What Law Firm Owners Can Learn from Startup Founders

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Are you an attorney looking for advice on how to structure your law firm? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Tyson interviews Jeff Holman, an attorney and entrepreneur. Jeff shares his journey from engineering to law and business, detailing his transition from private practice to in-house counsel and ultimately creating a fractional legal team model. 

Jeff shares how to set expectations for clients about the legal team model. Some clients are used to working with an attorney who will be with them from intake to the conclusion of all affairs. A legal team model involves collaboration with different individuals within a firm, which can involve other lawyers working on a case. Jeff emphasizes the need to provide clear communication with clients who might not be used to this model so they know what kind of support they are receiving.

With AI growing within many firms, Jeff and Tyson provide insights on how AI affects client interactions. Research shows that AI integration might lead to firms hiring less attorneys since there are tools that can do a lot of the work for you. For Jeff, the use of AI is a great tool, but won’t be useful for certain aspects. For example, if the right questions aren't being asked, AI can help with this. It can also help replace a first year associate that might be too green to work in a specific legal environment. 

Listen in to learn more!

• 02:43 Transition from Private Practice to In-House
• 04:15 Burnout in Fractional Roles
• 06:02 Running a Firm with a Spouse
• 12:01 Team Model and Client Expectations 
• 15:30 Pricing Strategy and Eliminating Billable Hours
• 29:39 Franchise Ownership Experience
• 37:51 Changing the Law Firm Business Model 

Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. 


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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 00:00:02 This is maximum lawyer with your host, Tyson Matrix.

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:11 So, Jeff, you're not just an attorney. You're a founder. You're an entrepreneur and even a franchise owner. So can you high level walk us through your journey and how you went from engineering to law to building intellectual strategies?

Jeff Holman 00:00:30 Yeah, sure. I'm messed up, I guess. I know I really like to learn. I'm just literally I'm a learner. I've been back to school a few times. If you look at my, you know, my resume, I'd go back again if my wife would let me. But I'm really just a learner. So I, you know, I went through engineering, I kind of decided I want to go to become an I don't want to become an engineer, but I want to go through engineering so that I can then go into business. I apply to a bunch of great business schools right out of engineering, and they all said, no, you need 3 or 4 years of experience. Come back later.

Jeff Holman 00:01:00 Except one school that said, nah, don't bother reapplying. and and then in the meantime, while I was, you know, on my kind of 3 or 4 year plan to work and go back and reapply to those schools, I somebody kind of came to me and said, hey, you should go to law school, become a patent attorney. I'm like, I don't know what that is, but sounds sounds interesting, sounds like it's in demand. Let's let's do it. And then, you know, ten years, is it ten years, ten years or so after law school, I went back and, you know, did my MBA and, really shifted my career. So it's, you know, I, I, I work with innovators, people who create. And I feel like I've got some of that in me. I like to explore, I like to experiment, I like to learn. And it's just led me on this path that's gone several places.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:44 Yeah. It's really it's really kind of a cool concept when it comes to the, like a fractional legal team, because you've heard of like fractional CFOs, fractional CEOs and, and all that.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:54 It's really kind of interesting what you've built. And was there some sort of defining moment or some sort of frustration that you had that, that you experienced that, that pushed you to create something that's really completely different, something I've not seen before?

Jeff Holman 00:02:08 Yes, probably a couple of things that added up. you know, I ran my own practice for a while, had a couple of associates and staff that worked with me, and I. I wanted to get out of this patent niche into something more generally more, more business. You know, generally, and because I saw my innovative clients doing cool inventions, but also cool businesses that were a lot broader. So I that's when I went back up MBA, but I think a couple a couple points in time that really got me to where I'm at right now. And, and, you know, believe me, I'm still on a learning curve and and innovating and, you know, kind of evolving with the process. But I think we're in a good spot.

Jeff Holman 00:02:43 But, when I went in-house. So I went from running my own practice, I went in house and two weeks in and I said, this is the wrong way to practice. What have I been doing in the last ten years? And I think most people I've talked to who've gone from private practice to in-house have said something similar, and it's kind of like having a baby. I say that to some of my friends who've never been in house, and I don't think they believe me. But, you know, you don't know what it's like to have a baby until you have a baby, right? It just it doesn't quite connect and and you just don't quite know what it's like to go in-house until you've been in-house and. And so when you go in-house, you, you, you just start seeing differently. In fact, one time I, you know, is maybe a couple times actually I was I was doing things I'm like, these guys are gonna fire me. I'm doing this like like a law firm attorney would do it.

Jeff Holman 00:03:26 And that's that's not what they want, right? They want faster. They want more succinct. They want they want you to jump from topic to topic to topic, depending on how many attorneys you have in your team. And so it's a different type of practice. But that was like the first moment. I'm like, this is something I've been practicing with the same types of clients on the outside, maybe the wrong way for what I should be doing on the inside. And so when I left that job, I went and I kind of just fell into a fractional role, I didn't. We called it outside general counsel at the time, because I was going from an employee to a contracted employee as well, and I watched some other friends doing that. I joined some groups doing that, and I realized fractional general counsel roles. It's just a recipe for burnout. Just like, you know, if you go to big law, it's a pretty much a recipe for burnout because, you know, good attorneys get good clients.

Jeff Holman 00:04:15 And and the whole concept is you have me part of the time I grow with you. Well, if you have 3 or 4 clients, I'll growing. It doesn't take long to see that they're going to grow and you're going to be in that that burnout phase again. And if that's not what you want, then you might be in the wrong spot. So that was a key for me. I'm like, how do I you know, I like the fractional. How do I transition from this solo fractional to something that's sustainable really.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:44 Yeah. Well, I think I'm very curious. Do you use any sort of fractional services yourself, like fractional CFO or anything like that?

Jeff Holman 00:04:51 I just brought on a fractional chief revenue officer. So we'll see how that goes, but I do. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:58 That's interesting. Okay. Hey, you're, It's kind of like a practice. What you preach. Almost kind of a thing. So I think that that's that's kind of interesting.

Jeff Holman 00:05:05 Yes. And I've talked to.

Jeff Holman 00:05:06 I actually run my practice with my wife. She's extremely good. she runs our finances and, you know, all the organizational stuff in the in the practice. I keep trying to talk to her about bringing in somebody part time on the finance side, because that's an easy thing to hand off to a lot of people. We're not there yet. You know, that's a that's a conversation we're still having as, as partners in the business. And so so we'll probably bring somebody on at some point. But, you know, that's, that's in the future.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:34 We just did a series, last week or two weeks ago where we brought on. It was three couples. They run the firms together in different capacities. Some had where it was. Both were attorneys, others they were one was attorney, one was not. It really was kind of interesting. I asked him the same questions, and so each one I think, had 20 minutes separately. And then at the end, we brought them together for ten minutes to see how their answers were maybe different.

Tyson Mutrux 00:06:02 It was it was a lot. It was a lot of fun. So with it, I am curious when it comes to running the firm with your spouse, how has that been? Is it is it what you expected it was going to be? why did the two of you decide to run the firm together? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Jeff Holman 00:06:17 Yeah. we. Yeah. So she's not an attorney. She. She was a stay at home mom for a long time. she's extremely smart. She doesn't necessarily give herself credit for all the all the things she knows how to do really well. and, you know, our kids were getting older. We got four kids. And when the youngest was, I guess, starting to go into, you know, elementary school and all that stuff, she's like, I think I'm going to go look for a job, find something to do. And I said, yeah, that'd be great. You know, whatever's fulfilling. After a while, she was kind of looking and I'm like, you know, we're building like I'm trying to build this thing.

Jeff Holman 00:06:50 It would be awesome to have you build with me. So she's like, yeah, I don't I don't know, you know, I kind of want to do my own thing. And then eventually, you know, she she came around and she, she said she loves it now. So I think she's fantastic at it. She's perfect for the role. She's better at a lot of the organizational things than I am. That's that's her expertise, her her zone of genius. So it's good to have her.

Tyson Mutrux 00:07:16 Someone please clip that segment and then send it to Jeff's wife, please, because I think it will help. Very good. But let's shift back to intellectual strategies and the the firm name, intellectual strategies. That's the firm name. And so it doesn't immediately scream law firm. I love that part of it. Your marketing is also really laser focused. It's focused on founders, disruptors, VC backed companies, which I think is just fantastic. I am curious because you're you're so intentional about shaping the brand And the model that you have.

Tyson Mutrux 00:07:49 And so how did you how did you become so intentional about shaping the brand, shaping the model. And then and then that ideal client that you wanted to serve.

Jeff Holman 00:08:00 Oh, that's another that's another long journey I think. I mean, so believe it or not, it started because of my IP practice. I was I was helping these big companies like IBM build portfolios of patents. And at one point I'm like, you know, I see the big companies, I help them put patents in their armoury. And you know what? What is that all that mean? But I see my small clients and I help them put one patent, their first patent together and it it's awesome, right? It means everything to them. I've had people come to my office with with drinks and champagne or or I'm in Utah. So a lot of times it's apple cider or whatever, sparkling apple cider. And they, they want to celebrate the fact that this has just been filed. Right. Because that's how much it means to them.

Jeff Holman 00:08:40 But as I was going through that, I started thinking, well, how do I figure out, you know, more about IP strategy. And then I realized. IP strategy is just one, you know, one version of general business strategy. And then I started studying business strategy. And that's kind of what led me to go back to my MBA. And when you go look at business strategy, it's the most one of the most confusing fields out there. Everybody has a different definition. Nobody knows how to describe it in a way that any small business owner can just take it and use it. And so I actually went down this whole path for years, you know, just kind of, you know, intentionally but tangentially to, to running a practice. And I said, how do I make this easier for myself, for my clients? I came up with a, my own definition of strategy. And that's, that's really framed how I've done things in, in my law firm intellectual strategies since then.

Jeff Holman 00:09:30 So that's, that's probably, that's probably the, the rough version of the story.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:37 Yeah. I so I am, I'm so curious about like patent trolls. Do you ever deal with like patent trolls. Is that still a big issue I mean, in the past I had heard about it before. Is that even something you have to deal with on a regular basis?

Jeff Holman 00:09:50 We do deal with people who. Yeah. I won't get into the definition of patent trolls and all that, but we deal with people who are asserting wild claims based on patents. And it's, you know, we did a case with a client a year or two ago. We finally settled it. And, you know, it comes down to how belligerent people are a lot of times and how much money they have behind their belligerence. And and so I think we had a really winning case, but we ended up settling because in the end it was, you know, it was easier and more efficient to do that after some initial fighting than to than to take it the full way.

Jeff Holman 00:10:29 Although I think we would have won had we taken it all the way. All the way, it just would have cost, would have cost our client a lot more and that's, you know, wasn't necessarily in their best interest.

Tyson Mutrux 00:10:36 Was it harder for you in that situation to advise them that it's better to probably settle it? Or do you think it was harder for them to accept the fact that they're that they need to settle. I am curious about that because it I'm sure it probably pissed you off.

Jeff Holman 00:10:48 You know, what's funny is I don't do litigation myself. I brought a friend in because we had, you know, when you're doing fractional. And I was like, I don't do litigation. I don't want to do litigation, but fractional. You're their guy. And so problems come up, you're like, enough problems are coming up. I should just bring someone who does litigation onto the team, because that's kind of the whole model of a fractional legal team. Anyway, the litigator I brought on, he is the most levelheaded guy that I know.

Jeff Holman 00:11:12 And and I get fired up, like, like you said, you know, somebody filed something. I'm like, this is ridiculous. This does not make sense. Like, we got to fight this stuff. I don't necessarily take that emotion to the client. I try to take them something a little bit more tempered and say, hey, here are your options. but but it fires the clients up, too, because they're like, what is this? This doesn't make any sense. Like, like they've got this thing and we've got this thing and they're totally different. And so clients get emotional and then I have to kind of back down a little bit and I'm like, well, you know, here are your options. Here's what how we should look at it here. Maybe Here's a recommended course of action. It's. It's easy to get fired up. but I'm glad that I have a counterpart on my team who takes the the more formal, very levelheaded and smart and strategic role for negotiating with the other litigators who often are more fired up than he is.

Tyson Mutrux 00:12:01 I'm glad that this scenario came up, because I want to know about the dynamic of how it works when it comes to your model, and why it works for clients. Because it is interesting, because I, I'm wondering how much clients, whenever they say, you know, whenever you they hire you to be their their fractional legal team, how much they think, oh you you're going to do everything. Or I wonder, how do you how do you set expectations at the beginning to say, listen, I don't do litigation, but I do have people that we're going to be able to reach out to, and I'm guessing it's going to cost them more money and all that. So how do you how do you explain that to them so that it still makes sense for them that that this is still a good model for them.

Jeff Holman 00:12:43 Yeah, it's a fantastic question because they most of the times when you hire an attorney, generally you're like, I hired you, I want him, I want her. And and you think that they're going to do everything, especially small business owners.

Jeff Holman 00:12:55 They're like, I didn't hire. You know, if you go to a large law firm, maybe there's more of an expectation that they hand stuff off to juniors and whatever. But but in my experience, they come and they hire as my wife says, Jeff, they hired you. They want you to be doing this. And so I've had to be very intentional over the last several years saying, hey, we are doing a team model. You're hiring me, of course, but you're getting the whole team. And there's I explained the benefits to it, but to to try to really drive that home with them, I go back to my engineering roots, right? In engineering, I like to see the whole system. I like to lay things out. I like to, you know, put tables together. And and so I've done that for a lot of the services we offer, including our fractional legal team stuff, where I just say, hey, let me send you a package. It's got a breakdown of three different packages that you can select from.

Jeff Holman 00:13:41 It tells you what's in them, you know. And these are starting points we customize for each client. You know, we had we've had two in the last three weeks. We've had two great fractional clients come on board and they're totally different. Some of one of them has a lot of IP stuff that they want included, which we typically, you know, exclude like litigation and and bigger one off projects are typically excluded from our monthly retainer. But for them, you know, we we balance things out and we're including that the other client. They're further along in their stage. You know they're out there selling products. They're a bigger company a lot more revenue as opposed to more of a startup. And so we're doing a lot more full service spread across the team type of work. There is IP, there is some there is some dispute stuff we're doing. But you know, so I send them this, I say, hey, here are the packages. Because what I want to do, I want to empower my clients to make informed decisions.

Jeff Holman 00:14:32 And I say, you know, we are probably a really good fit for a lot of people who we're targeting because, you know, we've been very deliberate putting our team together. So if we're so if we're having a conversation, there's a really good chance that we have something we can offer you. But if I just go and say, you know, I do a patent, it's $12,000 and you don't know what that means, because that's the past life I was in. I've watched lots of firms do that, and they're like, you need a patent, it's $12,000. You need a whatever. It's. And I'm like, but what what are you getting? There's so many different ways you can do that. And so I say, well, here's how I, here's how I do it. I've got a I've got a basic package. It includes these things, I've got a plus package. It includes these and I've got a premium. It includes these. And of course we can customize these.

Jeff Holman 00:15:15 But let me send you that. We'll start there. You get an idea of what you want, what feels good to you because you know it's going to come down to you want all the services and you want the lowest budget. That's not going to work, but there's going to be some balance in there that does work. And let's figure out where it is.

Tyson Mutrux 00:15:30 Can you talk about the pricing strategy? Because I that seems to be The most effective strategy when it comes to the pricing, something like this. And so can you talk about the different tiers and how you came up with those tears and why you came up with those tears?

Jeff Holman 00:15:45 Yeah. So my goal and this is where me and my wife have different roles, right? My goal is eliminate the billable hour completely. I hate it like most most attorneys do. So if I could eliminate it completely, I would totally do that. And I've tried to structure it so that from a client perspective, it's not an hourly thing, because that changes the behaviors of the client and the interactions and how often they call you.

Jeff Holman 00:16:09 I don't want anybody to feel like they shouldn't be calling me because of the way that we bill. That's that's like counterproductive to the entire reason we have a relationship in the first place. And so I do everything I can to frame it in terms of, in terms of just flat fees. And, you know, I'm, I'm kind of hey, things will even out as you go if there's some ups and downs. Great. If it trends will we'll switch it. So client facing. It's really not an hourly situation for the most part. Internally, where my wife is tracking and we've got team members working, she's very much on the hour. She's she's tracking that stuff because we need to know for our own purposes, of course, how to pay, how to pay our team and all that other stuff. And so she'll track it, and that's how we'll know then if there's trending going up or down, because, you know, as a fraction, we scale with our clients and hopefully they scale up, but sometimes they scale down too.

Jeff Holman 00:17:00 So we track it internally on an hourly basis to a large extent. But we make it we try to remove the hourly from the client conversations as much as possible.

Tyson Mutrux 00:17:11 You know, I don't know if you saw this study that came out. Now take it with a grain of salt. It was commissioned by Lexus, and they hired an outside company to to determine how much I was reducing the need for companies to hire attorneys. And so they and they did it through a different few different models. And they, they, created this fictitious model. And so that's why I'm a little skeptical of the data. But what they found was, is that there's a 13% reduction in the the company reaching out to the outside legal counsel for for assistance. And I wonder if you've seen that in any capacity where the people that you that you represent reach out to you less because maybe they're using AI to get some answers to their questions.

Jeff Holman 00:18:01 I do see that. I don't know that it's reducing the workload, because I know in a lot of instances it's garbage in, garbage out, or, you know, not garbage.

Jeff Holman 00:18:12 Maybe it's maybe it's great input in and great outputs. But for most people, unless you know how to ask the questions, right, you're not asking the right questions. So I do see it. You know, we're starting to integrate it more. I use I you know, I was on it this morning quite a bit. Some work and some marketing and some other stuff. I use it daily. We're encouraging our team to use it. We're looking into some products, but we've done some demos. Frankly, we haven't adopted anything on a large scale because frankly, when you look past the, you know, kind of the business speak and jargon of even during the demos, what they're really saying is we can do a pretty good job if, you know, if your expectation is, you know, a first year associate who's, you know, in his first six months of practice and and we don't, you know, to to which I say, great, I hope it gets better soon. But we don't hire first year associates like we can't.

Jeff Holman 00:19:04 We can't do that in our practice. It's either because I'm not a great you know, I don't have patience to train people or or it just doesn't work for our clients, right. Financially. But so we don't hire first year associates. So I haven't figured out how to plug in a first year associate. I tool into into a role that we don't have for people. Even. So.

Tyson Mutrux 00:19:22 That's pretty interesting. So how do you how do you design this in a way that you can provide a legal service that integrates really deeply with that client's business, but you're still able to do it on a fractional budget. And in in it's a fractional in scope. Because one of my biggest concerns when it comes to any sort of fractional anything is that they don't quite understand the business. So I wonder how you're able to integrate in a way where you're able to understand the business and really understand their needs, so you can advise them properly.

Jeff Holman 00:19:53 So this is there's a there's an internal fight that happens with me all the time.

Jeff Holman 00:19:59 And that internal fight is all about the engineer saying everything needs to be perfectly defined and, you know, known and risks identified. And then there's what I'll call the MBA inside of me that says, hey, let's try it. Let's, you know, let's hypothesize, let's, let's take some action, see what happens and evaluate and, you know, pivot if we need to. And so really that NBA side has to has for the way that I work has to. Has to control a little bit more than the engineering side. So that I go and I say we're going to because every company is different. Every I mean they're all innovators. They're doing stuff that hasn't been done before. Some of the processes are the same, but they're literally creating teams in ways that teams haven't been created. They're creating products in ways products haven't existed before. So they're creating new problems and risks that haven't existed. And so, you know, for me to think that I'm going to engineer this, you know, down to the fourth, you know, decimal point or something, it's just not going to work.

Jeff Holman 00:21:01 So so I take a very relaxed approach in a way. And I say, let's, let's meet often. Let's communicate well, let's talk high level strategy and let's, you know, make sure that your team not just it's just not just CEO talking to me. Right. Talking to Jeff, it's let's make your make sure your team feels comfortable talking to my team as if they were just walking down the hall, poking their head in the door and saying, hey, Danielle, I got a question, you know. Do you have a second? It's, you know, that's how teams operate. Well, right. It's just having fluid communications. And, you know, that's been my approach at a really high level.

Tyson Mutrux 00:21:39 There's got to be like as you hire attorneys, I wonder how much when people hire you as a fractional CFO, that they want you as the actual or not CFO, fractional attorney, the fractional legal team, however you want to put it. But do you sell it as a team or you're getting the team to help? Does that help prevent them wanting Jeff every single time, or because how do you deal with that?

Jeff Holman 00:22:03 Yeah, the short answer is yes, like I used to.

Jeff Holman 00:22:06 I used to be more hesitant about selling the team aspect of it, and now I'm I'm as bold as I can be because I want to I want it to be clear that, like, there's people don't realize it, but there's value in having access to the team. You know, you don't want one attorney with one specialty giving you advice across every discipline in your business. They just don't know it. And while that happens a lot in small businesses and it's worked, it's not the best way to do it. The best way is to get a bunch of, you know, experts across different areas that every business needs. Every startup has 20 different areas that they're dealing with. And, and, and so to have people who are more expert in each area as it comes up, why wouldn't you do that if you could? If you can do that, that's, that's that's been that's been my driver. I'm like. Like there's nothing about this that doesn't make sense. It's it's maybe a little bit more, fuzzy around the edges sometimes.

Jeff Holman 00:23:00 And maybe there are people who say, well, I want you, and I have people, I have clients who's who? They'll say, hey, you know, for this project, I want you on it, you know, and I'll. And I'll accommodate that to the extent that I can. But that's not every project. And I have to be very deliberate when people hire me because they're just not used to hiring attorneys in a team setting like we're doing, it's just new.

Tyson Mutrux 00:23:22 Yeah, I, I'm very curious if you've learned anything, about selling legal services. and when it comes to, like, your clients, like, have you learned anything from your clients? You know, they could be founders. A lot of them are disruptors. They're they're creative types. So I wonder if you've learned anything about selling, like specifically selling legal services from your clients that's made you a better law firm owner?

Jeff Holman 00:23:47 Oh, gosh. I might have to, like, dissect that that question a little bit.

Jeff Holman 00:23:51 I don't think of myself as a sales guy. So let me say that upfront. I don't I don't like I think I'm good at selling legal services, but that's because I believe in the way we're doing it. But I don't, I don't I don't profess to know sales tactics and techniques and stuff like that. Despite my MBA. That's not where I focused on anything. So when I go, when I go into a conversation, like the conversation you and I are having is a lot like the conversation I would be having with a potential client. And I just say, hey, here's how our team works. Here are the people that are on our team. You know, let's Where we focus the conversation typically is on, you know, the business milestones that are coming up in your business or maybe a few past hiccups that need some cleanup. And and I say, well, well, if those are the business milestones, how how do I, as you know, as your legal counsel, come in and, and start to frame some legal work into those business milestones to support you getting achieving those in time.

Jeff Holman 00:24:46 And so, you know, by the time you've spent 30 minutes having that conversation, it's I don't think it's a matter of, you know, now, I'd like to get a commitment from you to purchase our services. It's just you've already started the relationship in my mind. And if it's a good fit, it will continue. And if it's not a good fit, it won't. And that's. And that's okay too, right? People should hire the people that they communicate well with. And, you know, I'm a pretty easy guy to communicate with a lot of times. but, but I'm not the right fit for everybody, and and that's okay.

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:19 I like that. It sounds like you're willing to walk away from a client if if it's just if you think that they're going to be a troubled client or, maybe you just can't help them, obviously, that you're not going to want to represent someone that you can't. Can't help. But at what point were you comfortable with that? Because at the beginning, a lot of times people want to take everything that comes through the door.

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:39 So when were you comfortable with the with being able to just walk away?

Jeff Holman 00:25:43 Yeah, I, I am for, for being an introverted engineer inside of me. I, I have this weird, I don't know, need to develop relationships. And so, you know, is there some childhood trauma behind that? Probably. But like, like, like all, like, all good personality characteristics. but so I tried really, really hard to establish relationships and to maintain those relationships and I, I probably, you know, I will turn people away if they're not a good fit because I know that that's my tendency, like, I don't want to get I don't want to use the word attached, but you know, I don't want to. I don't want to develop a relationship and then feel like, how do I. Because I in fact, one of my attorneys, the the litigator, Trevor, he says, he says, I know you pretty well. You have this hyper accountability, issue. You know, you are always trying to take accountability for the things that are anywhere within your the the realm of your, you know, your influence.

Jeff Holman 00:26:40 And it's true. I just it's just how I operate. And so if I when a problem happens my first my first go to isn't. Man they really messed up. It's like okay that happened. And how what could I have done differently on my end. What do I have control over that I could do differently to, to fix that? And so, you know, for example, I have a client that I, I, I loved working with. We worked on several business businesses with them, for 4 or 5 years. as an individual, I really like I like the team, I like the founder. And I, you know, when they got into into some we should have scaled back our services. Right. Because they were in these issues where payment was a problem. And instead I offered to continue providing services at the same scale, partly because there was some litigation going on. And, you know, then you're having these internal conversations like, what are my professional responsibilities to, you know, finish this litigation versus terminate the relationship.

Jeff Holman 00:27:38 But so all that's happening and, you know, it took me a long time to actually fire the client. And and I know that about myself, which is why I'm hesitant now to get into relationships where there's a risk that, you know, the relationship might not work out. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Tyson Mutrux 00:27:55 It definitely does. Let's shift gears. I want to talk about leadership with you, and I wonder how you've had to adapt your leadership style as you've as you started to grow with the firm as the as the firm has begun to grow. So I guess, have you had to adapt your leadership style and in what ways?

Jeff Holman 00:28:13 Yeah, I have to. And I don't profess to be like a stand out prototype. Prototype for leadership. I, you know, it's funny because last, last year, we've got five attorneys on our team. We've had a few come in and out. And last year I did these, you know, regular monthly meetings with the team. Hey, let's talk about how do we do this and what do we do on a strategy call.

Jeff Holman 00:28:34 And you know, what does client experience really mean. And just you know, things about the practice. And and this year I didn't put any on the schedule this year. And I just had my team come back and say, hey can we do some more of those? We really need to have one of those on XYZ. And I and I thought, yeah, we probably do. So I don't know if that speaks about my leadership style, but but it shows that in a team setting, people people look to have kind of I don't know if it's leadership or even just, you know, build community. And, you know, by nature, because I started the firm, I guess they looked to me to to kind of head up that, that community. So.

Tyson Mutrux 00:29:13 Yeah.

Jeff Holman 00:29:14 It's probably something I could work on quite a bit more though.

Tyson Mutrux 00:29:17 Well, the reason I wanted to ask you about that is because you had mentioned that you had the attorney come to you about your hyper accountability, and to me, that that seems like a pretty healthy culture because you're you're accountable as the owner.

Tyson Mutrux 00:29:29 But they recognize that too. So I think that that's a to me that that shows that you're probably doing the right things.

Jeff Holman 00:29:36 It probably shows that I'm pretty transparent at least.

Tyson Mutrux 00:29:39 Yeah. I want to talk about the franchise. Tell me about the franchise ownership. What's that all about?

Jeff Holman 00:29:45 Oh, man, that might be another episode. It was. Listen, like I said, I experiment, right? I, you know, when I, when I built my first house, I'm like, I'm an electrical engineer. I want to wire my house up just because I want to know. You know, at the time I was designing, you know, wiring schematics for commercial buildings and these large homes. And I'm like, well, I should it'd be great to know what that's like. And so I did that, and I, I went into the lighting store for the 17th time, and the guy's like, hey, I've been meaning to ask you, how big is this house? I'm like, nah, it's like 2200ft².

Jeff Holman 00:30:14 So it was not a big house, but apparently I was inefficient in some of the materials I used. But, you know. But I learned something. Right? And so. And so there's this just this part of me that's like, you're helping these companies, you're doing this stuff. You know, I've done a couple side projects here and there, and I and I've had some work out, okay. And I've had some that haven't worked out and I've closed them. The franchises is just one of those side things. And long story short, without going into details. A lot of franchises are sold as semi absentee businesses and end up that they are not semi absentee businesses. They are they are pretty much owner operator businesses. We're in a mode with this side business of figuring that out and how to, you know, of our own accountability I guess make that more of a of a semi absentee business than it has been. And we've gotten to the point where it is for us, but now we have to work on the profitability of it, too.

Jeff Holman 00:31:05 So it's it's been an interesting project. I'll say that and leave it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:31:09 Yeah, well, how is that experience? I'll transition this back to the to the firm. How do you think that that that experience has informed how you approach like actually creating processes and systems for the firm.

Jeff Holman 00:31:21 Perfect question. I mean, that's that's exactly what I've taken out of it. And, you know, my wife and I were talking about this last night, you know, that we bought into a franchise because we thought, oh, processes, systems, you know, proven business model, all that. I don't I don't think that we bought what we thought we were buying, but whether that existed before or whether we're creating it now, that's that's like the lifeblood of a of a semi absentee business or a or or a business in general. Right. Like I always talk about my law firm. I tell people, hey, I'm trying to build this as a business, not as a law firm, not a typical you eat what you kill and you, you work, you go, you get paid for the hours that you work and you like.

Jeff Holman 00:31:59 You just exist to be an attorney until you stop being an attorney and then you pretty much don't exist anymore. Like, like that's not what I want. I want to build something that is That is sustainable. Right. Back to the strategy. I want to build something sustainable, whether it's a little franchise fitness business or whether it's a, you know, a growing law firm, it should be sustainable. Otherwise you're just trading time for money. And that's in my mind, not necessarily a winning proposition.

Tyson Mutrux 00:32:24 It makes me think about how and I was having this conversation yesterday, but it makes me think about how Japanese companies view the future and actually scaling their companies. And a lot of them view, they look at it in like 200 to 300 years in the future, what it should look like. And I think it's really an amazing way of looking at things, because to me it takes a lot of pressure off of you. You're like, okay, I'm building this thing. And the way I put it yesterday, let's see.

Tyson Mutrux 00:32:50 Let's say you grew your firm 2 to 3% every single year for 200 years. Like, what would your company look like? So you're not worried about, you know, doubling revenue every single year? You're not worried about that, right? You think more about kind of like compounded interest because everyone's wanting to grow as quickly as possible. Well, what if you took this more like, steady approach and. Okay, we're building this thing for for not just my children, not their children, not their children, not their children. But you're going down, down, down, down and deeper and deeper down into your genealogy, I guess. But I do think it's a really interesting way of looking at things. So have you ever. Have you ever thought about something like that?

Jeff Holman 00:33:28 I love that I haven't I haven't used that term or heard. I don't think I've heard that information about Japanese business, you know, vision. But I love it. It makes me think, you know, businesses grow in spurts, right? It's just in a way, steady spurts.

Jeff Holman 00:33:42 You're like, we want steady 10% growth or 50% growth or whatever that is for your business every year. But but no, no business ever grows that steady. It's it's really steady over time. But it was it was really spurred by, you know, in the moment. And so I haven't thought in 2 or 3 year timelines and I don't think I'm capable of that. My, my engineering brain would start saying, well, what are all the factors, you know. Yes. So but but what I do is I think the, the analogy to that, that I do use is going back to sustainability. How do I build a business that's sustainable. And I would and I view that the metric for that in my mind is enterprise value. If you have a sustainable business, it will have enterprise value. It will also probably be sustainable, independent of any one single individual in the business. And most law firms are not. And and that's why I named our that's why I didn't name my law firm Holman and something and something I said, hey, I want to be different and I want it to I want it to sound like a business.

Jeff Holman 00:34:40 You know, I see these friends who have consulting businesses and they go out and nobody is asking them what their hourly rate is. They're going to they land a, you know, a $700,000 contract for results, not for hours. And the results in a consulting business are pretty questionable a lot of times anyways. Right. How do you gave us results that we to tell us that we that it's that it's inconclusive. But, you know, they still get paid their money because that's the value they brought. I think lawyers really need to figure out how to do something more along those lines instead of being, you know, arguing over whether or not a contract review should take two and a half or three hours or whatever. I mean, that's who wants to do that their whole life, not me.

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:24 Yeah. No kidding. You use the phrase that I don't think anyone's ever mentioned on the podcast is enterprise value. I think that's a great I love that phrase. Really, really good terms. Awesome.

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:34 In what ways do you think firms can increase their enterprise value and get to that point where they can sort of be that absentee owner, where that almost sounds bad, but like where you are, you're still making money from the firm, and it can the firm can live without you.

Jeff Holman 00:35:51 First of all, I just want to point out, I love that that you you actually said it sounds kind of bad to have an absentee owner law firm. And I my gut reaction to that is why? Why is that bad? Every other business out there like you don't. You don't hire an agent, a marketing agency and demand that the CEO do all of your work and, you know, pay, do your paid ads. And like, they don't do that. But in law firms, we think that's normal and I that we've got to get away from that frankly. But it's but it's so prevalent that as attorneys we all feel it. We've all felt it. And we we still feel it even when we're trying not to.

Jeff Holman 00:36:27 So having pointed that out, what was the question?

Tyson Mutrux 00:36:31 Oh yeah. Well I'm glad well, I'm glad you brought that up. I actually I'm glad that you, you pointed that out to because it is it is something we need to get away from. So let's stay on this. And I'll come back to that question though. How much do you think that has to do with us? Like putting our freaking names on our law firms?

Jeff Holman 00:36:45 Oh a lot. We yeah. We go. We attorneys go to law school. At least this is what we all believe, right? And since it's it's us believing it about ourselves, there's probably some truth to it. We go to law school because we're kind of that, that maybe slightly risk averse Personality where maybe a little exuberant sometimes. Or argumentative or whatever. We've got some characteristics that that attract us to the law. And one of those, I think is stability and prestige. I guess that's two of those stability and prestige. And so, you know, when prestige is part of your equation.

Jeff Holman 00:37:19 Who doesn't want to hear somebody, you know, praise you about the work you've done and then pay you a big fat check? Everybody loves that. But but that's the golden handcuffs. And that's not enterprise. There's no enterprise value in that. There's maybe personal reputation and and personal value, but no enterprise value. They're not aligned.

Tyson Mutrux 00:37:39 So let's go back to enterprise value. So the question I was asking about was what I guess what are the elements of a firm that would increase its enterprise value and allow the law firm owner to to be absentee?

Jeff Holman 00:37:51 The entire business model has to change. You know, that's that's the I would start with something simpler but but but the real answer is the business model has to change. This is why when I look out there and I say, okay, I'm doing a business model, I'm sharing it. I've been on, I don't know, 50 podcasts so far in the last in less than a year, and I'm trying to share it everywhere. Right. Because I want the word to get out there.

Jeff Holman 00:38:10 I want to get clients, of course, but I also think people should be practicing in this way. And when I look at it, no big law firm with an established business model is that because of their personalities, they're not going to change their business model to do what we're doing now. They could implement it in different ways, but but under the existing business models, it just doesn't work. Like you have to fundamentally change your outlook in how you're doing stuff. You might also have to, you know, remove your ego from it. I like having good relationships with smart people and clients, but but on the one hand, it's not it's not one of the drivers for me personally. Like I don't need that to feed my ego. I, I, I think highly of myself regardless.

Tyson Mutrux 00:38:47 So as you should.

Jeff Holman 00:38:49 As my wife would say. But but no, I think the business model really has to change because because business models are almost always set up to, to, you know, they're based on hourly billing.

Jeff Holman 00:38:57 They're based on hierarchical organizational structures. And and they're based on, you know, very intimate client relationships. And if you worked in a law firm, you've seen some of the attorneys and a lot of attorneys are this way to some degree or another. They're extremely protective of their territory. And, you know, I've had people yell at me about stuff because they thought I was infringing on their their territory. It's just like, okay, you know, so what I've had to do is I've had to, I guess maybe to round this out, I've had to change. I have had to approach this with a totally different mindset. I want to have open communication, open relationships with my clients so that they know who my team is and they want to talk to my team as much as they want to talk to me. If I'm doing it right, I'm hiring people smarter than me, and my clients want to talk to them more than they want to talk to me, hopefully. And but the but the business model is set up so that it's a team approach.

Jeff Holman 00:39:52 And if we're locked in as a team, you know, if I have one really aggressive, hungry person that I've hired and they like, I'm going to take my clients, go somewhere else. I'd be like, well, I mean, go ahead. But but you're like one piece in the team. And if a client really wants to follow you because they love you that much, then they should probably go with you. But chances are, the way we've structured it, one person leaving shouldn't impact most of our client relationships because they they hired us, so they get the whole team and one person leaving isn't a team. So it's just the business model itself is just fundamentally different.

Tyson Mutrux 00:40:26 Yeah, I agree with you quite a bit on that. How can law firm owners build that, that mental muscle to make that mindset shift? Because it's I mean, it's been so ingrained. The host that was or the guest I had before you had talked about how the legal industry hasn't changed for like 200 years, and it's basically still operating the exact same way.

Tyson Mutrux 00:40:48 So like, there's some things that are just so ingrained in the practice. How does some of these law firm owners make that shift, that mental shift, because it can be tough for for especially the ones that have been doing this for a few decades.

Jeff Holman 00:40:59 It's very tough. I don't want to downplay this. I literally closed down or altered drastically the, the the law firm that I had pre pre fractional team to what it is now. I went back to school for two years in a, in a part time MBA program. I, I spent I don't know, I've spent the last 12 years doing like thinking about and reading about writing about strategy. Like it's, it's not a, it's not a like a hey, let's just make a few tweaks in our business and change. I don't think we can. If I had to name one thing that I think would be the trigger point, and this is just me throwing it out there, I haven't I haven't thought this through all the way, but I think that the trigger point get rid of fricking get rid of origination fees.

Jeff Holman 00:41:42 This whole idea of origination fees is the lead in to everybody thinking that they own something, you know, with a particular client. It's like I brought that in or my client. I need to get origination fees either you know, on the first project or the first year. Or in perpetuity. Like, like get rid of origination fees. That's that's that's the that's the biggest and first impediment in my mind, at least to creating a team approach.

Tyson Mutrux 00:42:06 I, I just heard a collective groan across the entire legal community. Whatever. You said that.

Jeff Holman 00:42:15 That's because all of them have built their businesses, and that's exactly how they grow their teams. You know, I see these other law firms out there, and this isn't to knock them. They've chosen a different business model. Right. Those business models rely on origination fees to attract laterals to come in and bring their business with them so that they can be so they can grow a bigger law firm. But. But are they actually growing a bigger law firm with a larger partner enterprise value? I don't think so.

Jeff Holman 00:42:39 I think they're just growing a bigger law firm with a bigger overall enterprise value, but probably this more or less the same per partner enterprise value.

Tyson Mutrux 00:42:49 Yeah. Well will. If the if that partner leaves. You've now lost the firm as a whole. The company as a whole has lost a tremendous amount of value based on one freaking person as opposed to the firm as a whole. So, yeah. Yeah, I think it's it's it's a brilliant thought.

Jeff Holman 00:43:04 Easy come, easy go. Right?

Tyson Mutrux 00:43:06 Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to I want to ask you about the marketing of the podcasting strategy that you're talking about. But before I do that, though, if people want to reach out to you and they want to ask you questions about intellectual strategies, or if they just want to connect with you directly about, you know, marketing or running a firm, how what's the best way of getting a hold of you?

Jeff Holman 00:43:23 LinkedIn probably. I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit. I'm pretty active. They're send me a, send me a non solicitation type of invite and I'll respond to it and connect with you for sure.

Jeff Holman 00:43:32 For if there are clients out there that hear this or partners, you know, people that say, hey, I, you know, I have we just had a client that got hired on that was they're transitioning from a very large, great, respectable law firm to us because they're moving everything to fractional model. And I met with the partner at that law firm. And, you know, he had a great kind of orientation meeting for me. Hey, here's where the business is at. And he said, hey, we should, we should, we should talk and we should figure out there's probably opportunities for us because they, you know, their model is different, probably opportunities for us and for you to to maybe think about working together on some of these clients that that could use your in-house, you know, skills and kind of act as an intermediary on a lot of the matters that that, and kind of let the big matters bubble up to the, to the large law firm. So if there are, you know, potential clients or if there are law firm owners out there who say, hey, this would be a great partnership to integrate into what we're doing, you know, reach out to me on my on my website, schedule a strategy, call my calendars on my website.

Jeff Holman 00:44:36 You can talk to me directly. And, you know, I just like talking to people that are doing cool stuff.

Tyson Mutrux 00:44:43 I love it, as do I. That's why. That's why I love this show. It's I get to talk some really cool people like you, so that's awesome. But I want to talk about the podcasting, like your marketing strategy in general. I know you do a lot on LinkedIn, but you said you've done about 50 in the last year or so. That's a that's I think that's great. Is the ROI. Is it ROI. Been there. Do you think it's been an effective strategy for you to bring in new clients? I am very curious about this strategy.

Jeff Holman 00:45:09 As a podcast guest. I hired an agency. It's been a great experience. I don't think there's a way to calculate the ROI in a positive way yet. Although the cost has been manageable, the financial cost of manageable and the and the time cost is, you know, because of how I structure things with what I do has also been manageable for me.

Jeff Holman 00:45:29 I am shifting, though, you know, I'm still doing. I've got 2025 more podcasts on my schedule through the end of the year, and we'll probably keep doing that. But I'm also going to start my own podcast, because I think there's a way to be really deliberate in in reaching out to the, you know, from a client perspective, that is a lot harder to do as a guest, although I really appreciate being a guest on shows like yours, because the message is really important to me. Even if even if the only thing people take away from this is this guy is kind of crazy, but really passionate about this fractional model. And there's a few points he made that makes sense. Like I think that's valuable. You know, I think I think there's value in the overall community to this becoming more available to people who need it, like startups and scale ups, you know, that are out there. It's just it's a better way to provide services to them, I think.

Tyson Mutrux 00:46:17 Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux 00:46:18 I don't think there's anybody in our in our audience is going to think you're crazy. I think that they're going to I they're probably gonna agree with you a lot of the things. So I think it's the fact that you're passionate, it definitely shines through. I think that that's that's pretty awesome. But I want to end on this question. Where do you see the biggest opportunities in the next few years for firms that are willing to rethink how they are going to deliver legal services?

Jeff Holman 00:46:42 Like philosophically, I would say I want to see law firms become partners again with businesses. You know, I read some anecdotal historical stuff about general counsel. Right. And general counsel started out as a really a business advisor with legal experience and knowledge. And it shifted. I think what I, the, the chronology I was reading said something about, you know, in the when, when these big law firms started implementing it and turning it into a different thing, and then academic institutions got involved, and then all the regulatory agencies and the federal government were created, and it's become something totally different.

Jeff Holman 00:47:22 Right? But but when it all started, general people would people would bring on an attorney as their general counsel to be a, you know, an advisor in the business, not just if I have to talk to you about a legal issue, then I guess I'll do that. And I would love to see philosophically the industry get back to that where where business owners want to include Legally legal experts in their business. On a practical level, how do we do that? I don't know how to do that other than what I'm doing.

Tyson Mutrux 00:47:51 You know what? That is an honest answer. And that's that's what I want. I think that that's the, I don't know, part. I think that there's so many things that are unknown over the next few years that in a normal decade, things were unknown. When AI is progressing as quickly as it is, it's it's even more unknown. So I think that that's a very honest answer. But Jeff, I really appreciate you doing this. It's a lot of podcasts that you're doing.

Tyson Mutrux 00:48:17 So that's that's pretty incredible. But really I've enjoyed this conversation a lot. I can tell you're passionate about what you do. And so anything we can help to do to promote you just let me know.

Jeff Holman 00:48:27 Oh, I appreciate that. It's been a pleasure being on your show and I love the conversation.