Jeremy Weisz 2:30
Do you have other favorite books you mentioned, I think, is it the immutable laws of marketing was Al Ries and someone else Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham has a bunch of books, any other favorite marketing or direct response books, I love Joe Sugarman. Joe Sugarman was another guest on my podcast and a friend. Unfortunately, he passed away recently, but he is one of my favorite copywriting direct response books of all time, as well.
Ben Glass 2:55
So I would say anything in Kennedy’s library, the no BS, no BS series, I would say, you know, bringing to modern but it’s still principle based is any Russell Brunson’s current work is great. And of course, our friend, Brian Kurtz, who you mentioned earlier, his book, although it’s not all about direct response, marketing, his book over delivered over deliver I think, is an amazing book about how to be a person of influence, without standing up on top of have a, you know, a big shelf or big stage and saying, Hey, look at me, the lights all on me, and Brian is the expert Barna and on that,
Jeremy Weisz 3:34
love it. Yeah, for sure. overdeliver and Perry Marshalls book, The 8020 of sales and marketing is a good one, too. So this episode is brought to you by Rise25 And by the way, as Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their dream 100 relationships, how do we do that? We help you run your podcast. You know, for me, Ben, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to do that over the past decade and a profile the people and the companies I most admire on this planet and feature them and, and shout from the rooftops while they’re working on and share their knowledge with the world as well. So if you thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions go to Rise25.com We’ve been doing it for over a decade and you can email [email protected]. If you have questions we probably have created been free. So many episodes that people can just learn for free on our podcast so they can check that out as well. And Ben Glass as been a personal injury lawyer I think, Ben at this point for over 40 years, right and
Ben Glass 4:41
probably almost 40 almost
Jeremy Weisz 4:43
40 years, okay. I don’t want to age you but I think I read somewhere 40 years and like well 40 years plus. And but the most impressive thing is he’s a father of nine children, for them adopted from China. He’s a small business advocate and nonprofit charity supporter And a soccer referee, okay, and he got a scholarship for playing soccer. So he could hold his own. And if you’re watching the video, you can see he’s got many books like business books, legal books, but you a teenage soccer referee. So we’ll talk a little bit about that as well. And he’s a recognized expert. I mean, lawyers, Ben travel from around the country to be trained by you and your team, the Ben Glass Center for Growth and Innovation and you run not just BenGlassLaw, but the Great Legal Marketing, you help law firms all over the country. I mean, you’re kind of I mean, I have heard about you for years and years and years, even though I’m not a lawyer. Just a, you know, names come up of people who are really, really smart, and helping people in business. So when you know, that’s you can find is BenGlassLaw, and Great Legal Marketing. And you’ve authored several books, The Truth About lawyer advertising five deadly sins that can wreck your accident case, and many more. So Ben, thanks for joining me.
Ben Glass 6:07
Awesome. We can we’re done. That’s a very nice introduction, Jeremy. Yeah. And you know, the work you do is very important. And you’re following a basic principle philosophy of life, which is asking the question always, like, what can I do for you first, right, and being the giver of your talent and gifts, that’s what makes the world go round. And that’s, I think my space in the world is to try to get people to recognize you are special, you have gifts, you have talents, let’s not hide them, let’s use them. We’re gonna dig deep
Jeremy Weisz 6:36
into how does one get to the point where you get to the all this stuff you don’t want to do you don’t have to do anymore. And sometimes it’s a mindset thing. But I want to start with the nine kids, you know, because obviously, that jumps out, and people probably hear that and like, I have one kid, I have two kids. I and I’m swamped. Right. And so there was a major decision you made at some point to expand your family. So just talk about that thought process, you know, with your wife and why.
Ben Glass 7:09
And yeah, sure. And we’ve been swamped. And so you know, the I written part about this in my book called Play left fullback. We had four kids and a dog. Sandy is my wife and says, you know, I think we’re called to adopt. And I said, You’re crazy. We for kids and adult we have a very full life. There’s a gap is about an eight year gap between child number four and child number eight, child number eight, just or child number five, right? He just graduated now from from Virginia Tech. And then that came along. And my wife said, I think we’re called to adopt. And I said, Well, you know, you’re really crazy. Meanwhile, my sister who couldn’t have children adopted and so through that we kind of saw the process of international adoption. She adopted from China as well. We went to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Christian music genre. Stephen Christian was very, very popular longtime artist and advocate for adoption. He adopted girls from China. And that changed my whole life. Because at that concert, I said yes. And 18 months after that we were in in Beijing.
Jeremy Weisz 8:22
You really have a choice when your wife said we’re called to adapt at that point. Um, yeah, it was
Ben Glass 8:27
for sure. Because I had said no, I’d said no, so that’s too much. That concert and God speaking through Stephen Chapman changed my heart a few months later, we’re in China with Kevin Kevin just turned 20 A couple years after that, we’re in China again to adopt six and a half year old Emma couple years after that Sandy shows me Hey, there’s this video on the internet because now there was more video in the beginning we didn’t have a lot of information, the video of two children 112 111 And an orphanage playing and there was a group that was advocating Jeremy for older child adoption when you’re 14 in China you’re no longer adoptable right you stay in social welfare system and and so again, we were all in and you know at different times you one or both of us will be really frightened and scared to to know what we’re getting into. And the other one hold each other out, which is a great parenting thing. It’s how it’s how you don’t get overwhelmed when you’ve got more than two right because one changes their life to your even usually with your spouse three are on number two, and now you got to figure out like how we could do it as a as a family unit. And so adopted David and Leah, they were 12 and 11. They both still speak Mandarin. You know, it’s been a journey and it’s been and I will say this too quickly. Is that being born in an orphanage being abandoned by your parents a child All my kids had some physical imperfection, let’s just say that creates, that’s early childhood trauma. It’s a whole set of new challenges. It’s a ton. And but here’s, here’s the interesting things that our kids have given more to us than we ever could have imagined. Because we’ve learned so much brain science over the years. And, and a big because you You’re famous for asking about like turning points, a big turning point was when we would, we would start to go and seek out experts and attend conferences, and it would be in a room with hundreds of other parents who are in the same place as we were some were farther, obviously farther along the experience path. And just hearing those stories and hearing, you know, resources that they had reached out to and hearing hope that was very helpful to us, which gets to somebody you know, you and I talked about, which is, you know, they’re getting into groups, and playing in groups of people who are farther along whatever it is the Business Path in that case was raising children from hard places path, whatever it is, masterminding with people is really, really critical. So here we are, we’re going to couplers still at home, they’ll need probably our systems for a long time. The whole bunch our home from college. And and a bunch of my kids are launched. We’ve we just had our six and seven grandkids in the last six weeks have two of our daughters congratulations. Yeah, it’s, it’s I the other last week, I looked up at the dinner table, there’s nine events around the dinner table like, wow, that’s a lot.
Jeremy Weisz 11:31
You know, I’m fascinated, Ben, by people who make decisions that are there’s a path that’s harder, and they consciously make that decision, because so my wife’s a child psychologist, so and so adopting, she’s worked with, you know, kids are adopted, obviously, but, you know, adopting from young age versus older, there’s a lot more baggage. Right? And so, yeah, so what, what was that decision like ago, you know, you could adapt to more kids, and they can be, you know, 1234, as opposed to 1011 12?
Ben Glass 12:12
Yeah, well, at certain points from our Christian faith belief, at a certain point, you believe, or you have this feeling that you are called to something, and that there’s a reason you are called and it can, it can border on sounding arrogant, right? And I don’t want it to be that way. But it’s like, okay, this is the unknown, these children, their lives would have been profoundly different. And especially now, I mean, China is a much darker, more restrictive, horrible place to live, actually. But it’s not like we save them from that. But that’s really was part of the thinking, then I think it’s like wrong thinking now in retrospect. And you just take, and you just take on, so part of my mantra is you live life big, right? You, you, you have this one journey, Jeremy through life, there’s no do overs, we can wish we were 18 Again, but that’s not going to happen. And you don’t have any control over when you’re born, who you’re born to, you have maybe some influence on how long you get to stay here on Earth. And let’s just go for it. We’re, we’re blessed. We live in America, we live in RCNi. In Northern Virginia, we have tons of resources available to us locally, which not everybody in America has in terms of mental health teams, and physical health teams and all that. So it’s one of those things that’s not really rationally, culturally explainable. And I will say this, to be fair, there were times when we would say to ourselves, man, how did we get here, like, this is really, really hard. And of course, you know, friends and family don’t always understand the thought process. They don’t understand why you make these choices and why you’ve made your life is more challenging at certain points. And so there’s isolation, there’s loneliness, until you find other people who are on this path with you, and they’re out there. And so today, all of that much pain, much worse, much stress. Now, kids are doing really well. And Sandy and I are mentors, to the next cohort of families. So what I always say when I do podcasts like this is like if you know someone who’s thinking about adoption, or someone who has adopted and they are being challenged like they’re, they’re finding it challenging. Reach out to me, reach out to CMD we are we don’t have PhDs after a name we have a crap ton of experience, right? And we’re really good at pointing people, as your wife probably as to here’s a resource, here’s a person, here’s an idea. We’re really good at that. Born of a lot of challenging times. So we’ll
Jeremy Weisz 15:13
you know, when we first got on this call, the first thing you said was about being grateful. And we’ll, we’ll kind of transition the family into business for a second because there’s, there’s business grateful. And then there’s, you know, being grateful for family. And I’d love to hear what were some of the conditions you learned about in these facilities? Was anything that sticks out, you know, when we’re just thinking personally, like, wow, that you had no idea that you uncovered through your research in and also experience with adopting?
Ben Glass 15:48
Yeah, when covered through my kids telling us stories, the older ones, so my son, one of my sons, lived in a, in a nice with a nice foster family. And he’s actually has traveled back to China and visit his foster parents and sometimes chat with them through video. But as he was nearing a time where he could potentially be adopted, you know, he was basically ripped from his possibly, I mean, put back into an institution, an orphanage in orphanages, not a good place, where he basically had to join a gang within the orphanage, right, in order to survive, saw a child killed, right. That’s trauma. I would say this to that no matter and the Chinese people are wonderful, wonderful people that government is, again, the leader is, you know, it’s a horrible place. But Chinese people are, by and large, very wonderful. But no matter how loving or caring, a nanny and an orphanage is, they have a lot of kids, right. And my, my, my one of my sons, who had a severe cleft lip, and palate was unrepaired. At the time we adopted him, you know, you need a long time to be fed, and you need holding, and you don’t get that. And so, you know, no matter how caring they were, it’s different from the love of a mom and a dad, the love of parents, right. And the security and the felt of safety, that our children, by and large, have the hours years and years in mind, you know, most, most children in America have at least felt safety, that they’ll be fed, there’ll be sheltered, someone will come pick them up when they’re crying, someone will advocate for them, these kids didn’t really have that. And it can have a profound impact early, the first 18 months of life can have a profound impact, because the brain has been wired, right? I didn’t know any of this. I didn’t know any of this. We’ve learned it by, you know, by being forced into this world. That that we didn’t know we had to go to. And and we’ve learned. So that’s just a couple. I mean, it’s a lot. Now. I don’t want to I don’t want to scare anyone who’s considering this. considering adoption to go, Oh, my this is way hard. Because we heard stories before. You know, we heard some horror stories. We just don’t know what you don’t know. And so our message is Sandy, and my message say is, you have to be willing to work really hard. I do think this works better. If there’s two two adults involved, right? Can be mom and dad, a mom and a mom, dad. Now that doesn’t make a difference. But to adults, it takes that energy because someone’s always tired. And someone’s always frustrated, and have two people who can tag team with each other, and, and go out and get ideas. That’s really, I think, my opinion, that’s really, really important. There are single parents who adopt, bless them, bless them. That’s the most challenging thing you can imagine.
Jeremy Weisz 18:59
How do you feel about partnerships in business? I’m sure you get a lot of questions and have helped people sort stuff out. Right, because I could see that same apply to business. But there’s also there can be issues with that as well.
Ben Glass 19:15
Yeah, so I’m in the law partnership with my oldest son Brian. I’m the sole owner of Great Legal Marketing in at least in law, Jeremy. So many law partnerships of small firms are born of this. Jeremy wow, like you. I think it would be fun to practice together. What if we did that and kind of split the overhead and, and did that and we’d have a vision for five years, which would be really fun to practice and that and that’s how those firms are born. And a lot of firms go through their whole life that way. And I’m just I guess I’m no longer shocked Jeremy of how many small All businesses do the they create the business. And whether it’s with a partnership or not, they created the business because it looks like it’d be a fun thing to I’m a good dog groomer, I’m a good hairdresser. I’m good at building decks, right? Cool. They create jobs, cool. But there’s no real proactive thinking about five years from now, this is where we want to be 10 years from now, this is where I want to be. So we can take deliberate steps. So I tell lawyers who are partners or thinking about becoming partners, is you Yeah, the first discussion you have to have is when this ends, either has retired of each other, or one of us gets dies or has a disability. Like how does how does that play out? We have to write that all down. That’s like, number one, what’s the what’s the, you’re writing down the prenup? Like how does it how does this deal? And second is, you know, it’s really, really helpful for lawyers, in particular, if are we running a law practice? Or are we going to run a business, and we just happen to be lawyers, and we’re going to apply business principles, we’re going to look outside the lawyer box for how other successful businesses are run, how they hire, how they come. And that’s my Great Legal Marketing business is about it’s about attracting those lawyers. We mentioned before we went live, I mentioned my friend, Brian Beck, and was a terrific attorney down in Houston. We’re tracking guys like that, who are entrepreneurial. They’re really good lawyers. And when you combine really good lawyers with really good business principles, there’s no top there’s no limit. Lots of really good lawyers, Jeremy, this shouldn’t probably will not surprise you are frustrated. They don’t make enough money. They don’t like the practice. And I believe it’s because they’ve never ventured outside the lawyer black box to see how does the guy running the bagel shop? Or the lady running? You know, whatever the car dealership? How do they who are the who are happy, like, what did they do? What are their habits? What principles do they apply to their life into their business? And that’s what I bring to the world, I think is showing the lawyers who want to be this want to be happy? Like show them? Okay, here’s the steps to take, here’s the steps to take in this order, frankly.
Jeremy Weisz 22:22
What’s the commonality you see benefit of lawyers who are happy?
Ben Glass 22:28
lawyers who are happy? A, they have set their own ego aside about who is going to do the bulk of the legal work, right? Lawyer, so lawyers who are happy, you know, we say you have high profit, low maintenance law firm. Well, in order to have high profit, low maintenance, you can’t be the one doing every case, answering every email. And so that’s where we get them to high profit, low maintenance lawyers who are happy to have you just as interesting to me, they’ve given themselves permission to be happy. First of all, because what you learn in law school is that you have to be a self sacrificial lamb to the client, and to the profession and to the community. And you have to work all these hours, and you have to run your way up the hard ladder. And then in 40 years, you can be successful, right? And so our lawyers, and I didn’t I see, I didn’t understand this when I began, but I do now. Our lawyers, I know who made that rule. Like that sounds stupid, right? Let’s be let’s bring happiness bar forward in the in the, in the progression through the profession. So giving yourself permission to think that way first. And then just the, the law, we talked about, like sort of personal ego of I have to be the one to do all the work. But now also ego of of the I actually going to bring in the the idea of the bagel Baker, who down the street who gets client customers, and they come back and repeat like we’re going to, even though he’s not a lawyer. We’re gonna go ask him some questions. And be curious about that. And those lawyers, and then they hire and we talk all about sort of hiring and culture and unleashing your employees on the world. Right? Those lawyers have a hot, much higher likelihood Jeremy of being happy. Sometime subtitle of one of my first book, my first book, which was called great liberal marketing was how to make more money, get more cases and still be home in time for dinner. Right. That’s happiness. I want to talk about hiring
Jeremy Weisz 24:43
in a second. But, you know, you’d mentioned Brian Beckham. I know we talked about Mark Brier. And do you feel that there’s an identity crisis? Do they come to you kind of already with that shift of I want to be the owner and not the doer? Or is that a shift they have to make? Because I feel like there could be like an identity crisis there because they, you know, you identify as your profession. Right? Not the CEO of the company. But the, the the lawyer.
Ben Glass 25:12
Yeah. So for both of them, I think they would say, yes, they have had an identity change, then has had an identity change, because, you know, I’m also from that school of thought, we are lawyers. So most lawyers come to us wanting to increase revenue. By getting more and better clients, they want to solve the advertising and the marketing problem, when Great Legal Marketing was born over 17 years ago, that’s really all we did. We showed lawyers how to advertise. So we showed small lawyers, small, firm lawyers, how to keep up with what was at the time, and the yellow pages and TV, like that was the that was the media that was on pre internet. And what happens is, Jeremy, that’s a relatively easy problem to solve. There’s, it’s systematic, to get more clients and to get better clients, either higher fee paying clients are larger cases, if your personal injury lawyer like that then causes problems, right? Because now, we now we do need to have employees who can fulfill we need processes, we need systems, we need structure. And so but in order to help in order to build that, and to be the coach of all of that, it takes time. And so you’re almost squeezed out of doing the legal work yourself. And again, for Ben, that was hard. Wow. Like nobody could do this as good as I could. The legal work. Yeah, they can’t. And so those guys, we mentioned mark, and Brian, Brian, back on, they are today true CEOs Minister, you still see them involved in a legal case, or two, if you look if you follow them around for a week, but mainly, they’re coaching, not managing, coaching their team and unleashing them unleashing their team’s talents on the world. And that makes it better for the lawyer owner, it makes it better for the clients to write this, the level of service goes up. And when you do that, then you’re great for your community as well. So we can solve all the problems that lawyers are trying to solve when they go to law school like, but we just eliminate the work real hard, climb this traditional ladder of 2020 500 hours, 2800 hours of your billable time. That’s old, and nonsense.
Jeremy Weisz 27:47
I mean, lawyers come to you then in this sense, you know, the company has the Great Legal Marketing. So you give them what they want. And essentially, then when they get there you give them what they need, is that they get
Ben Glass 28:01
a big part of what they need is the personal development. It’s it is the mindset stuff, it is the I deserve nothing they’re entitled to, but I deserve to be happy, it’s going to take work. The world doesn’t owe me happiness, just because I have a law degree. And today, Jeremy, you know, young lawyers coming out of law school or dropping out in 150k, right to get their law degree. So that doesn’t entitle you to anything, but you but just because you’re a lawyer does not mean that you do not deserve to be happy, even early on. And you know, we work mainly almost exclusively with lawyer owners, right. But if that lawyer owner is happy, then all the lawyers who worked out learn are going to be happy, they’re going to be coached. And one day they may go compete. We talked about that. We view that as a win win, like America is a win win win, like unlimited opportunity.
Jeremy Weisz 28:58
Is that a common thing you get is paid you other people who are in my region in your group, or is that not? In their mind?
Ben Glass 29:09
Yes, it is. Hey, if I join and there’s another lawyer who’s in the same state could be four hours away here in Virginia? Like what if we both start using the same advertising? Sure. What I what I tell people, Jeremy is I’ve been doing this for 40 years in the practice of law. I bring local lawyers in if a local lawyer who competes with me wanted to see everything we did, I would lay it all out in the table and I would explain it to him. A 90% of them are gonna go that’s too much too hard. It won’t do it. The 10% who get really curious about it are going to do it with their own flavor with their own unique avatar client that they want when everybody everybody looks for slightly different clients how and so you have different messaging you have diff In capacity to buy media, you have different personal goals. So we hear it, we debunk it. Not everybody believes me, right?
Jeremy Weisz 30:14
That’s a an abundance, mentality mindset.
Ben Glass 30:18
I think 100% and we and we just, again, that’s I tell them that story. So I brought local lawyers in here and show them I have local lawyers in my mastermind groups, show them everything, right, they hear everything. Boom, the world was a plenty. You know, you
Jeremy Weisz 30:35
talk man about the importance of team a lot. And I’d love to hear some, some hiring starts with the hiring process, and maybe hiring mistakes, what you’ve seen, or what you’ve seen some of your clients do that, that maybe other people can avoid?
Ben Glass 30:54
Well, I think that pre hiring, you have to understand really what your own culture is. We often talk in terms of core values. My team is doing a reread of a Good to Great Jim Collins fantastic book. Yes, it’s old. The principles are 100%. still correct. And so being really clear, and when we talk about core values, Jeremy is that means? How do we treat each other inside these walls? How do we debate, discern respect? Try to make it a great, great place. So let me let me well, I’ll get to your hiring question here in a second. But the other thing I think people would be interested in knowing is when Brian my son, and I asked ourselves, why do we exist as a law firm, most fear for most law firms, it’s going to be Why do we exist, we exist to help people We exist to, you know, be aggressive, we exist to get you the divorce, whatever it is. We said, now, we exist to build a place where people will thrive. First, our people, our people, you come here to work here, this will be the best place you ever worked, you will grow as an individual, you will not want to leave, you will want to invite your best friends who are a good match into work with us, doesn’t mean you won’t leave because we hire a lot of young uns who are still in school or growing in their careers. But every decision we make is around that core, which is this will be the best place you ever worked. We want you to thrive here. Because if my team, Jeremy is feels like they’re thriving, they come to work. They like coming to work, they’re doing work that’s interesting to them, they’re compensated appropriately, and they’re doing work with other people in this building, who they really like, that seems unbeatable. I’m convinced I could take this whole group. And we could go open up a bagel bakery or a print shop or whatever. The only thing we would need is subject matter expertise in that area. And my team would be we could build a winning business. So now to your question was about hiring, which is okay. We only want people who we believe match our core beliefs about the world, which is, in part, asking, What can I do for you? All right. advocating for yourself? Hey, Ben, perfect would be I need these three things. Ben can’t promise I can always deliver perfect, but I need people who advocate for themselves that right? I want people who are curious, who are forever learners? Who will who will, you know, press the leadership. Why do we do things this way? I’ve got another I’ve got a different idea. Here’s how I you know, and I’ve thought it out. Right? We want people who are proactive Stephen Covey’s habit of owning that space between the stimulus and the response. Now, it’s hard to know when you hire that, that a person meets your core values as as well as you would like them. So we’ll get through there and so our ads are not paralegal needed. Three to five years experience salary negotiable can multitask because that’s BS. That’s it, everybody are agile. This would be a good place for you. If boom, boom, boom, this is not the right place for you. If boom, boom, boom, right. Gary Halbert, long format if you’re familiar with his ad, but he was looking for a wife or girlfriend, right, if you’ve never heard of this story, you’re listening to this podcast, Google Gary Halbert, long ad for a girlfriend Go read it, model it, right. And now, okay, so that narrows the pool, and it gets people who are much closer to a core value, good higher match. Now, you and them have to agree that over 90 days we’re going to date and over 90 days isn’t the right place for you, you’re gonna tell me and if I don’t think it’s very clear to you, I’m going to tell you that I’m going to pay you for the next month, I’m going to pay you for the, you know, the 120 days. And there’s no guarantee you’ll be here after 90 days, but we are going to work hard to make sure that we are a good match. Because again, I want you to be around for a long time, mistakes that people make, are, and Ben has made is his hiring without a purpose, like we want to grow. But but we’re not asking these questions, we’re running generic ads to get people who don’t have jobs to come here and start here. The other mistake that Ben has made is that Jeremy, like your a c plus player, but I could coach you up to an A player, right? And feeling like really confident where that hasn’t worked out, where I really shouldn’t be spending my time coaching my A players, and helping my c plus players find a new place to work, right. And we tell them that and we we tell them that in our I do a core values meeting and speech to a new hire, by the way, I meet the new hires on their first day of work. So I’m not involved in that process at all. So again, delegation of that whole deal, but we tell people, you know, on our on our court, my core value talk to him is we believe that that work is a force for good. And we believe that you should only work at a place that you like working at, you’re compensated right, and it’s the best thing for your life. And I actually have a story of this. And if at some time you don’t feel Jeremy, this is the best thing for your life, I will help you find that next spot, right in your journey through through life and your journey through the work. So hiring is hard, especially in this market, we’re recording this summer of 22. The labor market is thin, people want more money. So we’re gonna see, you know, the cost for labor to go up. People want to work virtually, that will work in some industries that won’t work and others will work with some people and not work out. For others. And the wisest business owners are in mastermind groups with other business owners, you know, intermixing, like not just lawyers, but lawyers, and podiatrists and bagel baggers, and we’re trying to figure this out. It’s critical, because if I have a great team, they don’t need me. I can get my job. And I said, get out of
Jeremy Weisz 37:52
the way. Once they’re there, then what do you do to foster the culture?
Ben Glass 38:00
Yeah, so in our law firm, specifically, a couple of things. Number one, we have kind of rotating where leadership is taking out people sort of randomly selected and, and in small groups, two or three of them across departments, and we’re having lunch, it’s number one. Number two, we are we have a monthly meeting, a monthly luncheon, right? Where we’re giving update on the firm, we’re doing something fun. And we are we are doing some exercise where one or more of them are getting on their feet and presenting something it could be presenting interesting cases we’ve worked on. It could be Hey, Jeremy, you we have a young lady here who lived in Japan and taught English to Japanese students. Great. You’re gonna do Japanese one on one for us. Okay, just one on one version at things like that. We have quarterly all day business planning meetings here. And so with leadership, and so within the next week after that, we have a meeting, hey, this is what came out of that business planning meeting. Here’s our goals. We have goals on posters for revenue and profit and number of cases and things like that. But I think the most important thing we do, Jeremy is we reinforced this, which is, I need to know if you’re working for me, Jeremy, I need to know what’s perfect for you. Again, I can’t guarantee it when COVID started. And people were businesses were closed down. Buildings were closed. Brian and I were always here. But we said to people, we had single moms with kids, right? That was tough. We said we don’t know anything about this. Worldwide panda. We don’t know how to handle it. There’s no book. I need to know from you. Like, think about it. What would we like you we want you to still work here. Well, how is that going to work? Do you need childcare assistance? Do you need changeover hours you need to be able to come in here to get work done. If there’s we’re gonna home is imperfect or but we made sure that our people knew that they can advocate for themselves. And Brian, I did our very best to fulfill everybody’s wish and try to be fair and all that stuff. Running a business is not easy. It’s and few businesses, I’ll tell you this, there are folks, you know, they’ve come from the working world that go to other meetings in groups with folks who work in other firms. Nobody out there is training their employees with the openness. I think that we do, right? Like, this is a team, we want you here. I need to hear your voice.
Jeremy Weisz 40:49
Yeah, that’s it’s a collaborative approach. Instead of just commanding, here’s policies.
Ben Glass 40:56
Yeah. So we say like, if I have to manage you, you’re not the right person. I don’t need people here that to manage. I want to coach you. Right. And I’ll coach you in, in all facets. Because I’m, I’m on them your needs. I have three young ladies here who are getting married this summer. I’ve been married a long time. Okay, I got some advice about a lot of questions about that you kind of asked me. And so we have those. Yeah, we’re gonna have those discussions, too. And, you know, a lot of visitors like, Yeah, but what if they get really good? And they leave? Like, what if they don’t get really good? Or they stay? What if they stay five years, and they’re the same person they are today? Like, that’s hard.
Jeremy Weisz 41:36
You know, we’re talking about, you know, what you don’t want to do that you don’t do anymore and stepping into from entrepreneur to CEO, and that’s a mindset thing.
Ben Glass 41:48
For some people, right?
Jeremy Weisz 41:49
So talk about ERISA and brief writing.
Ben Glass 41:54
So ERISA is a is a niche practice of ours. We represent people who’ve been denied Long Term Disability Insurance not so security, but long term Disability insurance claims involves reading files that are 1500 2000 pages. Recall involves writing appeals and writing briefs for federal judges. And I would say to my coach, because I’ve had a personal corporate mindset coach for five years, beginning, we met weekly now we meet once a month, I said, like, how can I say I can’t scale this, right? Because Can I hate all that writing or I grew to hate it? I use a lot of work. And I said, nobody else could do it. Yeah, I have to how can I teach him? He goes? Well, we don’t know. His name is Sam. He said, This is Ben, we don’t know until we ask the universe to answer that question. Or Oh, tell me more about that. This is what we need to do is to be able to articulate exactly who we’re looking for the avatar who out there, I said, Well, you know, smart lawyer doesn’t need to be licensed here. Because it just they’re writing in the background, and I’m reviewing their stuff. Attention to detail. Great. Start to tell all your friends that this is what you’re looking for. Alright, I’ll do it. But it’s not gonna work. So I did it. Well, then I discovered this thing, the military spouse, legal network. Wow. Think about it. You got to be licensed in every state. Let’s say your spouse is in the military, they get transferred across state lines. It’s hard to get a law license, right? It’s stupid. But it’s hard to get a law license easily as you move with your spouse. Oh, there’s this whole world out there really, really smart lawyers who are running at home businesses, Jeremy doing what? Writing briefs, reading files, holy cow. Now, what was really cool was that, because they were really smart, and because we had a playbook, we could teach him the playbook. And boom, we’re able to we have that enabled us to be able to scale that business really from for us at that time at about $200,000 a year revenue part of the business to over a million dollars last year, because I was very clear, and intentional on who we were looking for. And I looked and I just left it, I only needed to find a couple have left it to the universe, God, whatever you want to call it like the world to answer my question, right and to and to fulfill my wish. And then I had to say you know what, even if they don’t do quite as well as I do, but can get me 80% of the way there. Now I get to work on the 20% and now really the 5% of what I call Jeremy I put I put really good icing on really good cakes now. I don’t bake the cakes for you.
Jeremy Weisz 44:45
Now you do what you want to do, right? And you handed off in or maybe in the beginning you kind of were really resistant to it and now you’ve embraced it. Do you have a specific process like right now let’s say you know you have stuff that creeps up that you realize, okay, I need to get this off my plate, you have a process for evaluating certain things, then once you evaluate it like getting rid of it,
Ben Glass 45:09
I’m a mole. If you’re not listening, if you’re not watching the video, I’m holding up a journal. So I have been a big journalist. For the last five or six years, writing my job with my kids, I have a lot of material for my family. But what always a page in the journal is a line down the page. Stuff I hate doing.
Jeremy Weisz 45:32
Stuff, everyday journal, like you journal every day,
Ben Glass 45:35
particularly one is the self journal. So it’s in quarters. I also am a big fan of the Passion Planner. So I actually am working out of two ones kind of business and one’s kind of personal. But yeah, it was it was creating that list of things that you do during that day or during the week, and just okay, I don’t like doing that just write it down, but not worry about how we’re going to solve that problem right now. It’s just write it down. And over time, looking at that list of things I don’t like doing so you know, I really don’t need to do this thing. If I if nobody did it, it wouldn’t affect the business. All right. email, email is like one of those things, I do email. But I feel bad. If I don’t respond to all of the in my world, all the vendors and people are pitching me stuff. I don’t have to respond to all that stuff. And so either, okay, I don’t need to do it, and it’s not going to change anything. Or, okay, I shouldn’t feel guilty. I’m going to delegate this to somebody else. I’ll tell you, you know, we can talk about my friend who runs Chick fil A unit here in a second. Or, I’m going to find someone who the thing is, I don’t like to do it, but it’s important. And now from Dan Sullivan street G to coach world coo coo not how like, who could really do and it really was how we scaled the wrestler practice. Let me find someone who can do this. Right. And we teach them what I need to teach him and boom, got a friend. I think it’s a great example for your listeners. He he runs a one unit Chipotle here. They sell me one year he’s working. So they’re close Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day, but he’s in there for five hours preparing the place. He’s the he’s the owner. He’s the owner of the unit. And he’s doing $12 $15 An hour work. Why? Because he said to himself, oh my people deserve they would want no one else would want to work on Thanksgiving. Lo and behold, his team was mad at him. Two reasons. Number one, a lot of his team weren’t born in America. So Thanksgiving doesn’t hold for them. The special place that it may be that does certainly for us, number one, number two, they said you’re depriving me of the opportunity to make more money for my family. Because you were stupid enough, he tells the story stupid enough as the owner to think that you were the only one that shouldn’t be in here slicing the chicken or whatever it is that they do on Thanksgiving. So I think that’s a very important story for any business owner, who is concerned about delegating stuff that they don’t like doing and they think like nobody would like doing it. No, not true. People, either because they’re good at it. They like doing it. They need the money, they want the money they want to serve, they want a different day off than Thanksgiving, whatever they are out there. And we have to be we have to be willing to do that. Because to delegate or get rid of us things we don’t like to use, what does it make us do it frees us up to be a better owner, if we’re a better owner, the company does better and everybody now benefits from that using the company that as well as the customers and the clients do well. Now you can afford to pay more you can offer more benefits, you’re going to have a happier crew, no matter what the business is. So it’s me Jeremy how this all I think it all kind of works. It takes a long time owner founders typically are running a business because they’re good at it. They are good at dog grooming good at car detailing, whatever cleaning houses whatever it is. And, you know, it takes it is this mindset, mindset personality shift that goes on you know what? The world is made better and my employees and my customers and clients are made better. The more I become the CEO leader of the company, and don’t feel guilty about it, in fact celebrate the fact that I’m not the one cutting the chicken in Ben’s case writing the briefs. At least the first you know the first level briefs we certainly should celebrate that I think it’s good for the world.
Jeremy Weisz 49:49
You know Ben when you speak what resonates with me is it’s helped me listen to you. Hopefully it’s helped me other everyone else’s. We make certain assumptions and And the some of the assumptions I heard you say is, no one can do it as good as me. Right? Which is, you know, is is probably not true. They don’t want to do it, which we do Chick fil A is not true, they may resent me for not doing the work. But like you said, you can make the company better. Are there any other assumptions that pop out? Or they don’t? You know, there’s so many assumptions that when you say it, it’s like, well, we’re making that as an assumption. And we think it’s true. But what other assumptions Am I making or other people making?
Ben Glass 50:35
Here’s the biggest one I end in mastermind groups that I’m in as a participant versus the ones you know, where I run, but mastermind groups or participant, you know, I presented this to the group, and it’s it’s the big writ large is, is I feel guilty when I leave the office, come in, in my T shirts, and I leave the office after a few hours, because everyone else is working hard. Right? Now, I’m working. And I do stuff that I like doing with like, focus on marketing, present on podcasts like this, be the big thinker, right. But it’s for me, it’s not hard to do. And it doesn’t take me very much time to do that. And it’s in it’s called, you know, it’s called actually founders guilt. So I think if you Google that founders guilt, and what and I think the remedy, or the solution for that is to just, I’m a huge fan, I read probably 70 books a year, or read and listen to an audible, but reading these biographies of people who have changed the world.
They all go through this, the process of working, you know, building computers in your garage, really hard was sneaking into the computer center at night gates and jobs and these guys to to program really hard work. And they’re not building computers, right? They’re not doing that stuff. Now, they all go through this process. And, you know, if you’re a founder, and you’re have a company, and you’re continuing to do the job, and it’s indexed by deliberate choice that you just like, detailing the cars, whatever, and it’s fine for you, that’s fine. If by deliberate choice, that’s fine. If what you’re looking for is you know, more money, more freedom, more autonomy, more time, more time spent with nine children, or whatever it is, right? You have to figure out how to be the CEO, coach of the team, I believe. And there’s now lots and lots of models for that. And the very best advice I could give someone on that is to get into group we call them mastermind groups, you and I are in the group, you know, Brian Kurtz is getting a group with people who are already doing it, and listen to them tell their stories. And if they don’t tell their story, you got to be curious, and you got to go up to them, you know, dinner time, and then the morning breaks, and get them to tell their stories, because over time, you’ll see that the stories are very similar, the principles are very similar. And most leaders, I’ve found a great businesses are humble. They’re willing to share what they have learned with people who will do something with none of us want our time wasted. Right? Come to me ask me for advice. And don’t bring a pen and a paper. And we’re that’s not gonna be a fun hour for me. You come curious, you’re taking notes, I will show you everything. And actually, I actually have a program lunch with ben.com. You send me the sandwich. Or if you’re coming in live, you bring the sandwich, I’ll bring the chips in the drinks, because I’m going to eat lunch anyway. And it’s and I get to meet with lots of different business owners, students, I do it for free for students, retired doctors, like what’s the next thing in my life? Like, I don’t know anything about that. But I do know principles. Bring me the sandwich. I’ll bring the snacks in the drink, schedule a time. And I’ll do that. And I’m happy to cheer for people who are making those events and go to lunchwithben.com. And he can read all the rules, which is show up, ask good questions and bring me a sandwich or have it delivered. And I enjoyed doing that. And I you know, I you know, because I run into people I never would have run into Jeremy.
Jeremy Weisz 54:23
I have one last question. Ben first, thank you. Yeah, my one of my jobs. I have three jobs when I was in college at Wisconsin and one of them was at a sub shop because I didn’t care if they paid me I just wanted that sub sandwich so and from the notes you’re looking at I don’t know if you could see anyone listening watching this could see my notes from this conversation from Ben. So definitely taking notes here. But last question, Ben and I want to point people to check out BenGlassLaw.com They can show greatlegalmarketing.com And now lunchwithben.com and all the great stuff you’re doing there. You know I have to kind of circle it. Back around since you know it is Great Legal Marketing as some of the stuff that you do what you recommend people love software tools and, and stuff that you use, you know, I go on BenGlassLaw and you have this innovative like intake or with a video of you and you can click and what you’re looking for, what are some software tools that you use that you recommend or that you’ve heard your clients use? That would be interesting.
Ben Glass 55:27
So one of the most valuable tools ever found was an app called speak, right? And so it’s just dictation. It’s a live human being that’s going to take the recording and send me back a Word document really quickly. I am I’m a longtime user of speak, right. I’m a long time so course everybody needs a CRM. I was in one of Infusionsoft first several 100 customers, Infusionsoft now keep. And so we have, we run Infusionsoft in both businesses. For our for our marketing. I’m trying to think what else I
Jeremy Weisz 56:05
is their internal communication from the team that use any tools like Slack or anything like
Ben Glass 56:10
Slack, I tell them I don’t need one more thing like that on my phone. So they know they can email me but I don’t use I don’t use Slack. Oh, the other one is Calendly which I which I think you’re using as well. That is brilliant. I mean, to be able to say to somebody, hey, yeah, I like to chat, but I’m not going to do 27 emails to find a time Calendly properly set up with the times and the reminders is magical. So you know whether it’s a client who needs 20 minutes, I don’t talk to a lot of clients, but they need to talk to me, boom. That’s how we schedule it. If it’s somebody who who’s an entrepreneur just wants to have an hour with me and buy me a sandwich lunch. You can go and see how that’s also that Southern guy, the guys and gals who invented that, like Hats off to him, I would pay them much more than they charge me because that is I think revolutionary. I use a lot of I use couple you know health apps. When health apps I’m a whoop user right so I track my sleep by fitness and 64 I do CrossFit and I referee high school soccer games.
I you know, I mainly work to be able to referee high school soccer which is really weird because you go there and people are screaming
Jeremy Weisz 57:27
sounds like a great stress reliever you go and everyone’s yelling at everything every call.
Ben Glass 57:31
I can run with 18 year olds. That is really cool. And it’s a and I love the high school athlete. The high school athlete is by and large the guys the boys and girls young men and women. They are fantastic people to deal with some of the coaches. Most of coaches are great. Some of them aren’t parents don’t know anything.
Jeremy Weisz 57:49
And I wanted to be the first one to thank you. Thank you so much everyone check out more episodes of the podcast check out Ben’s what he’s working on and some of the books that he has going on and and thank you so much.
Ben Glass 58:03
Yes sir. Thanks, Jeremy.
