'm going to say, I don't know, I don't know until you have that child in your staying home and you're working through that postpartum process that you can say, I've already made the decision. And I don't, I really hadn't made that decision after our first. And after my maternity leave with Knox, I looked at Benson, I was like, I'm going to come back to work. Like I think I'm a better mother to him and subsequent leader or other two children because I work. And I want them to see that side of me. And I want to be able to have that outlet personally for my own personal well-being. But yeah, balance probably not a good word. Not a ton of it. And we understand we're kind of in the thick of it right now. And things have just started to level out. Like our youngest is three. We're out of diapers. We're almost in the same school. They all play together independently. They don't need us for entertainment as much. And it's really been a sweet time as we've kind of leveled out of the baby stage. And that's made it certainly much more manageable. But there are so many years there where I look back and like, I don't know what was happening. I know. It's a black hole. I think I've blacked out for a good three years, especially that close together. Yeah. Well, and consequently, it was about the time we started with Chris. I was like, all of these things just happened at one time. Yeah. It was just a lot of change. Yeah. I would agree. Balance is a very poor word to describe what our lives look like. But we intentionally said our priority is our kids. And the only other thing in our life that we're spending time on outside of our kids is work. And that's intentional. There are huge sacrifices, right? When we talked to other couples, they all have a couple of friends that they hang out with. And they have nights of the week that they're able to take off. And our lives are we get home. and we spent time with our kids. That's a choice that we made. It is a little manic in terms of all the things that are going on and-- - We all have our side hustles too. We all have something else, like some creative outlet going on. - She's got a tequila brand that she's launching with her brother. - Yeah, oh, that's been super fun. - So we're always doing something, but it's a choice and it's, as Anna put it, it's a stage of life. I don't think in 30 years I'll be doing exactly the same thing. I am probably a little bit of workaholic and I'll be doing something. - It's your way of relaxing. It's like some new project. I don't know if you've noticed this with Michael, but I feel like when he'll set these big goals, so have a vision, will work really hard, will be on these sprints, will accomplish it, and I'm like, great, we'll celebrate. - Yeah, no, no, we're just none of that. - Oh, it is like he is already on to the next thing. - On to the next thing. - And I mean, I'll never forget one day, he woke up, he's like, I'm gonna write a book. I'm like, what? (laughing) With like, what time are you gonna write a book? Or when you woke up, he's like, you know, I think we can make a better software than what's out there. We're gonna make one. - Oh yeah. - Just gonna develop it. - Yeah. - I was like, and there's no dabbling. - Great, it's not dabbling. - It's just like, all the way in. - It is a concept to immediate first step, 24 hours notice, like get on board. But I recognize that's the main I'm married, and I know this is gonna be a life on journey doing. - Oh yeah. - We have fun. - We do have a good time. And now we get to drink tequila at the end of a long day. - Oh, no, that's why it's tequila, this is exciting. - Oh, it is really cool. So it comes to date side in about two weeks. - Okay. - It's called Point Blank tequila. We secured a partnership with Taylor Sheridan's Bosky Ranch Live. He's the executive producer of Yellowstone and all the awesome shows. And he's got a ranch in Weatherford. And we're the exclusive tequila for this music festival. He's putting on, and that's our debut. So that's the first time he will be able to drink it. And I just got roped into it because I love my little brother. And he is real, he's an entrepreneur. And he came to me and said, hey, you want to help out with some branding? And I was like, absolutely, I do. So that's been like kind of my creative outlet. 'Cause I got that side of me that, you know, sometimes law doesn't scratch. And it's been really fun. - It's been fantastic. I've gotten to get a front row seat. Man has been very humble. Lots of opportunities came because of how she designed everything related to Point Blank from the website to helping with the bottles and the labels. And this story ultimately is what got Taylor Sheridan interested because it's a very Texas story. There's a female founder when it comes to the distillery. And there was just a lot that, again, how you message is so important. And getting that message out is so important. She's done a tremendous job with that. So we're excited for it. - I've always loved when people are like, what are your hobbies? I'm like, we don't have hobbies. - We don't have hobbies. - And now I get to say, actually, that's a good one. - That's a good one. I love it. So I'm looking ahead. What are you guys most excited about? I mean, obviously the tequila, but what about just anything else in the firm personally? What excites you? - Baseball trial sometimes Sunday. - That's exciting. - That's right. - No, you've got some big stuff coming up. - I think Anne is more excited about me launching loft to the general public than I am because that'll be a moment of relief for her that all this work has paid off. Within the firm, we have seen so much growth. But again, filling out our satellite offices to their capacity excites me growing the people within our firm, I think we've done a tremendous job of hiring and bringing on great people who are growing into their roles last year we were able to come up with individualized career paths for all of them again inspired by y'all. And we want to help grow everyone at the firm to take us to the next level. And someday, my five-year vision may not be a scary because we'll have met it. And then I'll have a new five-year vision. - Always, there's always a next one. You know, at some point though, the goal of doubling your revenue every year becomes like, that's daunting at some point, yes, yes, it's a lot. But I've always been proud that he's a man of great vision. - It's like the same. You always want your future to be greater than your past. It's like, you always want to be looking ahead as opposed to looking backwards. So as we come to a close, guys, this being the game-changing attorney podcast, I'll ask each of you and I'll start with you. What does being a game-changer mean to you? - Being a game-changer to be means being able to pivot towards challenge and not away from it. So when you see a challenge coming your way, your tendency is to pivot towards it and take it head on. As opposed to run or find some barrier between you and the thing that's scaring you. - Being a game-changer to me has been seeing the effect of our work actually change markets in a way that affects the general public positively. So when we talked about 11 years ago, what legal look like in North Texas, that has absolutely changed. And we played a part in that change. When people ask me why are you getting into this space that's so crowded for a law firm software, again, it's the same idea that the work that we do raises the bar. If some small guy can come along and challenge what you have, it means everyone's gonna improve. Whether they use my product or not. It's the same thing we did in legal. And to me, that's what being a game-changer is. Being willing to be at the front of the line to say we're all gonna do better because of it. (upbeat music) - I want to give a huge thank you to Benson and Anna for taking the time to join us on the game-changing attorney podcast. (upbeat music) If you found this episode valuable, here are three free ways that I can help you grow your law firm. Number one, download the first chapter of my book absolutely free at gamechangingatourney.com. Number two, you can shoot me a text at 404-531-7691 and I'll answer any question that you've got for me. And finally, number three, if you can leave this podcast a five-star review, it'll help us gain access to more influential thought leaders and bring their lessons learned here to you. For more information on our interview with Bensonburg East and Anna Somerset, see the show notes for this episode in your podcast app or visit legalpodcast.com. (upbeat music)