Brooke Lively / Louis Goodman – Transcript

Louis Goodman / Brooke Lively – Transcript

Link to Episode:

https://www.lovethylawyer.com/brooke-lively-whats-my-practice-worth-can-i-sell-it/

[00:00:00] Louis Goodman:
Welcome to Love Thy Lawyer, where we generally talk with attorneys about their lives and careers. Today, we welcome back to the podcast, speaker, author, and profitability specialist, Brooke Lively. Brooke is not a lawyer, but works closely with law firms in an effort to implement better business practices and profitable cash flows.

She’s been featured in Forbes, U.S. News World Report, CNBC, and numerous podcasts as well as speaking engagements. She’s written several books, including the best-selling From Panic to Profit. She’s recently written and released her new book called Exit on Top, which is designed to assist attorneys in selling their practices effectively, successfully, and profitably.

Brooke Lively, welcome back to the Love Thy Lawyer podcast.

[00:01:02] Brooke Lively: Thanks, Louis. I really appreciate you having me back.

[00:01:05] Louis Goodman: It is so nice to see you again. I listen to you whenever I see you come across other podcast feeds that I listen to. I listen to a lot of podcasts and whenever I see you there, I go, Oh, I have to listen to Brooke and see what she’s saying.

Where are you speaking to us from right now?

[00:01:24] Brooke Lively: I’m in Fort Worth, Texas. I’m actually home. I’m not here very often, but I am today.

[00:01:29] Louis Goodman: And you were just recently in Korea, is that correct?

[00:01:33] Brooke Lively: I was. I came back from South Korea on Saturday. I went for a conference and it was beautiful and a lot of fun.

[00:01:42] Louis Goodman: Can you tell us in your own words, what type of business you have?

How do you describe your business and what’s the name of it?

[00:01:53] Brooke Lively: My company’s called Cathcap. Let me kind of tell you why I started it and a little bit about me and, and that might help explain it. We help make law firms more profitable. It all started because after grad school, I was working for a hedge fund and then throughout a series of wild events, I ended up running my family’s law firm. And I hired someone to help us with sales and marketing who only worked with law firms and his clients started coming to me and saying, can you help us, can you do for us what you’re doing for your family? And that was when I realized that lawyers don’t run their law firms like a business. They don’t run them based on data and numbers. And that causes a lot of anxiety and frankly, a lot of lost profitability. So I started Cathcap as a fractional CFO company.

So we help law firms get that strategic financial advice that they need, but frankly, can’t afford it a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. And if they brought in a CFO. That poor CFO would be bored to death.

[00:03:07] Louis Goodman: I would like to mention right at this point that in season two, we’re now on season five of this podcast, but season two, episode number 62, you were on the podcast and we kind of did a bit of a deep dive into your background.

So if anyone’s interested in hearing that deep dive, please go to season two episode number 62 and check out my first interview with Brooke. But having said that could you very just briefly tell us what your educational background is?

[00:03:43] Brooke Lively: Sure. I went back to grad school a little later in life, and I got my MBA.

I did a double concentration, so I did corporate finance, and I also did investments. I went on to get my, my CFA, Chartered Financial Analyst.

[00:04:03] Louis Goodman: Why is it that you like working with lawyers? I mean, you could work with any group of people, but you’ve chosen to work with lawyers, and you’ve stuck with us.

[00:04:13] Brooke Lively: Uh, yeah.

Is that a genetic mutation? Do I need to be, if I need to be talking to a therapist about that? I don’t know.

[00:04:21] Louis Goodman: Probably.

[00:04:23] Brooke Lively: My father’s an attorney. My brother’s an attorney. Two of my uncles are attorneys. Virtually every guy I’ve ever dated has been an attorney, including the guys I dated in high school that grew up to be six foot two left-handed lawyers.

So I definitely have a type. I don’t know. I get you guys. I understand you. I have a lot of empathy for lawyers, and I think there are a lot of people out there in the world that don’t, that don’t understand how your brains work. The analytical side of your brain is such a gift with what you do and can be such a roadblock to running your business.

[00:05:07] Louis Goodman: Well, I would like to talk to you a little bit about that in the sense that your, the first book of yours that I read, The Panic Profit talked about using statistical analysis and getting numbers and really looking at the way one’s law firm works. As a business, and I think that for most of us as attorneys, we often just don’t even think about it.

I think I heard you discussing this at some length with Steve Fretzin on his podcast. As attorneys, no one ever talks to us about the fact that if we’re not going to work for big government or we’re not going to work for a big law firm, we’re ultimately going to be responsible for running a business of some sort.

[00:05:56] Brooke Lively: And no one taught you that in law school. What a disservice.

[00:06:00] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I think it is a disservice. But, here’s the interesting thing now is you’ve written this book called Exit on Top. And it’s designed for attorneys who have a. successful or relatively successful or what they hope will be perceived as a successful law firm and have an interest in selling it.

So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that book, we’re going to get to it in some depth, but why did you write this book?

[00:06:35] Brooke Lively: The idea came, I was actually at a conference. I was at NTL, the National Trial Lawyers Conference in Miami, and I was sitting in one of the panels and there was a woman from the Arizona Bar Ethics Committee up there, and she was talking about alternative business structures, and how Arizona was going to let non attorneys own law firms. And I was like, Louis, hot diggity, this is it, this is my chance, I’m starting a law firm. Because let’s face it, I can run the crud out of a law firm. I can’t practice law, boy can I run a great law firm. So I thought I’m gonna open a law firm, and I’m gonna run it, and I’ll just hire some attorneys to do the legal work.

And then I started thinking about our clients. And all these attorneys that we work with and all the law firms, I started thinking, okay, what does it mean that non attorneys can own law firms in Arizona? And, you know, it’s in Arizona. It’s been in Arizona for two years. It’s going to continue to spread.

We’re, we will eventually have non attorney ownership in most of the U.S. It’s coming. You guys have done a great job protecting yourselves. I think you’re starting to lose the battle. I thought it’s going to have a couple, it’s going to mean a couple of things. And the biggest thing we’re going to see is consolidation.

We’re going to start to see really big law firms. We’ve seen this happen in the dental industry, and we saw it happen in with veterinary clinics. Private equity, or just business people have come in, they have bought up the mom and pops. Branded them under one name when you’re running a hundred of something is cheaper than when you’re running one of it.

It can be very profitable. I’ve got a lot of clients who are in their 50s and they’re gonna need to sell at some point. There are a lot of baby boomers who are selling. I also have a lot of clients who are really growing their practices. Buying law firms is a great way to grow your practice. Acquisition is a great strategy.

So I was like, okay, wait a minute. If this is happening, we’re going to see a lot more law firms getting bought in full. And in fact, that’s what’s been happening over the past two years. That’s why I wrote the book, so that lawyers can understand you’ve built a business. Not just a practice, you’ve built a business, and that business has value.

How do we leverage it? How do you leverage it to buy more? What are you looking for? What do you want to avoid? How do you leverage it to get the value out of it if you want to exit? And, and let’s face it, you don’t sell overnight.

[00:09:46] Louis Goodman: I have two comments on what you just said. First of all, I think you’re absolutely right about the fact that venture capital is ultimately going to end up buying law firms.

They can’t do it in most states right now, but I think that will change. So whatever you want to call it, I don’t think it matters. That model I think is going forward. That’s my comment. But my next question is, you know, I think most of the attorneys who listen to this podcast are not ready to sell their practices.

They haven’t even thought about selling their practices. They certainly have no sense of what the value of their practice is. But why should a lawyer who isn’t really interested in selling a practice right now read your book?

[00:10:34] Brooke Lively: That’s a great question. So first of all, I talked about this a little bit. If you’re looking to grow through acquisition, it’ll show you what to look for and what to avoid when you’re buying, but more importantly, a firm that is an attractive acquisition target is the firm that we all want to own because a firm that is an attractive target that somebody else wants to buy, it’s really profitable, throws off a lot of cash, has happy clients and happy employees and doesn’t take a lot of effort from the owner or let me say that in a different way, allows the owner to do the things that they really enjoy doing. And I’m going to use you as an example, Louis. So, before we hit record, you told me that you had hired this new attorney. And they’re making all your court appearances for you.

[00:11:31] Louis Goodman: A lot of them, yeah.

[00:11:32] Brooke Lively: A lot of them. You’ve been making court appearances for 40 years.

You’ve been there, you’ve done that. You don’t need to make them all. You can make some, but you don’t have to make them all. This guy is thrilled to be making them. And with him making those, it opens you up to do things that you now enjoy more at this point in your career that is, frankly, more profitable for the firm, which is going out and finding new clients and doing those types of things.

It makes your firm a better firm.

[00:12:06] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think in reading your book, and I have read it, it made me realize that in order to have a marketable firm, that it really requires the attorney to take a look at what’s going on in the firm and to do things that make it a better place to work, that make it more profitable, that make it something that maybe thinking about selling it.

And if you do the things that you say are required in order to get it in shape to sell, you say, hmm, maybe I don’t really want to sell this thing. Maybe, maybe I like owning it so much that I’m going to keep it for myself.

[00:12:50] Brooke Lively: The story I tell in the introduction is actually about my own family and my brother, who, when he first came to work for my father, he loved practicing law.

He was not so interested in the whole owning a law firm, and the idea was to transition the law firm to him. So I told my father, I thought that we needed to sell the firm. We needed to sell it. I knew who we needed to sell it to. I knew everything. And that would create a great place for my brother to be, for my brother to work.

He could play to his strengths, and we’d get someone to do all that back office stuff for him. But before we did that I needed to kind of clean it up. So I started doing that and I went back to my father and I asked him I said if you ever seen the TV show Love it or list it? What happens is you’ve got a couple they have their existing house.

They get a budget a renovation, you know people come in and renovate the existing house and then for the price of the renovated house, they get to go out and look for a new house you and then at the end, they decide, do we like the house that we have fixed up, or do we want the new house? Do we love what we have, or do we want to list it and get the new?

You know, I had been working on our law firm to get it ready to sell. And in the meantime, my brother had gotten married and really kind of grown up and had gotten much more interested in the business side of the firm. And I told daddy, I think daddy, I think Jonathan has fallen in love with the firm. I think it’s happened to all of us.

Anytime you list a house, you know, you go through and you de junk and you touch up all the paint and you’re like, you do the flowers in front. You’re like, wow, that’s really nice. Why are we selling? All of a sudden you enjoy it. Going ahead and fixing up your firm now, fixing the problems that a buyer would see, just makes it so much nicer for you to live in that firm.

[00:14:52] Louis Goodman: So before we get to how you can fix it, I’m what, you know, people like you use the house example, you have a house, I think, you know, people always think, I don’t know, what’s my house really worth? You know, they go on Zillow or something and they look and see, or they see what the neighbor’s house sold for and they’re, they’re curious, what’s it worth?

So how do you figure out what your firm is worth?

[00:15:21] Brooke Lively: Okay. Everybody get out your pen. I’m going to tell you how to actually figure out what your firm is worth. You ready? It is two and a half to four times, either 2.5 or four, somewhere in between there, what is called SDE, Seller’s Discretionary Earnings.

Basically, total owner comp. So, your salary, your benefits, any draws you take, the profit from the firm, any taxes that the firm pays, and then, and I know you all do it, and it’s fine. I don’t care. It’s between you and your CPA and the IRS. All those personal expenses you run through the firm; I don’t care.

But basically, what is the total benefit you get from your firm? You take that number, and you multiply it by something somewhere between two and a half and four X.

[00:16:16] Louis Goodman: So you take one year’s worth to yourself, multiply it by anywhere between two and a half and four. And that’s roughly what the firm is worth selling on the market?

[00:16:30] Brooke Lively: That’s right.

[00:16:31] Louis Goodman: Okay.

[00:16:31] Brooke Lively: So. Another way to look at it, Louis, even if you’ve got a fabulous firm that’s fully automated, that doesn’t need you really as the owner, you’re probably not going to get more than four times what you would get. So you’re going to sell this firm and you’re going to get about four years of income in a chunk.

So all these people, Who hear, Ooh, private equity’s coming in, Ooh, I can sell my law firm. They keep thinking they’re gonna get 10 times revenue. These are not hugely sexy numbers, people. This is three or four years worth of income.

[00:17:10] Louis Goodman: So basically what you’re saying to us is if you sell the firm, you’re gonna be able to kind of cruise for three or four years at the, at the same level that you’ve been getting from working, but it, it’s, it’s not a, a lifetime.

[00:17:26] Brooke Lively: It’s not going to be a life cashout. Yeah.

[00:17:28] Louis Goodman: Right.

[00:17:29] Brooke Lively: If you are 67 and you have not put any money away for retirement. And you think in three years you’re going to sell your firm and be set for the next 25 years, you’re on crack not going to happen. However If you have been running a firm that is an attractive target, that is sale ready and has been sale ready for a long time, and you are living below your means, which means that you are putting money away for retirement. Then, when you’re ready to retire, you can sell the firm and you get a little gravy on top.

[00:18:07] Louis Goodman: I know there’s different ways to value a law firm and you go into it in the book. Let me ask you this. What are, what are the biggest drivers in increasing or decreasing a firm’s value? I mean, what can you do? Let’s assume that you decide in three years, four years, I really should be thinking about selling this firm.

What can I do with a three to four year runway?

[00:18:34] Brooke Lively: So the biggest thing you can do. Is increase that SDE, that sellers discretionary earnings, which basically means become more profitable. So it’s clean up those financials. You know, we believe in running law firms on the rule of thirds. One third of revenue goes to pay people.

One third of revenue goes to overhead and one third of revenue should go to profit. If you’re not getting those multiples, you got some work to do.

[00:19:03] Louis Goodman: I told you Offline before we started actually recording the podcast we were chatting and I told you that part of reading your book I found to be really scary and the part that I found scary were the quizzes that you have in the book which talk about the things that affect value and I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about those quizzes.

I know we’re gonna you’re gonna give me some links so people can go online and take the quiz online. Recommend buying this book for anybody. I got it on, on, on Amazon. I think it was like 10 bucks. It was such a mind-expanding experience reading the book, but let’s talk about these quizzes that had me so frightened.

[00:19:48] Brooke Lively: Yeah, it’s about 35 questions and we look at seven different areas. The first is financial. So I asked you a series of questions, five questions about your financials. How much are you spending here? How much are you taking home? Those kinds of questions. Then we talked about marketing. Where do your clients come from?

Are they all coming from one place? Some questions about that. How much of it is based on your name and your image? Then I asked questions about sales or intake, depending upon which one you call it. Are you the only one that can do sales calls? Do you have a sales training program? Then we talk about operations.

We talk about your people. We talk about production and technology. And the last question in every single section is on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of your time do you spend on your financials? How much of your time do you spend on your financials? on marketing. How much of your time do you spend on sales?

How much of your time do you spend on operations, on people, on production, on technology? That is a huge driver of value. Because you’ll remember I said that a firm that’s an attractive acquisition, a firm that somebody wants to buy, throws off a lot of money. Okay, we’ve talked about that, that as being the biggest driver.

Has happy clients and happy employees. And the third one is it doesn’t take a lot of day to day effort from the owner. And that’s the one we’re measuring with that question. Louis, if you are the only one who does any of your billing and is the only one who can write a check in your firm and you, it is your name and your image on all the marketing and you do all the networking and you are the only one that can do a sales call. No one else in your firm knows how to. And you are the only one that knows where the toner is kept and what’s going on with your lease and how to get anything done within the firm. And you’re the only one that knows how to do the legal work. And you’re the only one who can put anything into a computer. What does that say?

[00:22:10] Louis Goodman: That without Louis J. Goodman, the law firm of Louis J. Goodman is worth pretty much nothing.

[00:22:16] Brooke Lively: Worth nothing. Because that means that any new owner is going to have to come in and they’re going to have to write all the checks or they’re going to have to pay someone to write all the checks, which is going to mean that their SDE, their seller’s discretionary earnings, is going to go down.

So the firm’s not as profitable as it looks. If they’re the only one doing the work, they’re going to have to hire someone. And if they don’t know how to pay that person properly, so you want to buy a firm where the owner is not integral.

[00:22:50] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I mean, just to be straight about it, the thing that I found scary about the quizzes is that most of my answers were, I just don’t know.

I really don’t know.

[00:22:59] Brooke Lively: Yeah. Did you go find the answers? Or did you bury your head in the sand?

[00:23:03] Louis Goodman: So far, I’ve buried my head in the sand, but the last time we talked, I buried my head in the sand as well. But over the last couple of years, I’ve definitely looked at some of the things that you said and taken some of the things you’ve said to heart and I’ve learned something.

So I don’t claim to be a fast learner, but I get around to some education at some point.

[00:23:28] Brooke Lively: To get there eventually.

[00:23:30] Louis Goodman: Is there an area of a firm that just isn’t really worth the time to deal with and the effort to fix? Yes.

[00:23:36] Brooke Lively: Yeah, I would say technology. Anybody buying a firm knows that there’s going to be a big technology project.

Even if you use the same practice management software as a company, as the firm that’s acquiring you there’s still a lot of data that needs to be moved They’ve already factored that into the price don’t think oh I can shove through a technology Implementation four months before I want to sell it’s not worth your time.

You won’t have any history

[00:24:06] Louis Goodman: Let’s just talk about the mirror image for a minute in terms of if someone is interested in buying a firm, what kinds of considerations does a buyer need to have?

[00:24:18] Brooke Lively: So are they profitable? And let’s start with, are they profitable when you’re buying a firm? And I talk about this a little bit in the book.

There’s a guy named Tom Linfesty, who I love. He owns a company called Law Practice Exchange, and he is a reformed attorney. What he’s really doing is creating a marketplace for law firms. Because in the past, it’s kind of been word of mouth. Oh, so and so’s retiring. Well, maybe I’ll pay him a little bit for his phone number.

He really is working at creating a national exchange where you can find out what’s for sale. His biggest thing is you’ve got to make sure that the law firm can cash flow the deal. So if I’m going to buy a law firm for a million dollars and I have to go out and get an 800, 000 dollar loan to pay for it, I need to make sure that that law firm, that the SDE, the seller’s discretionary earnings, Is enough not only for me to live off of as the buyer, but it’s enough for me to live off of and to service that 800,000 dollar loan.

So you really want to look at that. Will it cash flow? Is it going to support everything it needs to support? That’s the first thing to look at.

[00:25:38] Louis Goodman: What about the attorney who sells the firm, it seems to me there’s generally speaking an expectation that that person will stay on for some period of time, maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, in order to facilitate the transition.

How does that work?

[00:25:57] Brooke Lively: Somewhere between three months if you’re really, really lucky and two years if you’re not so lucky. Most people tend to be done at 9 to 12 months, so if you’re locked in over 12 months, I can guarantee you that anything over that is not going to be super happy. You have to be able to train the new owner and how things are done.

You have to transition clients. You have to transition referral sources. I mean, Louis, think about your own practice. How many people refer directly to you? It’s a lot. So, if you’re trying to transition your practice to a new person, you need to help them build that relationship. And that takes some time.

[00:26:35] Louis Goodman: One of the things that you talk about, I think right in the beginning of the book, is that 75 percent of people who exit their business, I assume you’re talking about lawyers, but from my experience and talking to friends and colleagues in all kinds of businesses who have sold them, not just regret, but they, in your words, profoundly regret doing so within 12 months and why do you think that is and what can the person selling their business, selling their firm do in order to not be one of that 75 percent who is profoundly unhappy about it?

[00:27:19] Brooke Lively: Yeah, so profoundly regret is not those aren’t my words. Those are Price Waterhouse’s words. They’re the ones that did the study.

And yeah, that when I found that statistic, that kind of undid me, it, it made me incredibly sad to think that 75 percent of the people that sell their businesses don’t just regret, but profoundly regret doing it within the first 12 months. And I think it’s because if you think about your life. Your life has been a series of additions.

I’m now a high school graduate. I’m a college graduate. I’m a lawyer. I’m a law firm owner. I’m a husband or a wife. I’m a mother or a father. You keep adding to who you are. This is the first time you subtract. I used to own my own law firm. I used to employ 20 people. I used to be the big boss. I used to be somebody important.

I used to have purpose. So, in general, people are much more successful when they are running to something rather than running from something. If you sell your firm and your plan is to sell, And that’s the end of your plan, you’re going to end up in that 75 percent if your plan is to sell your firm and take a three month trip to Europe, you’re probably also going to end up in 75 percent because you’re going to come home from Europe and you’re going to be twiddling your thumbs and you’re not going to have anything to do and all you will do is sit in your house, watch TV, doom scroll, you have no structure to your day. And that’s nothing but a recipe for, for depression.

The people who do well are the people who say, Okay, here is my plan. I am going to sell my firm. I am going to build a house in Colorado. I have already lined up to sit on these three boards. I am going to volunteer one day a week or three days a month, two days a month at the Bar Association, blah, blah, blah committee.

They fill their lives with other things to do and they leave their firm excited about what they’re going to do next. They’re going to something. You have to have something that you’re running towards.

[00:29:46] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I get that. I really do, because I’ve thought about it, you know, before having read your book, in the sense that I’ve often said to people, I have a very small kingdom, but I’m the king.

And there’s, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s something that’s, that’s nice about that. And, and then the other thing I’ve noticed is, Hold on,

[00:30:07] Brooke Lively: before we move past that, Let me point out and I don’t know if you’re married or not, but if you are married,

[00:30:14] Louis Goodman: I am,

[00:30:14] Brooke Lively: your wife is the queen of her kingdom. And if you go home and you sit in her, her kingdom all day, your queen is not going to be very happy because you’re going to be underfoot.

I’m just saying, I watched too many of my friend’s fathers retire and, and get underfoot queen, not happy when the king is around the castle too much.

[00:30:33] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I married you for life, but not for lunch.

[00:30:36] Brooke Lively: Exactly. I’d love that.

[00:30:38] Louis Goodman: I’ve heard it someplace. It’s not original. But the thing that I have noticed in my own life as well is, you know, sometimes, you know, we have a long weekend, three day Memorial Day weekend or, you know, whatever, Labor Day weekend.

And then because I’m the king, I sometimes say, well, we’re going to have a law firm holiday that we’re going to tack on to the Federal holiday. And so we make it into a four day weekend or a four and a half day weekend instead of just a three day weekend. And I have to say that towards the end of those four, four and a half days, whatever it is that I really want to get back to my office because I just feel like as much as I enjoy having the time off, there’s a certain yin and a yang to it. And maybe I’ve had enough Yang now, and I just, you know, need to get back to that, that structure. And I honestly, you know, I don’t know how successful I would be retiring without giving it a lot more.

[00:31:42] Brooke Lively: So, my grandfather was in that position. Not an attorney, but he retired at 39, by the way with a baby on the way But he retired at 39 thought this is it I made my nut don’t need to get I’m gonna retire that did not last very long. He was in the profoundly regret category.

He went on to start another like 15 companies 15 or 20 companies. He went to the office until the week before he died. He had a routine. He had that structure. We’re not entirely sure what he did at the office. We used to joke that he would get the Wall Street Journal out and a pencil and a calculator and a legal pad and calculate his, the net worth of all of his stocks every day.

We don’t know what he did, but he had that and he had, he had something every time he sold a company. He knew exactly what he was doing next and that gave him that that structure that you need. He was out of my grandmother’s house from you know, nine to three. She did not marry him for lunch. Breakfast was one thing dinner, okay. Lunch, not a chance

[00:32:50] Louis Goodman: Brooke. I have a few other questions I want to shift gears her a little bit I have these questions that I always like to ask people and sure that I asked you some of them before You But, you know, maybe we can see if there’s been any change or not. What sort of things keep you up at night?

[00:33:06] Brooke Lively: You know, I think what keeps me up at night is exactly the same things that that keeps my clients up at night. Just like my clients. I run a small business there. There are 20 of us. Are my people happy? Have I hired the right people? Do we have enough new leads coming in for new clients? Are existing clients happy?

All the same things.

[00:33:30] Louis Goodman: Let’s say you came into some real money, let’s say three or four billion dollars. What, if anything, would you do differently in your life?

[00:33:40] Brooke Lively: I don’t think a ton would change. Like I said, my grandfather went to the office until a week before he died. I certainly know the perils of sitting at home.

That’s not going to happen. Do I think I might travel a little bit more? Absolutely. And yes, I am going to travel on that Emirates airplane seat with the door that closes fully or maybe in that, that apartment. Is it Emirates that has that apartment with the two rooms and the shower? I think I’m going to have to fly on that airplane.

[00:34:09] Louis Goodman: Well, if I come into my three or four billion before you do, I’ll let you know what it’s like.

[00:34:14] Brooke Lively: Sounds great.

[00:34:15] Louis Goodman: Brooke, if someone wants to get in touch with you to discuss making their firm more profitable or getting their firm ready to sell or to think about acquiring a law firm in terms of expanding one’s practice or any of the things that you have given such great thought to and have such expertise in, what is the best way to contact you?

[00:34:43] Brooke Lively: I think the best way is really just to go to our website. Cathcap.com

[00:34:49] Louis Goodman: And that’s C A T H C A P dot com?

[00:34:55] Brooke Lively: That’s correct.

[00:34:56] Louis Goodman: If we Google Brooke Lively, are we going to find you on Google?

[00:35:03] Brooke Lively: Yes, you’ll find me.

[00:35:04] Louis Goodman: Brooke, is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven’t discussed, that we haven’t touched on, anything at all that you’d like to bring up?

[00:35:11] Brooke Lively: I just want to kind of go back and touch on something that you had mentioned. So you talked about the quiz, that kind of made you a little uneasy. I’ve got that quiz online and I’d love for you to put a link to the quiz in the show notes so that people can go take that. And if you take that quiz, it will also help you value your law firm.

It’ll give you an idea. It’ll give you a rough range of what your firm might be worth. Really, what’s more important is it will show you where your biggest deficiencies are. And from there, you can look at it and say, Oh, I need to spend some time in marketing or Oh, really need to spend some time in production. And just know that everything you fix, everything you improve, you are going to benefit from.

The other thing to think about is you may not have the skill set. That’s okay. There are tons of people in the world now who have businesses designed to help attorneys improve their firms. Go hire an expert and let the experts help you fix it. There’s no reason for you to bang your head against a wall trying to make yourself a subject matter expert when you can go out and hire one and get it done faster and frankly a lot cheaper.

Go out and find the right person because they can improve not only the value of the firm but the way it’s running, which makes it easier for you and they will ultimately increase the bottom line, which is better for your life.

[00:36:51] Louis Goodman: Brooke Lively, thank you so much for joining me today on the Love Thy Lawyer podcast.

It’s been so much fun to talk to you again.

[00:37:01] Brooke Lively: Thank you, Louis. I really appreciate you having me back. Maybe we shouldn’t wait three years for the next one.

[00:37:07] Louis Goodman: That’s it for today’s episode of Love Thy Lawyer. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a friend and follow the podcast. If you have comments or suggestions, send me an email.

Take a look at our website at lovethylawyer.com where you can find all of our episodes, transcripts, photographs, and information. Thanks to my guests and to Joel Katz for music, Brian Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media and Tracy Harvey. I’m Louis Goodman.

[00:37:42] Brooke Lively: Louis, that one’s hard.

We’re going to have to pick a different question.