Maximum Lawyer

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE


Tyson Mutrux uses a real-world example from a local gym to explore how law firms can build stronger communities around their clients. The episode looks at why great service alone is not always enough, how clients form deeper connections with businesses, and what law firm owners can do to create more trust, belonging, and loyalty.


For lawyers, the key question is not just whether the firm is doing good work. It is whether clients can see, feel, and understand the value being created for them. Tyson talks through practical ways to demonstrate value, communicate better during a case, share more relatable stories, and create touchpoints that help clients feel connected instead of forgotten.


Listen for:
  • Why “doing a good job” may not be enough to build trust
  • How to show clients the work happening behind the scenes
  • The difference between satisfied clients and connected clients
  • Why law firms should compete on identity, not just price or outcomes
  • How intentional touchpoints can help create community

Highlights:
  • 00:00 - What a gym taught Tyson about community
  • 03:20 - Why good work alone is not enough
  • 04:05 - Demonstrating value to clients
  • 05:40 - Selling belonging instead of services
  • 07:35 - Competing on identity
  • 09:45 - Engineering community on purpose
  • 11:00 - Turning clients into advocates

Follow Maximum Lawyer for more conversations on building a stronger, more connected, and more intentional law firm.


Resources:

Creators and Guests

Host
Tyson Mutrux
Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux (00:01)
Welcome back to Max Lawyer Live. I'm Tyson Mutrux. And today I'm talking about building a community. so over the weekend, I went to a birthday party. One of my really good friends, he owns a gym. It's a gym where I go to. It's a really interesting setup. So you don't go just and lift weights on your own or hit the treadmill on your own. None of that. It's you go in with a trainer.

Tyson Mutrux (00:27)
So you can only go into the gym if you've got the personal trainer with you. Like there is no other option. Okay. They've got some group classes on weekends and during some of evenings, but otherwise it's, it is you and your trainer. Okay. It's a really interesting setup. It's, it's worked really, really well. He also, it's also interesting. It's very rare compared to most gyms is like, they're all W2 employees too. All the trainers are W2 employees as opposed to like contractors. A lot of gyms use like independent contractors.

Tyson Mutrux (00:59)
I only bring that up because I think that may be part of the recipe here with the community because the birthday party was one, it was his business partner. So he and a friend, so my, buddy Scott and his friend, Nathan, started this gym together years ago. And it's really successful how, how it's interesting how successful they've been. And they, so.

Tyson Mutrux (01:20)
It's Nathan's, it's his birthday party and I'm there and I'm kind of expecting something a little smaller, kind of quaint, you know, just a few people. Not a huge number of people, but I start seeing, you know, the trainers that work at the gym. I start to see actual clients that I see while I'm at the gym and I'm thinking like, oh, this is really interesting.

Tyson Mutrux (01:44)
Um, I was at my jujitsu tournament in December and there were clients there. Cause one of the guys, one of the trainers was also competing. This is big guys, like six, five, and like, I don't know, probably two 50, you know, big guy. Um, and some of the clients were there to watch him compete, which is really interesting if you think about it, right. Um, how did, have you paid for something?

Tyson Mutrux (02:10)
So you paid somebody and then you go and watch the person you're paying do something that they're, that they're interested in, like watch them do their hobby. Like how often do you actually do that? That's not a common thing that, and it wasn't just one person that went to watch it was a few people and, one, one of my trainers, I've got two different trainers while I'm there, which is nice. It's actually, I, if you have that option, I highly recommend it because you have different styles. so.

Tyson Mutrux (02:41)
But that's another topic for another day. don't want to digress on that topic, but one of my trainers, Jay, he's getting into bodybuilding. So he's got his first competition and not this Friday, but next Friday. And I guarantee there will be a lot of people in Kansas City to watch him for his competition, coworkers, owners, and clients.

Tyson Mutrux (03:01)
And I, I've actually considered going to Kansas City myself to go watch them. don't think I'm going to, but I have at least considered it. it's, it's an interesting, it's a really interesting thing. And they've, they've really built this culture. That is it's so interesting. And I really got me thinking like, okay, as law firm owners, how can we build.

Tyson Mutrux (03:23)
this culture. I'd say we've built a really good culture in the association and in Maximum Lawyer. That's a little different. I think that that is a little different. I mean, I'm not saying different as you can't take some of the things from Maximum Lawyer and apply it to your firms because you absolutely can. But I'm specifically talking about our firms. How can we build a community around our firms where you get the same sort of

Tyson Mutrux (03:50)
of experience where you've got these people that are wanting to come to your hobbies. Like think about that. Like that is a really interesting thing. And they do some of these things, excuse me. They do some of these things like where they give out like every quarter they give out a gift. So every single quarter you get a gift and it's usually a shirt or like a actually.

Tyson Mutrux (04:14)
I have a shaker bottle that I'm holding up for those of you that are just listening. got a shaker bottle for them. It's evolved personal training. Give a shout out to my buddy, Scotty, but they do things like that. But otherwise it's not, there's nothing super special about what they do other than they just deliver. It's one of those things where they really do deliver.

Tyson Mutrux (04:37)
They, whenever there's appointment, people show up and there are times where people get sick. I've had a trainer get sick, but guess what? They have someone lined up to go. So it's, I've had one time, one time in, I think it's been going four years now, one time in four years where they've, they've had to cancel and it was like, they were, the person was sick and they didn't have a backup, but I've had, I've had someone sick a few times and.

Tyson Mutrux (05:06)
they usually have someone there. They have all these contingencies sort of thought out. Scott and I, when we first met, he was introduced to me by another buddy of mine, actually Jim Hacking. And I have another buddy, another Jim in St. Louis. And so the other Jim introduced me to Scott. And we really kind of started talking about business stuff.

Tyson Mutrux (05:28)
It's kind of cool kicking things back and forth because there's a lot of things that I'll think about. Hey, what you think about this? We tried that. That's something we're already doing. And they really have thought about the business side of things very, very well from like the moment you walk in. And it feels very much like a concierge service almost where they have espresso there if you want espresso.

Tyson Mutrux (05:52)
They have like the sauna and they've got the PEMF chair. They've got the Normatec boots. If you've ever heard of these things, if you're into working out and all that, they have all these different things that it's because they do take this approach where they look at every aspect, aspect of your life. Right. So I'll meet with Scott and body fat percentages up or body fat percentages down. How do you.

Tyson Mutrux (06:18)
Like, what are you doing that's different? And so we go through all those different things. Okay, what about diet? What about lifestyle? What are you doing at home? What about sleep? All these things. How are your relationships? Like they do have a really interesting approach to things. They're really looking at all aspects of it. And I don't know. I think there's parts of it, like little bitty elements about like, you know, the swag and all that, that

Tyson Mutrux (06:45)
is effective. think it's somewhat effective, but it really has got me thinking a lot about like, is it just execution? I mean, if you were just freaking bad-ass at your job and just solid at your job, is that enough to build that community? I don't think it is. Just a little teaser of my thoughts. I don't think it is. think you've got to do more. You've got to do a good job of demonstrating the value and where that is.

Tyson Mutrux (07:14)
part of what they do though, right? So it's not just that they are good at their job. They demonstrate value because we have this meeting where we go through and they do the weighing and the measuring and all that, go through the body fat percentage. And I can see my results. How good of a job are you at your firm in showing them the value, the things that you have done for them?

Tyson Mutrux (07:40)
personal injury. think that is something, if I'm being really honest, that's something we have struggled a bit at in showing, cause we can talk a lot, we can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about all the things that we're doing. One of the, I think one of the obstacles that we have, we have to get over as an industry is there's a lot of distrust of lawyers. so sometimes getting medical records can be a real big pain. And so one of the tricks that I use,

Tyson Mutrux (08:11)
If we're having a client where it's like, we're having issues getting records or there's something where like we're following up and we're not getting the, um, you know, a response from the insurance adjuster from the other attorney. I'll just send them copies of the things that we're doing saying, listen, these are things we've done. I've even gotten the client on the phone. said, I just want you to sit, put them. I want you to put the button on, uh, hit the mute button. I don't want you to say a thing and you're going listen to this conversation. And I've done that too before where, um, good.

Tyson Mutrux (08:49)
Because demonstrating value and sometimes what we're doing, if you're not actually delivering a work product to them, right, you don't have the deliverable. It can be hard to actually show them value without just having to tell them, right? If I'm making phone call, if I'm calling and calling and just, or usually not me, if one of our attorneys or one of our case managers is calling the other side, because we're not getting a response, how do you show that to them?

Tyson Mutrux (09:18)
And sometimes you have to get a little creative. so sometimes what we'll do is I'll say, draft an email to the other attorney or to the adjuster and document all of the things that you've done and everything you've done to try to get in touch with them and then send a copy of that to the client. Sometimes that's good enough, but sometimes you have to demonstrate that to them. right now I'm talking about a situation where it's gotten to the point where the client's getting a little upset because things are taking a while, but

Tyson Mutrux (09:52)
If you do that throughout the case, you don't have to wait for them to get upset. So I think a lot of it, a lot of it, this part where you're building the community and taking care of the client, a big part of it is just communicating to them what's going on with the file and doing a really good job of that as you're doing it. Cause I know that all of you, you're doing a lot of things on the backend that the client never sees. And so if they don't see it and if they don't hear about it and sometimes hearing about it's not even enough, but

Tyson Mutrux (10:30)
If they don't see it for sure, they're going to just think that you're not doing anything. And so that is one aspect of building the community. is a lot of other things too, but that is a big part of it is if they don't trust you and the work that you're doing, it kind of just starts with that. It really does. You've got to deliver on your promise to them. The moment that they sign that contract with you,

Tyson Mutrux (10:58)
They're agreeing to a part of the promise and that's usually them agreeing to pay you. The moment that they've done that, the moment they've signed that, you have a promise to them that you have to keep on your end. And I think maybe some of you might think, oh, I'm doing a good job. You probably are. You're probably all fantastic attorneys and you're amazing at what you do. But showing it to the clients, you have to show it to them.

Tyson Mutrux (11:27)
So you have to get that trust from them. don't, this isn't like in the movies where, you have my trust until you break it. No. You got to earn that trust. And if they've given you that trust by signing that contract, you have to maintain that trust and you do that by demonstrating it. Okay. It's very good. Something else I thought about when it comes to the gym is just, so they're not selling,

Tyson Mutrux (11:53)
Like access to gym equipment and they're not just, they're not just selling a gym. They're not just selling a workout. a big part of like what they're selling is belonging, right? They do these events where they'll go and like those go rocking. I, I'm a firm believer that rocking is terrible for your back. I, as someone that's done real rock marches, I just refused to do those, but I know that there's a lot of people that say that they're great and all because so they do those things. That's not the point of this.

Tyson Mutrux (12:26)
But they'll do like other hikes and all that. They'll, they'll say, Hey, you want to go do some hot yoga and I'll do some things like that. So they're really, I mean, they're selling belonging, which is interesting. and it's, but it's weird just cause like, don't feel like they sold belonging. That's not, I guess I, I joined because I wanted to get healthier, but then also like Scott's a friend of mine and I kind of want to support his business too at the same time. So I guess in a way.

Tyson Mutrux (12:59)
It is, I guess I want to support someone in my community, right? And so there, I think there's a lot of people that are in our communities that want to do the same thing with our firms. They just got to know what we do. Um, but you have to, that you have to be a part of the community too. Um, that's what a big part of our, our, our core, one of our core values. It's about being leaders in the communities that we serve. And, and so that's why, you know, we take part in things, um, like

Tyson Mutrux (13:33)
There is a, I've been asked to be on several boards. I've chosen to not be on most of them. There is one that I'm actually gonna be joining. I'm not officially, so I'm not gonna say what it is yet, but I've gotta be officially accepted. that's one of the things where, know, team or the community, we've been, you know, in the past highly involved in, know, Cub Scouts, and then also coaching. I'm currently coaching.

Tyson Mutrux (14:00)
So like, you know, helping out with the school and all the kinds of doing, doing multiple things. And we think it's a really, really important part of it, but you have to be out there. You can't just be a hermit in your house and not do these things. I think part of building a community is also being part of the community. That's, that's a big part of it too. so I guess my point when it comes to talking about this is like a lot of times what we focus on too much is focusing on pricing or.

Tyson Mutrux (14:34)
This is the services, these are the features, these are the outcomes. Those are the things that we focus on. But I think that the strongest firms, really compete on identity, right? Like who do you identify with? I think that's a really important part of this and in building a community. You attract the people that wanna be around you and that are most like you is what you.

Tyson Mutrux (14:58)
what you attract. And to be really honest, I have a really big problem sharing. I've done a better job over the last year or two, sharing my personal life, my stories, as opposed to in the past where I really did struggle with that part of things. I didn't really like to talk about my personal life. I wanted sort of there to be a dividing line. I kind of put up these walls around it and you have to...

Tyson Mutrux (15:26)
You have to kind tear down those walls and be more willing to share a little bit because I think that's what people want to know and that's how they connect with you as well. That's the way that they connect with you. Okay, so another thing. I have preached in the past about law firms that just, they do this me, me, me advertising. They advertise about their success.

Tyson Mutrux (15:49)
I'm vehemently against that. is everything they teach you when it comes to marketing is remember, just as a reminder, I've got a degree in marketing. Everything they teach you, it's about what does the client need? Put the client's needs first. Now I'm talking about from a marketing standpoint, not from a business standpoint. So I'm not saying the whole customer is always right. That's not what I'm talking about. talking about from a marketing standpoint.

Tyson Mutrux (16:16)
What is, what's the client's needs? What, what, what do they want? Right. And what, whenever you think about yourself, if you go to buy something from your perspective with the customer's perspective, what, what do you like, what are you looking for? What kind of results are you looking for? And so you, a lot of times you see law firms like they'll advertise, Oh, I had this massive settlement, things like that. And there's really no shared experience in that.

Tyson Mutrux (16:44)
We think about like the, okay, so you, cause I guess let me back up just a second. Make sure I'm very clear about this. We've, we've had our very successful cases and we don't, we do not, the, the, the, the most we do is we put something in Missouri lawyers weekly. It's for other attorneys so that we can get referrals. That's what we do. Other than that, we don't put things like that on Facebook. We just don't, we don't put them on LinkedIn. So we have those successes. So.

Tyson Mutrux (17:15)
I think some people say, you just don't have those results. Well, that's not true. That's not true at all. We just don't post about them by like a lot of other attorneys. I want you to imagine for a second, you see, how about this? When you see someone else post about a big verdict, let's just use verdicts for a second, or a big settlement, what is your initial reaction? Be honest with yourself. What is your initial reaction? You don't like it. 99 % of you don't like it.

Tyson Mutrux (17:46)
If you're the 1 % that says, okay, that's great. And I, and I am the good for you. I absolutely, Hey, that's great for you. But the average person, right? The average person that's not an attorney. Okay. They see that there is no shared experience with that unless you're the rare person that's also had a settlement, that you got with that was massive. Okay. And that's extremely rare. Okay. But there's no shared.

Tyson Mutrux (18:12)
So there's no connection. So you have no connection between that client or that potential client, the person looking at the post and you, there's none. Okay. But what they do connect with is our, our stories that about, you know, how you help a client maybe get out a really tough situation. so you don't make it about the money, right? You make it about, okay, what have they been able to do?

Tyson Mutrux (18:37)
since being injured and how did you help them get the treatment that they needed? Cause it was, there's a lot of people that have been hurt before. Okay. A lot of people that have been hurt before had to go through some sort of medical issue and getting through that, talking about that part of the story that creates a connection. The dollar part of it does not create the connection. So, so try to focus more on the stories part of it, not on the me, me, me was look what we did. Look what we did. This is amazing. We're awesome.

Tyson Mutrux (19:12)
And that's not to say that you shouldn't have some sort of authority. You should definitely build authority. But a lot of times just being an attorney in your market is all the authority you need. You're already a professional. They are already looking at you as a professional. So for example, like doctors, mean, a lot of people look at doctors like attorneys. Like I don't, I get referrals from other doctors or other attorneys to a doctor and

Tyson Mutrux (19:40)
It's like I go and look up their credentials. I don't I go and I use that doctor because I trust their their opinion. They're experts in that field. That's what a lot of people view attorneys. So you already have some built in authority there. But that's that's a that's a part of this community thing, right? Is is is actually focusing on the stories of of people that people can relate to. That's a big part of it. All right, I'm I'm starting to run short on time, so I'm going to I'm going to.

Tyson Mutrux (20:13)
push head on some of my notes here. I've got a lot of notes. I've been kind of going deeper on some of these and I thought I would. All right. So engineering community on purpose. Okay. So a big part of what I think they do at the gym, it's they've built this community as a system and without it being obvious, there's some things where I'll of like, I'll kind of sit back, oh, that's kind of clever. That's interesting.

Tyson Mutrux (20:40)
Cause I think a of people think though that, community has been an organic thing. I don't think it does. think you can manufacture a community. I'm not saying being fake. think you should still be authentic and everything, but you can totally engineer the community. the gym I talked about, it's got its consistent touch points, right? it's got events, it's got shared challenges that it does. it's got these accountability systems built in.

Tyson Mutrux (21:06)
They've got their kind of own internal language when it comes to things. They've got their own processes when you go into the gym. And how many of you though have those things in your firm? Okay. So you have these consistent touch points and where we like, we have things that we do when it comes to like the touch points, like we have the fact finding calls, the injury impact calls, deposition, like all these things.

Tyson Mutrux (21:33)
Like have these consistent things within your firm. When it comes to events, we put on events in the past. We've done like the, the giving away bikes for Christmas and like I said, we've done lots of things like that. We've done challenges online that those are some things that we've done. So shared challenges, accountability systems. Now, accountability systems, we don't really have that built in to our firm. I guess you could do that. You can gamify things for clients. That's a way you could do it where.

Tyson Mutrux (22:04)
you need, you know, these, you know, list of one to one through 10 from the client whenever you're, it could be an estate plan. could be a family law matter. could be a person, your case, whatever you need, these things, I need them to do these things where, they're kind of graded on that. You could totally gamify that we, in a way we do gamify our deposition training. Cause we do know, their completion percentage. And so do they, so it knows it, it shows them what their percentage is when it comes to that. And then our, have our, we definitely have our own internal language.

Tyson Mutrux (22:41)
So that's part of building that community as well. Excuse me. you, internal language is a big part of it. I did that presentation at Max LawCon a few years ago about the Disney realities. And that was a big part of Disney is like they have their own internal language, right? The way they communicate with each other. That's a big part of it as well.

Tyson Mutrux (23:04)
All right, and then I guess the next part of it is once you've sort of built this community is then you you're using These clients to then become like these advocates Dan Kennedy and believe he's the one that calls them raving fans and creating these raving fans because the thing is like like when you get these people that they They like you they feel like they belong They don't just stay like they will they'll bring others in

Tyson Mutrux (23:31)
And that's where like that growth, you get to see that growth compound. So remember that part of it too. It's like, cause there's this, there's a difference between like a satisfied client and a connected client. Like I'm sure a lot of you like, satisfied clients, but how can you turn them into like a connected client, um, sending those birthday cards or sending them a handwritten note at the beginning of the case or at end of the case or in the middle of the case, I'm seeing those things.

Tyson Mutrux (24:03)
someone dies, sending them flowers, things like that. All of those really, really matter. Those matter a lot to lots of people. So you should really try to think of unique ways of connecting with them. But that's all I have this week. Holti got something from it. I know that I was kind of all over the place, but this is one, it was just kind of interesting thing where I was observing this over the weekend. And then I've been thinking about it over the last few days, but remember to check out MaxLawCon, go to maxlawcon.com, get your tickets.

Tyson Mutrux (24:38)
Those will not be on sale for a whole lot longer. So make sure you get those tickets maxlawcon.com if you've not gotten yours yet. Check out BeccasList, beccaslist.co. That's where you can rate and review legal vendors. And also if you're interested in the association, go to maxlawcon.com and check us out there. See you buddy. Have a great day.