Stop Lying to Yourself

This episode is about one of my favorite topics, which is money. Money is such a wonderful gift that we have that we can create in our businesses. We as business owners don't fully appreciate all that money opens us up to. One of the things that recently spurred me to record this podcast was that I was watching an exchange on Facebook. I was in a Facebook group, and the question was posed, how do you compensate associates? And there were probably 70 or so responses on the thread by the time I saw it. Of those 70, there had to be at least 50 different ways of attorney compensation. I always hate to see those questions to some degree, because, when you cherry pick, this is how I compensate a particular person. There's a lot that's left out of that discussion, including things such as how you compensate other people in your office.   Tune in to hear my thoughts on this and more!   In this episode we discuss: Difficult business decisions regarding compensation. The value of money and ways that it makes life better in law firms. Weighing the cost benefit of buying experience. Money as a great stress reliever. How reliable and sufficient cash flow can help avoid temptation of trust account violations. The impact of persistent economic distress on the attorney client relationship.   Allison Bio:   Allison C. Williams, Esq., is Founder and Owner of the Williams Law Group, LLC, with offices in Short Hills and Freehold, New Jersey. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, is Certified by the Supreme Court of New Jersey as a Matrimonial Law Attorney and is the first attorney in New Jersey to become Board-Certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy in the field of Family Law.    Ms. Williams is an accomplished businesswoman. In 2017, the Williams Law Group won the LawFirm500 award, ranking 14th of the fastest growing law firms in the nation, as Ms. Williams grew the firm 581% in three years. Ms. Williams won the Silver Stevie Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017.  In 2018, Ms. Williams was voted as NJBIZ’s Top 50 Women in Business and was designated one of the Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs and Business Owners. In 2019, Ms. Williams won the Seminole 100 Award for founding one of the fastest growing companies among graduates of Florida State University.   In 2018, Ms. Williams created Law Firm Mentor, a business coaching service for lawyers.  She helps solo and small law firm attorneys grow their business revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.  Through multi-day intensive business retreats, group and one-to-one coaching, and strategic planning sessions, Ms. Williams advises lawyers on all aspects of creating, sustaining and scaling a law firm business – and specifically, she teaches them the core foundational principles of marketing, sales, personnel management, communications and money management in law firms.    Contact Info:   Contact Law Firm Mentor: Scheduler: https://meetme.so/LawFirmMentor     Snippets   00:20:31 (73 Seconds) OK, so the more that we focus on bringing money into not just our possession but into a systematic way of consistently generating predictable recurring revenue in our business, the less stress we have. Right. If I know I'm going to have a thousand dollars next week, I can make plans with that thousand dollars. If I know I'm going to have fifty thousand dollars next week, I can make plans for that fifty thousand dollars. If I have no idea whether it's going to be a one thousand dollar week or a fifty thousand dollar week, all that I can do is hope and pray and opt not to spend money and make sure I have as much available credit as possible while I'm biting my fingernails, praying for the fifty thousand dollar week. And that over time creates emotional, physical, psychological and intellectual stress that erodes your energy, your creativity and your ability to show up as your best self for your clients. You are a better lawyer when you are reducing stress in your life in all areas. And money is one of those great, great stress reducers.   00:17:32 (45 Seconds) So one of the things that you have to think about with buying better talent is what are you buying? Right. You're not just buying more legal work, you're buying contribution toward your culture. And if you are designing a law firm in a way that is sustainable, you need people who can deal with ethical challenges and who can deal with challenging clients and who can deal with emotionally laden problems in a way that someone with 10 years of life experience from adulthood or from from when they became a practicing attorney really doesn't have. So in other words, there's a place for all of it. But you get to actually afford that talent when you have the money generated in your business in order to create it.