[00:00:00] MPS: Hey law firm owners, welcome to the Your Practice Mastered podcast. We're your hosts, I'm MPS.

[00:00:06] Richard James: Hey, and I'm Richard James. And today, Michael, I don't know. I think we got a pretty interesting guest.

[00:00:14] MPS: Or he at least likes to think so. No, I'm just kidding. Today we've got Mr. Richard James with us. We thought this would be a fun little episode for you guys to get a little peek behind the curtain or peek behind the mic if you're listening to get a better understanding of who Rich is and who it is delivering this podcast on a weekly basis and why we have credibility to do so.

[00:00:36] MPS: So this is gonna be a fun episode. We want you guys to enjoy this and get some insight into Rich's journey as an entrepreneur and how he is to where he is today working with law firm owners like yourself. So Rich, why don't we kick off strong and start with something. Obviously, I'm your son. I know a lot, but why don't you start with something? Maybe not everybody know.

[00:00:56] Richard James: Yeah. So, and by the way, just a plus one on what you said, since I am a [00:01:00] part time host of this scenario today being the guest, but I do want to add in our mission of this podcast is really to give value to all the Attorneys out there listening to this. And so, while our conversations are not going to be about our journey in law, it is an entrepreneurship journey.

[00:01:14] Richard James: And so, you know, if you're an entrepreneurial attorney, hopefully you'll gain some value out of today's conversation and some lessons learned. And so, something that people don't know about me, I guess two things. One, I jumped out of an airplane, perfectly good one, when I was 40 years old, to get a little adrenaline.

[00:01:31] Richard James: I tend to be a bit of an adrenaline guy. I don't drive as fast as I used to, but I used to drive really fast. I like to drive fast cars. I like to jump out of planes. I like to do those types of things, even though some things I only do once. My East Coast Italian bride and I have been together for 30 years.

[00:01:46] Richard James: And she told the guy that I was jumping out of the plane with who was in tandem with me that if the chute didn't open, make sure I died when I hit the ground because she didn't want to take care of me the rest of her life. So, that give you a little insight as to who we are as a family.

[00:01:58] Richard James: But that being said, the other [00:02:00] thing you probably don't know about me is few people do is some people know I was a funeral director. Most people don't know that I really made my first fortune as certainly as a 25 year old man, or a 23 year old man, embalming bodies for a living. So, all the funeral homes in the Scranton area, that I had as clients, I would get up at two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock and whatever, and I would embalm bodies on the side.

[00:02:20] Richard James: So I'd get two or three hours of sleep a night, most nights, and embalm bodies for, you know, that extra, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 couple hundred bucks a pop, whatever it was. And so that's how I make a living from nine to five and fortune from five to nine.

[00:02:35] MPS: Well, that's actually a pretty good segue into, I'm sure a lot of people actually don't know that about you. So that's a good segue into your journey as an entrepreneur. Now, I know there's obviously different points of this journey, but why don't from a high level perspective, you take them through the funeral home, excuse me, to where you are now.

[00:02:54] MPS: Like, well, what did that journey look like?

[00:02:56] Richard James: Yeah. I think I need to back you up just one step before the funeral home [00:03:00] only to give it some premise is that the very first thing I learned to do as an entrepreneur was to sell. Now, much like a lot of the attorneys that we have listening to this, the reason they got into opening their own practices, they didn't want to be under somebody else's thumb.

[00:03:15] Richard James: They thought if they were going to work 70 hours a week, why not do it for themselves? Maybe they wanted better pay. Maybe they wanted freedom. There was lots of reasons for them to do it. Maybe they didn't have a choice. I don't know. But for me, it was all of those things. And I chose to be an entrepreneur.

[00:03:27] Richard James: And the first skill I learned was selling. And so the very first business I owned was selling life insurance. And I learned all of the mechanics of sales and selling. And I think you can relate to that too. Right, Michael?

[00:03:42] MPS: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I would go a step further and I would say in my mind, the most important skill that an entrepreneur can learn is the skill to sell. I think it's a skill that serves entrepreneurs the best among all of the other attributes, I think that is a [00:04:00] primary function that if an entrepreneur cannot learn to sell, they better be partnered with someone that can. What about you?

[00:04:05] Richard James: Yeah, no, I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. No, I completely agree. I mean, something has to be sold at some point. And we watch that with law firms all the time that a lot of them think that people are just going to show up to their door and hand them the money. And those are the ones that have worked.

[00:04:19] MPS: If only it worked.

[00:04:21] Richard James: Well, I like that. It doesn't work like that.

[00:04:25] MPS: Me too. Because now you get the art of closing the deal, and there's something so fascinating and rewarding about that. So, you started in insurance, that's where you kind of grinded out to learn how to sell. What happened next?

[00:04:38] Richard James: Well, I was a bit of a bum. So I, you know, I didn't have my act together. And so my uncle was, my grandfather died when I was 22. And my uncle grabbed me by the shirt collar after my grandfather's funeral and said, Hey, you know, your grandfather died. I could use some help in the funeral business.

[00:04:53] Richard James: I know you don't like the business, but maybe I can show you how to be a man. Because you're not much of one right now. And maybe I can [00:05:00] show you how to run a business and it give you a skill that you can use with, you know, you obviously learned how to sell. And so, it didn't take me too long cause my life was headed in the wrong direction.

[00:05:08] Richard James: So, you know, I need a change. And so it was the right decision. I was scared to death, no pun intended, of the change because because I didn't like the funeral business. Like, I'd go see grandma and grandpa and I would just go right up the stairs because they lived above the funeral home.

[00:05:21] Richard James: And so, I would just go right up the stairs and wouldn't go through the funeral home at all. Cause I freaked me out completely. Whereas your mom, she's a nurse. She would go down in the embalming room and see the whole process. And so I was like, I always thought she was a little weird. And then, you know, lo and behold I had to do that in order to, you know, obviously get my license and go through that process.

[00:05:42] Richard James: So I got fully immersed into the funeral business and the part of the funeral business that I think, I enjoy the most. One I didn't realize I was going to enjoy was the art of it. There's obviously science to it, but the art side of it, so making somebody look presentable to their family, which I thought was really cool.

[00:05:59] Richard James: But also the [00:06:00] service side of it. So learning how to serve families in, boy, they're Darkest time, right? And how to give how to be that rock for them during difficult times. And that served me really well. So now I filled it with sales. I knew how to close deals and I use that technique in the funeral business to maximize value.

[00:06:18] Richard James: And then I learned how to serve families and I, my uncle, when he brought me in I just asked him to promise me that by the time I was 25, he would sell me my first funeral home. Cause I knew he was thinking about retiring and he did, he promised me by 25, he would and I, at 25, I bought my first funeral home from him.

[00:06:35] Richard James: And ended up with another one that I bought and he and I built one together on the side and off we were. So we were kind of, for those years when I was 20s, in my 20 something, we were working a lot of hours.

[00:06:48] MPS: Got it. And so you learned to sell in the insurance business. You learned to serve in the funeral business. So those were like the two common traits that you picked up throughout there that obviously are the backbone and [00:07:00] foundation of everything you do in a business predominantly which are two very important skills to learn.

[00:07:05] MPS: So, what happened next? You obviously transitioned out of the funeral business at some point. What led to that? And what came after?

[00:07:12] Richard James: Yeah. So, I love sales and I love marketing. And I use both of those things, obviously in the insurance business and I try to use them in the funeral business. But no matter how many times I put a sign on the building said, buy one, get one free. I couldn't really drive results like you couldn't convince anybody to really want to die.

[00:07:28] Richard James: Right. And so I get that. I was never mad about that, but I wanted to figure it out. And my uncle, you know, after we had their third location two of them, which were mine, he just said, and I was going to go buy a fourth. And he just said to me one night, you're never going to change this business.

[00:07:42] Richard James: He goes you've developed the skills, you need to go do something else. And so with the blessing of the fourth generation, I went in search of the next company I was going to buy. And I read a great book by Richard Parker called How To Buy A Good Business At A Great Price.

[00:07:54] Richard James: And I went on, took every advice he had, I called him up personally or sent him an [00:08:00] email and then he called me up and said, Hey, you sound like a young man and you sound like you're serious. And he offered to mentor me and I was like, blown away and he did. And he mentored me through my first process. And I bought my first business and first business after the funeral business.

[00:08:12] Richard James: That wasn't, it was a pet supply company. And it specialized guys. Yeah, I mean who draws this up insurance business funeral business pet supply business, right? And so I was service product, right? So I was service business insurance business service business in funeral business and then product business.

[00:08:30] Richard James: So now I had Warehouses and I had manufacturing plants in China and I had distribution centers and I had I mean, every major moving part in a business I had, we had a market, we had a sell, we had a full sales team full phone sales team, full marketing team full warehouse team, you know, the whole nine yards.

[00:08:50] Richard James: And so, I was now, I was very used to working hard. And I used my skills that I'd learned and by the way, I learned how to serve. So we applied service [00:09:00] to customer service and we had extremely high marks from our clients or customers, I should say, they were small mom and pop pet stores and they love doing business with us.

[00:09:07] Richard James: Cause we just had a crazy high service level, but now it was in the product business, something I didn't know a lot about. And I grew it, we grew it. Like 1500 percent really quickly. But in the product business, it's all about inventory, right? How many sizes, how many shapes, how many styles, how many of everything.

[00:09:23] Richard James: And so, we had millions of dollars leveraged to bring in these products, proper products. And then 2008 hit, and I liked the joke, you know, the pet supply industry is a cool. It almost seems recession proof, but at the end of the day, fish don't fetch. Right. People like their cats and dogs a heck of a lot better than they like their fish.

[00:09:42] Richard James: And, you know, if you look at today, what is this almost? Oh, my gosh. A long time later, right? How many actual people have an aquarium in their house these days? And the answer is not very many. And so that industry literally away.

[00:09:55] MPS: Not very many.

[00:09:56] Richard James: Yeah. And so that was a lesson, we lost everything in that business because [00:10:00] the recession hit and nobody were buying aquarium decor.

[00:10:03] Richard James: And we went from 3000 mom and pop pet stores in the country to 500 mom and pop pet stores in the country that had fish aquarium stuff. And we quickly went under.

[00:10:13] MPS: Well, so each business has had a primary either skill or lesson that came from it. You had sales, you had service, what came out of the pet supply business?

[00:10:24] Richard James: Avoid debt at all costs. So I promised myself any business going forward. I wouldn't have debt. Matter of fact, I just broke that rule, this last year I put a side investment into a trucking company. Cause once you start making money now, you got to know how to invest it in places that I was looking for alternative investments.

[00:10:41] Richard James: And I bought some semi trucks, long story. Suffice to say, I took a loan on them, cause I was gonna try to leverage the RIO.

[00:10:49] Richard James: And a couple things went awry here or there. It was no big deal, but I just, not long ago, about two, three, four weeks ago, I just went down to the bank and paid the note off because I [00:11:00] just hated the feeling of having the debt. I know lots of successful entrepreneurs who have debt and they use that in a healthy way.

[00:11:06] Richard James: And if you're buying real estate and you're doing it healthfully, which means fundamentally no more than like 60 percent leverage. Then you're probably going to be fine with no problems. But personally, for me, I've seen from, I saw my business get destroyed by just having way too much over leveraged, high interest debt.

[00:11:24] Richard James: And then I've watched now clients, law firms that we've worked with through the years. Think that they could finance their way to their future and to success and to their growth. And one little thing tips the scale and that debt just swallows them whole. And I've seen it happen over and over again.

[00:11:41] Richard James: And so, yeah, I'm not a fan of debt at all. I try to be as debt free as I possibly can.

[00:11:49] MPS: Understandably. So, we're pulling good lessons out of each of these. Now, obviously, I'm sure everybody's wondering, okay, funeral home, pet supply business, How did you start working with [00:12:00] law firms?

[00:12:00] Richard James: You know, so we, mom and I moved to, sorry, my wife, Maria, he's your mom but anyway, my wife, Maria and I moved to Phoenix. As you well know in 2008 and and we were, I was bald and cold and I needed a change because, you know, we had just went through this major loss. And so mom went back into nursing to make sure we paid the bills and she had health insurance while I went to figure out what I was going to do.

[00:12:25] Richard James: And I started a couple of side businesses. Again, you've heard these stories, you know, I had a day trading business and I had a foreign currency trading business and I did a few things to figure out how to make money and I tried a different variations of them and some of them worked really well and some of them have really funny stories.

[00:12:40] Richard James: But suffice it to say, I was in a mastermind. My mentor was Dan Kennedy. I was being mentored by him through his books and his newsletters. And so Dan Kennedy was my mentor and he had a mastermind program that he was an affiliate of his in Phoenix. And it was actually one of the things on my bucket list or my checklist that we were going to move.

[00:12:57] Richard James: I wanted there to be a GKIC affiliate, which was a Dan [00:13:00] Kennedy affiliate. So I was in his mastermind and I was, you know, doing what I do, which is share business thoughts or ideas of what I've gone through and see if they can apply to the other business owners. And the one guy's business was just a hot mess and he would always bring his problem and I would always give him the solution.

[00:13:17] Richard James: And then, he finally came to me afterwards one day and said, Hey, can I hire you as a consultant? And I'm like sure, why not? And so I did it and then I fixed his business and then he wanted me to have a more important role with his business. And then he said, Hey, do you think what you did for me will work for my clients?

[00:13:32] Richard James: And his clients were attorneys. And that's when I started traveling the country teaching what I call the DNA of the seven figure law firm. Because this guy had a business traveling the country teaching attorneys kind of how to market and run their law firms. And so I handled the systems and operations and lead conversion side of that story.

[00:13:50] Richard James: And so, all of my examples were from the insurance business, the funeral business, the pet supply business, foreign currency or day trading business, but I didn't have any [00:14:00] law firm stories. But despite that when I presented my first presentation, it was October of 2008 made that first presentation.

[00:14:09] Richard James: The a law firm saw me present and hired me to come in and do an audit of their firm. And I was like, wait, what? You know, like I know nothing. I'd never known nothing. And the only thing I knew about, you know, a law firm was the guy I had to hire to help me with my chapter 11 for the pet supply business that we had to wind down.

[00:14:28] Richard James: And I didn't know anything about how his firm operated. So, I'm in this business knowing nothing. I just stepped in and applied my thought processes. And that's how I got started. And I was honest with, I really never did it before, but he still wanted to pay me to come in and do it. So I did it and I wrote up my report.

[00:14:44] Richard James: It was like 10, 000 word report or whatever, and gave it to him and. And I saw him that long ago. He told me, he still refers to that report today. So, so that's what taught me that maybe I could do something with this.

[00:14:57] MPS: Got it. So we transitioned into law firm [00:15:00] owners, which brings us to obviously present day there is a I think you could probably do a podcast episode on the journey from that point to even just right now, but we're here. So right? Yeah. I mean there's a lot to it, right? There's a lot of lessons a lot of downturns, there's a lot to it so on the topic of kind of downturns and lessons what would you say?

[00:15:24] MPS: I know the recession was one of them and obviously going through you know, what you did with the pet supply company, but what would you say was one of those failure points or low points that you were able to take something from?

[00:15:36] Richard James: So the number one lesson for me that came out of the low points, regardless, was that all of these businesses, even though three were service businesses or four were service businesses, and one was a product business, they are all the same. So at their core, they all had the same fundamental principles, and that's what hit me when I was able to do this with law firms.

[00:15:56] Richard James: I was like, Oh, wait, this works. And so, [00:16:00] the part of the story that we didn't talk about was just after another guy saw me speak at one of these events and then asked me to come start a firm with him in Phoenix and proof that all my ideas really worked. And we did, we started that firm together and we literally shared an executive suite.

[00:16:15] Richard James: He sat on one side of the desk and I sat on the other side of the desk and we grew that firm from two guys in a room sharing a desk to, you know, three and a half million in annual gross sales in just a couple of years. And that was a great success story. And he was able to take vacations and make money and all that stuff he was never able to do before, but we were only able to do that.

[00:16:30] Richard James: Because, well, obviously he had a bar card, so that was the one way we were able to do it. The other way we were able to do it was because I had figured out, and I get credit for this, was that running a law firm was no different than running any other business. And in many ways, sure there are idiosyncrasy differences and there are practice area differences.

[00:16:46] Richard James: But fundamentally, this idea of a client attraction and making sure finance and profit is in the right order, and making sure the workflow's in the right order and making sure the people are in the right order. They're all the same systems fundamentally, and they're just [00:17:00] replaced it. And so that was the biggest lesson that came out of my transitions, losses, movements from one industry to the other.

[00:17:07] Richard James: And that was the aha moment that I had that I did not see. And I will tell you, I did not see it. Like I can't, this was not no, some grand scheme. Like when I was, in the mastermind program in Phoenix in 2008, and I'm just giving advice to everybody else. I still didn't see it. I heard Dan Kennedy say it, but I didn't see the application to me until I got to apply it.

[00:17:33] Richard James: And the moment I got to apply it, I was like, Oh, what I learned fixed the consulting business that I fixed, then it fixed the law firm that I fit, you know, fit. Oh, okay. So this'll work. And so that was the big, so if I can get attorneys to realize that, you know, look, if you're a business transactional attorney in Idaho and you're, and you see somebody that's a bankruptcy attorney in Scranton or a PI attorney in California, the [00:18:00] similarities that run through your business are much greater than the inconsistencies or the differences that run through your business.

[00:18:07] MPS: Well put. And it's something that I think it takes a lot of people to come around to, and usually not until they're in it in some way, shape, or form. Right? Like, we've got all the clients in Partners Club, and many of them start in Partners Club, and, you know, oh, I'm in this practice area. It's nothing like any of these businesses.

[00:18:26] MPS: And then you start to implement and realize that it's really the same thing over and over for every single law firm and really every single business. So I think that's good insight. So, we got a double whammy there. We got to learn the lesson and the aha moment. And those two were both kind of combined into one in the same.

[00:18:47] MPS: So from a success standpoint, you know, What do you do on a daily basis or a consistent basis that leads to the continued success?

[00:18:55] Richard James: Yeah, so I would tell you that discipline in my opinion is the greatest success. So [00:19:00] I was, as I said, a bit of a loser in my late teens and it was my uncle who grabbed me by the collar and he gave me forced discipline. You know, I never went to the military. I'm inspired by those who do go to the military had I gone to the military, I think I feel like I might add an easier time than my uncle gave me because he really drilled at home and, you know, acted like a drill sergeant to me and made sure he micromanaged everything I did in the early days.

[00:19:27] Richard James: And so I learned the art of discipline. Well, I learned the value of discipline. I started to see, oh, well, if you're disciplined about this and you work at it diligently, then it pays off and it equals this result. And so when I saw that and I put two and two together, I started becoming really you know, probably over the top, leaning right all the way to the right about discipline. Like, you know, you'll you could throw a rock through my window at breakfast time, you know It's seven o'clock and you can hit me in the head in the [00:20:00] sitting in the same chair drinking out of the same coffee cup eating the exact same breakfast every single day of my life for the most part.

[00:20:08] Richard James: And you will see me run the same routine and have the exact same process that I have every day. And it's not because I'm as attracted to the process. It's because I'm attracted to the results. And what I find is when I don't do the process, and it used to be, by the way, years ago, I would actually, you know, Oh, I'm on vacation.

[00:20:27] Richard James: I could take a break from being so militant. Right. And what I found is I was less happy. I was less fulfilled. I was less, my diet, my eating, my health, everything kind of went astray and I didn't feel as good. So now I even maintain these disciplines through vacation. Because I just find them to be successful.

[00:20:48] Richard James: There are still disciplines I wish I was better at. But for the most part, if I lack onto a discipline and a structure, I'm going to do it over and over again until I get the desired result. And that's likely the biggest secret I can give [00:21:00] anybody generally for life, but in business, that's been my number one biohack is discipline.

[00:21:07] MPS: So what I took out of that is if anyone's ever trying to hunt you down, you make easy on them. They know your routine.

[00:21:13] Richard James: Yeah, that's right. That's right. If you know my address. You could find me in the same chair every morning. Yes that's true.

[00:21:22] MPS: No, yeah I agree. Discipline is, I think the bedrock of just most successful individuals because it just lays the framework for everything you do. So, discipline's important.

[00:21:37] MPS: One of the other things I know we sometimes like to do is a book reference. Is there a book to the law firm owners listening to this that you'd recommend either reading or listening to, depending on how they consume the

[00:21:49] MPS: book.

[00:21:49] Richard James: I can't give you one because, so in 1993 it's earmarked because that was the year that my friends, I was in mortuary school. I was 23 years old. I was in mortuary school and my friends in mortuary school, all were going to see [00:22:00] the movie, The Firm, with Tom Cruise in it and they had all read the book and I was not a reader I didn't I thought I always said I fall asleep when I read I was bored when I read whatever it was all BS.

[00:22:12] Richard James: So anyway, they said No you got to read the book and they peer pressured me into reading the book and I read the book and then I went to the movie with them and I'm like, you know the movie was good but it wasn't anything as good as the book and I instantly got hooked on books and I was like Oh, all right.

[00:22:27] Richard James: Cool. Cause I love movies, but now I realized, oh, wow, my mind's eye is a much better movie than even the movie itself. And so, let's read more books. And so I made a commitment in 1993 to read a book a week. And so from 1993 till, you know, till recently, I will tell you, I read a book a week. Now I no longer read a book a week to completion, to fit some goal.

[00:22:47] Richard James: Now I read my books to revelation. So I'll read a book until I see a point that needs to be implemented and I'll start to implement it. And the reason for that is because I used to read books for the point of completing them so I could check the [00:23:00] box off to say that I read the book in that week. So I could be true to myself and integral with what I said I was going to do.

[00:23:05] Richard James: And I found myself burning through the books, but never stopping and implementing. And I had so many books back in the day that would have, you know, earmark bent over corners and dog eared books that I wanted to go back to, but I never actually got back to cause I was onto the next book. Right? So, now I read to Revelation and I'll have four or five or six books open on audible two or three, four books open on the Kindle at all times.

[00:23:29] Richard James: But I will tell you this. So, you're asking me the question. So what are the, there are some books that I make sure I religiously reread or re listen to. And so, they are not in any particular order. But they are Atlas Shrugged, which is a fictional book about, from Ayn Rand, about theory of objectivity.

[00:23:53] Richard James: But it is a wonderful business book and mindset about how the business owner thinks. It's a very long read, but it's, in [00:24:00] my opinion, one of the greatest books written about that subject.

[00:24:03] Richard James: And then the other one is obviously Think and Grow Rich was one of the very first book that was given to me in 1987 that took me almost four years to read, because I didn't read as I admitted to you, and it was like back in 2023 or whatever when I picked it back up again and read it because it was now part of my book a week long.

[00:24:19] Richard James: Dan Kennedy's Ruthless Management of Time And People massively important book of understanding the value of your time and how to manage time and manage yourself around time and manage your people.

[00:24:32] Richard James: Good to great by Jim Collins is just another one I'll read on a regular basis and the four hour work week and not because the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss is a hack to work four hours a week. In fact, anybody who has read it knows that the book, the title was really you know, it was just something, it was clickbait, right?

[00:24:49] Richard James: But the 4 Hour Workweek, because it just provides, yeah, it worked, but it provides some great practical advice. And it's a real head nod for me, because it was the book that helped me break away [00:25:00] from being stuck to a physical location and realize I can operate anywhere. And it was really the book that gave me the courage to move to Phoenix and be able to build my business the way that I wanted to, so those are the few I would give you to start with.

[00:25:14] MPS: All great recommendations into the law firm owners listening seriously Take those to heart very good reads. So, there's obviously a lot of things happening in our world always, but what's got you most fired up and excited today?

[00:25:30] Richard James: Yeah. So today you know, we have doubled down and recommitted to the legal niche because we're always asking ourself, can we take what we teach and teach it other businesses? Cause my business is no different from yours and we've really doubled down and we've said no, we are committed to the legal niche.

[00:25:42] Richard James: This is where we're going to be. I'm probably going to die doing this. Hopefully I don't die anytime soon, but you know, I'm probably going to die doing this. Cause I like what I do. And so do you. And now, so I'm really excited about the new framework we're developing for law firm owners to understand both [00:26:00] where they are as a law firm owner.

[00:26:01] Richard James: How are they classified as a law firm over based by taking an assessment? So working on some assessments to help them understand. Are they level one, level two or level three law firm owner? We won't get it. We won't have enough time to get into all that.

[00:26:13] Richard James: And then the secondary one is giving them a framework to understand what's working, what's not working in their business and having to be able to use assessments to identify is your client attraction.

[00:26:21] Richard James: Is it your profit or cashflow pipeline? Is it your people pipeline or is your process pipeline that's broken and figuring out how to go about fixing that. So I'm really excited about that release and what we're developing and we're in beta with that now. So that's, what's got me excited at this very moment.

[00:26:37] MPS: Yeah, I think that's a great reason to be excited. Like you said a lot to be excited about around here. And that's one of the things. So I appreciate you being on and sharing everything you did today. Obviously if people want to learn more about us, where should they go?

[00:26:54] Richard James: Yeah, I think you go to YourPracticeMaster. com, certainly, you know, listen to these [00:27:00] podcasts because I didn't want this to be, I hope this didn't come across as a pitch for us or Partners Club or anything else. I hope that they derived lessons from this as they were listening to the lessons I went through because there's some really good ones.

[00:27:13] Richard James: And they're really the foundation that I built everything on and now you build everything on. So, but yeah, go to Your Practice Mastered and check us out. Grab one of our free copies of our book or subscribe to the podcast. You can get new episodes all the time.

[00:27:28] MPS: Absolutely, and to the law firm owners listening, I hope you like this little peek behind the curtain or the mic, again, if you're watching or listening. To learn a little bit more about Richard James, the background context of kind of how he came to be and why he's working with law firm owners today and what we're all excited about around here.

[00:27:45] MPS: But if you did take the time to listen, and this is not your first time listening or watching, we have what we call the gentleman's agreement around here. So we just ask if that is you, take a moment, make sure to hit that like button, comment. Did you like this little peek behind the curtain? Did you like learning a little bit more [00:28:00] about the host or hosts behind this podcast?

[00:28:03] MPS: And then don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow button, depending on where you're watching or listening. As we appreciate it. And of course, if you know, another law firm owner or even business owner, that's a listening or could use this, share it with them. It never hurts.

[00:28:17] MPS: And I think it's a nice little touch to be able to learn a little bit more about the hosts of the show that you listen to. So I appreciate you very much for watching.

[00:28:25] MPS: Rich, obviously appreciate you sharing for everything you did. And I think there was a lot of great lessons for the law firm owners listening to pull out from today.

[00:28:31] Richard James: Yeah, man, I appreciate you Michael as you know, I really can't finish this podcast without saying thank you to you. Thank you for you to joining our company bringing your talents I told your brother one day when he said hey, well, how about giving me a job dad? And I said fine I can give you a job, but would you rather me give you a job or would you rather go out and become so valuable?

[00:28:48] Richard James: That I want to recruit you and that's what you did. You went out and made yourself so valuable that I really wanted to have you as a partner. And when that was something that you wanted to do, it became very exciting to me. So thanks for joining our [00:29:00] company. It excites me every day that I get to work with my son.

[00:29:03] Richard James: Maybe someday we'll wrangle your brother into this crazy world that we live in, but appreciate you. And thanks for doing a great interview today.

[00:29:11] MPS: Absolutely. Appreciate the opportunity and looking forward to continuing in our words, selling and

[00:29:17] Richard James: serving.

[00:29:17] Richard James: Selling and serving. All right. That's it.

[00:29:22] MPS: Thanks guys.

[00:29:25] Richard James: All right. How much time do we leave?

[00:29:29] MPS: Not enough for another episode, which is fine. We got another in the can. We can do me another day this week or next week.

[00:29:41] Richard James: Yeah. I don't know how long.

[00:29:43] MPS: Do you like it Alonzo?

[00:29:44] Richard James: That was 31 minutes.

[00:29:50] MPS: Yes. Yes.

[00:29:55] Richard James: But I think it was good timing. It was about 30 minutes. We probably could have went longer, gave [00:30:00] more, but I think we gave a couple of good nuggets today and a couple, you know, I think they got something out of it, so.

[00:30:05] MPS: Yeah. I mean, I try to keep it in timeframe with kind of where we keep all the other episodes.

[00:30:11] Richard James: Awesome. All right. So we got another one in the can. What else do we need to do, Michael?