Why Your Parents Are Responsible for the Lack of Success in Your Firm and How to Fix It

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Are you a law firm owner struggling with success? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Alexis Austin Litle, a former law firm partner and strategic success coach about how subconscious beliefs—often shaped by parental influence —can limit success in law firms. Alexis explains how these deep-seated patterns affect sales and growth and provides practical strategies to identify and rewire limiting beliefs about money and success.

Subconscious beliefs drive success for people and more so for those who own their own businesses. Most people don't realize that the negative things that are said in your childhood actually are used to drive your success when you are older. These patterns that existed are now what control your success. For law firms, it is easy for there to be negative ideas about clients or something being too “expensive”. It is important to transform the beliefs of your team by rewiring  those beliefs. 

Alexis talks about what kind of action plan you need for this change, ultimately leading to success. Once you identify those thoughts and feelings from your team, flip the script on them. Start changing your own thoughts and feelings about clients, an expensive software that will help the firm or your intake process. The key is to be in a constant spaced repetition, so your team can follow your lead.

Take a listen!

• 3:58 The Power of Subconscious Beliefs
• 9:39 Identifying and Rewiring Beliefs
• 13:04 Proof of Success After Changing Beliefs
• 16:00 Action Plan for Change
• 18:34 Lasting Change and Parental Blame

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.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:00:03 All right. So today we're going to be talking about why your parents are responsible for the lack of success in your firm. As soon as I find the clicker. Okay. Let's get started. So we are going to be talking today about why your parents are responsible for the lack of success in your firm, and how you can take it back. I want to ask you first, does this graph look familiar to you? Do you have this struggle? Have you ever experienced ups and downs where this green line. There it is. Whoop! Now the the thing is coming back. Here we go. There we go. Okay. This green line represents the goal that you have for your firm. You're wanting to accomplish these revenue goals. You want the success in your firm. You have this projection. But no matter what you do, you have this up and down line. You have good months, you have bad months, you have good weeks. You have bad weeks. You struggle to make payroll.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:00:53 You have great weeks where you're flush with cash and you do all kinds of things, but you just can never cross that threshold. I have good news for you. It is not your fault. Now, you can blame this all on your parents. What I want to do right now is ask you all what you see in this image. Anybody shout out what you see. Triangle. How many of you see a white triangle? Yeah. Everybody all right, all right. Would it surprise you to know? Oh, our thing isn't going to work here. Now, our slides aren't working. If we had the Canva up here, it would move for you. But there's actually no triangle there. What your brain did in this image is it sees a habit, a pattern, something that it's been trained to see before. But really, all that's there are some little PacMan figures. There's no triangle there. This is a psychological concept called the Kennedy triangle. What it's showing you is that your brain is recognizing patterns that do not exist.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:02:00 Your brain says, oh, there's a triangle there because that's what I'm wired to see. But in reality, your brain is looking for patterns. This is what happens. Is my mic fading in and out and being weird? Okay, I'm hearing it up here. I'm just going to ask you guys for feedback and we'll get some interesting things going on here. Is it in and out? Hello. All right. I'll have to talk quieter. All right. So why should you listen to this? This could sound like a bunch of pop psychology. I will tell you all. Spoiler alert. I do have a psychology degree, so I do bring psychology into what we're talking about. I also have a philosophy degree. But what makes it relevant to you all here is I was privileged to be a partner at a law firm in Colorado before the age of 28. I then moved on to open my own law firm. It's Wright Law Group in Colorado Springs. we have a successful criminal law practice there, and now I work with people helping them actually gain success and traction in their firm through strategic success.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:02:57 But I'd rather go back to blaming your parents. So let's talk about that. Why is it that your parents are controlling the success in your firm? How is it that you can actually start having the success that you want? To understand this concept, we're going to have to look at this little stick figure guy. We call this the stick figure. It was actually created by a doctor. His name is Thurmond Fleet. And what he did is he was trying to show how the subconscious and the conscious mind affect you. Now, when we're looking at this image, you see, it's kind of broken up into two parts. It's just a visual representation. But the top part represents the conscious, the bottom part. The subconscious mind. What's fascinating, though, is that the conscious mind only makes up about 5% of your brain. It's only running about 5% of the time. 95% of the time is subconscious, and before the age of seven, you have no conscious capabilities. If you've ever had kids and you think, why doesn't this four year old understand this logical argument I'm making? This is why the subconscious mind is fully operating and fully open before the age of seven.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:03:58 And this is why it's so important to understand, because every influence that you've had in your life your parents, your caregivers, authority figures, everything that they are telling you gets into your mind before the age of seven. These are the patterns that are controlling your mind. These are the patterns that are actually dominating when you're not consciously thinking, which is 95% of the time. So if you've heard things growing up, let's do a little thing here. How many of you have heard any of these on this list here? Take a moment to look at these phrases. Raise your hand when you see at least five that you've heard. Yeah, these are the ideas that were taught before the age of seven. These are the things that we've come to learn. Money doesn't grow on trees. It's difficult to make money. A penny saved is a penny earned. You got to get the deal. Otherwise, you shouldn't buy anything. These are the subconscious ideas and patterns that are operating your success in your firm, and is all the stuff your parents put in there and their parents put in them.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:04:55 And it's all of this back and back drama going on. We've got these patterns just like that triangle we talked about. We've got these patterns running us subconsciously. These are the things that are controlling our success. And that's why even when you have your goals, you have your projections. All of these things that you're wanting to accomplish, these patterns are underneath running the whole show. So let's do an experiment here. I want to do a focus exercise with you, and I'm not going to make you stand up. I checked to see if anybody was interested in standing, but do me a favor and take your right hand and make it a pointer and then point it out in front of you. Now make it a circle and aim towards the bottom of this area here and look through the circle. Now look up. Now take that circle and put it on your chin. I've got some lawyers in the room here. I saw a number of you stop because you saw me putting it on my forehead. But you still went for the chin.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:05:51 The reason is, is even when you know I'm trying to trick you, your subconscious is still following pattern recognition even when you know it's a trap, even when you know it's coming. That's the power of our subconscious beliefs. Now, this is important because like we talked about, 5% of your brain is operating consciously. 95% of your day is subconscious. This also explains if you've ever ended up somewhere where you were driving and you're like, oh my God, 45 minutes just passed by. How did I get here? It's because your subconscious is always operating on this pattern recognition. Now, this is fantastic because it's trying to keep you alive. It's trying to make sure that you're successful at staying alive and procreating, which is the job of your subconscious. But it's not particularly helpful at keeping you on track with your success. When we have these beliefs, they are deeply embedded and there are only two ways that we can rewire them. One is a sudden emotional impact and another is constant spaced repetition. Now said an emotional impact would be like if I say, hey, I'm going to give a few lucky people in here a hundred grand.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:06:54 Now I can't give everyone a hundred grand, but a couple of you actually do have 100 grand under your seat. So check it out. See who's got 100 grand. I'm not kidding. Someone has 100 grand in here. We're gonna see. We'll see who gets it. Did anybody find 100 grand? Oh, we have 100 grand for Ryan. I didn't plan this, but he gave me this awesome shirt, so it makes total sense that he got it. I know, I know, it's not actually 100 grand of money. I didn't say it was money. It's a hundred grand candy bar. But for a brief moment, if you felt that. Is this woman really having that much success in her company that she just handed out 100 grand? That emotional impact? That's an example. A very brief example of what a sudden emotional impact could be. Something that emotionally jolts you and changes your beliefs. It's not really easy to do, especially when we're talking about a belief like clients are never hiring.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:07:49 People are going to always have a sales objection. They're going to say, that's too expensive. Changing those beliefs, the only way you can do it without a sudden emotional impact is through constant spaced repetition. So my goal for us in the next ten minutes that I have here is for me to teach you all how you can actually transform that belief or transform the beliefs of your sales team, your intake team, your lawyers, your staff to actually start gaining the success that you want in your firm by rewiring those beliefs that you have. Now, this is actually based in my real life. This is me back in the days of grinding it out, when I first opened my law firm, it was 2018. I was trying to get the success that I wanted. I was a new criminal defense law firm in town, and I was doing all my own sales calls. And I remember I would come in and I would enter these sales calls and it would be going great. I would talk about how awesome I was, everything that I'd done as a Da and a defense attorney in my other firm.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:08:45 But then I get to price and I would stop a little, I would stumble, I would rush really quickly into saying, okay, but I also have all these 12 different discounts that you can do, and I can put you on a 1500 month payment plan, and we'll be good to go. These beliefs that I had about success were holding me back. I really, really wanted success in my firm, but the underlying belief was that sales was difficult and success was hard. I need to tell you guys something. Everything that we've heard during this conference is true. There's all kinds of things out there that can help you, but true success in your firm equals sales. That's it. If you're not selling, you're not lawyering. Because if you don't have clients, you don't have a firm. So in order to actually have all of the things that you want to utilize, all of the tools that we have available, you have to make sales. And in order to make sales, you have to rewrite those beliefs that you have about money.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:09:39 Now we're going to repurpose this triangle. When we're looking at this. Let's call this a belief triangle. And let's say that belief is in the center of the triangle. I'm going to teach you all a tactic that you can use to actually rewire your beliefs. Because If I say change your belief. You're like, all right, well done. Changed. You can't actually just sit there and change your belief unless you've got some superhuman power. Unless you understand how you can actually use constant spaced repetition to change those beliefs. When we're looking at beliefs, the way that we can tell what we believe is a human being is you look at your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. Your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions will tell you what it is that you believe. So when we're looking at this belief, let's say the belief that clients don't have money to hire us, first you need to say, okay, this is the belief I'm going to identify this belief. And I'm going to look at what are my thoughts, feelings and actions.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:10:32 I'm thinking, well, clients can't really afford me. I'm going to get on this call. But they have a public defender and I know they're not going to have any money. They're just price shopping. I'm thinking, I don't know if this person's going to hire or not. I'm going to try, but who knows? The thoughts are there. The feelings are this feeling of anxiety like, I've had this great call, but now I've got this anxious feeling and I don't really want to go forward because I don't know if they're going to reject me and it's going to be a pain in the butt, and I'm going to have to do 12 more phone calls. And you've got this feeling of anxiety. Your actions are doing things like not doing follow ups, not answering the call, not calling you back a second time to say, hey, did you change your mind yet? Are you going to buy? These are the things that are showing us with that underlying belief is that people don't have the money.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:11:13 Now how do we change this? We change our thoughts, feelings and beliefs or our thoughts, feelings and actions to change the belief. So if we say, okay, when we're looking at this, my thoughts were no one has the money, I'm going to change my thought to consciously think clients hire me every single day. And the feeling that I had, that feeling of anxiety, the kind of nervous energy I'm going to get myself into a physical state, a feeling, a nervous, excited energy and be excited to change the lives of people. Then, when you're doing actions, instead of hesitating to follow up or choking on pricing, you're going to have strong quotes. You're not going to waver in your pricing, and you're going to follow up every single day for the first week. You do these things because these are the things that start rewiring the belief. You can't just suddenly decide to change your belief. I wish you could, but you can do things that will tell your subconscious, this is the belief that we have.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:12:09 So what you do is you do these new patterns. You identify the patterns that you're engaging in, and you consciously change them now through constant spaced repetition. What you will do is you'll constantly reinforce these patterns and your new belief will start to become embedded. This is how you actually change a belief. You hear all these like, I'm a I'm a mindset junkie. I'm a coaching junkie. I love it. But you hear all these Law of Attraction things that people talk about, like vibrate your way to success. If you sit there and think about millions of dollars falling from the sky, it will fall into your lap. It's only. It's only half true. You can actually create money, but what you have to do is you have to believe it. And in order to change a belief, you need to have some actions that help you change that belief. Just deciding to change a belief doesn't work. You need to convince your subconscious that this belief is real, and the way that you do that is you change your thoughts, you change your feelings, and you change your actions.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:13:04 And through constant spaced repetition, changing thoughts, feelings, and actions will change the belief because your subconscious takes anything you put into it as real. Now I will tell you this actually works. This is a chart of the success that my law firm has had. This is looking from 2018 all the way to 2025. We have grown exponentially and it's because I learned how to change my beliefs. Now, just like that triangle that we saw, you're always going to initially see the white triangle. It's always there. You've got this habit recognition, this pattern recognition that's been passed on from your family. You can't change that, but you can consciously change the belief. You can consciously change your thoughts, feelings and actions to rewire those beliefs. And once you rewire those beliefs, you can experience massive growth and success without changing anything else. And no offense to my wonderful marketing people, but without spending any more money, you can just convert the leads that you actually have coming in. When you teach your team how to come from a place of assuming that this person on the other end of the line is going to hire.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:14:08 Assuming that you can help this person believing that everyone is hiring all the time, believing that you have the ability to help this person on the other end of the line, and coming from a place of success, instead of these old patterns that our parents have given us of making money is hard, or success is hard, or people are always looking for a deal. Now, the way that I like to describe this is you can just make a little diagram. And I know it seems silly, but actually from a psychological perspective, if you write it down physically, write it down without AI, without doing anything other than handwriting, it works faster. But what you do is anytime you have a belief that you don't want a belief that you want to eradicate. Draw this triangle and write your belief in the middle. You identify that belief and then step two, you map out the thoughts, feelings, and actions that show you what this belief is. Once you identify those thoughts, feelings, and actions, then do the opposite.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:15:03 Actively engage in the opposite. So in the example of a sales call, what this looks like if you have your team. And this is particularly interesting when we have people from, let's say, a third world country that you've hired through a VA service, you have someone who barely makes 20,000 a year selling a $20,000 case. You've got to work on their beliefs. You've got to change it because they can't outsell their own potential income without changing that belief. So have them that map this out. And what you do is you have them actively work on this new belief. It's very simple, but it just takes constant spaced repetition to change. When you say, well, change your feeling, you can actually change your feeling. You can get yourself into a positive state before you get on the phone. Have them play some music that they like. I have one client that I have go run a lap because she likes. She's a runner. I don't know, that's crazy. I don't understand it. But she goes and she runs a lap and gets her endorphins up, and she's in a positive state when she answers the phone.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:16:00 And it dramatically changes things because your beliefs really do control the success of your firm. So once you identify the thoughts, feelings, and actions that reflect the current belief, flip the script on them. Change your thoughts, feelings and actions and you will change your belief. The key is it must be through constant spaced repetition. You must continually do this. One time is I'm going to do it, two times isn't going to do it. But you do this for a month. Your sales will dramatically change, I promise you. My firm, we had a 17% conversion rate and we went to 74% on average when we started working on these sales techniques. This is the foundation of it, but it does work. Now, I will say it is not your fault that you have these beliefs, but it is your responsibility to change them. Yes. Your parents embedded these thoughts and they didn't mean to. But this is just a subconscious thing that has been passed down. These thoughts and feelings of a lack of success.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:16:56 It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility to change it, and it's your responsibility to change it not only for you, but for your team as well. Because once you get your team actually engaging in these habits and changing their beliefs about success in the firm, your firm can experience massive amounts of success. Now, this is part one of about 12 million that I like to talk about with sales. And I really wanted to talk to you guys for a long time. But Tyson said I couldn't have two hours. So what I did is I fudged it and got an extra two hours. If you go to this QR code, I have put up a 90 minute video that I've made. It's super raw. It's nothing polished. I'm not a marketing person, but it's going through all the practical things that you can do after you have changed your belief. We talk about intake, we talk about sales, we talk about helpful tips. It's all free. The video is there without even you having to enter anything.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:17:47 I know we can say, hey, do this and put your number up here, and then we'll collect all your information and spam you. It's just on the video link. It's not anything else. However, I do have a download as well if you all are interested. Totally free for you guys. It's looking at metrics that you need to be monitoring in your sales and intake so that once you've changed those beliefs, you can actually start tracking the success in your firm. And it's pretty robust. I apologize, I'm a little extra. I like to give you as much as I possibly can, but if you go to this link and you download that and you watch the video and you still have questions, just email me. I'm happy to help you guys with anything I can, because I truly believe that there are some fantastic marketing companies here. There are some fantastic tools here, but until you change the actual process of converting the clients and getting the success in your firm that you deserve, you're going to flatline.

Alexis Austin Litle 00:18:34 So anything I can do to help you all, please let me know. I'm happy to be of service, watch the video and have some success in your firm, and make sure you tell your parents it's all your fault. Thank you.