Top tips from Matthew Davis.
1. Figure out your word problem.
I have my word problem up here. And some of its qualitative, some of its quantitative and entire A players. And then get the attorneys and I’ll just say x leads in a new market, why leads and established market close at 30% utilize, which means make sure they’re billing, you know, 95%. And, and, you know, I just walked through the, you know, what, what the numbers have to look like for us to be successful.
2. Learn how to delegate and understand the difference between delegation and abdication
The other one or number two would be really learn how to delegate and understand the difference between delegation and abdication. So abdication is oh, I don’t want to do this, I’m gonna give this to somebody, just just go handle it. Now delegation is, okay, here’s what we need to do. This is the job function that needs to get done.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, attorneys, work, book, life, jim collins, scaling, talking, lawyers, recruiting, catastrophes, law firm, fit, call, coach, practice, business owners, good, team, eos
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:00
Welcome to the Better Business better life Show. I’m your podcast host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. In this podcast, I interview business owners, iOS implementers, and business experts who share with you their experiences, tips and tools to help you create not only a better business, but also a better life. At the end of each show, you will have three tips or tools that I get share that you can implement immediately into your life. If you want more information or want to get in contact, you can visit my website, Debra dot coach, that’s D B ra dot Coach, please enjoy the show. And today I am joined by Matt or Matthew Davis, who is the CEO and owner of Davis Business Law, which is actually a law firm practice over in the US that’s got eight branches, 16 lawyers, and I’m guessing a whole team of support staff as well. Welcome to the show, Matthew,
Matthew Davis 00:50
Thank you. It’s great to be on a New Zealand show. It’s expanding my worldwide reach after Tasmania and London, Australia. So it’s been
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:01
You’ve been you’ve been to all of the kind of the main body speaking countries outside of the US from the sounds of
Matthew Davis 01:07
The Anglosphere as we call it so
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:10
Excellent. Good. Hey, look, I know that you’re a lawyer by trade, but you’re a lot more than that, right? Because you’re actually an entrepreneur, you have built this business up from this from the ground up. Can you tell us a little about your journey to get to where you are now and a little bit about how that’s been?
Matthew Davis 01:29
Well, I’m kind of not joking. When I tell people I had a midlife crisis and started a law firm, which you know, better. Things are a lot more constructive than things a lot of guys do. I was a lawyer in a small city in my hometown, which I like live in everybody’s like, why do you live out there? And like, because I like my three minute commute. And one day i i stumbled onto a coaching company and they said, why don’t you go start start a law firm. And I said, Okay, and, and I had a great practice, okay, but a practice is different than a business. You know, I practices take care of professional services all day long. And, you know, I had a very sophisticated marketing strategy for that practice, in that I wasn’t in the phonebook. I didn’t have a webpage. So I’m joking, when it was sophisticated, there was no marketing strategy. I just had repeat business. And all of a sudden, one day, it just sort of snapped. And I turned that practice into a law business. And here we are eight years later, and 30 some employees and we grow at about 30% a year. And we just map it out and figure out how to go do it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:56
That’s awesome. And so what was that, that moment that that made you decide to change from being just a practice into being a business?
Matthew Davis 03:05
I was at one of the conferences, and I just, I was talking to some other lawyers. And I said, Why don’t you grow up, go grow your practice into a business. And it was it was really kind of that simple. And, you know, lawyers tend not to think business wise, I mean, I’ve always been a business, all your top business law and so on. But I had just never spent a lot of time thinking about it, because I always made a good living. And then it just sort of struck me one day, and I was I didn’t have any staff at that point in time, because I just downsized, and I tell a lot of business people that I say there’s there’s two ways to make money, good money in business, they really small and tight or grow it. And the middle is not pleasant. Because you know, in the middle, you’re adding a lot of non revenue staff. And you know, my friend Greg Crabtree who wrote simple numbers, calls that the Badlands and yeah, I really think that’s true. But
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:17
I completely agree. I mean, I think people sort of think that I don’t want to get my business any bigger because it’ll become more complicated. I have more staff. But actually, as it gets bigger, it becomes easier.
Matthew Davis 04:27
Truth. Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s true. Except, you know, and I think you’re, we’re not disagreeing. It’s that middle part. Crabtree maps it out in America, maybe between 1.5 to three or $4 million in revenue. You know, you’re at that point you’re starting to add. You’re probably clo function, your CFO function, probably some bookkeeping, maybe HR, and you know, those those are expensive positions to fill. No, but as the owner of the business, you just can’t do all those things once you start to grow it. And so yeah, that that middle is unpleasant. And you know, I can tell you from personal experience, it was really unpleasant for us. And then confirming what you just said, once we’ve gotten past that, yeah, my life is a lot better.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:25
Now, I’m just making little notes here that we had a quick chat about. You’re also an author, I forgot to mention that in our introduction. So you have written a book called preventing stupid is that right? Yeah.
Matthew Davis 05:38
It’s okay. So that books called The Art of preventing stupid, and you can grab it on Amazon. And it’s, it’s what it is, is it’s a book about teaching business owners or managers how to think about preventing problems preventing business problems before they strike. Because one of my thoughts is, there’s not that much new under the sun, it’s, you know, the same business problems happen time and time and time again. But business owners tend to be very aggressive going forward, and what their, if what they you know, about their strengths and their opportunities, but they tend not to think very much about their weaknesses and their threads or their vulnerabilities. And so as a business law, you’re trying to be proactive with our clients, we say, Okay, guys, let’s tap the brake. And let’s develop some tools, which is what that books about, of how you can brainstorm and then develop a plan of dealing with those vulnerabilities. So you can capitalize on your opportunities.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:57
Okay, so what do you think are the some of the biggest mistakes that businesses tend to make?
Matthew Davis 07:03
Well you know, the, the easy one that we see all the time is getting into business with people that you don’t need to get into business with. Because you know, you’re starting a business, you’re apprehensive, you’re a little concerned, you’re scared, you’re intimidated. And so you’ll bring somebody else in, and you think it’s shoring up your strengths or your weaknesses? And my thought is that’s generally just complicating your life. So we’re, unless it’s a sophisticated set of people working together who have done, you know, several businesses, wow, we really discourage people from doing that. Because we see it all the time. And we do a lot of business divorces, and which is in a formal legal name, but that’s what it is, you know?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:05
Yeah. So you’re talking about people specifically, who go out and find a co founder or an investor or somebody who wants to come into the business in a formal relationship sharing kind of perspective as opposed to having an employee. Right.
Matthew Davis 08:21
Exactly. And, and that kind of dovetails in to how one of the core things that we teach, and I teach, and my team teachers, in working with businesses, there’s three main things you need to brainstorm about, about how to protect yourself and one is the catastrophes you could call it the sucker punches, the disasters, you know, pick a word I call it catastrophes, you know, just what what are the things that you need to either prepare for or prevent? And that let’s let’s look in that category. Now, the second category of things you need to brainstorm about is, what are you ignorant about, which is really just a maybe more negative way of saying what skill sets do you need to acquire, to get where you want to go in your business? And I call that ignorance because I’m trying to agitate business owners. I’m trying to go come on guys. Let’s permit these stupid mistakes, right? And so let’s fill in a brainstorm about catastrophes brainstorm about ignorance. And you know, one thing people will do that’s really unconstructive is let’s bring somebody in that we just need for a short time when maybe we really just need a consultant. Or maybe we just need to go to Amazon or to the local bookstore and buy every book we can about the subject until we understand it, and understand how to acquire that skill set. By the way, the third thing we teach people to look for is when, when when they’re being inept, and which is really, when you’re starting to slack off on the skills you already have. And you’re just getting sloppy. So I guess what I’m getting to is we we read, and we plug in with a lot of Eos and scaling up coaches, where you all are strategic planning, we kind of do the negative planning of what can go wrong, if that makes sense.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:36
Perfect sense. Yep. So you’re already aware of the EOS and the scaling up structure? And that’s I think what I was asking the question is, like you’re talking about, obviously, in the business, we do need to build up that team of people who are going to support us to grow from being a sole practitioner to being a true business. But it’s really when you get into relationships, legal relationships with people so shareholdings found co founders, that kind of stuff, where it is just like a marriage, right? And I think we tend not to approach it necessarily the same way. I mean, you wouldn’t go and marry somebody without spending a fair amount of time dating them understanding that you share the same kind of values, that you’ve got the same vision in life, and that you want the same things. And then after you’ve dated, you might get engaged for a while, and then eventually you’ll get married. Whereas in business, people, I think what you were saying is they sort of see they’ve got this this weakness or this gap that they need to fill, and they bring somebody in to fill it when maybe it was just a short term thing. Maybe it was, they didn’t need to bring them in as a partner in the business.
Matthew Davis 11:37
Yes, you, you’ve hit it exactly on the head. And yeah, and then you know, you’re there together, you’re, you’re in the business together. And you know, by metaphor, somebody’s not doing the dishes, and you get sick of doing all their dishes, and cleaning up all their messes. They’re not taking out the trash, but they’re still taking half the profits if, you know, if they’re 5050 owners, and you know, then you’ve got disputes about who’s getting a lot salary even before the profits. Oh, it’s just a nightmare. And, again, there’s there’s exceptions to that rule, but as a general rule, particularly with startups, gosh, we discourage people from doing that.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:24
Yeah, I know that when I work, I mean, I used to do a lot of work with startups, not so much these days. But in the past, I would actually, you know, I’d say to them, you’ve got to treat this as seriously as a marriage. And you need to be really, really careful. Because, like you said, if when, if and when it ends, it’s going to be like a divorce. And so you need to know what you’re getting yourself into, before you get into it.
Matthew Davis 12:48
That’s, that’s why we call it a business divorce. You know, it’s a colloquialism. They find I think I said that word, right?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:55
Yeah, absolutely. Like, it’s the other kind of mistakes that people sort of tend to make when they are because I think you’ll you’ve done the classic thing. I mean, with the E Myth revisited talks about moving away from being a technician to actually growing a business and you’ve done that very successfully with your law firm. What are some of the challenges and potential risks that people need to look out for when they’re on that journey?
Matthew Davis 13:21
Wow. And that’s yeah, that’s funny, I was just talking about a myth. The other the other day, I was thinking about it yesterday. And I was thinking about yesterday, because Incidentally, I, I kind of, I still do a little technical work, even even with the size that we are, but for what that’s worth, that I had E Myth on the brain here today, because I spent a lot of a lot of time doing technical work, but part of the reason I do that is look, I’m in a professional services firm. And my my team likes it when I’m in the mix. You know, when when I’m bringing on a new attorney, or new staff, they like to work with me they like to get part of the culture and maybe that’s the really the question on getting to, or going to the answer that I’m getting to with your culture or with your question is, one of the big things is building your culture and understanding who you are and not being afraid to just to be who you are and to be the leader. And to go Okay, guys, this is who we are. These are our values, and then to find those people that share the same values and like to work like you because we we take great pains of going and hunting for lawyers that share our values of interpolating and protecting our clients dreams. and creating solutions because we don’t want problem bringers everybody hates problem brainers. Right? You know, our clients need practical solutions. Well, most of our clients are small business people, they don’t have a budget like Exxon or BP. And, and those are two of our four core values. But we are really serious about who, you know, what our core values are, what our culture is, and who we lead on the team. And I’ve sifted through 100 resumes for attorneys in one of the cities in Texas. I’ve talked to two of them. And
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:45
Naturally say that wasn’t a fit, or why is that?
Matthew Davis 15:48
Yeah, I can see they’re not a fit. And they you know, their skill set components, because we we need kind of swiss army knife, attorneys meaning people who can do some paperwork and people who aren’t afraid to go to the courthouse if we need to. And you know, that’s, that’s a little bit of a It’s not that rare of a skill set. And we also just don’t hire baby lawyers. So yeah, 25 of those 100 are baby lawyers, I’m gonna let somebody else train them. And then once they’re, once they’re sick of those big law firms, they can come work for us, because we’ll treat them. So how do you
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:30
Ensure that somebody does share your values? Because it’s, you know, it’s absolutely fundamental, I believe, to have people who share those core values, who are on the journey with you who wants to be part of that journey. But how do you kind of test that? How do you make sure that you’ve got people that genuinely will fit into your culture?
Matthew Davis 16:49
We use two books in our recruiting one is Jeff smarts, who, and his dad was Brad smart, who wrote top grading, and top grading kind of reads like the Old Testament, and who kind of reads like the New Testament. So I use that analogy. And the real simple principle there is the leopards don’t change their spots, if you can see how people they stay the same over the course of their lives. And, you know, I got a resume today was kind of promising. But this woman had changed jobs every year for the last five years. And like, why would I bother you know, investing in you? You know, it’s come on. Okay, so that the other book we use is one called hiring for attitude by Mark Murphy. And it’s fantastic. Our ad is so crazy. When we when we run it in with the Bar Association’s are on LinkedIn. It’s a must law firm. It’s like, Would you like to wear a gray suit and be torment humanity are one of them geez, and prestigious law firm, you know, and it’s like just playing to their ego. And ours reads in a very conversationally, would you actually like to help people and work with people you love? Or no, it’s almost like this. And, literally, there’s a line in there that says, and we don’t hire any Dior’s as in you know, er, from Winnie the Pooh, because we don’t hire. And so when, I mean, there are half the team saw that ad and said, that’s where I want to work period. Amen. And then we have to deliver on that. And, you know, we we really work hard to deliver on that but that that’s our culture, that’s who we are. And so you know, they it starts with recruiting and I, I really do commend those two books, we spend a lot of time on that and then you know, a couple recruiting pointers we always do an initial interview on Zoom. Because it’s just a ficient and empathy you know, just an initial 30 minute get acquainted. We don’t do it by phone because you just pick up so much more. And we’re always real clear about with this is a lesson learned the hard way that we check references before we set a more formal interview. Because, you know, you’re gonna you’re gonna hear things and those are those are important, important The things to do when we’re recruiting because, you know, one, one issue is once you start recruiting, you can start to get invested in the person. And we, you know, when we find somebody says, hey, these skill sets look good, they look like they’re a good fit. And I’m just talking really about attorneys now. Then, we’re at that point, we’re kind of looking for reasons to say no. Because I can tell from experience, what people have done and how it could plug in with us. And I like people and my clo likes people. But we have learned that, you know, we just kind of want to take everybody and bring them into the tribe. But we have to look for reasons to say no, and we just went through a long recruiting process with an attorney going into a new market. And we walked away, because we just, we had four or five reasons to say now. And we were like, hey, you know, he’s just not a cultural fit. And the issue there was, we didn’t think he was a hard worker, at the end of the day. And we work hard because we like what we do. So we, you know, it’s kind of not work for us, because it’s fun. And it’s cool seeing people grow and make something out of their lives.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:26
Okay, cool. So you’re very, very careful about people before they come on board. And I think that’s a really important point that you said is that sometimes we get really invested in the process. And and you need to actually check those references reasonably early on, because you will, it’ll highlight any red flags before you get to invest it and before you kind of, you know, feel like you already entering into a relationship. So yeah, I like that a lot. And I’m actually quite keen to look at the whole book. Yeah.
Matthew Davis 21:57
Yeah, one more thing. And we always talk about money in the first interview, because you know, we do a little sales of us. And then the question is, I’m kind of proud of this question. So are you interested in this opportunity? First question, they say yes, I say, what sort of compensation level would it take to keep you interested in this opportunity? And then, you know, they answer, and they may hem and haw, and you can say, Okay, send me an email and let me know. But that has proven to be a really powerful question. Because the other thing is, we don’t want to waste anybody’s time. If if it’s just not a financial fit for for anybody. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:52
I think that makes perfect sense. And I think it’s, I mean, even coming down to the job advert, I think, is one of the most important things even sort of being honest in the job, advert about what the job really entails, what it what their culture really is like, and potentially that kind of salary range can can really help people because I always think a job adverts role is not only to attract the people that you want, but actually to repel the people that you don’t you actually want somebody reading that advert and going, You know what, that doesn’t sound like me at all. I’d hate that.
Matthew Davis 23:19
Oh, yeah. I mean, all the jerks that went to law school, and there’s a lot of them, they see my ad and they go, I hate that guy. And I’m like, I hate you, too. So stay away.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:31
And that’s what coaching is all about right? Being nebulous, but it’s about being authentic, is that actually this is who we are. And and if you don’t like that, then we’re not a fit. That’s okay.
Matthew Davis 23:40
Yeah, and that’s Yeah, that’s so important. It’s an it’s an it’s been a real, real key to our success. And our staying power is, is really amazing with the you know, the length of the attorney stay with us compared to how they just move around in the law business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:03
I’m really fascinated, you know, that this whole journey that you’ve gone on from being a sole practitioner to having a large business, have you put any kind of business operating systems in your business, because we’ve talked about iOS scaling up? What’s your experience, the business side of it.
Matthew Davis 24:19
I know this is a little heretical here, but we run scaling up just because we wish started about our second business coach was a scaling up coach. Now, I will, I’m going to pay you and you’re an ELS a compliment, because I work with a lot of a lot of my clients and and then almost everybody in my Entrepreneurs Organization chapter, Ron ELLs, and about everybody I A couple of groups that I mean, almost everybody runs pls. And I’m constantly kind of looking over the fence going, Wow, that’s pretty awesome. And, and so I could real easily be persuaded, but we are devotees of it. Right now, of, of scaling up, and I’ll tell you what we were we were talking about the differential between the 2am i e o forum meeting the other day. So that’s Entrepreneurs Organization intends to
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:39
Work closely with them. Yep.
Matthew Davis 25:41
And the one, I think there’s a lot of, there’s the one thing that I think I think ELS has a lot of things over scaling up. The one bit that we really have gotten a lot out of, with, with scaling up is the function accountability chart. And this is just this idea of boiling everybody’s responsibility down to just basically one word, I am responsible for revenue, I am responsible for expenses. So like, my responsibility for the farm is I am responsible for growth. Now, that means recruiting and marketing, if you think about it, so And right now, we’re growing so quickly that we’re all the leadership team is talking about how to parse out those those their functions. So I will spin off recruiting next year. Because I’m all likewise a believer in Simon Sirenix line of marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department. The short answer to your question is we run EO. But I’m a big fan of ELS to
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:02
Have a look. And I’ve actually, I’ve also trained in scaling up, I think that actually, it’s a great system. And I honestly say that to people, and we don’t mind you one, my biggest thing is pick a system, stick to it, use it, that’s how you’ll grow your business. If you want to pick and pick and choose and take bits from here and bits from there. That’s when things start to fall over. So yeah, I agree that scaling up is an awesome system. Personally, I prefer ELS but that doesn’t mean that you know, it’s horses for courses.
Matthew Davis 27:28
I just might as well to I’m looking at my copy of traction right over here. So
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:36
Yeah, well, maybe one day will convert to you. But in the meantime, I’m very pleased to hear that. And this is the thing that I’m really passionate about is that, you know, we put if you think back to our original analogy, you put a lot of time and effort into building your personal relationship and what your family life looks like and what you’re doing, it’s important that we have the same kind of thing in our business, you know, actually thinking about the future thinking about who we need to have on that journey with us, how do we create the right structure to actually execute on that, and because when you’re an entrepreneur, your business life and your personal life are so kind of intertwined, it’s really important to have a bit of structure in both that you can enjoy both.
Matthew Davis 28:13
Yeah, and I completely agree, it’s, it’s been invaluable to us. And it’s, it’s just one of the reasons we grow as quickly as we do. And, and, and similarly, I mean, we don’t make a lot of really dumb unforced errors, because we also play really good defense with the tools that we have. And again, my first book, which is, it’s largely about that, um, one of my rocks for this quarter is to dust off the two year old cop, you know, manuscript for the second book and get that out. So.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:55
So what’s the second book? Well, you got a title for it yet? Or do you know when it’s
Matthew Davis 29:00
Right now, it’s called the strong protected business, and it’s building on the same tools and ultimately building it out into a plan that then dovetails into your ELLs are EO strategic planning. And it just, it’s, it’s further elaboration. It’s looking at the elephant from a different angle.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:23
I love it. My whole thing is the elephant in the room. People always said with photos of elephants and things. And I think that’s what you’re you’re doing is it’s all very well having the beautiful vision about where we’re headed, but you have to be aware of the opportunities and the issues and challenges and by having that awareness of everything. It just means you can make better strategic decisions, doesn’t it?
Matthew Davis 29:44
Yeah. And you know, Jim Collins talked about that in gosh, I can’t remember, you know, maybe it was Great by Choice.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:54
By choice. Yeah. Yeah,
Matthew Davis 29:56
He talks about that as as being productive paranoia. idea that the 10x leaders are constantly going, where’s this? You know, where’s it all going to go wrong? What What don’t we get here? And? And? And that’s, that’s really Yeah, it’s that’s that’s what we do. That’s, that’s one of the strengths we bring to the table for our clients. Aside from just
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:27
This this little fun stuff. Yeah, I think I think it’s really interesting people sort of say, you know, but if I’m focusing on the negative, you know, that’s, that’s something that’s a negative and it’s like no, actually, that’s it, it’s really important that you have a complete view of everything. And as you said, those 10x leaders, they are thinking about, what if we missed so if we’re always just focusing on the positive, there’s a real danger that we’re missing out on those those crocodiles, elephants, those things that are going to actually bite us?
Matthew Davis 30:51
That is our experience? And in my experience is the companies that do that are the ones that are the strongest players on the field, and they just dominate the field. So yeah. Speaking of Jim Collins, have you seen the b e 2.0, which is his, it’s a reissue of one of his sorry, I’m kind of off on a tangent, but you’re,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:20
You’re just it’s Go Go Go Go for it
Matthew Davis 31:23
Be to point out is a reissue of his first book and his first book didn’t get a whole lot of it didn’t make a splash, like good degrade. But in this b 2.0, he augmented it or add it to it. And then he put in this little chart, and he goes, You know, I finally figured out everything that I’ve been writing about for 35 years fits into this one little chart. And I’m like, that’s fantastic, because now it all makes so much more sense. So I have it sitting right up here on my wall. And I would command a quick look at that. It really helped me understand Jim Collins’s work better. And, you know, we, whenever we do our strategic planning, that’s part of okay, how are we doing with the lessons that Collins teaches of? Okay, yeah, are are we doing a 20 mile march? are we practicing productive paranoia and all those elements?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:29
Okay, I’m definitely gonna have not looked at that. So I’m definitely look at that. So that is v two point naught. And that chart is in there. Beautiful. Okay, so you You’ve obviously can you’ve done really well, with your business, you’ve gone through the ups and downs of leading a business, what would be the three kind of key things you would share with the listeners? What are your three kind of top tips or tools that you’ve taken from that journey so far?
Matthew Davis 32:51
Oh, boy. Well, the funny thing is, I was just at a family reunion with my cousin. And we were, he’s thinking about buying a business up in Denver. And one thing I always teach young entrepreneurs, he got this because he’s a PhD engineer, said, figure out your word problem. Now, Jim Collins made he calls it your smack recipe. And now Yeah, and what that is, is figure out what your business has to do to be successful. And, you know, we all hated word problems in school, you know, if Jane is traveling at 25 miles an hour, and she has to get to Wellington, right. Okay. How are having that? You would say kilometers? Probably,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:41
Yes, of course. Yeah. But
Matthew Davis 33:44
And so, how many hours? Will it take her to get there? All right. But I mean, I have my word problem up here. And some of its qualitative, some of its quantitative and entire A players. And then get the attorneys and I’ll just say x leads in a new market, why leads and established market close at 30% utilize, which means make sure they’re billing, you know, 95%. And, and, you know, I just walked through the, you know, what, what the numbers have to look like for us to be successful. And when you figure that out, then you can start to measure it, and then you can start to manage it. And that’s just so important to understand, you know, what that long chain of, of numbers and there’s, again, there’s always some qualitative things in there, what those look like. So that’s, that’s a bit of advice. I always give entrepreneurs. The other one or number two would be really learn how to delegate and understand the difference between delegation and abdication. So abdication is oh, I don’t want to do this, I’m gonna give this to somebody, just just go handle it. Now delegation is, okay, here’s what we need to do. This is the job function that needs to get done. And here’s your KPI, your key performance indicator, go figure out how to achieve this, and I’m here to support you. But I need a report back. And, and, you know, so give me this report every week or every month. So for instance, our CEO, his job is his is his on his door, I am responsible for attorney productivity. And you know, his KPI is given this many number of hours out of the attorneys, you know, making sure that we’re hitting a good percentage of productivity and that we’re just not wasting time. And you know, and so he reports back every week, and we’ve got just a variety of reports like that. And our call intake is I want 95% of the calls or whatnot, I want the firm needs 95% of the calls on the phone, have new leads on the phone with an attorney immediately. Because if we do that 40% of the time we get the business. If not, it’s 10%. So you know, that’s, that’s a delegation versus an abdication. Here’s it,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 36:31
Pitch hobbies, it’s because I think I’ve been guilty of it in the past where Yeah, abdication is where you kind of go, I don’t want to do this, somebody else needs to do it. But the heart of the delegation is also making sure that the person has got the right training, the right resources, all those things that come with it, but being really clear about the outcomes that you want, and supporting them to achieve it. Right.
Matthew Davis 36:49
Yeah, and you know, and then, you know, the report gives you, you know, it’s a spot check, you can come back, you can, Hey, okay, how do we do this? How do we have let me let me figure out how I can help you what tools do you need, what learning what skill sets do you need to acquire? And the third one, here’s here’s your wildcard answer. We take great care of our team spouses and significant others. Because I think, I think it’s Mark Murphy, he talks about how employees always have shoves out of your company and tugs back into your company. And if you can, so we do retreats twice a year, we take spouses, we take significant others, and we want them when we dine on we have parties we have. And the reason is because I don’t want to take my employees and have a spouse at home with a bunch of bratty kids who now hates us. And, you know, I would rather than go on, oh, you know, Davis business law took me on a free vacation. And, and, you know, it’s one of the craziest simplest things that cost us a few $1,000 a year. And now we’ve got advocates at our employees homes, who are saying, the best place you’ve ever worked? Why Why would you ever? You know, yeah,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 38:31
That’s makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? But I think you’re right, it is they’re forgotten about quite regularly. And yet they’re there their support network for your employees, so that people who will, you know, allow them to work late, occasionally allow them to do their work and be in the right headspace as well, because they know your home life very much affects how you actually perform and show up at work.
Matthew Davis 38:54
Yeah, I was, I was just in Kansas City yesterday, and I took boxes of chocolates to all of our attorneys. And I said, these are not for you. And this happened to be two men said these are for your wife. And they can share them with you on their discretion. But tell them I’m thanking them for letting us borrow you. And so yeah, yeah, they tend to like
Debra Chantry-Taylor 39:27
That’s really cool. I look for some really, really good tips. So you know, figure out your word problem is smack recipe, learn how to delegate not abdicate. So be very clear about what you’re wanting the person to achieve. And then yeah, take care of the team’s spouses and significant others because then you’ve got a cheerleading squad back in their home, who’s going to want them to continue to work with you, which is always a good thing. Well, we’ve had quite a lot of cover quite a lot of things in there. I mean, we talked about the three main things like you know, recognizing catastrophes and disasters. What are you ignorant about when are you being inept there the three kind of key areas that you We help businesses to focus on. And putting that in conjunction with an operating system obviously means that you get that strength in your business, which is just amazing. Hey, Matt, I’ve really appreciated your time. Thank you very much for spending the time with me this afternoon for you. If people want to get ahold of you, they want to get your book and we’re looking forward to the second one coming out. Of course, why would they do that?
Matthew Davis 40:21
Yeah, the websites Davis business law.com, and my web or my emails, just m Davis at Davis business law. And I answer emails I, I don’t I’m not one of those guys with like, 7000 emails, I’d like 10 emails in my inbox because I just stay on top of it. It drives me crazy. books available on Amazon.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 40:45
Yeah, and that’s the art of preventing stupid. Yeah. Beautiful. I met again, thank you so much for your time. I’m a bit envious of your inbox. If I’m honest, I have not managed to stay on top of mine. That’s one of those things I need to work on. But, as he said more than welcome to email, Matt, he’d be happy to help you. Yeah, thank you for your time.
Matthew Davis 41:04
Sounds great. Thank you. It was fun being on.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 41:07
Thanks for listening to the podcast show better business better life. My name is Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m an EOS implementer family business advisor, business and leadership coach podcaster and speaker. However, I’m also a business owner with several current business interests. I’m fortunate to have live the high life with all the lifestyle, the toys, you name it, and then I’ve lost it all. Not only once, but twice in two spectacular train wrecks. I know what it’s like to experience the highs and lows. I came across EOS when they launched into New Zealand using my entrepreneurs playground at an event center in Parnell Auckland. I love the simplicity of the tools and their philosophies fitted my personal brand statement perfectly. The brilliance is in the simplicity. I’ve always been passionate about seeing entrepreneurs live the life they love. And now I help them live that EOS life doing what they love with people they love making a huge difference in the world being compensated appropriately and with time to pursue other passions. If you want more information or want to get in contact about using aos and your business, you can visit my website at Deb Debra dot coach that’s dub dub dub Debra D B ra dot coach. Thanks for listening.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Professional EOS Implementer New Zealand
Professional EOS Implementer Australia
Professional EOS Implementer UK
Professional EOS Implementer NZ
