How To Rebound From The Hidden Costs Of A Bad Hire

What do you do when you hire a person that does not fit your needs? Don’t fret – it happens! Let’s figure out how to fix it and review actions you can take to avoid this pitfall in the future.

In this episode we discuss:

  • Getting the right people on your team.
  • Transforming your business through the people you hire.
  • Having the right mind frame around what to do when you have made a poor choice.
  • 3-Key Strategies for rebounding from a bad hire.
  • Elevating your leadership as you hire.

Allison Williams: [00:00:05] Hi, everybody, it’s Allison Williams here, your host of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you to grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.

 

Allison Williams: [00:00:28] I have talked a lot about hiring, and I’ve talked a lot about getting the right people on your team because it is such a vitally important part of growing and scaling a law firm, even for those of you that have just gotten to your first part-time hire. Maybe you’re at that place where you’re kind of crossing over from deciding whether you need to extend the hours of your virtual or maybe add your first full-time employee. Some of you have lots of team members already, and you’re at the place of saying, How do I transform my business through the people that I hire? So hiring is something that all law firm owners, if they are truly going to have a business, will have to encounter and have to optimize at some point in the ownership of the business. But one of the things that I have seen a lot lately, a lot in these social media streets is people talking about hiring the wrong person and how it has shut them down, right, how it has stopped them from having the excitement and the energy for the law firm. Stop them from moving forward with aggressive growth goals, stop them from taking a new work or just the retraction that we’ve seen in the marketplace that a lot of people are saying, Oh my God, it’s so hard to hire right now. I’m just, I’m having to turn away work or I’m having to, I’m having to make do and I’m having to work harder than I want to. So I wanted to give you some thoughts around rebounding from bad hires, because if you don’t get yourself into the right mind frame around what to do when you have made a poor choice or where someone who was the right choice at the right time for the business that you had, but is no longer right for the business that you are creating. When you don’t recover from that fast enough, it tends to linger in the air, right? And I’m going to use somewhat of a crass reference now because I think a lot of us have heard it before. If you’re an adult, so if your kids are in the room, you might want to tell them, listen away for a minute kids and send them out for a second, right? It’s kind of, it’s kind of the statement of like, how do you rebound from a bad relationship, right? The best way to get over and a bad guy is to get under a new one, right or to get over.

 

Allison Williams: [00:02:52] The best way to get over the last guy is to get under a new guy, right? And there is some truth to that right? And I don’t mean that in the, in the literal sense of what that statement implies. I mean it more in the sense of like whenever we are moving ourselves into action and we start shifting into action, meaning we start assembling the resources that are necessary in order for us to create the goal law firm, you’re going to encounter the inevitable problems of hiring poorly, right? And I say that because there’s a, there’s a few things at play, right?

 

Allison Williams: [00:03:31] So the first thing is that we can only hire if we, if we are for most of us, if we are really thinking about what we need right now, probably always going to hire the wrong person. Right. And I say that knowing that I have done this before, I have hired some amazing people that were very much, I need this right now hires. And then ultimately, they’ve been with me for a long time, right? I have, I have one. One of my attorneys, she’ll hit eight years next month, so I know that there is times where you can happen upon a good hire, even when you’re not hiring well. But we don’t want to take a chance on all of those poor hires that will likely result from this process. When you were very much thinking about today and not thinking about the future, not thinking about what you are creating, not thinking about the goal law firm you’re thinking about the law firm of today. And when you think about the law firm of today and you solve today’s problems, tomorrow’s problems are oftentimes a misfit for the hires that you made of today. So we want to be thinking about what we are creating. We want to be very intentional about that and we want to make sure that we stay in the energy of moving forward.

 

Allison Williams: [00:04:49] One of the things that we’ve experienced in Law Firm Mentor this year is that we’ve had some of our folks cross over the seven-figure mark for the first time, so we’re really excited that we have several clients that became seven figure business owners this year. And we had almost 20 percent. A total of 17 percent of our clients actually doubled their revenue this year. So when you think about close to 100 law firms that we service across the country right now, that number is not insignificant. And whenever people are having conversations with me or other members of our team about what it is to be a client of Law Firm Mentor and they ask the question, Well, how do you, how do you get people to double like, you know, I want to do that? Or how do you get people to that seven-figure mark? And there’s a lot that goes into it, but the thing that consistently comes up is that these people, the people that are growing and doubling. These are the people that consistently show up and keep going, even when shit goes wrong. Ok? When things go wrong, it’s very, very easy, very easy for us to kind of need a moment to like, go within ourselves and lick our wounds and feel bad about it. And then we start overthinking the process. And then the next time that it’s time to step out on faith and make that next bold move to replace whatever problematic person or problematic entity or problematic process did not work out for us before, what we will often do is we will justify stopping by virtue of saying either I’m tired and I’m entitled to stop, or we will say to ourselves, I need to figure this out before I make the same mistake again. And the figure it out first and then take action mindset is problematic for a whole host of reasons, right? It’s great for you as a lawyer when you are litigating and or transacting and or negotiating and or servicing a client when you are in that mode and you are trying to get to a great result for a client, it’s great for you to think about how to solve the problems.

 

Allison Williams: [00:06:53] But I want you to ask yourself this question, right? I want you to ask yourself, Do you stop practicing law until you are the best lawyer you can ever be before you take on another client so that you can give the most exceptional lawyer to the next client? Or do you say the practice of law is just that? It’s a practice. We have malpractice insurance for the very reason that we protect the public from certain problems that may come from just being human and not having it all figured out, or even if we do have it all figured out. Sometimes stuff goes wrong, right? Because human beings make mistakes. We want to have protection for the public for that reason. But we don’t say to lawyers, you have to be your best one hundred percent perfect lawyer that you could ever be before you can serve a client or else none of us would be serving clients because we’re always growing. Right? So I want to give you today three key strategies for rebounding from bad hires, and I want you to take these to heart as you are growing and scaling your law firm so that as you are in the hiring process, as you are in that growth and developing process of growing and creating more in your business, you don’t get stuck in the stop and think about it. Try to perfect myself first mindset before you add people, which ultimately adds profits and helps you to grow your business. All right.

 

Allison Williams: [00:08:17] So the first strategy I want to talk about is that you have to refuse to personalize the experience. Now I know this one can be tough, right? We talk a lot about different resources here at Law Firm Mentor that I give over to you guys to think about one of my favorite books, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. You know, not don’t take things personally is one of those agreements, but. I think a lot of us, even when we intellectually understand the value of that, we still struggle with it because when you think about it, especially in a smaller law firm, when you’re bringing someone into your law firm, you are really bringing someone into your space, right? It’s and this is true and when I say your “space”, I’m using air quotes here when I say the word space. You know, this is true, whether you have a virtual law firm, you have a traditional brick and mortar law firm or maybe even have a hybrid, right? When you bring someone into your, your law firm, your business, your business is your baby. For most small law firm owners, right, this is the thing you have created. It’s your space, you own it and you feel very protective of it. So a lot of times when we don’t feel that we are at the place where we would like to be. A lot of us have image issues associated with that and we don’t want people from the outside of our space coming in and then seeing us in a less than perfect state, right? We don’t want them to see that we don’t have all the answers, and we don’t have all the systems drafted, that we don’t have the 40 page or one hundred page or five hundred page, detailed, keynoted, indexed employee manual bound leather with gold engraving on the front, right? We think about all this perfection that we are requiring of ourselves as par for the course of being a quote, good business owner. But the reality is, you know, a person can come to you at any time on your journey. And if they are the right person for where you are in your journey, they’re going to fit with where you are in your journey, right? And I remember this so poignantly the very first time that I hired. I hired a lawyer, and I’m still friendly with this lawyer to this day, even though his time in my law firm was short-lived, but I remember thinking this lawyer is such a great lawyer, if I could just be better for him, right? If I could just give him more resources, more structure, more guidance, more of my personal time, more of the systems and the structure in the forms that are in my head about how to handle certain cases. If I could just hand that over to him. He would be exceptional, right? He was already a very, very good lawyer. But there was a disconnect, right? Because I didn’t have the type of law firm that he required in order to be his best self. And the challenge that I felt was that I had done him a grave disservice by not being quote good enough for him to want to work in my law firm. And I remember very distinctly having a conversation about this and, and having this conversation actually with him many, many years after the fact. And you know, we had we kind of had a very personal conversation. I won’t share it all in great detail, but I’ll just say that there wasn’t a there were there was a point of awareness where I said, you know, I was at a certain point on the journey and you came to me at that time on the journey. And sometimes no matter how exceptional a person is, they’re just not right for where you are on the journey. But there will be other people that come in when you are similarly not structured, not organized, not systematized, not highly developed, and you don’t have it all figured out and they will come and they will be perfect for where you are on the journey based on where they are on the journey, right? And so I just, I think about that because I remember having this great sense of guilt and responsibility to be America’s next top business owner when I hired people.

 

Allison Williams: [00:12:24] And it’s just not true. Right? And the more personalized I made it, the more I made it about me as an individual when I was hiring people, when I was deciding to let people go. All of that energy, that was then. Held in my body that depressed me, that made me not sleep well, that made me not eat well, that made me kind of internally self-abuse about whether I should ultimately move down the line. It made me less effective in the things that were already in my zone of genius, right? It took away from what was good by virtue of spending so much energy debriefing and kind of kicking around in my head all the things that were wrong. So I had to ultimately grow out of that, and I had to learn that there is a part of this process of growing a business that is not having it all figured out when you are on the journey and you have to accept where you are on the journey and to, to a certain degree, forgive yourself for not being where you are to be in the future yet.

 

Allison Williams: [00:13:33] And the sooner you can do that and release it and say, OK, this is where I am in the journey, this person can’t work here. This person can’t work for where we are in the journey. But that’s OK. That doesn’t make them a bad person. It doesn’t make them a bad paralegal, lawyer, marketing assistant, file clerk, whatever they are. It just means that they’re no longer a fit or they’re not a fit for the company that I have right now. And that’s OK because as soon as you go through that experience, what you start to learn, what starts to become institutionalized in you is all the ways that hiring for where you are today is not going to work. Because when you hire for where you’re going and you bring in a person who’s not a fit for where you are because they’re further advanced down the line, there’s a friction that’s created that helps you to start solving the problems of where you’re not today, so you can get to where they are right now. And if they are the right person for you, that friction is going to cause them to help you to create all of that system, all those systems, all that structure, that you’re going to ultimately need in order to get where you are.

 

Allison Williams: [00:14:45] So the other thing I want to say about not personalizing the experience before we move on to strategy number two is that you have to debrief what went wrong with this person. Ok. Debriefing is not from a place of beating yourself up. It’s not about making you wrong or making them wrong. It’s simply asking the question Why did this person work well here? Why did this person not work well here? And sometimes those answers are going to be self-evident, right? Sometimes there were some huge red flags that you saw that you just chose to ignore because you were desperate. But a lot of times there are things that you didn’t even know that you needed until that person came into your company and you saw, Oh yes, we absolutely have to have someone who has X. And when a person does not have X, that person is not going to be effective for us in the business.

 

Allison Williams: [00:15:36] All right. We’re going to take a quick break and when we come back, we’re going to dove into.

 

Allison Williams: [00:15:45] Money comes from marketing and sales. Free time comes from people and systems. Law Firm Mentor teaches a four-pillar system that covers marketing, sales, people, and systems. Every year we offer four live, interactive retreats dedicated to each of these key areas. All retreat attendees walk away with our proven system for crushing chaos in its tracks and moving them forward to the life they want.

 

Allison Williams: [00:16:10] Hi, my name is Tiffany Powell. I’m the owner of Tiffany Powell and Associates PC, located in Chicago, Illinois. One of my favorite parts of attending Marketing for the Masters is the camaraderie because I’ve been able to attend other retreats. It’s always great to come back. It feels almost like a family reunion. And not to mention Allison, I can never forget her. Her personality is so vivacious, even online and in her videos you can feel it, but in person, it’s like she’s speaking to your soul.

 

Allison Williams: [00:16:40] To learn more about our next retreat and how it can help you achieve your business goals. Text RETREAT two nine zero eight two nine two three five two four. Again, that’s nine zero eight two nine two three five two four, and one of our growth strategies will be in touch.

 

Allison Williams: [00:17:03] All right, and we’re back now strategy number two for rebounding from bad hires in your law firm where we’ve already talked about strategy number one, which is refuse to personalize the experience, strategy number two is to elevate your leadership as you hire. Ok, now this goes back to something that I said is we were introducing today’s topic, which is that a lot of lawyers decide that they’re going to press, pause and go get, get themselves right before they hire the next person. It’s almost like they feel like there’s a kind of, you know, kind of like a punishment phase, like a, you know, when you’re a kid, you did something wrong. Your parents would say, go sit in your room and think about what you’ve done. A lot of lawyers will do that, right? It’s like there’s this mindset of, Well, before I hire the next person, I got to like, make sure I get everything like all cleaned up so that I don’t make the mistake of hiring and, you know, hiring the wrong person again. And a lot of times we can intellectualize that as looking at what was the, what was the lost income that I had.

 

Allison Williams: [00:18:10] Now the beautiful thing about hiring is if you do it correctly, your hires are going to produce more money. Ok? If you just hire somebody and say, I got to have six months in the bank in case this person doesn’t work out and the salary of the person for the first three months is going to be paid to them before I realize that they’re not going to work. And then I let them go. And then I say, Oh, I just lost three months of salary. If that’s what’s going on in your business, you are hiring incorrectly. Ok? Every time you hire a person, what they produce should be a part of what you compensate them with. Ok? In other words, you shouldn’t be taking out of what’s already in the business and bringing a person in every person from file clerk to paralegal to secretary, to lawyer, to marketing assistant, to office manager. Every person that you hire produces more economic value, or it’s not the right hire, OK? Or rather, I could say it’s not the right hire. It also could be that you’re not structuring the role correctly. Now, if you need help with structuring your roles in a way that is going to produce for you more profit, I invite you to have a call with us. We can certainly talk you through some strategies on how to do that.

 

Allison Williams: [00:19:20] But the one thing that we will often see lawyers do is they will come and they will say, Oh, I can’t, I can’t invest in coaching right now. I got to go hire somebody, right? The hire is going to cost some money, so I’m going to have to take money to pay for that person first before I divert my funds to something else. And when I have that personal conversation with them, my answer is always if you are thinking of the person that you’re hiring as an expense, meaning they’re going to cost you something, not an investment where there’s going to be a return in excess of what you cost, what it costs you to get that person. Then you are hiring wrong all the more reason why you need coaching now, and you don’t need to wait for coaching because if you’re going to structure the role in a way that it’s going to cost you money first, then you ultimately are making more mistakes that have to be cleaned up later. You’re going to make it worse for yourself, not better for yourself. But the reason why people have that mindset is this, this idea that there’s kind of like a definitive cost, right? The cost is dollars and cents going out to hire the person. And then there’s the potential return on investment, but they can’t quantify it, right? So it doesn’t become real. It becomes kind of a well, I may make more money from this person or I may not.

 

Allison Williams: [00:20:35] I can tell you every single time I hire someone, I know they’re going to make more money than I pay them, right? Because that’s how we design the role. That’s how you hire a person in a law firm in particular. But that’s really how you hire a person generally. So you have to be thinking about the idea that when you’re bringing in people to your business, you’re always going to be in a state of growing right? If you wait to get yourself to the leadership metrics that you desire to be at in order for you to attract and hire the right people, you’re never going to be able to hire because you’re never going to be done growing as a leader, right? One of the, one of the greatest responsibilities that you will ever have as the leader of a small business is to be the leader, right? It’s a greater calling than management. It’s a greater calling than the actual legal work you will do because it touches upon so many things. You are not just creating a billable hour or a dollar collected or, or a roll configured. When you are a leader in a business, you are actually creating little ripple effects that are going to run through every single person that encounters you. That means every employee that encounters you and how they show up in the world and every person that they are married to, every person that they parent, every person in their community. You are at the top of a tributary or a series of tributaries that run out and through your community.

 

Allison Williams: [00:22:03] So the leadership aspect is something that you are always going to be refining in yourself. But you have to recognize something right? As a divorce lawyer, I say it all the time attend does not marry a Jew. So if you are finding that the people that you have hired in the past were bad hires or they seemed perfect, but they didn’t work out, I want you to ask yourself, would you want to work for you? Seriously contemplate that, right? Are you the leader that your ideal employee wants to work for? And if you’re not, then I want you to think about the ways in which you can shift that immediately. Now, some of the, some of the things that come to mind are probably pretty easy to change, right? It could be anything from I’m a recluse who goes into my office and doesn’t talk to people, and my team feels disconnected from me. Or it could be. I don’t give enough compliments or attaboys or added roles, right? That can be something very simple, literally. I have a calendar in my office now. I don’t use it anymore because my role in the company has shifted to the point where I now manage my managers and I oversee my manager, so I don’t have direct points of contact with everyone in the team the way I used to.

 

Allison Williams: [00:23:22] But we do have a process for using a calendar to give praise, right? To make sure that people are getting those atta boys and atta girls as they need it, because that was an area where I knew I needed to grow. That was something that’s not instinctual for me, and I don’t know that it’s ever going to be instinctual because even though I’m filled with gratitude all the time for the team that I have, my mindset, my orientation, the way that I was raised was you get an atta boy or atta girl when you do something miraculous, all the daily stuff that you might want out of the boys and girls for. We’re not giving those to you. You know, you’re not getting those until you do something really big. You know, you don’t get the A for effort, you don’t get the trophy for participation. So because of that, my mindset is, well, I don’t need those things. So I keep myself going internally, but everybody doesn’t have that mindset. A whole lot of people grew up with those atta boys and atta girls, and if they don’t have them, they’re not going to be their best selves, right? So that was an area where I had to be very intentional to say I will rise to the occasion of leadership to make sure that I’m giving people the emotional needs that they that, you know, I’m fulfilling their emotional need for support and praise in a way that is going to make them their best selves or contribute to their being their best selves, right? But that was a choice, right? It wasn’t something that I said, OK, I can’t hire people until I rewire my brain so that I am giving praise on a regular, consistent schedule for all the people that report to me. If I had waited until that became instinctual, I would never have grown my law firm because it’s still not instinctual, right? There are times where you’re going to have to say there are areas where I am always going to be a work in progress. And here’s how much better it can be. But until it’s there, we’re going to create a process. We’re going to create a workaround. Right? And that workaround gives you the opportunity to always be growing right again, it’s that friction that comes it’s that disconnect of where I need to be is 10 steps ahead, but I’m back here. There’s a huge chasm between where I want to be and where I am. And as a result of that chasm, I am going to hire a person because that’s going to create that inner friction in me that I have to grow.

 

Allison Williams: [00:25:40] Right? It becomes a necessity. It’s a sloppy and frankly a lazy way out to say I won’t add a person because I don’t want the pressure of having to evolve and to a better person. I’ll just stay back here in my own mediocrity, and I won’t add team members because I’m not good enough and I don’t want to be. Right? And when I say it is sloppy and lazy, I mean that with all due respect, and I say that really thinking about myself in the process, I used to have a very myopic mindset and my, my mindset was very much around, you know, I can’t change these people and they add too much frustration and too much stress. And what I realized was what I was doing was I was stymieing all that was within me in terms of creating and growing. I was not giving over to the world the gifts that God gave me because I was saying, I’ll just stay small because I don’t want the headache. And here’s the thing it stopped being a headache when I stopped defining it as a headache, right? When I started looking at it as an opportunity to grow instead of a requirement to grow, that friction stopped being painful. The friction was still there, right? Because there was still a problem to be solved. And by the way, if you are in a business, that’s what you’re doing. You’re solving problems all day, every day. Ok? Even when you have a happy, well-functioning, well-run business, a highly systematized, highly profitable business that runs without you, right? Even when you arrive. Your business is an ecosystem that generates problems. You solve problems for a living, OK? Whether you solve big problems or small problems is up to you, but you’re always going to be in a state of solving problems. And here’s the problem with solving problems that are small problems. When you solve small problems, you don’t make progress, right? All that you do is wear yourself out down in the weeds of those small problems. When you start solving seven-figure problems because you have a multiple seven-figure business. That is where the fun starts, right? That’s where those creative faculties are ignited as a result of you having to think differently and be more strategic and evolve as a person. And that’s where life gets to be a lot more fun.

 

Allison Williams: [00:27:56] Ok, now we’re going to end today with our third and final strategy. We’ve talked about strategies for rebounding from your bad hires. We’ve talked about refusing to personalize the experience and elevating your leadership as you hire. This third one is one of my personal favorites. Ok? Is that you got to keep hiring as you evolve? Ok, now this again is consistent with our theme for the day that you have to keep going, but it’s something very particular, right? Remember earlier I talked about the practice of law and how when we are practicing law, we see it as a practice because we know we’re always going to get better right with every case, with every nuance, with every new issue, with every new adversary, with every new conglomerate of facts, with every new emotional issue, with every new judge, right? There’s always going to be some little tweak on the last variation of that the area of law that you handle, where you’re going to say, Ah, this is a little bit different than last time, and here’s what I’m learning from this, right? And I want you to think about the fact that we don’t stop practicing in order to get perfect before we serve the next client. You should also think about your business that way you don’t get to perfect before you hire the next employee. Right? You don’t get the perfect before you market the next activity. Right. One of the things that I’m in a process of doing right now is changing both of the websites in both of my businesses. So you have to love. There’s never like, say, Oh, we’re going to change one thing over here and this business over the other business is going to be like hanging out, doing fine. Yeah, we don’t. We don’t do that to change a lot of stuff all at once in both businesses.

 

Allison Williams: [00:29:42] But the beautiful thing is that I have great teams in both businesses, so we can do that, right? But right now we’re changing both of our websites. And so one of the things that have been coming up as we have been evolving the websites, both of them is I have had the very uncomfortable reality of right now we’re hiring somebody pretty high up the food chain in Law Firm Mentor, we’re hiring a COO. And so I’m meeting with COO candidates and you know, of course, they’re doing the research. So they are going onto our website and, you know, every time somebody sends me an email that says, Hey, there’s this typo on the website or, Oh, this, this, this sentence right here doesn’t quite make sense or, Oh, this link is broken on the website. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. I absolutely hate it. I love, that I’m, that I’m interviewing people of such caliber that they’re doing the research to actually read the website so they can become familiar with the company so that they can say, Yeah, this is a place where I see myself fitting or not, right? I definitely want people to be doing the research, but there’s a little bit of pain, a little twinge that I feel when people point out what’s wrong in the website, not because I feel triggered by the fact that there’s problems on the website, but because it points out to me areas where we need to grow, right, things that we need to change, areas where we need to improve.

 

Allison Williams: [00:31:03] And when I think about those areas that I need to improve in the website, right? And the website, by the way, is just in this instance, I want you to think of it as a metaphor for your law firm in general, right? When I think about here’s this, here’s this disconnect, right? Here’s this problem that a person is seeing, right? They’re seeing the imperfection, right? And I guess I think of it as if my website is just out there and people are going to it, but they’re not pointing it out. I don’t know that they’re seeing it. I don’t feel that the same. But in this instance, people are pointing it out to me. So I see it and I feel it. It’s like, Oh, nails on a chalkboard. I wish it was perfect, right? I wish it was where it needs to be. But the beautiful thing is that as that moment hits right, as that feeling comes in, as that awareness. Comes in then I say, Oh crap, you know, I got this, this problem on my website. I am also equally aware at the same time that here’s a human being who would be coming into my ecosphere to help me solve the problem, right? And so I want you to think about your business that way when you think about the idea that your business is in a constant state of evolution. It’s never going to be solved. It’s never going to be fixed. It is always going to be available for consumption by people who can be available to make it better. Ok? Again, it is always available for consumption by people who can come in and make it better. When you see it that way, hiring the next person becomes an imperative. Right? So if you hired a secretary who didn’t work out the next thing that you do as soon as that person is gone is you clear the energy and by clearing the energy, I don’t mean you start burning some sage. Some of you, some of you might be some sage burners out there. If you’re a sage burner, that’s great. That might be how you technically clear the energy. But when I say clear the energy, I mean, I want you to get right in your head. I want you to go into your thoughts and I want you to say, All right, that person is now gone. The next person is my next opportunity to solve the problem of fill in the blank. Right. Whatever that person’s job was, whatever they did, the next person is an opportunity for you to step into a next opportunity. Right? There, person. The person is a placeholder in your world in this moment, right? They are not here yet.

 

Allison Williams: [00:33:33] But when you go out and you seek that person, you get the opportunity to better your best over the last, over the last person. Even if you thought the last person was phenomenal, let’s say it’s your, it’s your, your tried and trusted paralegal of 10 years and you love her more than life itself. And she’s not happy and fulfilled in the law anymore and decides to do something else with her life, right? Even if you’re not happy that the person who is, is leaving, is leaving, sometimes we’re happy people are leaving because, you know, you’re firing them for malfeasance. But whether you’re happy or you’re not happy with them leaving, they’re gone right? And now there is a hole there. But that hole creates space for you to grow and not just grow quantitatively wise, but to grow into the business that you are creating. So we referenced earlier the need to do a debrief, I want you to think about the debrief process is looking for the opportunity for your business to up level, OK, the opportunity for your business to go where you desire it, to go through that next person. But that requires that you continue to hire as people leave your business. If you wait, then what tends to happen is the problem of whoever is no longer there anymore. Oftentimes busters. Right? And you then either duct tape a solution by taking another employee and plugging the hole with that person, or maybe even you.

 

Allison Williams: [00:35:00] You might default into doing some things that you didn’t have to do when that person is no longer here. And now you have two problems, right? You have the problem of solving whatever that person’s leaving left for your business and you have the problem of all of the depression, anxiety, frustration, anger, resentment that has built up in you. If you’re doing that work or that’s built up in another employee, if you’ve shifted it onto them. So we want to get out of the energy of looking for duct tapes for solutions, and we want to actually go for the solution that you require for your business. All right.

 

Allison Williams: [00:35:39] Today, we have been talking about how to rebound from our bad hires. We have covered that you need to refuse to personalize the experience. You need to elevate your leadership as you hire and you need to keep hiring as you evolve.

 

Allison Williams: [00:35:54] And if you are someone who wants to create more for your law firm, if you’re struggling with how to get to that ultimate dream law firm on the other side of the, of the identified goal that you have for yourself, then we’re here to help just reach out. You can schedule a call with a growth strategist in our team here at Law Firm Mentor. And we’re happy to help you walk through that. All right, everyone. I’m Allison Williams and I’ll see you next time.

 

Allison Williams: [00:36:26] Thank you for tuning in to The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast to learn more about today’s show and take advantage of the resources mentioned. Check out our show notes. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, take a moment to follow the podcast wherever you get your podcast and leave us a rating and review. This helps us to reach even more law firm owners from around the country who want to crush chaos in business and make more money. I’m Allison Williams your Law Firm Mentor, everyone. Have a great day!

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Allison Bio:

Allison C. Williams, Esq., is Founder and Owner of the Williams Law Group, LLC, with offices in Short Hills and Freehold, New Jersey. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, is Certified by the Supreme Court of New Jersey as a Matrimonial Law Attorney and is the first attorney in New Jersey to become Board-Certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy in the field of Family Law. 

Ms. Williams is an accomplished businesswoman. In 2017, the Williams Law Group won the LawFirm500 award, ranking 14th of the fastest growing law firms in the nation, as Ms. Williams grew the firm 581% in three years. Ms. Williams won the Silver Stevie Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017.  In 2018, Ms. Williams was voted as NJBIZ’s Top 50 Women in Business and was designated one of the Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs and Business Owners. In 2019, Ms. Williams won the Seminole 100 Award for founding one of the fastest growing companies among graduates of Florida State University.

 

In 2018, Ms. Williams created Law Firm Mentor, a business coaching service for lawyers.  She helps solo and small law firm attorneys grow their business revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.  Through multi-day intensive business retreats, group and one-to-one coaching, and strategic planning sessions, Ms. Williams advises lawyers on all aspects of creating, sustaining and scaling a law firm business – and specifically, she teaches them the core foundational principles of marketing, sales, personnel management, communications and money management in law firms. 

 

Contact Info:

Book: The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz

Text Us at 908 292 3524

Text Retreat to know more about the upcoming one.

Book a Session with our Growth Strategists

https://lawfirmmentor.net/speak-with-a-growth-strategist/ 

Scheduler: https://meetme.so/LawFirmMentor  

 

Snippets

00:14:54 (41 Seconds)

Debriefing is not from a place of beating yourself up. It’s not about making you wrong or making them wrong. It’s simply asking the question Why did this person work well here? Why did this person not work well here? And sometimes those answers are going to be self-evident, right? Sometimes there were some huge red flags that you saw that you just chose to ignore because you were desperate. But a lot of times there are things that you didn’t even know that you needed until that person came into your company and you saw, Oh yes, we absolutely have to have someone who has X. And when a person does not have X, that person is not going to be effective for us in the business.