Speaker 1: Everyone's going to say that they care, but the reality of it is most don't give a shit. They'll say they care, yeah, we want to provide a great client experience, but they want to outsource it and say, well, can I order a gift for them or can I send them something and then they'll like me? That's not a replacement for providing great service and client experience. And I've never met anybody who could do this well unless they actually genuinely cared about their clients. I'm Michael Mogul, founder and CEO of Crisp, the nation's number one law firm growth company. I've built my business through practice, not theory. Crisp started with just $500 to my name and has grown to over eight figures in revenue over the last few years, earning a spot on the Inc 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. Our approach has been to take everything we've learned about generating massive growth within our own organization and help the country's most ambitious and committed law firm owners do the same for theirs. In each episode of this podcast, I sit down with innovative market leaders from the legal industry and beyond to learn from those who thrive in the face of adversity, challenge the status quo, and define what it means to be a true game changer.

Speaker 2: This is Emily, executive producer of the Game Changing Attorney podcast. And today we're flipping the script for a special edition episode to get Michael's take on how to create a culture of innovation and creativity, why sweating the small stuff can take your client's experience to the next level, and why settling for average is a dangerous move.

Speaker 1: Here's the thing about average. No one wants to be average. And yet, do they start to change their habits? Because if you are working like everybody else, if you are approaching things like everybody else, if you are following the herd, consuming the same information like everybody else, well, then you're going to get everybody else's results. And I've seen people that have six-figure habits and want seven-figure results.

Speaker 2: That's coming up on the Game Changing Attorney podcast. Michael, are you ready for another one of these episodes?

Speaker 1: Yes. Let's do another one. Also, before we get started, so if this is your first time listening to the Game Changing Attorney podcast, we do three different types of episodes on this podcast. The first one, which most people are familiar with, is our interview format where we've got various thought leaders from the legal industry and beyond. So it could be best-selling authors, it could be elite athletes, great trial attorneys. And those are episodes usually hit on Tuesdays. Then there's our throwback episodes, which is we've been doing the podcast now for three years. We've had some incredible, incredible guests on. So sometimes we bring those back. And then now this one, the AMMA is Ask Michael Mogul Anything. So you guys ask the questions, they text us the questions, or they submit through email, or even on social media. And we go through typically about three questions.

Speaker 2: About three. Yeah. I mean, they could be faster, but you gave such great answers, Michael. We've got to give you some time.

Speaker 1: I hope that continues.

Speaker 2: These ones are going to be awesome. And we'll get right into it. So question number one, I'd love to foster a company culture that encourages innovation and creative problem solving. How can I create an environment that supports and celebrates unconventional thinking and helps my law firm break away from the average?

Speaker 1: The first thing I would say, if you want to have the type of culture that supports like innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, your culture is always going to be in many ways reflection of you and of your team. So your environment is really a reflection of you as well. So meaning that if you want to foster innovation and creativity, are you making decisions within your law firm that are conducive and supportive of that? So I'll give an example of this. When somebody has an idea, they want to try something different, let's say they're on the marketing team, they want to try a new type of campaign. Is the answer yes or is the answer no? Or sometimes let's say they have a different approach they want to take. Are they allowed to do that? Or let's say they want to invest in some sort of education or training or development or attend a conference. Is the answer yes or is the answer no? So a lot of times it comes down to what are the types of habits and mindsets that you're either encouraging or discouraging within your firm. I remember years ago, this is when like VR, virtual reality was like, it was just coming on the scene. And although it had nothing to do with our business model, some members of our team were interested in it. They're like, what about virtual reality? Maybe there's some future with CRISPR, you know, in the virtual reality space. Perfect. We invested in virtual reality headsets. We invested in virtual reality like software, hardware, all these things just to try it out with no expectation at the time of whether there would be, you know, a potential business model here, but it was just to encourage them to try different things. And maybe there's a great idea that comes out of it. Similarly, when we do marketing campaigns, I'll tell you about 50% of them don't work at least, you know, when, whenever we're, we're trying different things, but they don't all have to work. And it's just the willingness to try different ideas, to try different campaigns, to try different strategies. I'm not trying to bat a hundred. I think that if you're encouraging people to try new things, a lot of times you're going to get that once in a hundred moonshot that just makes up all the difference. And for everything that maybe had failed that preceded it, the outsized returns that come from doing something that's truly creative and truly unique is amazing, but you would never gain that opportunity if you weren't trying different things. Similarly, right now with AI and artificial intelligence and chat GPT, one of the things that we're doing now at CRISPR is we're starting an AI task force. So putting together a team of people that are obsessed with AI, they're obsessed with chat GPT and where that industry, that technology is going and working with each of our teams in our departments and finding ways in which we can leverage, whether it's AI or even to specifically chat GPT to make the work more efficient, to be able to save man hours, to automate things more effectively. So you have to be willing to try those things. It doesn't mean that it's always going to win. So when you really get to the root of this question, it's if you want to encourage this type of culture of innovation and creativity, it is becoming perhaps less risk averse to the idea of trying something new and allowing somebody to try perhaps different approach. And it's also not taking yourself so seriously. So if you're trying to bat a hundred, you're not going to allow for wiggle room or any sort of like innovation and creativity because a lot of times many ideas don't work out. Many ideas are not effect. I think it also comes back to within your organization. How do people treat failure? How do they treat basically something not working out? Are they afraid to fail? Because if they're afraid to fail, then they're not going to try something new. So it's creating a culture where you're almost encouraging failure or you're encouraging making attempts and saying, that's great. We've just found 10 more ways that don't work that gets us closer. So now we approach when we're trying something new, we call it more of like research, R&D, research and development. I don't look at it as, oh, this has to be successful. I say, hey, this is going to give us data back, at least especially when we're starting a campaign. We may invest, let's say a small amount of budget of saying, hey, this is just R&D money. That's money that we write off entirely and say, look, I have no expectation from this at all. It's just to get data back to inform future campaigns. And now someone can try it out. They can try a new platform. They can try a new medium. They can try a new strategy, a new approach without having to be right. Because a lot of times you don't know, especially with new and emerging technologies.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's not going to work if you don't try, but you have to be willing to try and not see it as failure, but rather being able to make an informed decision for the next

Speaker 1: time. Right?

Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Cool. All right. I'm coming up with a lot of average, huh?

Speaker 1: If the goal is to stand out from, you know, let's say in quotes, what an average firm is, and you have to ask yourself, well, why would you consider them average, is because they don't care about their client experience, that they not care about their clients. Every attorney that I come across says that they care about their clients. And yet average is obviously, when you look on a parabolic curve, that's where, you know, where the majority sit. So if you're trying to separate yourself from the average, I think the first step is to really establish a baseline and to know, well, what is our client experience? Like if you say, oh, it needs to be better, well, how do you know where it's at? If it's a good experience, great experience, a poor experience, and that starts with auditing everything. I mean, one, call your law firm today, not say, oh yeah, I'll do it. I'll get around to it. Call your law firm and see how the phone is answered, if the phone is answered, what that experience is like. Secret shop your own law firm, submit a contact form on your law firm's website, see how long it takes for someone to respond to you and how they respond to you. Start doing the things that are like Schrodinger's cat, right? So meaning that it's almost like you don't want to do it because you fear how bad it's going to be, but then if you don't do it, you never have really the opportunity to know for sure and then start improving. So if you're not willing to do those things, it's probably worse than you think it is, to be completely honest. That's where it starts. Like active clients, it's auditing what that experience is for them and not just waiting until they get to the end of the case of saying, well, what was it like working with us? Can you leave us a five-star Google review? It's asking really along the lines of all the various touch points. Every time they have a call with your staff or they have a call with anybody on your team, how was your experience on that call? Maybe come up with a list of your top 20 or just even a random 20 clients every single week or even every month if you want to stretch it out and just call them and just as the leader of your firm, ask them, hey, I just wanted to check in. How's your experience been with our firm? Is there anything we can do better? Any type of feedback? One, it's probably going to mean the world to them. Two, you're going to get a lot of very valuable insights. And the worst time I think to ask someone what their experience is like is really at the end of an engagement. The best time, even if it's a poor experience, is while they're still working with you because now you have an opportunity to improve upon that experience. And then, of course, you can do all the other things like, you know, their birthdays, you send them their birthday cards, and we've had guests on the podcast talk about things that they do for client experience. They'll send client gifts and they'll send them newsletters, they'll send them mailers, they'll do like special touch points on significant events for them on like their wedding anniversaries and then things like that, their kids' birthdays, because the more you know about your clients, the more that you can make these special moments for them. But I think all that stuff is supplemental to getting the foundational aspects right, which is really how are your phones answered? How are people responded to? How are updates communicated? And a lot of times we get so distanced from this that we don't really inspect our process or really fail to understand what that experience is like for a client of asking, well, how frequently do we update our clients? And then when we do update them, how are we updating them? Is it a phone call? Is it a text message? Is it an email? Has that been helpful to them? Has it been beneficial? What kind of impact has it made? Have we gotten any feedback on it at all? And if you can get obsessed in this way, because everyone's going to say that they care, but the reality of it is most don't give a shit. They really don't. I mean, they'll say they care. Yeah, we want to provide a great client experience, but they want to outsource that client experience. Let's be real, right? This is kind of a real, real podcast. They want to outsource it and say, well, can I order a gift for them or can I send them something and then they'll like me? That's not a replacement for providing great service and client experience. Those are just supplemental things. Those things work well when you're already providing a great experience. It's like the cherry on top. But the reality of it is, is like you got to check yourself first. And I've never met anybody who could do this well unless they actually genuinely cared about their clients. And genuinely caring means that you are obsessed. You know me. I will randomly submit a form. I will randomly go on the website and start chatting on the Crisp website. I will randomly start doing these things. And it's one, because I'm a pain in the ass, but two, because I genuinely care about that experience and I know that if I'm not checking it, maybe somebody else is, but I need to know for sure. So you have to be almost like a pain in the butt in your own law firm. And that to me would tell me that you care, not just simply saying, oh yeah, you know, I care. I want to make this experience better. If you really cared, you would get obsessed with it and start looking at every single touch point, put yourself through that process, and then make sure that's satisfactory to you. I mean, check everything. Check the way, if you guys mail out a gift to the client, I've asked this on the team. I'm like, send it to me. I want to see what does the box look like? What does the card look like? How is the mailer packaged? What does the wrapping paper look like? I want to see it. I want to touch it because you got to know for sure. And we've had discussions internally of saying, oh, I don't like this wrapping paper, or I don't like the font that's used here, or I don't like the way this feels, the card stock here, or whatever it is. And you wouldn't know those things if you didn't put yourself through that process. So if you want to improve your client experience, why not make yourself the client in some ways of secret shopping your firm and putting yourself through that process? And the next step is, if you want people to provide a better experience, they need to know what great looks like. You have to have some sort of standard in place, and everybody will say, hey, I want to do it like the Ritz-Carlton. I want to do it like the Four Seasons or whatever it is. But a lot of times when you're communicating that to your team members, they don't really know, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by Four Seasons Ritz-Carlton? I don't know. So they don't have that frame of reference, and you have to really show them, here's what great looks like. Maybe book them up in a room there. Maybe put them through a Ritz training. When we do our workshops, we brought in the Ritz-Carlton to provide client experience trainings. But just someone has to really know what great looks like, and you have to have those standards in place. Otherwise, you can't just outsource great customer service.

Speaker 2: And I can absolutely attest to you checking everything. There's a section of the warehouse where we have a box, like a Michael Mogul-approved box of every single mailer that we've sent out. And they'll also look back at them, like which ones were really great, and we can use those things for next time.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we get a lot of feedback on our shirts. People like the shirts. But what they don't know is sometimes we'll go through six, seven, eight, nine, ten revisions of the shirt where I'm like, I'm going to screen print this thing. I want to wear it. I want to feel it. I want to feel the fabric. I want to see what the colors look like on it. Is the silver, is this going to have this type of sheen to it? And we'll go through revision upon revision upon revision, and they're like, oh yeah, can't you outsource this to someone? Maybe. You know, you can. But if it's your brand and it's your firm and you say you care, well, maybe you should inspect it.

Speaker 2: Would you rather send out 5,000 shirts that were just a little bit off or take the time to go through 10 different shirts to get them absolutely right? That's what we do. All right. Number three, I've grown a lot since joining Crisp and focusing on growing my business. The next big problem is that as I grow, I take on fewer cases, but my clients want me. They always ask for me, me, me. How do I get them to see that my firm can be valuable for them even without me as the attorney leading their case?

Speaker 1: I think this is a common trap that many firm owners fall into because for many, they've been the brand of their firm. Their name is on the firm. Anytime anybody sees any sort of marketing, it's them. You've created a really strong brand for yourself, so everybody wants to talk to you and everybody wants you to handle their case every single time. And for many years, I'm sure that's what was the case, you know, I guess pun intended, but that was every single time, every client that would work with your firm would work with you. But as you've grown, obviously you no longer have the capacity to work with every single client, nor should you, to be quite honest. I mean, you would never scale your law firm that way. So what do you do? And where we've seen firms achieve a lot of success with this is that you really have to start building brands around other members of your firm. So meaning that whether you incorporate them into your marketing, whether you start featuring them on your social media, on your website, it is really to convey the fact when you really get to the root of this, it is the understanding that when someone works with your firm, it is more about your values and the standards that you set and less about the particular lawyer that they work with. For example, if somebody is calling Morgan & Morgan, they're not expecting to work with John Morgan. There's no one that's expecting to work with John Morgan at this point because they've got hundreds of lawyers. But the reason why that firm generates so many cases, is so successful, has been growing year over year and love them or hate them, is the simple fact that they have built a brand around certain standards and a certain type of experience and a certain almost like trial standard, if you will, to where when you're working with our firm, here's what the experience is going to be. And it's highlighting the wins of your team members. If anything, this is interesting here because what we've started doing over the years is we'll feature different team members at our workshops. Our head of people that spoke at a recent workshop, our COO speaking at a workshop. Emily, you've conducted some of the intensives, like it's bringing other people in and sharing the stage with them and featuring them because now what you're going to communicate is the fact that, hey, I'm not the only competent one here. In fact, I think what I've done is kind of even the opposite of that. I'm like the least competent here and I've surrounded myself with competent people. I don't know that a client would necessarily want me to project manage their videos or their campaign or whatever. You probably would not at this point because the people that we've hired over the years are way better at that than I am. They're way better. They're way more patient. They're way more skilled. The people that are editing your videos are way better than I ever was at filming and editing videos. Why would you want them? Why would you want me? So it's just recognizing that like when you work with your organization and being able to have this type of messaging, here are our standards, here are our values, here's our team and highlighting them more and giving them more attention. And then when people reach out and there's no longer the expectation that they're going to work with you. In fact, why would they even care? Right? They don't necessarily have to work with you. They're reaching out to your firm because they want to work with your firm. But that takes time. And I believe that it starts by starting to feature other people and to share the spotlight and the stage with them. So don't be afraid of that. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with it, but otherwise, if you don't do these things, sometimes I'm going to listen to this and go, well, if I share the stage with them or I start featuring them and then they leave me, right, then I've just invested all this money into this person that's no longer going to be with the firm. Well, you don't have to do anything. You can stay stuck and make yourself the bottleneck of your entire law firm by just being the key point person and not featuring anybody else. But if your goal is to scale and to have people reaching out to your firm, not wanting to specifically just work with you, but just wanting to work with your firm, well, then you've got to be able to start marketing other people and presenting other people. And also the way you talk about your team members is really important because whenever a phone is answered or whenever your staff is working or they're communicating something to a lawyer, it's always building them up of saying like our team of all stars, our team of senior litigators, our phenomenal intake staff. Every time you're talking about something, you should be building them up because then even the way you talk about them, it's not just like our lawyers or whatever it is. It's like really build them up in a way where the way that you're speaking about them is helping to build their expert status and their level of authority. And that's going to help build trust with your clients. So that's the way to do it. It's not easy. It takes time. But if your goal is to scale beyond you, that's what you got to do.

Speaker 2: That's what you got to do. Well, that's three questions. Three answers. Michael.

Speaker 1: These are good ones. The last thing I'll say on this. A lot of these questions are interesting. People kept mentioning average. Average this. Average that. No one wants to be average. Which is great. That's the enemy. I love that. Obviously, it was a big theme of our conference this past November. But here's the thing about average. No one wants to be average. And yet, do they start to change their habits? Because if you are working like everybody else, if you are approaching things like everybody else, if you are following the herd, consuming the same information like everybody else, well, then you're going to get everybody else's results. And I've seen people that have six-figure habits and want seven-figure results. So again, I know we mentioned this every time we do an AMMA, but it's really auditing your habits of, okay, are you doing the things that average people do? Is your life the exact same? Hey, you know what? I ate it Monday through Friday. I kind of go through motions and then like Saturday and Sunday, I get drunk and then I, you know, whatever. And then I get the Sunday scaries and then I roll in on Monday. Is that it? Every week for you? Well, then you look around your results and you're like, why am I not making any headway? And it's because you're doing the things that everybody else is doing. And one of the worst things that's ever been perpetuated, I think in recent history, is this idea of just balance. And everybody can have different chapters in their life. I would say my life today is way more balanced than it was three, four, five years ago, but it would never reach the balance that it is today without a significant period of imbalance. And if you look at anybody who has achieved a level of massive success, I know a lot of people don't love hearing this, and especially in this day and age, but they go through periods of significant imbalance of being able to make certain sacrifices, certain trade-offs, being able to put in, let's say, additional hours, making certain commitments, making certain investments. Friends are out, they're drinking. It's Friday night. It's this and that. Oh, listen, like David Goggin said on the podcast, sometimes you have to be the one when everybody's out at the club and they're walking home from the club and they look up in that office building and there's one light on and it's you. And they're saying, man, what a savage exists up there. But that's the person who decided they didn't want to be average. So if you're stuck in this cycle of just kind of either going through the motions, you're not happy with your results, you're kind of stuck in the middle, which I think is the most difficult place to be. Average is where all the struggle is. You got the most competition. The root of all mediocrity. But if you're stuck there, it really starts by auditing your habits and surrounding yourself with people that have really gone against the grain and gone against average. The challenge is it's not very popular to not be average. There's a quote, I think it was in F1, Formula One, which I absolutely love. Christian Horner, I think he was the CEO of the Red Bull team, he said that the fastest way to lose popularity and gain criticism is to win consistently. So that just comes with it. I mean, the price of success often comes with envy. It comes with being misunderstood. It comes with people looking at you and saying, hey, I'm abnormal. Why the hell would you want to be normal? I don't understand that. Why would you want to be normal, in debt, struggling, overweight? I don't know. Like normal? In fact, they had to recategorize, this is interesting, body mass index, because what was average, let's say in the 1970s, I think the average adult male weighed 170 pounds. Now the average adult male weighs over 200 pounds. See how average has now drifted? When you go to the doctor and they say, hey, you've got average body mass index, or you've got average lab results, well, the problem with that is that they're measuring average against where society falls on a bell curve, which if you don't like where that is, I don't want any of my numbers to be average. That to me says error, problem. The sirens start going off, because as society kind of gravitates towards obesity and depression and anxiety, now the parameters of what is considered average starts to evolve as well. So don't be content with average. And I'm glad that a lot of people who listen to this podcast are going to go against average, but it really does start with auditing your habits. And sometimes you got to be a freak and a savage for an extended period of time to then gain the opportunity and the freedom to be able to then spend your time in a more balanced way. But if you're choosing the balance today, well, maybe you're just choosing an increased level of suffering with certain levels of comfort. So for example, I will say that sometimes what people do is they're going through suffering, they don't enjoy what they do, they don't enjoy the people they spend their time with, they don't enjoy the work that they do, but they'll get themselves certain creature comforts, like they'll buy a nicer car, they'll buy a nicer house, they'll go to a nicer dinner or whatever it is. And this just kind of soothes them to kind of lessen the suffering, but there's still suffering. So meaning that instead of kind of breaking out of the average and saying, well, instead of just buying all these material things or like these short term pleasures, I'm instead going to recategorize my life in a way where I'm going to go beyond average and actually be engaged and fulfilled in doing things how I want to do them, the people I want to be doing them with, and really gain that entrepreneurial freedom that I was after when I started my firm. So if that's something you're interested in, well, guess what? You're probably the right person to listen to this podcast and what I just said offended you. Well, then you don't have to listen anymore if that's how you so choose.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1: We're not for everyone.

Speaker 2: It's true. This is a podcast for the savage, not the average.

Speaker 1: There you go.

Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Game Changing Attorney podcast with Michael Mogul. If you found this episode valuable, here are three free ways that we can help you grow your law firm. Number one, download the first chapter of Michael's book at GameChangingAttorney.com. Number two, shoot Michael a text at 404-531-7691 and ask him any question you'd like. You might just hear the answer on the next episode. And finally, number three, leave this podcast a five star review so we can gain access to more influential thought leaders and bring their lessons learned here to you. For more information on this episode, see the show notes in your podcast app or visit LegalPodcast.com.