Building a Business? How to Create a Service Culture that Drives Growth (Ep. 37)

Justin Sisemore  00:00

All right, Justin Sisemore Andrea and Mary Maloney back here, with In Your Best Interest today, we’re going to kind of mix in a little bit of business and law. We like to really mix up the podcast so that it’s not all divorce litigation, because candidly, that gets a little stale for us to do, and I know it gets stale for y’all so really want to kind of mix in some business topics and how it plays into litigation, and just kind of how we grow as humans, to really move the world forward, hopefully, at least the ones that are listening.

Mary Maloney  00:32

So today we’re talking about, you know, to people that are building a business, or they’re trying to grow a business, and how to part of that is, you know, creating a culture that that helps you to grow like a service culture. But it’s also understanding why you’re in business, too. So let’s start off today, both of you, I’d like to know if you could talk a little bit about your whys, why you’re do, why you do what you do, and how that informs the businesses that you run.

Mary Maloney  01:01

So

Justin Sisemore  01:01

So in the last probably two years, really four years, but last two years, I’ve become a lot more focused on this question. I think that every individual, attorneys, business people, you’re kind of starting to second guess, am I in the right space? Am I doing what I’m called to do. And so I think that invokes the question of passion, which we’ll get into in just a little bit. But for me, what has transpired just a little bit of a history? So I’ve had a battery company with my wife, been in real estate plays, and then also oil and gas and the law firm. Well, why do you do law? Why do you do these other businesses? I love the entrepreneurial aspect of everything in life. I love engaging human beings. I love opportunity. I love seeing kind of rare things and being challenged by things that I’m not probably known to be good at. You know, our last and most recent thing is this options trading. We’ll let you know how that works out later on, probably not as well as I’m anticipating, but, but I really do like to have a holistic approach, and I think that that makes not only good human beings, good business people, good lawyers, good dads, good husbands, good wives, all those. And so, you know, when I look at why, or whether I’m going to get into a specific venture, one of the things I look at is, okay, what? What are my strong points? I’m not this super technical, charty type person. I like to consider myself to be kind of a very curious mind. And I’m a I’m a pretty good listener when it comes to people that I really have respect for and that can drive me and push me, like Andrea does, for example, like you do, Mary and so you know, for me, why I got into family law, which is probably not that as interesting as a battery company, because a battery company, we took to a bunch of money and sold and did all those fancy things, but The Law Firm, to me, really was the gate opener, which was all right, are you going to get to interact with a lot of people? And are the people that you’re going to get to interact with? Are they, you know, at a higher level? Can they challenge you? Can they expose you to new ventures? And so when my my check boxes were Yes, in addition to fact, I just needed $1 to eat. I started going into the law, and what I found about family law was it’s really like Shark Tank. And I think that there’s a lot of parallels between business. We talk about that a lot, but there’s a lot of parallels between all different types of businesses in different spaces. And so when we talk about it’s like Shark Tank, well, if I’m interviewing a client, and all of a sudden that turns into a business relationship over a year or two years, and they’re doing very neat business things, and they conduct themselves in a fashion that I want to align myself with. It’s really opened up the doors for a lot of business opportunity. Okay, so that’s, that’s part of the why. And then also, you know, I really do believe I have a servant’s heart mentality. I love, I really love helping people, even if it’s not like become a success, it’s maybe just not become a total failure. Or maybe they learn about a Bible study or a workout or something in in law, or with their kids, or with their business, or just being a little bit more independent. I just, I think we’re on this earth for a very short period of time. And so my why is really linked to my spiritual connection, but it’s also linked to what I think I’m good at. And then so I surround myself by people that I know I need to fill in the areas that I’m not good at, which are all right, which I did.

Andrea Jones  04:42

So for me, I think the passion has to be there. The first thing for me to get into anything, and I tell my kids all the time, they’re in college age now, I say, you need to find an occupation, a job that you would do without getting paid for it. That’s your calling. If you would do it without getting paid for it, because you just have a passion for it. You. That’s a good path to take in my life. Okay, I was a, I was a COO of a men’s professional basketball team in Germany, and counseling, and then, and I found out while at the basketball team that I have gift for marketing, and then did that. But I think the passion has to be there. You have to enjoy what you’re doing. Cannot be a job. And then I think the other, the other thing is integrity. For me, integrity is really high. So I don’t work with clients that don’t have integrity. When I see that writing on the wall, I’ll take off. I leave. That’s not my thing. And same thing as you were, like the servants heart, I want to help people. I see a lot of things in businesses where I can help and that’s where I want to do. And I’m connector. I mean, I’ve connected so many people with each other. It’s like, oh, this person can help you with that person, and this person can help you with that. And the basketball team also taught me a lot of operations. So also like to work with people who are open to business development, because I think marketing and business development go hand in hand. So I don’t work with clients, for example, who say, Well, I got that all under control, to just bring me leads. No, I won’t. Because if the leads come and then you just drop them, because you have no internal processes, I can’t work with you. And I think Justin, I both worked on this together over the years, that the business development becomes really, really important because it supports everything else you do and and that that makes it fun to to work with him, because we, I can be aligned on that, on that piece, the business development has to be there,

Justin Sisemore  06:18

yeah. And I mean, I, I’m going to kind of pivot here, just a little bit on the idea that passion that I have to be passionate about, or I wouldn’t have accepted $1 because I can assure you that most of my attorneys, I say my most of our attorneys, that we work together, and most of our support staff, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t do What we do without taking a paycheck, you know, just carte blanche, right? And a lot of a lot of our day to day is very unrewarding, because people are in a very tough situation in the family law sector, it was really true in the battery sector too. With with service, it was not much different there. I mean, their forklift battery goes out and Amazon shut down for a day, you’re getting 50 phone calls blowing you up, and you’re going to lose a customer that could potentially put you out of business.

Mary Maloney  07:04

Interesting.

Justin Sisemore  07:05

So it’s not just a passion about the specific space, where I kind of differ from you a little bit. Andrea is, I think you can actually develop passion by creating habits in your day, and as you get more wins in those habits, ie, you wake up, you work out, you go to work, you have clients that come in, you go to podcasts, you go, you know, just keep pushing yourself. You push me all the dang time, sometimes too much. But for real, though. I mean, you know those habits? We just talked with our team about that, and we do a monthly meeting. I talked to my team about that last week. You know, it starts with small, small wins,

Andrea Jones  07:41

but I think, but before you get into that, I think looking at at the staff that you have, all the people that are there, passion might not be the right word in that case, but they all have a they all find their work meaningful. I think they all find the work meaningful because they and they and they thrive on helping people through those tough situations. Yes, are there sometimes up to here and they are stressed, or they might snap, or whatever, that’s normal. That’s human behavior. But at the core, I think every single person, when you look at every single person that you have in your office, that is in most of your employees, which is unheard of, have been there for many, many years, 10 years, and plus, my attorneys might change because they’re young, they’re upcoming, but the support staff has been with you forever, and if they were just collecting a paycheck, I would not sign that, because I think they’re all passionate about help. Again, passionate, maybe not the right word my language, that might be a better word, but really interested in helping people and helping people through those tough times, and because they’ve seen it over and over again. They know where they’re coming from, and that shows because they’re not letting a case lay there forever, knowing that the client needs an answer. They know in that situation, a mother needs an answer, or dad needs an answer. And they’re not just saying, This is my J, O, B, I have something else to do here. I’m just not going to respond. None of your people does that. So I would say there is a passion involved in every single person in your business, and the servants heart to to help those people. Are there struggles, yes, but I think every single one, Otherwise, they wouldn’t stay that long. No, no, I that’s, that’s super kind. And I think a very fair point, and I think to Andrea’s other point, like, with respect to connecting people, that that’s, that’s also one of my strengths is, is going out, being social, engaging a lot of humans and connecting them. And so, you know, it ironically, I don’t, I don’t think I set out when at the beginning of my career to like, I’m gonna go do this. I think I just got into it, and then it blew up because of successes and wins and and then you get more passion, and you have more experience, and you connect more people, and you actually find yourself doing what it is that you wanted to do in the first place, and then you still complain about it.

Andrea Jones  09:43

You forgot your list. Is also what I did. Same thing I said. That’s, I think, why we aligned so well. Is also integrity, because you are a Christian man, and you don’t say it, but it shows in every action you do, you actually care about people. And I think that’s something that you didn’t have, didn’t have on your list. But I think that’s a very important part, because you care about people, and you don’t work with people that have no integrity. When somebody calls and says, Hey, I want to get out of child pain, child support, you’re like, Okay, you’re not the client for us. Other attorneys would take them. They might make you a lot of money, but you refuse taking people like that. So I think integrity is also important for you. You didn’t mention and I mean,

Justin Sisemore  10:19

to be fair, I think when you’re building a business, you don’t get to cherry pick the types and natures of clients you deal with as much or customers or whatever. When we were in the battery space, we were just like, literally waking up, trying not to go broke, so that that that moves and flows, and

Andrea Jones  10:37

you don’t do shady. I mean, like you don’t do shady. I mean, you rather you need to look in the mirror the next day. I do too. And if somebody is shady, you rather not make the money and not do that and find somebody else. That’s what I’m saying. You should add that to your list. Now you can go into your details. I interrupted you today

Mary Maloney  10:54

well, and my second question that I had for you, kind of tied into something that you were talking about there too, is that when you’re when we were preparing for the show, you said something that was interesting, and it was, the question was, does passion Drive service or the other way around? It’s kind of the one of those chicken or egg kind of areas, if that ties into what you’re

Mary Maloney  11:11

so

Justin Sisemore  11:11

so I thought about that chicken and egg thing, right? So I really, you know, I was, we all go on soul searching missions throughout the year. You know, I look at things like upward mobility for my my team, right? And in all businesses, and I look at things like my freedom and free time and challenge to myself. And am I really pushing myself? And if I don’t push myself, Am I pushing the people or pulling the people underneath? Are they pushing me up? Are they elevating me? So, you know, those that’s the whole chicken before the egg thing, or commentary. And so I kind of dissected that, and did immediate our last meeting was just talking about that very thing, talking about small wins that align with expectation, like, if you if you just think you’re going to go dunk a basketball mayor, maybe you can with those PF flyers on, but you know, it’s going to lower that goal a little bit because, you know, we just are confined by our aquarium a little bit sometimes, right? And we can get outside of those molds. But if you try to set your real, your expectations so out far, so outside of the norm, and you’re trying to buy the big, fancy, flashy things, and that’s really driving you, it’s a really empty feeling. So I was thinking about like, all right, how do I keep our team and people around us understanding what I mean by passion? Are you passionate about this? Because I talk about having a servant’s heart to our team members all the time. It’s critical that they that they feel that, because that’s what drives people to come to us. I think, you know, and and even if we’re at our peak level of passion. Sometimes people don’t feel it or experience it. So to me, it’s, you know, or they won’t share that. It actually was that great of a result, right? Well, attorneys are human beings. Paralegals and support staff are human beings, and they want to know that they’re receiving wins, that you know, your career should somewhat inspire you to help people. And if you’re not getting any accolades, you probably need to go back to the trough a little bit. But those wins create resilience, and that expectation when you’ve got wins, and that creates resilience. And then where I was thinking further is that resilience allows you to overcome a lot of obstacles that you definitely will face in every business. And if you, the more you overcome those obstacles and challenges, you really start to get outside of the box to serve others. And that that’s, I think, what I was trying to unpack a little bit. Andrea, when I talk about, like, when you’re starting a business, it’s not as easy to be selective, and you’re just literally trying to figure out, who do we call, and how do we set up the business, and how many attorneys do we need, or how many paralegals? And, you know, in the battery company was how many support staff and where, how many locations? And those are things I really think a lot about, and that’s the business of law, and it’s the business of business. And you know, the cliche is, working on your business and not in your business, but you know, when a day pulls you away for three or four days because of a trial, you can’t work on your business those days. And so when you’ve got a one person operation and they say, Well, I want this lawyer, because their names on the sign, they have all the flashy, fancy things, and I want that lawyer to do it. That’s why I keep saying to people, no, you what you want is a lawyer that looks at all of it and does the good general contracting work to put together the team to save the cost, to get you the responsiveness. And you know, I’m passionate about process too, not I could literally take almost any business and come up with some degree of what I’m passionate about in any space. And I think that’s just kind of critical to success in business. And I don’t think you get stuck in one area unless you’re like a really good neurosurgeon. I think lawyers think too much of themselves, sometimes, in the category of they think they’re too good at something, right? And I the reason I believe that is because you can have really bad facts. You can be freaking Amazing, and you can do some mitigation or damage control, but you’re not going to go and, like, get the billion dollar verdict on somebody that trips and falls over a banana peel, right? I don’t care how good a lawyer you are. So it’s being passionate and being understanding expectations and setting those wins around those realistic expectations

Andrea Jones  15:19

and the 1% we always say, like, 1% better each day. Like, be 1% better each day, every day, try to be 1% better than we yesterday, not 20% 1% what can you do today that they didn’t do yesterday? That has a better outcome for the clients or for yourself, right? That’s, that’s, that’s a goal that we we constantly talk about, be better. What can you do better?

Mary Maloney  15:39

So you guys were talking about resilience, and I know that’s another trait that you preach. Justin, can you explain how you talk about that with your team or your different teams at your businesses?

Justin Sisemore

Yeah, you know, especially nowadays, everyone talks about, you know, you go on Facebook and or whatever, and you see all this online information that’s coming to you. And so people’s appetite for change or success, or really anything politics, it comes at us so fast now. So to me, you know that’s part of the reason why I like this stock stuff, because I like to scale it back and look at what’s happened over 10 years, right? And the companies that really survive and then thrive during down times, are the ones that are very resilient. Well, how are they resilient? Well, they’ve dealt with issues, they’ve they’ve monitored success, they’ve looked at what it means to fail and it’s not an overall failure. And then their people don’t all jump ship. They know how to deal and navigate with those waters. So, you know, in a small, closely held business like a law firm, you know, the attorneys may see something on Facebook that somebody else posts about their law firm, and they think, oh my gosh, these guys are doing it so much better. And you go, you walk in, and yesterday, the culture was awesome, and today it’s like, Oh, we didn’t take these Facebook photos or whatever. I mean, it can be that fast in a small, closely held business. Now, obviously, you know, when you’re scaling 10s of 1000s of employees, it’s different. You’re you’re looking at process based on an overall outcome. And so in the small, closely held, what I really try to do is a show up, right? That’s the simple thing. B, check in with everybody. Hey, how you doing today? You know? And, and I may not always, like, really fully engage in that culture, or of what their response is, and I certainly don’t want to make decisions and just jump to whatever they they say to feel, because resilience is not about making immediate reactions. It’s about being proactive and thinking through it. So when I look at that resilience, you know to me, if I’m going to hire an attorney or anybody in business, if they don’t, you know if you’re not, if they’re not being referred to or people aren’t referring them to you, I go, Well, wait, why is our referral rate down? That’s got to be something inside of our business. So if we’re not, if we don’t have a lot of referrals, we’re not resilient, because advertising Andrea helps us every single day with that stuff. It changes on a whim. I mean, Google wakes up with a different algorithm. So if you’re, if you’re 100% dependent on things like advertising, or if you don’t advertise, you’re not resilient, you have to have a holistic

Andrea Jones  18:16

correct and I think the the process piece is a big thing. Because remember when, when, when COVID happened? Your law firm was one of the few that survived that and actually thrived during that time, because we have backup plans and processes in place that allowed us to we can’t be in the office anymore. Well, let’s move home. The telephone system was taken home. Everybody had the phone at home. We have a system. Yeah, but it worked, but it worked, and we didn’t have a dip. Actually, we did this compared to other firms who had to close doors because they didn’t have processes in place. I think and resilience means the processes in place also help people to do their daily work, because there’s a system. It’s not just flying by the seat of your pants and doing whatever comes across your desk, because then you’re not good in your business. The backup plan and the structure that we built in your business helps them to be there every day and to know exactly what what we need to do. And I think COVID showed that so many law firms had to close doors, and we were one by best years there, because we were prepared for potentially anything coming. And that, I think that’s part of resilience too.

Justin Sisemore  19:21

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think a lot of people don’t realize that, you know, the tail can wag the dog really quickly in family law, specifically, because, you know, things are happening so fast to clients. They wake up, they get served, they have all this stuff going on in their life. And, you know, their kids are in the mix, and they’re still doing life. And so if you allow that tail to wag the dog, meaning that the client then drives, how you conduct your business, or really, in any business. I mean, you know, there’s people that literally will call me at four o’clock in the morning, and if I just start answering the phone, my wife’s upset, my wife’s upset. I don’t sleep. How am I going to run business that next day? My kids are running around. They don’t know their dad. I mean, there’s a lot of. Ways to put process to your point, in place, to control those mechanisms, and that is the definition of resilience. Process people. I love, love, love. When I hear somebody tell me that they are very process oriented when I’m looking at hiring people, because I’m not always I want to be, but I’m also good in a courtroom, and I fly around and do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Andrea Jones  20:23

And lawyers don’t like change. That’s that’s another thing that we run into law, which you said earlier, they have a big opinion of themselves, but they went to law school, they spent a lot of money, and they had, they spent a lot of time. My daughter’s a lawyer, spent a lot of time educating themselves, so they are on a very educational high level. So, but, but change is hard for lawyers, but, but, but nowadays, I mean lawyers technology. If you do not adapt yourself to technology, and you’re not willing to do this, you’re going to be out of business. Did it? Study over study? Also as an attorney, that’s why I said earlier, when another podcast, you need to figure out whether your attorney is open to technology, because if they’re not, they’re not going to be good match. Because how to how is a house in your in your law firm, when one attorney is not showing up, because, God forbid, they have a car accident or they get sick, seamlessly, another one can come in, even the day of a hearing, go into our system, look what’s going on, and know exactly what the status of the case is, and go to court and handle it. That’s possible in other law firms, the attorney is not there. We have to continue the case. It’s not possible, but processes are put in place, and that makes the law firm resilient, because people are not that we want to replace them. As I said earlier, they’re all going to stay there normally, because they like it there, but they are replaceable, and it’s not based on the person. The process backs it all up. And I think that’s huge for a client to know when they come in, their person is sick. My case is not going to be falling apart now because the paralegal is not their attorney is not there.

Justin Sisemore  21:48

Yeah, I think it. I think it’s just like venture capital looks at businesses too. I mean, when you look at organic growth, organic growth, and growth is the key part of that. The the organic growth creates resilience, because if you’re just organic and you’re not growing, it means you’ve just been in business a long time doing the same thing. So we see a lot of the onesie twosie shops, and they can do a fine job. I mean no disrespect to people that don’t have larger firms or whatever else, but there’s no possible way, if the firm is being run correctly, and you don’t have shops all over town and all that stuff. There’s no way that you can tell me that you can respond as fast, that you can get the work edited, that you can, you know, come up with legal strategy, bounce ideas off of each other. You can’t tell me that you can do the same job.

Andrea Jones  22:31

You need to be scalable. You need to stay scalable, and you need to be able to replace,

Justin Sisemore  22:35

yeah, and the brain, the top brain surgeon in the world. I’m certain everyone looks to that person to see how to operate, but that person goes to conferences, learns is constantly, is constantly pushing themselves forward, so they don’t just stop it. Well, I’m the best, so I’m just done. And I see that happening a lot in law.

Mary Maloney  22:53

So I this is a question I didn’t like give out to you guys before the podcast, but I was just thinking about how important it is, and you kind of touched on this with the COVID thing, how important it is to be really agile, because change happens in marketing for us. I mean, we’re looking, you know, at SEO changes all the time, you know, Google stuff, and now we have AI in the picture. And I’m, of course, as a writer, I’m sick of hearing about AI, but, you know, whatever. But it’s important to be able to take those challenges and those changes and be agile and change and actually make it into an opportunity. And you both have had to do that.

Andrea Jones  23:29

And we, we just went to a conference, your office manager, and we went to a conference, and proudly to say, when we came back there, she even said that everything that the legal Trends report said, what clients want to see we’re already doing it, because we were already listening to our clients and listening what they had to say, and looking at process, and we’re thinking, how can we do it better? That is so, so important. And again, people that are not willing to work with AI, even in the legal field, they’re not going to be needed anymore, because now you can, you can draft. I mean, you don’t do it yourself, because we know where we go. Mary, Mary, you’re not going to be replaced. I don’t know you know what? There’s lots of web pages Google cooked took down because they’re all written by AI. Google took them all down. They can, you can figure that out. So good writers are never going to be replaced. But attorneys, if you have certain in certain areas of the law, you cannot replace the attorney going to court, and you can’t replace them there. But there are certain tasks that an attorney can do that now with the push of the button. Gets done. You still need to review it and all that other stuff. But if you’re not willing to adapt to that, and to say, I don’t need to draft that document because I push the button, the information from the client comes out, the system is automatically plugged in, and the document is done. I need to read over it again and then give it out. If you’re not willing to do that, your price is going to be so high that there is a young attorney that is willing to do it for half the price, a third of the price, and then they can spend actually time what’s important for clients. Because now, when I push the button and I have the document, now I have time to actually have the conversation with the client and do strategy and all this other stuff. And I’m not head down into a document,

Justin Sisemore  24:57

and I want to touch on that AI piece Since we’re going down this rabbit trail, because I love it. So the AI piece in law, I heard a really good commentary on CNBC, actually this morning, talking about, you know, we’re only as good as the human being that feeds the information. So in our space, in in family law, litigation, the pleadings really the orders. And this the mundane paperwork. I’m not going to say, like strategy, and I’m certainly not going to say letters and responsiveness, and some of the discovery can be done, but, but the paperwork piece of of a case is probably, I would estimate, to be about 20% ish, so where we’re going to be able to see massive improvements in cutting costs. I mean, if you tell me you cut costs in 20% of business, I’m like, Absolutely. Let’s roll the thing with AI though that. And going back to that point, he said, you know, how do you teach a human being how to love? And the guy said, well, the AI, you know, the AI tools, can do things to emulate love and show what Love feels, but they can’t do it. And so the adaptations of human beings, at least in my in my legal career, I don’t see AI taking over any ability whatsoever to do anything that result that evolves or revolves around thinking about why judges had policy arguments, what cases and what things to argue, what judges personality types are. And if you roll in there with some lawyer that just whips up some AI thing, I will smoke him like I hope, I hope we do that, man, I’m excited. I get excited about there, no but, but the but to Andrea’s point, if we’re not using AI tools to, you know, basically drive discovery and drive some of the drafting. You know, we’ve been lawyers. Have been doing that forever, to create Shells. Shells create speed and efficiency, and that cuts down the billable hour. That’s awesome, okay? And it creates less burnout for people that are drafting so and so the petitioner. I mean, my mom used to type on the ding dong typewriter thing, and she was good.

Andrea Jones  27:00

And there’s so many cool things. I mean, I think you’ve seen the AI out there. They can look at you and you talk, and they can tell you what part of your conversation is a lie, or it’s most likely a lie. So in a deposition, you can look at that stuff and you can say, let me, let me repeat that. Or you depositions can be 50 100, 500 pages long, yeah. And then you send it to the tool and say, like, in which part of the deposition that the person contradict themselves, you, as an attorney, still have to go back and ask additional questions, but with the push of the button, you get all the information. Why in the world would you not use something like that and then and then have better time to strategize and do other things? So that’s why you have to be agile. You have to be adapted, adaptable. You have to learn those things, although you get the harder it is to adapt to new technology, as we know, but you have to, unless you want to be out of business, you will have to,

Justin Sisemore  27:45

yeah. And I mean, this the scale of that question. We could probably have a whole podcast, yeah. We could probably need to divert back, but, but, but the scale of of which, you know that, because, keep in mind, when you’ve got people that have been in the business, I’ve got some paralegals that have been doing, you know, with me for over 12 years. And, you know, they they have very kind of, sometimes we’ll have a one trick mind, like, I don’t want to deal with this, and this is how I, you know, make my livelihood. And they’re just freaked out by I’m like, Well, look, if a client is is giving information into a portal, which we now have thanks to Andrea, if a client’s giving information into a portal, and it’s disseminating that information, and you’re gathering all the discovery, instead of you going and bait stamping page by page and hole punch by and you’re sifting through that information at warp speed. That is not what we do for a living. It’s just what we have to do for a living. And it sucks. Okay? So the things that suck in law, I think, will be taken out to a degree by AI, but the decision making of what questions to ask somebody and how you deal with somebody, or navigate those waters when they’re talking to you, and what you’re doing and how you’re presenting in front of

Andrea Jones  28:54

build a relationship with

Justin Sisemore  28:55

building the whole case strategy. If AI finds that tool, oh, man, we gotta, because this is the human side of the business. We we’re gonna be able to do some really cool stuff. And I just don’t know what it is yet,

Mary Maloney  29:07

right? Well, we do want to, I know Justin, you have a lot to say, but we do want to talk about customer service. And because this is this podcast, is a lot about creating a service culture to help you drive growth in your business. So we know that customer service is really at the heart and soul of your business. So can you kind of share some actionable steps that people can use for building a service, service oriented culture?

Justin Sisemore  29:32

I tell my nine, seven and four year olds the same thing every time we go to a restaurant or our place out at rough creek or anywhere else, leave it better than you found it. I talked to a banker friend of mine who actually runs a really cool bank in town, Trinity bank, little plug there, but he is, he’s very high up there, and gave me a very good perspective about, you know, when clients come in, are they leaving better than when they start? Started with you. And that’s not just a that’s not like a when they start in the beginning and when you exit their portfolio, it’s every day, it’s every action, it’s every phone call. So it’s a super simple way to say when the client calls you, did they get their questions answered? Did they call you three times and you call them back two days later? That is the biggest pet peeve of mine. You want to get fired at my firm. Wait 24 over 24 hours to call somebody now you want to get fired as a client, call us on a Sunday at 6pm and say we didn’t call you back on Sunday at 6pm and do that multiple times, and we’ll have a nice conversation and all that to avoid those kind of pitfalls, because I know things get stressful, but the responsiveness just being able to talk to a human body part one is part of of that aspect of really finding a customer service approach. My wife is fantastic at it. You know, she picks up the phone within 12 seconds all the time, wherever we’re at. Don’t expect that of law, because you should have a very good understanding about what the questions are. You should drive kind of the nature and the agenda of those meetings. My my staff has seen me many times come in where I just kind of wing it to a degree on a meeting, because I’m trying to come up with content of the meeting. And I just think it’s really important to know, like, what you’re looking at, as far as responsiveness, how prepared you need to be for that. But customer loyalty comes from that, right? So if you’re proactive and you set up systems, my consults are Monday and Wednesday afternoon. I don’t I know that I’m going to come in the office, and I don’t want to break from getting things done and strategically coming up with the week early on. So compartmentalizing time, compartmentalizing your mental state and when you’re clearest, I know when the week in, the week in the week in a given day, usually when that’s going to be and then basically, once you create that proactive approach, and you’re being responsive, you’re you do care about that. You’ve got the servant’s heart, you create customer loyalty, you create positive brand image, and that in turn creates a boost in morale, which creates, basically the ability for you to keep your damn business okay, because if your employees are happy, they don’t jump ship, and you’re not having to freaking reinvent the wheel every other day. And that’s that’s been a hard thing in our business, honestly, because there’s not a lot of scalability to law in people’s mindsets. And, you know, I think that’s kind of a false narrative a little bit. But the reality is, I don’t want to scale our law firm to be 50 people. I don’t want to do that because it cheapens the brand. And in my mind, right? Other people have different opinions of that, but I mean, I have a very specific way we do things, and I really care about the culture. And if I get over 50, which I’ve been in the battery company, I know what that can look like. And I want to know their kids, and I want to know their grandkids, and I want to know what’s going on in their life in this space, because that’s how they become servants, and that’s how I can tell people these are servants hearts, if I don’t know who the hell they are, yeah, well, I can’t do that.

Andrea Jones  32:54

And I want to back up kind of like what you said, because I talked about the legal Trends report, and they did calls with over 500 law firms all across the United States. The Clio legal Trends report, they do this every year, and they found that lawyers, when they’re called, lawyers just, just 52% were reachable, and only 40% even picked up the phone. That’s horrible. So if I’m whatever out of 10 clients, they answer phone calls for four. And I mean, that’s ridiculous, right? So their responsiveness,

Justin Sisemore  33:22

and we get paid by the hour.

Andrea Jones  33:23

Get paid by the hour, yeah. So 48% were not. Were unreachable by phone. Law firms unreachable by phone. There are so many things you can do. Have an answering service. I mean, there are so many things he couldn’t put in place that there’s somebody always answering the phone, which we have, if the phone rings at the same time, which can happen, three different lines ring at the same time, then two people answered the third one goes to an answering service. We get a message in the system, we call the client right back, and that’s that’s to me, unbelievable. 1/3 only 1/3 answered emails of attorneys, 500 law firms. 33% even answered their emails

Justin Sisemore  33:56

now, because, like, I’m, I’m not an emailer, right?

Andrea Jones  33:59

It doesn’t matter, but at some point. But if that’s fine, you don’t have to be an emailer. But if you’re not an emailer, you need to surround yourself with people that check your email and answer the email I don’t understand. And then the other thing that they said, which we talked about, touched on before too, when their consultation piece, when they do a consultation for only 41% offered even any information about pricing. That has danced around the whole pricing thing. 41% give information about the pricing. 12% could even give an estimate about the total cost. 12% so basically, one in 10 lawyers gave a client an estimate what that would cost, ridiculous. And 36% were even able to explain the process. So I come as a client, and again, little bit over 1/3 is able to explain to me what the process looks like. So if we talk about lawyers are being black sheeps or having a bad reputation, that is why, because as a client, you don’t answer my phone calls, you don’t and I’ve experienced that too. We know I experienced that too. I send you an email, I send you an email, you don’t respond, then I pick up the phone. Phone or not available out there, call you right back, and then it’s three or four days later. And I had, at that point and and kind of important question, and there was no response. I mean, that’s ridiculous.

Justin Sisemore  34:49

That goes back to, like, the simplest it, that was what was so cool about the parallel the battery company. If you’re in any sales organization, you don’t understand, like, I don’t I’m not saying we should have our phones tethered to us at all times like I look like right here, but these are actually notes. I just don’t understand the concept of not wanting a client of yours to talk to you like or not creating the availability my voicemail says, I do not check voicemail. I don’t check voicemail. I do not very regularly check email, which is frustrating, probably for the two of you sometimes when we’re trying to get something done.

Andrea Jones  35:44

But know that and that, you know, read somebody else.

Justin Sisemore  35:47

So then I get a text. It’s like, oh, yeah, you know. So just just, I think it’s really critical just be, be connected in whatever way, and filter that communication.

Andrea Jones  35:55

And then the customers, I totally agree in the Customer Service piece like you nowadays, the younger generation, we’re like among the older ones, the younger generation, they don’t like to talk on the phone. They like to do everything with text, which we offer too in a law firm, you can text us. Don’t have to call us. You can text us your questions, even if you don’t want to use email. But I think another one that we need to touch on is people are used to bad customer service already. People don’t even expect good customer service anymore. So if you have the goal to be 1% better each day, and you have a servant’s heart, it’s easy to wow a client and have raving fans. There’s a book out there about that, but it’s easy nowadays, I think, to have raving fans, because you if you do a little bit more than what they expect, a little bit more than what they expect, you already got them, and many people nowadays don’t get that anymore. I’m always shocked when you go wherever you go, and it’s like the I want to get this person out of the door. I’m really not interested. And we actually do that too, even on the exit, even if a client leaves angry or is not or is upset or is leaving, whatever, we still leaving them when they leave. We’re still courteous, we’re still nice, because again,

Andrea Jones  36:56

and

Justin Sisemore  36:56

and we don’t sell puppies,

Andrea Jones  36:57

no, we don’t have horrible it’s a horrible time in your life. But still, even when they leave, there needs to be, yeah, to be customer service and serve. But nowadays that’s that’s hard to find. I think that’s why the law firm is thriving, because that’s so every person, like I said earlier, every person in the business wants to help, wants to serve, and want not is not a number. Everybody’s known by Carrie that wants to answer phone. Office manager knows every case when they call. She knows who is the attorney for that. She knows exactly. She knows the attorneys not there. And 24 hour response time, so there’s a guaranteed 24 on a weekend. Of course, a little longer, within 24 hours, you get a phone call back. And that many law firms don’t offer that

Justin Sisemore  37:34

Yeah. And I think about just including concluding on that note. I think about like, the business at one year, five year, one month increments, like what happens with our people, what their upward mobility is. So I’m thinking about customer service at all stages and growth at all stages. And it’s just that piece. If you you know a guy named Dean who was the president of America’s in the in the battery business, he always said, if you just go back to the simplest stuff of customer service, and just getting those communications out there and having that access point, it’s really not, you’re not going to blow up in a day. You can blow up in a week if you, if you shut that down,

Andrea Jones  37:34

and you’d have to be, you have to be, I think the one important thing too, is you have to be open to feedback. And a lot of people are not open. We do good customer service. Did you ask your clients whether you actually do customer service. We even now have a survey for the consultations that mean we send out after the consultation is done, we send an email service survey out or text message to and ask them, how was the consultation. That is their perspective. Doesn’t make it true, but we know what clients are thinking, or potential clients are thinking, we do customer service. We call clients out of the blue and ask them, so we need to have the feedback. You can’t be sitting on your high school and say, like, I do a great business now. We need to have feedback and be open to potential changes needed to make you even better.

Justin Sisemore  38:53

But not just react to every single data. No, exactly, exactly, if you see trends, then you make moves

Andrea Jones  38:58

exactly. It’s their perspective. But at least ask what customers are thinking.

Mary Maloney  39:02

That’s critical. Any other final thoughts before we wrap up?

Justin Sisemore  39:06

No, no, I think we’ve covered more than people that are paying you.

Andrea Jones  39:10

Yeah, and your first client is and I think one thing to add your first your first customer is your own employee. Yeah, that’s always people forget that too. They want to be great for the customers out there, but they do not treat their own employees. That’s right, the same way, and that’s that’s detrimental. Then you’re not going to get good customer service from your employees if you don’t do that

Mary Maloney  39:28

exactly, very good. Well, if you live in Texas and you would like to contact The Sisemore Law Firm, you can reach the firm at 817-336-4444, or visit www.lawyerdfw.com We also invite you to share the podcast with anybody you think might find it interesting, and share any ideas with us that you would like to hear on the podcast as well. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.

Justin Sisemore  39:54

Go start some businesses and be good humans.