Great Practice. Great Life. by Atticus

Here at Great Practice, Great Life, we believe that building a successful law firm is not just about being a great lawyer and entrepreneur. It's about building a great life. One way to do that is by taking care of our bodies and prioritizing physical health. Today, I brought on a guest who helps people do just that. Jeff Life is a medical doctor and has a Ph.D. When he was in his fifties, he completely turned his life around. He transformed his physical well-being and ultimately won a national competition for fitness and health. Today, at age 83, Jeff is still as healthy as ever and is still actively practicing medicine full-time. He is joining us today to share his strategies for living a healthy life and to tell us how he's pursuing his goal of living past 100. Tune in to learn from Jeff and his incredible expertise! In this episode, you will hear:

• How Jeff got involved in the fitness industry.
• How his medical practice shifted when he transformed his physical health.
• Why getting rid of visceral fat is so important.
• Why nutrition is so crucial to health.
• How to protect your arteries and reverse any damage already done to them.
• How to make cardio less boring.
• How to prevent yourself from losing muscle mass as you age.
• The protection muscle tissue provides.
• Why Jeff decided to get into martial arts.

Subscribe & Review Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. ⭐Like what you hear? A quick review helps more people find the show.⭐

If there's a topic you would like us to cover on an upcoming episode, please email us at [email protected].

Supporting Resources:

https://atticusadvantage.com/

Curious about growing your own practice without burning out? Contact Atticus to see whether our law firm coaching can help you strengthen attorney success, refine your law firm business strategy, and build a practice that actually supports your life. This podcast for lawyers is part of our broader legal podcast library, offering practical insights on how to grow a law firm through stronger law firm leadership, law firm pricing and management, smarter marketing, intentional hiring, efficient operations, healthy law firm culture, and sustainable profitability, all while addressing law firm burnout and the realities of modern practice.

You can also sign up for our newsletter to get practical insights on how to grow a law firm: from law firm leadership and management to marketing, hiring, operations, culture, and profitability, so you can build a Great Practice and a Great Life.

Mark Metzger is an attorney, law firm owner, and my good friend. He started out working for a huge law firm in Chicago and went out on his own in early 2006. When he first began his solo practice, it was just him and his computer. However, in less than seven years, Mark grew his practice tenfold. In this episode, Mark is telling us the secret to his growth. He's letting us in on the strategies that allowed him to grow his law firm so exponentially. Tune in to learn the three changes you can make to grow your law firm.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Mark's career journey.
• How he came to hire his first employee.
• Why hiring employees is an investment, not an expense.
• How to hire strategically.
• Why working in your practice is as important, if not more important, than working on your practice.
• Mark's unique workflow process.
• How innovation has improved his firm.
• What "mind the gap" means as a law firm owner.
• How we have to shift our mindset and skillset as attorneys after graduating from law school.

Subscribe & Review Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. ⭐Like what you hear? A quick review helps more people find the show.⭐

If there's a topic you would like us to cover on an upcoming episode, please email us at [email protected].

Supporting Resources: https://atticusadvantage.com/

Curious about growing your own practice without burning out? Contact Atticus to see whether our law firm coaching can help you strengthen attorney success, refine your law firm business strategy, and build a practice that actually supports your life. This podcast for lawyers is part of our broader legal podcast library, offering practical insights on how to grow a law firm through stronger law firm leadership, law firm pricing and management, smarter marketing, intentional hiring, efficient operations, healthy law firm culture, and sustainable profitability, all while addressing law firm burnout and the realities of modern practice.

You can also sign up for our newsletter to get practical insights on how to grow a law firm: from law firm leadership and management to marketing, hiring, operations, culture, and profitability, so you can build a Great Practice and a Great Life.

Why is it crucial to build a great life? Can't you just give your all to building your practice, make a lot of money, and be content with that?

No. That is the biggest lie and the most fatal mistake I see lawyers making. This is exactly why I started this podcast. I'm creating the show I wish I had when I started my practice, one that explains why you need to work on creating a great life and how to begin. In this episode, I'm diving a little bit deeper into why I started this podcast and what I hope to get out of it. I'm also telling you more about what you can expect if you keep listening in and what you will get out of it. Finally, I'll give you three challenges that will help you get started in building a great life and a great law practice.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Three key reasons I started this podcast.
• What you should expect from this podcast.
• Three challenges every lawyer faces when they start a process of growth.
• Why your firm's growth is capped by your personal skills.
• The difference between legal skills and business skills.
• Why you need a great life to build a great practice.
• The four cornerstones of growth.

Key Quotes:

[4:36] - "The ability to implement change is correlated to the time that you have to invest in implementing change."

[5:08] - "You're stuck. But you're not stuck because you're stuck. You're stuck at a level of thinking. You're stuck at a level of time management and focus skills that keep you where you're at."

[9:28] - "The more that we expand your ability to focus and be a better time manager, the more we open up space in your calendar for change."

[12:11] - "Most lawyers make the assumption that if they make good money and they build a great practice, everything in life will take care of itself. So they assume that if… I'm making good money, then I will have a great life. It's a fatally horrible, stupid mistake. What happens when you make that mistake is that you build a practice that enslaves your life; your life goes to serve your practice and you get lost."

Subscribe & Review Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. ⭐Like what you hear? A quick review helps more people find the show.⭐

If there's a topic you would like us to cover on an upcoming episode, please email us at [email protected].

Supporting Resources: https://atticusadvantage.com/

Curious about growing your own practice without burning out? Contact Atticus to see whether our law firm coaching can help you strengthen attorney success, refine your law firm business strategy, and build a practice that actually supports your life. This podcast for lawyers is part of our broader legal podcast library, offering practical insights on how to grow a law firm through stronger law firm leadership, law firm pricing and management, smarter marketing, intentional hiring, efficient operations, healthy law firm culture, and sustainable profitability, all while addressing law firm burnout and the realities of modern practice.

You can also sign up for our newsletter to get practical insights on how to grow a law firm: from law firm leadership and management to marketing, hiring, operations, culture, and profitability, so you can build a Great Practice and a Great Life

As a very reserved, introverted person (with a speech impediment to boot), I'm not the likely candidate to start a podcast. I was questioned a lot as I began the journey of launching this show. However, I have a message I want to share with the world and, more specifically, with my fellow lawyers. This message gives me a driving passion that helps me overcome my limitations and get out into the public sphere to share it. What is that message? If you're focused on building a great practice but neglect your real life, you will never know true success. We need to build a great practice and a great life at the same time–in other words, life in practice. That's what this podcast is going to be all about. Throughout each episode, I'm going to share shortcuts, strategies, and guides to help you build a great practice and build a great life. Tune in to learn more about what that will look like. In this episode, you will hear:

• More background on the substance of and motivation for this podcast.
• My first incredible experience as an attorney.
• How chaotic the first two years of my career were.
• How I decided to open up my own practice.
• How I had to shift my paradigm when I opened my practice.
• The importance of self-reflection as a lawyer.
• How your ability to lead and manage becomes the cap on the growth of your firm.

Key Quotes: [2:09] - "As lawyers, we get so obsessed with building a great practice, we never focus on building a great life. And, really, the secret is to build a great life and a great practice at the same time."

[4:58] - "I ended up finding a job with a litigator, one firm in Tampa, Florida. They had four partners and probably five or six staff. It wasn't a big firm… they offered me a job and I gratefully took it. My starting salary was less than the receptionist."

[11:43] - "The whole time that I had been in law school, I was focused on achieving becoming a lawyer. And when I got out, I focused on achieving becoming a partner. And Covey's book allowed me to really appreciate and realize that I hadn't really thought beyond becoming a partner… I got an opportunity to really look at what I wanted my life to be."

[16:13] - "Most of your customers… don't know whether you're a good lawyer or a bad lawyer. They do know if you don't return a phone call on time, they do know how the office answered the phone, they do know how the customer service works… They have a different way of judging: not how smart you are but how you treat them."

[23:39] - "Our growth will be capped based on our leadership lid, not based on our marketing, not based on our website, not based on the quality of work we do but based on how we think about how we manage other people inside our practice."

Subscribe & Review Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. ⭐Like what you hear? A quick review helps more people find the show.⭐

If there's a topic you would like us to cover on an upcoming episode, please email us at [email protected].

Supporting Resources: https://atticusadvantage.com/podcast/

Curious about growing your own practice without burning out? Contact Atticus to see whether our law firm coaching can help you strengthen attorney success, refine your law firm business strategy, and build a practice that actually supports your life. This podcast for lawyers is part of our broader legal podcast library, offering practical insights on how to grow a law firm through stronger law firm leadership, law firm pricing and management, smarter marketing, intentional hiring, efficient operations, healthy law firm culture, and sustainable profitability, all while addressing law firm burnout and the realities of modern practice.

You can also sign up for our newsletter to get practical insights on how to grow a law firm: from law firm leadership and management to marketing, hiring, operations, culture, and profitability, so you can build a Great Practice and a Great Life

What if you could hang out with successful small and solo law firm attorneys, ask them about their successes and failures, their business strategies and mindset habits; then take an insight or two to guide your own growth in your practice? That's what we do each week on Great Practice, Great Life. Hosted by Steve Riley –– former trial attorney and lawyer coach for more than 20 years –– every episode is an in-depth look at how to work less while maintaining high client service standards, reduce your stress levels while growing your income, and find time to make changes when you are time-starved. The goal is to provide strategies to help you balance your lives and grow your practice.