Non-Linear Growth for Law Firm Owners Part 2
Discover the 3 biggest mistakes law firm owners make when trying to scale successfully.

Description
Most law firm owners think scaling means working harder, hiring more people, or pushing through the chaos—but why does growth still feel unsustainable? They're pouring energy into complex systems, tolerating mediocrity, and wondering why progress is so slow. The truth is, they're making the same three fundamental mistakes that quietly sabotage their ability to scale.
In this second part of the series, based on The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Melissa breaks down exactly what those mistakes are and how they show up in your firm. From avoiding goal setting altogether to pursuing conflicting priorities, these errors keep you stuck in linear growth patterns. She explains the psychology behind why your brain needs clear goals, what happens when you aim too low, and why having multiple competing objectives guarantees you won't scale.
This episode gives you the practical framework for raising your standards, simplifying your operations, and building with the right people. You'll learn why scaling isn't about doing more; it's about deciding what matters, eliminating what doesn't, and creating systems that work without your constant involvement. By the end, you'll understand why your floor determines your future and how to build a firm that delivers the results you want without burning you out.
If you’re wondering if Velocity Work is the right fit for you and want to chat with Melissa, text CONSULT to 201-534-8753.
What You'll Learn:
• Why avoiding goal setting altogether is psychologically impossible and how your brain uses "prospection" to shape every decision.
• The four common mistakes in goal setting that keep law firms stuck in linear growth.
• How raising your floor changes your culture fast and why some team members won't survive the shift.
• What "killing your elephants" means for eliminating complexity and why you can't scale a complex system.
• The value of super-whos and why top talent elevates everyone around them.
• How selective attention works and focusing on one strategic priority accelerates growth.
Featured on the Show:
- Create space, mindset, and concrete plans for growth. Start here: Velocity Work Monday Map.
- Schedule a consult call with us here.
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson
- Dr. Benjamin Hardy
- Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday
- The Founders Podcast
- Ep #119: Virtuous Procrastination Is Still Procrastination
- Ep #311: Intentional Delays: How to Make Wise Choices That Boost Productivity
- Ep #324: Non-Linear Growth for Law Firm Owners Part 1
- Journal Prompts for Law Firm Owners around The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
Enjoy the Show?
Leave me a review in Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you listen!
Transcript
If you're trying to grow your firm, but it still feels unsustainable, messy, or off, you're not alone. Most law firm owners make the same 3 mistakes when they try to scale. And in this episode, we're going to be breaking those down, from the way you set goals to the standards you allow, to the people you surround yourself with. So, let's get into it.
Welcome to The Law Firm Owner Podcast, powered by Velocity Work, for owners who want to grow a firm that gives them the life they want. Get crystal clear on where you're going, take planning seriously, and honor your plan like a pro. This is the work that creates Velocity.
Welcome back to part 2 of our series on The Science of Scaling by Dr. Ben Hardy. Last episode, we cleared the air around what scaling actually means, why it's not about hustle, headcount, hype, and why an impossible goal is the first step if you want to grow without burning out.
Today, we're building on that foundation. We're going to walk through the biggest mistakes law firm owners make when setting goals. The kind of mistakes that quietly sabotage your ability to scale. We're going to talk about what strong goal setting really looks like, how to spot the goals that do not serve your vision, and how to shift your mindset so you can lead the kind of firm that actually delivers you to the future you want. So let's dive in.
There are 4 common mistakes when it comes to goal setting. And we're going to cover those and how you can think about it instead.
Mistake number 1: avoiding goal setting altogether. Now, because goal setting is layered and emotional, and Hardy talks about this in the book, people carry a lot of baggage around the pursuit of a goal. The misses, the wins, people think that they're failing. And so many have just decided that not setting goals at all is the wiser, more evolved path. And you'll hear things like, "I don't set goals, I just focus on the process." And that statement is a little trendy these days. And it sounds noble on the surface. It sounds disciplined. But it isn't the truth. People don't realize it when they say it, but it's not the truth.
As an example, and this is cited directly in the book, Ryan Holiday said in a recent blog post, "I don't have goals. I know that might seem a little crazy, but it's true. I don't fault other people for having goals. If that's what motivates you, enjoy. They're just not for me. I'm much more focused on the process. Immerse yourself in the work, in the daily practices that make up the bulk of your life. Forget goals. Be process-oriented. Be internally driven. Be every day."
Now listen, I admire Ryan Holiday, but I really, truly, I like him a lot, but I wholeheartedly agree with Hardy that this perspective only makes sense when you're already at the top of a mountain. It is easy to say, "Just focus on the process," when you've already achieved the results that most people are still climbing towards. But for those of us still building, still growing, still trying to figure out what to say yes to and what to say no to, goal setting is essential.
Now, ironically, even Holiday himself contradicted that quote 2 years earlier in the book, Discipline Is Destiny. He wrote, "If we didn't have ambition, some big goal we are after, how would we know what little things, what distractions to say no to?" And that's the point. Without a clear goal, how do you decide what matters?
Now, the truth is, you can't not have goals. You may choose not to set a goal, but it is psychologically impossible to not have goals. I loved reading this section in Hardy's book. Every single thing we do is influenced by what we're aiming for, whether you admit it or not. You might not say the goal out loud. You might not write it down, but there's always a desire, conscious or not. And that's directing your behavior. So, the internal aim is shaping what you notice, what you prioritize, how you make decisions, whether you realize it or not.
In the book, Hardy shares a quote from Dr. Jordan Peterson. He says, "All of our perceptions are biased. They are biased toward our goals. When you look at the world, what you see is a pathway forward to a goal. You see the things that help and the things that get in your way. Everything else becomes irrelevant."
This is backed by decades of psychological research. Hardy talks about this, that there's a name for it. It's called prospection. Prospection is our brain's natural tendency to simulate the future, to evaluate possible paths, and make decisions based on what we want. And from that, we develop pathways thinking. Pathways thinking is the ability to generate viable routes to get from here to there.
But here's the key insight: your goal determines the path. No goal, no clear path. Just motion. And motion isn't progress. Motion is here, there, everywhere, busy, busy work. And not only does your goal determine a path, your goal shapes your attention.
So there's another psychological concept that gets introduced here. Some of you've probably heard this term before: selective attention. That's our brain's built-in filter for spotting what matters and ignoring what doesn't. In other words, the clarity and quality of your goal shapes what you notice, shapes how you make decisions, and what actions you take.
So if you're still telling yourself that you don't need a goal, that you can just focus on the process without having a goal, you are lying to yourself. Because no process exists without an aim. And if you want to scale, if you want to build something that doesn't suck the life out of you, then it's time to stop avoiding the discomfort of choosing a goal.
Yes, a goal limits you, but it also focuses you. It protects your time, your team, your energy, and that's why mistake number 1, avoiding or dismissing goal setting altogether, is such a dangerous place to operate from. It sounds wise, but it leads nowhere. And the truth is, every action you take is shaped by your assumptions about the future. So the clearer and more intentional you are about that future, the more powerful your process becomes.
Now, let's talk about the second major mistake people make when it comes to goal setting. They aim too low out of fear, out of doubt, out of a desire to stay comfortable, out of a need for control. But here's the thing: the future is not some distant event. Psychologically, it's a mental tool. Your future is a mental tool, something we use to shape how we think, what we pay attention to, how we make decisions right now.
So again, what is a goal? A goal is a tool. It's a filter. It's not a wish or some motivational poster. It's a practical device to help you focus, to make real-time trade-offs, and to separate signal from the noise. But for a goal to be useful, to actually move you forward, it has to stretch you. It has to sharpen your awareness, and it has to make you honest about what's working and what isn't working.
As John Doerr once said, and this is a quote from the book, "A goal properly set is halfway reached." Why? Because when you set a real goal, one that challenges you, you are putting a pin in the map. You are defining a destination that forces you to get serious about what you're doing now.
At Velocity Work, we don't set goals to obsess over the number. We set goals as a tool to create clarity, to draw a hard line between what matters and what does not matter. And once the goal is clear, you stop spinning. You stop hiding, and you start seeing what is essential, and you let go of what isn't.
And here's what most people miss. If you set a weak goal, you will build a weak system, one that generates noise instead of real results. Because the systems you create and the actions that you take and the expectations that you set, those are all in response to the goal that you have chosen. So yes, a goal properly set is halfway reached because it changes the game. It reshapes how you think, what you focus on, and how you act, starting now.
Now, don't worry, we don't make our clients set goals that we think they can halfway reach. That's not the point of the quote. But it's a good quote nonetheless.
Mistake number 3: pursuing conflicting goals. Now, this mistake is one of the most common issues we see, especially in firms that are growing, but they're not scaling. They've got too many irons in the fire, too many objectives that are not aligned, too many priorities with no real hierarchy. There are so many things that, at any given moment, owners could do, should do, want to do, and they don't do what it takes to focus down and commit to one main goal.
They tell themselves a story that they can do it all or that they have to do it all, that all of it matters, that they're just going to work harder to hold it together. But the truth is, if you have several competing outcomes, what you have is a complex system moving in several different directions. You cannot scale complexity.
This is the state of most firms. They are radically unclear on what they are trying to accomplish, and they're unwilling to let go of lesser goals in service of a greater one.
There is a quote by Robert Brault that I loved finding in the book, and it says, "We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal." I'm going to say that again. Like, really, I hope you soak this up. We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but from a clear path to a lesser goal. That is so true, and I know that's what you guys experience. That's what I hear on consults. You don't say these words, but that's what's happening.
When you commit to a bigger future, to a goal that feels impossible from where you stand today, you're forced to simplify. You're forced to say no. You're forced to pick a path. The impossible goal acts like a spotlight. It reveals how much of your current work is actually just maintenance of distractions. How much of your team's energy is being poured into projects that no longer make sense.
So the truth that opposes this mistake, committing to a seemingly impossible goal forces you to redefine who you are, to simplify your focus, and become the best at what you do. When the goal is that clear, when it's that ambitious, almost nothing you're currently doing is relevant unless it supports the goal. So it falls below the floor.
Remember, we were talking about the floor earlier. And what's left is a leaner, more honest system that can scale. And by the way, one that allows you to keep your head straight instead of darting between all these different things. But if you want extraordinary results, you have to start building systems that point in one direction.
On to mistake number 4: setting the wrong goal. What Hardy hit on well in this chapter is that people don't set clear enough goals. And the research on this is clear. For an impossible goal to be effective, it has to be outcome-based, not process-based. We talked about that just a moment ago, if you remember. The outcome will define the process. So it has to be something measurable, tangible, binary.
He gives the example in the book, like putting a man on the moon or breaking the 4-minute mile. Here at Velocity Work, we almost always set a revenue goal with firms, and we'll talk about this more in a minute, and why this is almost always essential, and we feel great about doing this. But whatever goal you set, you have got to name it. Because only when the goal is clear can you and your team align, innovate, and rise to meet it.
Now, someone in the workshop that I went to that Ben Hardy led, they got up to the mic, and they said, "What if I don't care about a number? I just want to make an impact." This was a startup founder who was funded, and they really did care more about the social impact than they do about a revenue goal. And so that's why they were bringing this up. And his response was simple and beautiful.
He said, "Quantitative goals have qualitative substance." That clicked something for me because I have to talk to a lot of clients about this who say something similar to me. In other words, what you measure, the quantitative goal, is a stand-in for the culture you're building, for the expectations you're setting, for the results that you believe in.
If your goal is binary, you either hit it or you don't, then it's strong enough to guide decision-making. It forces clarity, it filters noise, it demands innovation, and it gives you something to build toward. And look, I get it. A lot of law firm owners do say things like, "I don't care about making millions, I just want to do good work." Sure, yeah, your impact matters. But if you're unwilling to quantify anything, then you are avoiding accountability, and you are also guaranteeing confusion about your path. Because remember, it's not about the number itself. It's about what the number forces. The number is a tool.
If you care about your culture, your values, your standards, raising your floor, then your path to that number is going to reflect that. It's going to be full of qualitative substance. But if you never stretch towards something binary, something you either hit or you didn't, then you'll never unlock that level of clarity, of creativity, of commitment that your full potential actually demands. You can't build world-class results on vague intentions. The right goal with the right meaning underneath it is how you lead with purpose and with precision.
The last point I want to highlight from part 1 of the book is about paradigm shifts and why they are essential if you are serious about scaling. So at the end of chapter 2, Hardy says something that I want to read straight from the book because it sets up a great quote that he shares next.
He says, "Once you've made the decision to scale, you must elevate your standards and change your identity. You must change your paradigm, your view of yourself, of others, and of the world. You can't get where you want to go operating from the same paradigm you have now. You need a fundamentally different way of seeing, of thinking, and of acting."
And then Hardy drops in this Stephen Covey quote. "It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms."
Scaling requires a paradigm shift. Not tweaks, not hacks, a transformation in how you see yourself, your business, your responsibilities. You can't run a $2 million firm with a $500,000 mindset. The systems are different, the team is different, the standards are different. You have to be different. Paradigm shifts show up in what you say yes to, what you say no to, how you define success, how you lead, what you tolerate, what you no longer make excuses for. You don't just want a bigger firm. You want to become someone capable of leading one. That's the shift.
As we round the corner to the next portion of this episode, here's the main thing: scaling is not hype. It's a skill, the one skill that lets you grow without burning out. In the show notes of this episode, you'll find journal prompts for you to use and reflect on this week based on The Science of Scaling. So spend 10 minutes with these prompts this week and get honest with yourself.
All right, let's dig into raising your floor. How to lift your minimum standards so that even your worst days still move you towards the frame. Hardy opens chapter 3 with a really strong distinction. At the professional level, the pro level, he says, "The separator isn't talent, the separator is accountability." And by that, he means being willing to tell yourself the truth about what's not working, what is working, and where you're falling short. Most people avoid this kind of self-honesty, and that's exactly why they stay stuck.
But when you lean into strategic scaling, there's a call to eliminate the illusions, not to punish yourself, but so that you can fix what's underperforming. If you've been around Velocity Work's sphere for any length of time, you've heard me talk about the importance of getting honest with yourself because it allows you to take the reins where you can.
Otherwise, you won't. You don't give yourself the opportunity. You'll just keep trucking with your stories, your justifications, assumptions, etc. If you're watching this, you're very smart, which means you can do that very easily, very, very well, let me say. Do you remember the episode on virtuous procrastination? I'll leave that in the show notes because that speaks to this tremendously.
Now, this matters because if you want to scale responsibly and sustainably, you need to understand what's really going on under the hood of your firm. We've already talked about that in part 1 of the series.
So it's not enough just to have a bold vision. If you don't know the current state, if you don't know the facts, you are building on sand. So before you chase what's next, stop and ask, "Am I telling myself the truth about what's working and what's not? Am I investing my resources, my time, money, and energy in understanding the real mechanics of this business? Do I know what's actually causing our results, or am I just hoping the math works out?" And finally, I think the thing to ask is, "Do I have the truth? What's the firm's source of truth?" Because you can't raise your floor, and you cannot simplify your firm if you're still lying to yourself or hiding from the truth, which is lying to yourself about what's not working and why.
Hardy defines your floor like this: it's the minimum level of performance you hit on your worst day. If you want to scale, that floor has to rise. Here are a few examples of what being below the floor could look like: chaotic, unplanned days and weeks, producers not hitting their expected numbers, inconsistent or late invoicing, discounting fees, reactive or unclear communication with your team. Maybe clients calling constantly for status updates because your systems aren't keeping them in the loop.
Now, here's what above the floor could look like, your new non-negotiables: Monday Map, you sit down every week to reflect and to plan. Targets are clear and tracked, and you review them regularly. Invoices go out on time. There's no discounting. And team communication is consistent and clear. There are short feedback loops. And then clients are proactively updated. Like that's above the floor.
And here's something you need to know as a leader: raising your floor doesn't just mean better performance, it means higher transparency, higher accountability. And then what happens is some people don't want to stay because when the floor rises, so does visibility. Now, it's clear when that happens who's delivering and who's just coasting.
So, culture and floor are really one and the same. And if you decide to raise the floor in the firm, it will change your culture fast. People who don't want to be held accountable, who aren't comfortable with transparency, they'll either evolve or they'll opt out. And that's a good thing. Because scaling your firm demands a team that is aligned with a new standard. No more hiding, no more guesswork, no more passengers, just clarity and results.
Let's talk about what it feels like when you're operating below your floor. It's not just inefficient, it is psychologically stressful. You are carrying around tension because you know you're saying yes to something that's holding you back.
And if you're someone who cares, someone who's empathetic, it's even harder. Saying no to people you care about, letting someone down, setting a new bar that others might not meet. And you may experience some guilt, but your floor reflects your level of accountability. It reflects your level of honesty and transparency. And when you hold that floor, even when it's uncomfortable, you're not being harsh, you're being honest, and you're being clear.
Yes, some people might be disappointed, but they'll respect you for it because they'll know it's real. And something powerful happens when you start saying no faster, when you start eliminating what's below your floor. The tension will dissipate, and relief starts to kick in, and the energy comes back online. Why? Because you're back in integrity. And that's what accountability does.
Now, let's be clear. If you don't raise your floor, the risk to that isn't just unrealized potential. That's what it seems like. The risk is collapse. And we have all seen it, people who said yes to the wrong things for too long and where that got them, who avoided the hard decisions, who avoided the hard conversations, who kept working harder while the weight on their shoulders only grew. Over time, that erodes the business's health, and it chips away at your personal confidence. So the business starts to feel heavy, sluggish, and eventually, you're not leading it, you are surviving it.
But when you do raise your floor, when you do start making the hard calls, everything elevates. And on top of that, your character grows, your leadership matures, your culture shifts. You become someone who no longer justifies things that used to hold you back. You make uncomfortable, sometimes unpopular decisions, and you stop accepting what's fine because you know it's not going to get you to the next level. And that's what scaling demands. It's not just about performance; it's about who you are becoming as a leader.
Raising your floor means fewer bad days, more consistency, and the ability to scale without the chaos. So let's pause here. I want you to ask yourself, what in your firm is below your floor right now? I know that each and every one of you have an answer to that popped in your head right when I asked it.
What have you been avoiding or what have you not been eliminating because it's uncomfortable? What conversations have you delayed for way too long? If your team knew the new floor, what do you think would be non-negotiable starting tomorrow? Let these questions sit with you because often the answers reveal the clutter. It reveals the hidden weight that your firm is carrying. It reveals the things that you've been tolerating that don't belong in the business that you're building. And that brings us to a hard truth.
Until the floor truly becomes the floor, you will not scale. Most people think their floor is higher than it really is. They say their rate's $450 an hour, but they regularly discount for it, for friends, for special clients, for convenience, whatever. Like they have a, they have a reason, right? They say that they won't tolerate chaos, but they allow late meetings, they allow skipped reviews, sloppy communication. So they think their floor is high, but their actual behavior is what tells the truth. Whenever you say yes to something, it reflects your real floor, not the required floor of your goal.
I was listening to a conversation recently with a seasoned entrepreneur and a less experienced business owner. And the business owner said something like, "I have a high tolerance for chaos." And the entrepreneur gently replied, "I'm sorry, I welcome you to raise your standards." And that exchange stuck with me because it perfectly illustrates the difference between tolerating what's familiar but demanding what's required.
So, as we close on raising your floor, here are a few more questions you can sit with. What are you optimizing for in your firm, in your leadership? What are you optimizing for? What are you currently saying yes to, and what does that say about your actual floor? What pathways are you still investing in that are ultimately dead ends? Because until you eliminate everything below your required floor, the required floor of your goal, you're not going to scale. When your floor truly becomes the floor, that's when the game changes. That's when scaling becomes inevitable. And that becomes your superpower once you're ready.
This is what most people and most businesses won't do: simplify to scale. In chapter 4, Hardy introduces a metaphor, "killing your elephants," which, listen, I'm just repeating what he's saying in the book. I tried to find a different metaphor, but I'm just going to pull in what he's saying. So, killing your elephants, it speaks to eliminating the big familiar things that no longer serve the mission. So this could be bloated initiatives, overbuilt systems, legacy services or processes that they feel central, but are actually holding your business back. And the point is clear: complexity kills scaling.
So let's bring this into your world. Where does complexity live in your firm? Do you have multiple ways of doing the same task that exists in your firm? Some, to do with intake or billing or file management? Are there layers of approval that tend to slow everything down? Is your team duplicating work because the process isn't clear or because no one has streamlined it? Do you have too many priorities competing for attention, so nothing gets the focus that it really needs? We talked about that earlier, one of the mistakes in goal setting. Does your tech stack look like it was built by committee? No, the tools don't talk to each other. Do you have cases that are complex and time-consuming and ultimately not worth the squeeze?
These are the elephants, and they're dragging down your ability to scale. Simplifying your firm means stripping out the complexity that slows you down and the complexity that distracts your team. This aligns exactly with the methodology we apply in our efficiency and streamlining workshop that we do for clients where we teach owners a simple process for identifying and eliminating operational waste.
There's a quote in the book that Steve Jobs said that fits perfectly here. "Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."
Hardy frames simplification as a courageous act of strategic focus, and I agree. It is because good strategy isn't just what you do, it's what you stop doing. You cannot scale a complex system. So, stop trying to optimize everything. Pick the 1 to 2 biggest strategic priorities, your highest yield efforts, and go all in. Because when you simplify around what works, everyone wins. Your clients get better service, your team has clarity and energy, your business becomes healthier and more scalable. Complexity spreads you thin, focus strengthens your impact.
So you can ask yourself, what's the elephant you're dragging around in your business? Which parts of your operations create complexity without delivering proportional value? And if you double down on one strategic priority this year, what would it be? Where are you saying yes to distractions when you really need to clean those up?
Raising your floor removes the slack that keeps you stuck at the same level. Simplifying your firm clears the clutter that slows you down and creates space for your team to focus on what truly moves the needle. If you want sustainable growth, raise your standards and clear the path, and do both and you'll scale faster with much less drama along the way. Raise your floor and protect it. Cut what no longer serves the mission. Remove the legacy baggage. Everything else is noise.
Most law firm owners say they want growth, but they don't have a focused path to get there. And they think the answer is in doing more, doing more things, offering more services, having more tools, spreading people thinner and thinner across more responsibilities, even if that's inadvertent. But more is usually what is slowing you down.
In the next little bit, we're going to be talking about cutting the noise, removing distractions that dilute your focus and that drain your team. We're going to be talking about choosing and following through on a focused path based on your impossible goal. And we're going to talk about stepping into true leadership so that the business runs well because of the systems and people, not because of your constant involvement.
In chapter 5, Hardy digs into the cost of losing focus. And you, when I say you, I mean your firm, your organization, must be focused. This is what Hardy writes. "It doesn't matter how brilliant you are or how brilliant your solution is to an important problem. If your delivery is complex or confusing, you won't scale."
So I hope you can see by now how scaling demands good strategy, well-thought-out simple paths forward. Good strategy means deciding what's most important and cutting the rest. We've already talked about what complexity can look like in a law firm, so I won't spend too much time on that here. When he really drives home through these examples and case studies is how important it is to simplify because it clears the way for a focused path. And a focused path is required if you want to scale.
So, let's go on to the next point I want you to hear, and this is on super-whos. This is my second favorite part of the book. Well, it competes for the first part with the floor. All right, we're going to start with a quote. Bill Gates said, "A great software engineer is worth 10,000 times more than an average one." That's not just about coders, that's true in every industry, including legal. When you hire top market talent, a true super-who, you get multiples on your investment. Ben Hardy says you get 16 times whatever you put into them, not double, not triple, 16 times.
And I don't know where he got that stat, but a few months ago, before I attended Ben Hardy's workshop, I listened to an interview with an entrepreneur named Brad Jacobs. It was on the Founder's Podcast. I shared it with clients because the insights were sharp, and they stuck with me. And so by the time I heard Dr. Hardy share the super-who section, I was primed. It landed with weight, and I want to share some of those insights with you here.
Here are 3 of the main points that Brad Jacobs said in his interview that I want to make sure to convey. First, a small team of A-players will run circles around a giant team of B and C players. I'm going to say that again. A small circle of A-players will run circles around a giant team of B and C players. I don't know what, that hit hard for me. It's not about headcount, it's about capability. Trying to scale with mediocre talent is like running a race with a parachute strapped to your back.
The second point that he made on the podcast that I want to share with you: an empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit. We've all seen this when someone lingers in a role too long, or you hire out of desperation instead of discipline, that one poor fit creates drag across the whole team. It costs you more than you realize in financial waste, in your team's drained energy, and it stalls progress.
Okay, now, I'm going to go to the third one. The third one that he said, okay, I really want you to soak this up. This is a good one. “The reason you overpay for talent is because it's nearly impossible to overpay for talent.” Okay, can we get a second go? And I'm going to put in brackets here, should overpay, that's what he's meaning. “The reason you should overpay for talent is because it's nearly impossible to overpay for talent.” Because when you hire right, when you bring in someone who is elite at what they do, they bring exponential return. They don't just fill a gap, they raise the floor.
So when I read chapter 5 in The Science of Scaling, and Hardy introduced the super-who content, it gave shape and structure to what I already saw and believed, that the right people aren't a luxury, they are the strategy. And here's what happens when you bring in a super-who onto your team, and I already mentioned some of these things, the floor rises, they change the baseline of what's acceptable, everyone sees what excellent actually looks like, and they make the old "good enough" look ridiculous. They elevate everyone around them. Their capability, their speed, their standards, they pull other high performers upward. And when you pair another superstar or you pair a superstar with another superstar, the whole game changes.
So this is why you can't have rock stars working along average employees. The culture and the mindsets don't mesh. And by the way, if you want a world-class super-who, you first have to be world-class. Tens don't work for eights. This isn't about perfection when I say 10. It's about engagement and level of commitment to a seemingly impossible future and staying above the floor.
So you have to decide, are you building a high-performing, world-class team, or are you keeping an average one? Because the truth is, world-class team members don't want to be managed, but they absolutely want to be led. They are committed and accountable to results, not just to process. Average employees, they want the comfort of a process to hide behind. And what they're committed to is their own security and comfort, not to actual results.
So if you want to hit a new level and get there quickly, you're going to need clear objectives and likely better team members than you currently have, a lot better. And here's what most law firm owners, this is where they choke, because they don't have the stomach to let go of people who are a wrong fit. They don't want to disappoint anyone. So they settle and they stay linear. You can't go halfway on this. Either you commit and get rock stars who help you scale, or you keep an average workforce. And if you try to mix the two, it's not going to work.
And here's the other trap: if you bring in an A-player but you don't raise your floor to match them, they're not going to stay. Tens don't work for eights because they're looking for environments where the floor is already high. This doesn't mean you fire your whole staff, but if you want to see who's really with you, set an impossible goal and present it to your team. Watch who leans in and who starts looking for the exit.
Scaling isn't a mystery. It's frame, floor, focus, right? Set the frame with an impossible goal, one that forces you to think bigger. Raise the floor so that only the best people, processes, and priorities make the cut. And keep your focus so tight that every move drives you towards that future.
And remember, you don't get there with more bodies and seats, you get there with super-whos. The people who change the floor the moment they walk in, the people who elevate everyone around them, the people who make "good enough" unacceptable. That's how you scale. That's how you build a business that works for you, your team, your clients. That's how you create the kind of freedom you meant to have when you started.
Next week, I'll show you how Velocity Work helps law firm owners do exactly that.
Hey, you may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map Friday Wrap. If you go to velocitywork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans so that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to velocitywork.com to get your free copy.
Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.
Latest pods

Non-Linear Growth for Law Firm Owners Part 2
Discover the 3 biggest mistakes law firm owners make when trying to scale successfully.

Non-Linear Growth for Law Firm Owners Part 1
Learn how to strategically scale your law firm and make the right moves for long-term growth.

Shaping Psych Evaluation Guidelines for Immigration Law with Dr. Andrew Rasmussen
Discover how immigration attorneys can help shape the future of psychological evaluation guidelines in asylum cases.

Net Thriving Score: What It Means for Founders and Leaders with Tara Gronhovd
Tara Gronhovd shares how the Net Thriving Score can help founders assess their well-being and create sustainable success.

Building a Firm with Clarity: Rebecca Deming’s Vivid Vision
Discover how creating a Vivid Vision can transform your firm’s leadership and growth.

You Can't Fix What You Won't Face: Tough Leadership Decisions with Paul Willman
Knowing your firm’s financials is key to making tough, necessary leadership decisions.
Join like-minded law firm owners
Let’s Build the Firm You Really Want
Velocity Partnership is a year-long private consulting engagement designed for law firm owners ready to scale smart - with clarity, strategy, and the right support.
🔍 Not sure if it’s the right fit? We’ll figure that out together.