It is time for one of my favorite episodes - the law firm quarterly report!

Yes, we are a little late to the game, with the second quarter officially ending at the end of June, but better late than never!

And, this specific report is doubly fun because I'VE GOT SOME EXCITING NEWS TO REPORT!!

Law Firm Quarterly Report

If you have been listening to The Art of Lawyering Podcast for any length of time then you know how much I love setting goals, going for big goals, and then reporting back to you on whether or not I've reached these goals.

That's what this quarterly report is all about.

And that is a big part of today's episode.

Law Firm 3rd Quarter Goals

BUT, that's not all.

I also let you in on what my law firm startup goals are for the 3rd quarter, and, maybe more importantly, I talk about how and why I arrived at those goals.

I think you're really going to like it, so listen in!

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms (you can see my latest one here and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

Law Firm Quarterly Report Transcript

Hey everybody this is Christopher Small, this is episode 134 of the Art of Lawyering Podcast. I am super pumped to be here with you today, this episode is coming out just a little bit late. If you are waiting for your regularly scheduled program. I have no excuse. Except that you know, 4th of July, I I don't know, busy. So no, no real excuse and there really should be one. But this is one of my favorite episodes of the year because we are at the end of the second quarter. We just started third quarter so super pumped up what that means we get to look back, see what we've done. We get to look forward. See where we want to go and that's what we're going to do. This is kind of like the goals post right. Now the goal post, the goals post. So I hope you had a good fourth of July by the way. You know went to the Kiddie Pride. Went to the kiddie parade. I watched a bunch of kids look like they got on their bikes for the first time, you know run into each other. Breed all kinds of havoc.

But it was pretty fun. You know kids had a great time so that's what really matters. So, but I digress right let's talk about what's going on. So I have a confession to make I did not so if you guys know the story. I sold my law firm in December of last year. Got out the plan was to start a new law firm C.M.S. law firm which you can find at CMSlawfirm.com. So go check it out and I was doing criminal offense, personal injury. I switched over to estate planning originally I was partnering up with some guys it didn't work out so about mid March I officially launched, relaunch my own firm. Just me and a lot has happened in that first quarter. Basically, you know so we have April, May and June was the second quarter and my goal for the second quarter was to get to twenty five thousand dollars in gross revenue with the firm and I must be honest, I don't think I got there but that's okay because you know some other great things happen.

And I'm not sure I have to do that April and May numbers to to find out if I even got close and I will report back to you on that sometime. Maybe actually here's the deal. I'm probably not going to report that to you and here's why. Because I don't want you to live vicariously through me. Okay, I want you to take action, I want you to be doing things, I want you to take steps and push yourself.

If you are starting a law firm or have owned a law firm for any significant amount of time, you’ve probably considered using project management software to help make managing your law firm easier.

I know I have.

The hard thing is, when you look around, there are a ton of different options out there, and it’s difficult to know which is good and which is bad.

I can’t speak to all of the other options out there, but today I’m going to tell you not just what I use - insightly - but how I use it.

Law Firm Project Management Needs

There is one thing you need to know about me when it comes to technology - I hate using stuff build specifically for law firms.

I think it’s too complicated.

I think it’s too cumbersome.

And I think it’s designed with too many features - they are trying to be everything to everyone, and it doesn’t work.

So I look outside of the legal world for my technology, and that’s where I found insightly.

Insightly meets the three basic needs I have:

Contact management;

Lead management;

Case management.

Here’s how I use it for each.

Law Firm Contact Management with Insightly

Contact management for me isn’t just about keeping people’s information up to date.

It’s about documenting each and every contact.

It’s about keeping detailed notes on their interests, family, and work.

It’s about making sure I am intentional about keeping in touch with the people that are important to my personal and professional life.

Insightly allows me to do that.

First, there is a space in each contact for all of your basic information.

Second, you can create custom questions that you can see within their basic profile information. I use this section to ask basic estate planning questions:

Do you currently have a will?

Are you married?

Do you have kids?

Do you have property out of state?

What is your approximate net worth?

Third, I can tag all of my contacts with a tag that allows me to organize and quickly see at a glance certain people. These are the tags I use:

Prospect

Financial planner

Family attorney

Personal injury attorney

Client-Potential

Client-Current

Client-Closed

Happy Hour

Database

Pro-Newsletter

Family-Appreciation

Fourth, and finally, there is a notes section and an easy email integration so I can keep everything that happens related to that contact a couple of mouse clicks away.

Law Firm Lead Management

I bet if you took the time to really look at how many leads you have come into your office that slip through the cracks it would blow your mind.

I know because I’ve started using insightly to track all of our leads and it’s mind blowing how many I would have forgotten if not for them being in the system.

For me, when a lead comes in, whether it is a referral from someone, a cold call, or anything else, it gets entered in the system as an opportunity.

Within opportunities we have four states:

white

red

yellow

green

A white opportunity is one that we’ve had no contact with yet. Our goal is to have as few white contacts as possible. They are just floating out there in the ether. We want a response.

A red contact has declined our help.

A yellow opportunity has made contact with us and set a meeting.

A green opportunity is one that has a fee agreement out waiting for it to be returned.

Can you see how easy this makes managing your leads?

We know every day we need to contact every white opportunity until we get in touch with that person to change it’s state.

We know every week we need to reach out to yellow and gre...

Here is a quick break down of the 5 keys to starting off the first full time week with your law firm assistant. To get all of the information, listen to the show!

And, don't forget, to get my law firm assistant job description and interview questions just CLICK HERE.

1. Preparation = Success

Think of your time with your assistant as if you are a coach and they are a player. It is okay to script out their day.

Make a list of all of the things you want them to do, and then prioritize. Take time for them to learn the fundamentals of each one at a time.

Watch. Do. Teach.

Come up with a couple of projects that will lead to immediate success (filing, scanning, setting appointments, etc.) Here's what my law firm assistant did on her first day:

Filing paperwork at courthouse

Kanban board from post its to white board

Close out a couple of files

Publication notice at courthouse

Reset happy hour

2. Full time does not equal work all the time.

Do not pressure yourself into making sure they are working on stuff all of the time.

The formula is that for every hour they work, you get to work on income producing work.

If worried about it, give them something to do for downtime. I give books. Here are my first three:

The go giver

Built to sell

How to win friends and influence people

3. Take it slow - Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your law firm assistant.

I always emphasize “right not fast” at the beginning.

4. Encourage questions and communication.

Ask these questions:

How is everything?

Do you have any questions?

Did you have any problems with x?

Tell me about how you did y?

The sooner you can open the channel of communication and show that you aren’t going to get mad if something goes wrong, the better.

5. Lunch.

Take your law firm assistant out to lunch on day 1, no matter what. Just you and them.

Get to know them.

Take an interest in their life and interests.

To earn trust you have to give trust.

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms (you can see my latest one here and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

Law Firm Assistant Great Start Transcript

Hey everybody, this is Christopher Small, this is episode one thirty three of The Art Of Lawyering Podcast. Hello. It's been a while since I've been here. A couple of weeks, almost exactly I think in fact and there's a reason for that. My son, my two year old son, brought home the plague. And he gave it to me. And I was, all I could do to stay upright for the last two weeks, I had a bunch of things scheduled. Meetings, presentations, events, and I did not want to break those and so what I ended up doing was just spending every open moment sleeping. Trying to get back to normal. You know, I have a six week old, seven week old at home. So we're not sleeping through the night.

So it was really really difficult for me to get the kind of sleep I needed to heal from this cold. I still have it, I'm two weeks in. I'm on the downward end of it I think but it was brutal. So I missed, I missed those, I think it was two episodes that I missed three episodes that I missed. A Friday, a Tuesday, a Friday. So I apologize for that. Promise to be here now with you for the long haul and I'm really excited to talk about what's going...

First things first, I wanted to let you know that I've decided to give away some of the resources I created to make my last law firm assistant hire.

To get a copy of the job description and list of interview questions I asked to hire my last law firm assistant, CLICK HERE.

This week was the week my new law firm assistant started. And it was great.

There were a few things I did though, to make it go as smoothly as possible. To figure out what they are, you have to listen to the podcast (or read the transcript below) but here were just a few of the topics I covered:

How to make sure your law firm assistant feels welcomed immediately;

How to start fast;

Three important things to remember to make your hire work out;

How to get them up to speed as quickly as possible; and

much much more!

To get all of that and more, just click the listen button!

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms (you can see my latest one here and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

Law Firm Assistant First Week Transcript

Hey everybody this is Christopher Small, this is episode one thirty two of The Art of Lawyering Podcast. Welcome, I'm excited to be here with you it's been a fun week. Hope you had a good one. It's hot as a son of a gun here. But I digress. I walking my way to this office right now. Think about ways I can get out of my brain what you need to hear and we're going to that right now. Before though we get going, I want, you know, today's episode is going to be part five of hiring a law firm assistant and I thought about and I thought, you know what, I bet people want to see what I used to make my hiring decisions. How it, what I did. So I'm going to give away my job description and my interview questions to you for free. To do that, all you have to do is go to theartoflawyering.com/assistant.

So theartoflawyering.com/assistant. You'll be able to get a copy of my job description and a copy of my interview questions. I share my job description with someone recently and they told me it was amazing. So if you are even considering hiring a legal assistant or an executive assistant or any sort of initiative role, then you might want to have this information. So again, theartoflawyering.com/assistant. Okay, let's talk about what's going on today so. First of all, if you missed the previous episodes, this is part five. So there are four parts before it. I talked about the beginning, creating the jobs description, and posting it. Where I did that. Setting up the interview and picking people and then the last two episodes have just been about prepping to get my assistant here.

Because I guess this is actually the first week that she started. You know, there are days when or there are weeks I guess there are days that go by, they seem like they go by very faster. Weeks that seem like they go by really fast and they are also weeks that seem like they go by really fast but have taken a long time. If that makes any sense. So to get to today, one week has felt like a really really long time for some reason this week. So, I didn't think that she had just started a week ago but she did. So that's great and we're going to run through some of the things that I did today did to try to get her started quickly to try to make sure that I was using her the best way and to make sure that she enjoyed the experience, right. So let's start right there. I think one of the most important things that ...

Today we are answering a question from the Law Firm Confidential Facebook group.

The question, essentially, is: I have a law firm website. Should I make the home page feature a contact form submission or the two button structure that I'm seeing a lot of firms employ (like this estate planning law firm)?

The answer is pretty simple and comes down to answering just one question.

If you want to know the answer to making the correct website design choices, listen to the podcast.

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

Law Firm Website Design Choices Transcript

Hey everybody this is Christopher Small, this episode one thirty one of The Art of Lawyering podcast. I am excited to be here with you today. I think today we're going to talk about is optimizing your website and approaching your website in a way that it does what you wanted to do. So there's a couple of things that I want you to think about when you are approaching your website and thinking about how to make it work for you. This is sparked by the way by a conversation that occurred in the Law Firm Confidential Facebook group.

If you want to be a part of that private Facebook group which is pretty legit. I have a lot going on there. Then you're going to want to become a member of Law Firm Confidential. In somewhere another, the problem with that is that right now there really is no way to do that. I am redesigning the website and opening up some new avenues to access some of the premium content for all of you so that you can make your firm better. So for now you're just going to wait but I did want to let you know that that's where it came from because I think it's important to give shout outs or shout out will do.

Let's talk about this. So websites for everyone are always interesting. The question that came up in the Facebook group was, you know, one of the guys is redesigning his website he's wondering if you should put a contact page up at the top sort of heavy and really record your face or if you should do one of the two button styles that is becoming more and more popular it's the way my website is design right now but the answer really is that you should do whatever works best. You should do whatever gets the action that you want. For me with what I want from my site is a phone call or a filling up a contact form is fine I would really rather have a phone call straight away because then you can gather everyone's information, you can set the meeting right there, you can have a conversation with the person, you can hopefully take next steps and move forward right there.

So that's what I want. What I typically, well the next step for me and my website redesign which is I mean my website evolution I guess is to add a pop up and I think everyone should consider adding a pop up giving away some kind of a free guide or some kind of a free e-book something that people can opt in to raise your hand and say hi. Even if it's offering a free consultation where you can, whatever it is, you want people, for me the reason I create the content, the reason I do all of that is at the end of the day to try to get people to raise their hand and say, I'd like your help. So when you design generic valium 10 mg your website that's what you wanted to do. If putting a contact form up at the top, really big long form or like takes up the whole screen works best then I would do that.

In case you missed it, here is part 1, here is part 2, and here is part 3 - listen to these first!

We're back for another installment of hiring a law firm assistant here at The Art of Lawyering. And, believe it or not, we still don't have an assistant actually working yet.

Here's what we have:

Part 1: creating and posting the job;

Part 2: interviewing and making the offer;

Part 3: pre-meeting number 1 (logistics);

Part 4: pre-meeting number 2 (philosophy, values, etc.),

Emily starts this week, and I'm excited to get her up to speed and see what she can contribute to the team.

To find out what happens, you need to listen to the podcast!

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

Hiring a Law Firm Assistant Part 4 Transcript

Hey everybody this is Christopher Small, and this is episode one thirty of The Art of Lawyering Podcast. Welcome, and strap in, put your seat belt on. Because we're going to talk more about hiring your law firm assistant and what we're talking about here the good stuff is this is I think of the part four of the process and into recap. I'm basically just walking you through what I've done. There was phases and after this episode is when the rubber sort of meets the road because Emily, my new assistant will be starting actually the day that this episode is released I believe. And should be pretty exciting but things still didn't happen in the meantime and I want to talk to you about them so that you can implement and do some of these things when you hire your new assistant.

And if you're not hiring an assistant, you're crazy. All right if you're making any kind of money, if you're feeling super busy get an assistant. It will help. I had a conversation with a family law attorney this week about this exact thing you know. A leader slipping through the cracks, calls aren't getting returned and it's because there's really not enough time in the day to get everything done and we need help and you need an extra body to do some of these things for us. So will I did, I have Emily come in for another hour or so this week just sit down and talk. And we talked a lot about sort of the nuts and bolts of things that we were going on last week this week I want to sort of turn that a little bit and we talked a lot about from philosophies.

Why I started the firm. Where I want the firm to go. Core values and fun stuff like that. This is an opportunity for you to actually be open with your people which is maybe a little foreign and all of scary for some of you or all of you. But they can really help to connect your new person with your company and really get them behind the logo. You know really get them body into the firm and what it represents. So that's what we did. I told her about what drew me to estate planning. Why it's important to me. Why I'm doing it. Talked about core values. I think I have eight core values. Humility, hunger, family first, fearlessness, ninety nine percent of what we do doesn't matter, excellent client service, don't be romantic about how you make your money, and there is one more that I cannot remember. I can see the list but I cannot see what that eighth one is but it's a doozy. Maybe you'll call me while we're talking.

So that's what we did and it went really well and now comes the hard part or the fun part of it all of that wrapped up into one. You know,

Law Firm Vision.

What is that?

How do you find it?

Where does it come from?

And what happens if you want to find it so badly but unseen forces are in your way blocking you?

That's what Eric Scroggins, the author of Vision Blockers, and I talk about on the show today.

Here are just a few things we talk about:

Networking rule of 5;

How to get financing through a bank;

The biggest hurdle to unblocking your vision;

How to deal with haters; and

So much more!

Show Resources:

ericscroggins.com

visionblockers.com

Book Recommendation - Put Your Dream to the Test by John C. Maxwell

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

In case you missed it, here is part 1 and here is part 2 - listen to these first!

We're back for part three of hiring a law firm assistant. If you've been hiding under a rock for the last three weeks I'm basically taking you through my experience of hiring my next law firm assistant.

Part 1 was about creating a job description and thinking about who I want this person to be and what qualities I want them to have.

Part 2 was all about the interview and pulling the trigger (including the offer I made, I think).

Today we're moving past the actual hiring and talking about what is probably the most important aspect of hiring a law firm assistant - we're talking about the on-boarding process. I talk to you about what I'm doing in the time between job offer acceptance and the actual start of the job.

If you want to learn about what I'm doing listen to the show!

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

Hiring a Law Firm Assistant Part 3 Transcript

Hey everybody this is Christopher Small, this is episode one twenty eight of The Art of Lawyering podcast. I am super excited to be here with you I am on the road going to meet with a financial planner who I believe is going to give me a bunch of deals this year so it's going to be pretty amazing. And this is a big part of my day, it's networking fund out the greatness tracker and I talked about it before and I'm not going to give you another go yet for the stuff but I'm putting together a killer course on networking. Okay, it's going to make a bunch of money so you have to wait for it.

Anyway but I digress, a couple things I listen to, so this is part three of hiring a law firm assistant and I went back and listened to part two. I'm like gosh, you know the content's pretty good but the energy level. So I think maybe I record. Sometimes I'll give you the pull back the curtain a little bit, sometimes I record these things in like one o'clock in the morning in my closet with everybody asleep and so I got to kind of keep it quiet I'm going to keep it a little bit subdued. Not today in the car. I want to make sure that I'm giving you my full energy.

That I am bringing it that I am letting you know how excited I am to be doing this process to be talking to you and to be sharing with you sort of my, some of my success secrets. So we're part for and the way this is kind of progressing by the way if you didn't, if you haven't gotten in now, I'm really just telling you what's happening step by step and it's working out pretty well so far because each week has kind of been a different step, so week one we had the job posting that was part one. Week two, we had the interview and hiring that was part two. Week three now, we had our first on boarding and I want to talk a little bit about how that happened and what the deal is with that.

So the, my assistant, my new assistant, her name is Emily. She couldn't start until well the start of that I have you know is June first. So this will have, this is mid May 2016, if you're wondering what day it is and so there are two weeks anyway, no matter what built in between the time that I hired her and the time she's goint to start. And I wanted it to be that way on purpose because I wanted to have an opportunity to set up e-mail counters, last pass account, and just think about how her day was going to work and make sure that everything was taken care of,

As most of you know, I sold my law firm at the end of last year and started a new one in March, 2016.

In just a little over a month I've made a ton of progress, and I've got a long way to go.

I thought now might be a good time to share my 2016 law firm goals with you on a quarter by quarter basis so you can get an idea of the things I'm working toward and the order I'm working toward them in.

As always, if you want to hear the details about my 2016 law firm goals you can listen to the podcast by clicking the link above or you can read the transcript below.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms (you can check out my current law firm here) and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

My 2016 Law Firm Goals Transcript

Hey everybody welcome to episode 121 of The Art of Lawyering Podcast. I am excited to be here with you today and excited to be talking about something that is always super fun for me. May or may not be fun for you but is a way that i definitely sort of waste some time. But also set the vision and set my path for the future and give myself a reason to come in every day and work hard. And today we're talking about goals. And specifically we're going to talk about my goals for the rest of 2016. I think it's important to be able to just hear and see what my expectations are for this year.

Knowing that I basically started this new firm. Not even January 1 but I'm really talking about March 10th or so of 2016, so like only a month in so far and I want to tell you what my goals are for this year so you get a sense of how I'm breaking down my new starting a law firm journey. So that you can you know steal what you want from this. Modify how you want, call me crazy, but every, whatever you want to do because of this is where it's going. So what I've done is basically, I broke up my goals into quarters starting with the second quarter of 2016 which is April, May, June. Third quarter would be July, August, September. And the fourth quarter would be October, November, December. Obviously, you do your twelve months divide them by four, that's what you get your quarters.

So let's just break it down, let's get into it. We don't have much time. So for this quarter's golf or so for Q2 2016, I have one goal. I have one keyword and one for main focus for this and it's foundation. I want to have the foundation of my law firm set. I want to have the basic processes in place. I want things to be running smoothly. I want the well oiled machine to be up and running. Will it be perfect in three months? No, but it can be well on its way that means having, forms in place. That means having a specific workflow. You know figured out that means, all of these kind of things. That will enhance the client experience. Enhance our experience on the back end. Get more people to sign up.

And also get more money into the office, obviously. This includes you know creating these marketing systems. Having these happy hour set up, all the stuff that I've been working on and talking about. That's what Q2 is for. And also Q2 is also about establishing expertise and building expertise. You know as maybe some of this forever obviously you know we're turning as we practice. No one ever gets the end. We're always getting better. But I want to dive in, to continue dive as I have in for the last six months or so. To build up that expertise.

The third thing that I want to do for Q2 is have my assist...

As many of you know, in January I started my own estate planning law firm.

Well, it's been going pretty well.

No, I am not rich, but I'm busy. Super busy. So busy, in fact, that I need some help. It's time for me to hire my first law firm employees.

I remember back to when I hired my first law firm employees and how terrible I was at it. I don't want to make that mistake again.

As luck would have it, a buddy of mine presented to our mastermind group on best hiring practices. I wanted to share some of what I learned with you so you can hire the best law firm employees possible.

Some of the things I talk about:

The three most important qualities of good law firm employees;

The one of those that you MUST hire for (it's not what you think);

The difference between work capacity and work ethic;

A foolproof test for work capacity you can give in 15 seconds; and

How to use Facebook to get amazing law firm employees.

To get the inside scoop listen to the podcast! Or, if you'd rather read, scroll down to check out the transcript.

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. - curious about what I do on a daily basis to create and build my successful law firm? Now you can find out first hand (and steal some of my secrets). It's called the Law Firm Confidential Podcast, and you can get access to the first 5 episodes for free by clicking right here.

Who am I? I am an expert on starting a law firm and law firm marketing. I've started two successful law firms (you can check out my current law firm here) and love sharing what I've learned so you can do it too.

Hiring Law Firm Employees Transcript

Hey everybody welcome to episode 120 of The Art Of Lawyering Podcast. I'm your host, Christopher Small. I'm super fired up to be here with you today. And we are going to be talking about hiring. The reason that I wanted to talk about this is because it's fresh in my mind. I just got through, I just got finished with my monthly mastermind meeting, it's called the club. It's built with other successful entrepreneurs, other successful business owners, it's not lawyer related.

It's all people that are crushing their industry, are going out there and doing the things that need to be done and want to share what they've learned and provide support and help for everyone else in the group. What we do have a monthly speaker. This month we had a speaker and he talked about his hiring practice which was awesome. With a little bit out of the box, only in the way that it's the refined. So that you get the best people the quickest way possible and I want to talk about that today.

So brief, so let's start at the beginning, I'm gonna try to sort of make this rocket packed and they want to do is probably create a course of it at some point. That really gets in the weeds on it and helps you figure it out. But with just this information you should be able to make your next hire, be a good one and the reason that is relevant to me too is because I'm in the hiring process. I haven't actually scheduled the, like a craigslist post we're not even at that yet. But I'm doing it like today. So okay, we're to start at the beginning, you have three qualities of a good employee. Really. Number one is experience. Number two is work ethic and work capacity and number three is integrity and character.

Which do you think is the most important? One, two or three? Come on, make a choice. Oh you said three. You are correct. For character and integrity is the number one. Here's why. If you have good experience and terrible integrity and character. It's going to reflect badly on your business. They're going to cut corners they may not do the things right. They may not treat your clients right. Blah blah blah. If you have a high work ethic and high work capacity and low character.