The Truth Is Hard to See from Inside It

Neither one was wrong. Neither one was stubborn. Both were operating on the best read they had. The best read they had, though, was not the truth. One of them had no read at all, very lost at sea. The other one had a read, but it had never been checked.

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.

I have a quick recommendation for you. So, our clients, Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright of Gideon Asen, they run a podcast called Elawvate: Build and Grow Your Law Firm. I’ve gotten to know these guys. I understand how they think, and they do not just talk theory. They get into the real stuff. They get into staffing, systems, what actually moves the needle on profitability. They have built a wildly successful, very healthy firm. So, this is a unique opportunity to hear from operators who are actually doing it. If you run a law firm, if you work in one, this one is worth your time. Search Elawvate, E-L-A-W-V-A-T-E, Build and Grow Your Law Firm, wherever you listen to podcasts. Enjoy.

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of The Law Firm Owner Podcast. I'm so glad you're here joining us. Today kicks off a series of three episodes. And this first episode is going to be the through line that will carry through the three. And episodes two and three, I'm going to go deep into some specific examples of how this affected firms. It manifested in very different ways.

So, the through line, and what today's episode is really digging in on and introducing as the conversation, is how difficult it is to see the truth from inside it, from inside your own world, how difficult it can be to be objective and to feel like you have facts, not feelings, and you have truth, a sense of truth. 

And as someone who teaches this and lives and eats and breathes the principles that we work on clients with, my company, we work really hard to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. So, truth matters to me a lot, and I am like a dog with a bone to get to the truth. We're doing it for Velocity Work. It can take longer. It can be a little harder. And that's because it's more difficult to be as objective and to see things as clearly. And it's because of the blind spots.

And so, all of you listening, I know we know intellectually, yeah, we have blind spots. But today, I want you to really think about this in your own world. If you, even though yes, we have blind spots, it doesn't mean we can't get to the truth of things. And I hope that today will open up something for you in terms of awareness that will help you more quickly get to answers that are going to be meaningful and be your right answers, right? Your next right steps. 

The background and the impetus for this episode, this series existing, is because I had this summer two retreats that were back-to-back. And these firms could not be more different. I mean, there is nothing alike about these firms. The owners are completely different, except that they're both awesome. So I will say that. We have incredible clients. So incredible owners, clients. But the firm size is entirely different, the culture is entirely different, the practice areas are—couldn't be on opposite and more opposite ends of the spectrum. There's nothing alike about these firms at all. 

But one of them knew something was off, and so you'll hear about that. The other one didn't know something was off. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, one of them knew that they couldn't see the truth of the situation. The other one was oblivious and did not realize that they couldn't see the truth of the situation. So, we're going to talk about both because, for both firms, they couldn't see the truth of the situation that they were in. And so that's what we really worked on together.

Now, I'll give you a glimpse of the first scenario, the second scenario, and then we're going to dig more into those in the subsequent episodes. The first scenario, the first firm. The first firm, by all measure, hit a stride as a firm. And every which way that could mean success, they were experiencing success. And they've been working their butts off since I've known them and then even before I knew them, right? So they've been working towards hitting this kind of stride for a long time. And they're hitting their stride. Their marketing is kicking in and is working. Their team is fantastic. Everybody's running on all cylinders. The leadership team, you can feel them actually becoming even better leaders. Like they're evolving and they're growing. Just their everything is in place and working.

They have every KPI they have beat. And some of them by just light years ahead of where they thought they were going to be. I mean, it's really significant success. Now, with that being said, one thing that I did know before walking into the retreat is that there was a little bit of drift from the owner. They've really hit this stride, and it was clear that owner is not exactly sure how they should be spending time in the firm anymore. This is new territory. So we're going to get into that in a moment. 

When we started the retreat, before we started the retreat, even a couple of team members said, "Hey, he's still adrift. You know, I know you were in the loop, but it's a month later, and he's still adrift." And I thought, okay. Okay, well, they said, "Can we bring this up today?" I'm like, "Yeah, this is, of course, it's going to surface, of course."

So we get in, and just to give you some context of how lost maybe this owner was feeling, at the beginning, we always do a check-in. And one of the questions in the check-in is for everybody to give a professional win or a bright spot. Well, this owner didn't really have anything to say. It was kind of quiet. He was like, "I don't know." 

So that gives you some insight into the state. It's almost like a fugue state that this owner was in. And so what ended up surfacing, obviously, fairly quickly, and it was a very productive conversation, was that the truth is, they built something that runs without them. It's all working. So what are they supposed to do? And the fact that success got them out of most of what they used to be needed for. Think about that for a second. And some of you have experienced this. No one hands you the next chapter and says, "Here, here's what to do next now that you've reached the top of that peak. Now there's other peaks, and here's what to do next." Like, no one's done that.

So there's no manual for this space. And because of that, this really requires a pretty deep identity shift. And identity shifts are disorienting by nature. I'm going to do a full episode on that next week because it's worth talking about. I have talked about identity here before on the podcast, but it's been a few years. And I see this come up when new levels of success are achieved that you've really been working for.

You know, most owners, all of you, know what it feels like that you have this picture in your mind of what you want things to get to, and as it gets there, I mean, you would cut off your pinky to get there. But then when you get there, it's like, "Wait, wait, now what?" you know? So, that disorientation is a normal piece or a normal aspect to this. So we're going to go deeper into that. 

Now, I want to talk about what happened in the room. In the room, what was clear was there is no sense of truth. It feels like a little lost at sea. And the reason that they were feeling a little lost at sea was because there's no anchor points for them anymore. Now, anchor points are truths. Anchor points are nuggets of clarity that you have to be able to help you make decisions about your next steps forward. Now, if you don't have those all of a sudden, that can feel disorienting. So, when you think about not only the owner, but also the firm, they were experiencing a lack of truth on what was supposed to exist. 

So, what we did was, the one question I directed at the team: "What needs do you have from the owner that only they can give?" I let them talk. And they talked and talked and talked. I mean, this was good. This is what I wanted. So it was probably 30 minutes to maybe an hour, I don't know. But they talked and we were taking—we were writing on the whiteboard and taking notes. So, okay, that's what their side. Now, at points, there was some disagreement, like, "You don't need me for that. Or you"—whatever. But we got to it and we got some good fodder from that question. 

The next question was directed to the owner that was feeling lost at sea. "Where are you still necessary, specifically? Where are you still necessary?" And so that sparked another hour-plus conversation. And we took some notes from that. What came out of it was there's basically four categories of things where the owner is still necessary. And there's four categories identified. And then, and maybe we'll get into this next week, there was a bit of a trade-off. But they had to revamp how they were thinking about their schedule and their meeting schedule and what types of meetings were happening, and what included the owner and what did not include the owner. Because the way they'd always done it, the owner was just in the daily, right? In the day-to-day or week-to-week.

But now, that wasn't really needed in the same way anymore. And so they had to revamp how they were thinking about it. So, I guess what I'm trying to say here is, now, it took two and a half to three hours to really get to what needed to shift specifically in a way that you could tell everybody felt really good. And, you know, when you think about, well, it's just a meeting structure. Like, how does that affect how they feel so much? But the owner did a great job of telling the room, the rational part of the brain was confident about the firm, where they were going. The emotional side had a lot of anxiety, both at once. There's this dissonance happening for the owner in their brain. 

And when there's nothing to break that tie, there's nothing to break the dissonance that's happening; that dissonance will run things. That dissonance produces anxiety or feelings that are not that productive. They are just existing. And when emotion is running the show, or preventing action, right? It gets tough.

And so, structure- this is where I was trying to go earlier. Structure is not there to correct their thinking. There was nothing wrong with their thinking. But with structured, high-quality questions, then it gives the rational side something to hold on to so it stops losing in this dissonance fight. And when it has an anchor, and I to hold on to, I mentioned earlier, it's like anchors. Like, what are anchors of truth here? And when your brain has that, then you can go. Then you can move. Then you can take action. Then you can move forward without all the friction that occurs. 

In their—I thought I would share this to you. I looked up just to be sure. In their words after, they said, "If I am in the cases that account for most of the revenue, I feel good about where we are." And it eased the anxiety. And that was the tell for me as an advisor. Then, okay, we're good here. So, if there's something to be taken away from this in this episode, because we're going to go more deep into this scenario in the next episode, it really is that structure provided the rational brain something to anchor to in a way that then can produce conversation and ideas and solutions that reduce anxiety and increase ease and a sense of purpose as you move forward.

Now, again, we're going to go more into this scenario, but that is true. And by structure, I said adding structure. The way I think about structure, when you are trying to determine truth, when you are trying to get to truth, you have got to ask high-quality questions. Now, the beauty is, you all, like I do pride myself on, our company is very good at this. This is part of what we do. And the reason that we're good at it is because we kind of have to get to the nugget of truth. And so you have to ask the right questions in order to get there. So high-quality questions have always been super valuable to me in my own world and in my work with clients. 

I mean, shoot, even in my relationships, honestly. But that's one way to do it. And you could, if you are in this scenario, you're listening to this episode, and you identify an area where you are not asking high-quality questions, and it didn't even dawn on you, go to your favorite AI tool, an LLM, and ask, like, "Hey, this is a scenario. I need some high-quality questions to help create clarity for myself." And it will. They may not all be bangers, but some of them will be great. So, that is one takeaway that I want to give you today in case you hear, you see yourself in anything that I'm saying. 

Okay, let's talk about the second firm. Second firm is an owner and their spouse also works inside the firm full-time. They are both spread thin right now. And there's a part of them; it's just cultural for the owner specifically to just work himself to the bone. This has been an ongoing conversation. I really work to keep things in check and make sure we're all telling the truth, and the idea is that's not going to be the case.

But as I've really dug in with this firm, they've made some amazing strides, amazing strides. They have made a very strong hire. In the past, they weren't willing to pay what they ended up offering a paralegal. It's a paralegal position. So that was such a strong decision. And so then now this paralegal exists in the firm, and that's creating bandwidth and capacity, which is great. 

They have weeded out some people and administrative people, for sure. And so they do have a need there, but the spouse has been picking that up. So the spouse is kind of the Swiss Army knife behind the scenes. And the owner is trying to be the main producer, but also has things that only they can do that isn't billable. And for the sake of getting this firm organized and growing and moving in the right direction. So they've been in a very grindy period. Now, the plans are to not do that, but they've been in a very grindy period. 

So all signs are positive, right? When I walk in this room, we're touching base on everything, and no one's coasting. Everybody's firing on all cylinders who's there, right? Very small team. And they're really proud of the moves they've made. And so from the surface, it just looks like, man, they did their steps. Nothing about this looks like a problem. Let's just keep on keeping on. And some of the language that was shared was, you know, they're just kind of leaning into their new normal, all of that. 

So when I walked in for the retreat, we're getting situated, we're starting to get into things, and the owner says, "We're not hiring anyone right now. We just need to get stable." In the back of my mind, I had a hunch on what the math was going to say. So I just said, "Okay, well, let's see what the math says." I just thought, we'll take it from there. Because it's not—I can't know what's best for a firm. And if I act like I do without checking the math and without checking other boxes, that's crazy, right? Like I can't know that just because of a hunch standing in front of a room. And I know my clients well, but I'm getting pushback. I listen to my owner.

So I say, "Okay, well, let's see what the math says." Now, they weren't refusing the hire, is this would be an administrative hire. They weren't refusing the hire, but they were deferring it. And that's the part was like, should we defer it or not? Like, why would you defer it if the math is telling you to go for it? 

That was our job was to look at that that day and get clear. The truth is, inherently, what they were waiting for a moment when there would be more space, there would be more money, there would be more of something. And nothing about their situation was going to produce that moment on its own. And they could not see that truth from standing inside their own world. I could see it. I knew what—I knew what the math was going to say. I didn't know the exact number, but I knew what the math was going to inform. But they could not see that from where they were standing. And it's because they didn't have the truth. They were just leaning towards this bias that they have that, like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, we made a good move. We're good for a minute. We're paying somebody more than we've ever paid them before. And it was a great hire. Like, we just need to chill before we make another move.” And you know, I get that. That's a very human reaction to have. 

So, now let's get to the truth. They were losing about three hours a day to administrative work. Let's just think for the owner for a second. They were losing three hours a day to administrative work, work that if they hired a strong administrative assistant, they could have done. Opening matters, printing file labels, setting up folders. You know, that's the kind of stuff that falls on you if you do not have someone to do that job. So three hours a day at their rate against what it actually costs to have somebody doing that, twenty thousand dollars a month, twenty thousand dollars a month is what they could have netted by hiring the administrative assistant, twenty thousand dollars a month. Another way to say this is what they were choosing not to make in order not to spend for this administrative assistant position salary. 

So what was happening here? What was happening was they were counting the salary, they were not counting the other side of the ledger. Nobody had ever added up the cost of waiting, including them. So the step that they were postponing until they had the space, and I have air quotes around that, is the thing that creates the space.

Now, once they saw all this, we had all this on the whiteboard, we did the math, we added it all up, they sat back and just looked at it almost like, "Whoa." They said afterwards that they would give the client the same advice, not to wait to do that. And I thought, okay, well, there you go. Meaning, a client that they advise. Getting concrete did not change their mind. It showed them what was true. 

Okay, so we're going to dig into that episode in more depth in a couple of weeks. Okay, so what did both of these owners, both of these firms, what did they have in common? So, two owners who look nothing alike, other than being awesome. What do they actually share? Neither one was wrong. Neither one was stubborn. Both were operating on the best read they had. The best read they had, though, was not the truth. One of them had no read at all, very lost at sea. The other one had a read, but it had never been checked. 

Your read is what you make every decision from, every one. And nothing really flags a bad read. From the inside, it can feel exactly like a good read. And that's just our bias. That's just our blind spots. And this goes back to it's very difficult to see the truth from inside the situation that you're in, from inside your own world. Not because you're wrong. It's not about being wrong or right. It's because your own reasoning can't tell what's wrong or right if there's not anchors. You have to put something concrete in front of you and look at it. 

When we think about why it's so hard to get concrete about our own situation, there's a few reasons. And one is that it takes real effort. And effort is the thing you have the least of when you're buried. The more overloaded you are, the less able you are to do the work that would unload you or that would provide relief. So, in the first example today that I gave you, it wasn't about unloading, but it was providing relief or a sense of purpose. Like, they were lost at sea. So you go on the read you already have because it's right there and it costs nothing. It costs no effort. It's just the read that you have. You have to force it. It will never feel like the right week to sit down and to do it. You have to force it. 

And, you know, when we think about what does it look like to get really concrete? I talked earlier about structure. And I think when you can't get data, because data is the ultimate. But when you can't get data, you do need to find a way to get some anchors of truth. And high-quality questions always do that.

By the way, I should say here, data is not the end-all, be-all. Data is one form of information. I never suggest that someone looks at data and solely makes a decision on data without checking in with themselves and working through the barriers that they anticipate or the fears or the worries or the whatever it might be. It's all important, but we don't do it without data. If we can get data, we need to do it.

So when I'm mentioning that the data is, like, if you can get that, then that's great. That doesn't mean that it's automatically the right decision because something falls perfectly within the data. It has to be you can see the truth in the data, and you can see the truth and the possibility on what it means for you and for your firm and for your clients.

You don't just blindly follow data without using your head to think about it as well. But I will tell you, most people just think about it with their head, and they don't have data, and that puts them in a situation that they didn't see coming that they could have seen coming.

So, yes, data is important, but it's not the only piece of information that will inform your next steps, your right next steps. I want to make sure that's clear. I'm not asking people to turn off their brain once they have a number.

And so when you can't get data, though, going back to that, for example, in the first scenario that I gave you, you have to get concrete a different way. That could be a number, it could be a name, it could be a list, it could be a date, it could be something that provides some anchors within how you think about what's in front of you. A list of four categories on a whiteboard. That's concrete. And it was there was a lot of specificity within those categories. Twenty thousand dollars a month, that is concrete.

So when you're thinking about how to get clear for yourself, when you're thinking about how to approach this, do not hunt for the belief that the way you're looking at it is wrong. It's more about you are hunting for the read that has never been made checkable. Like, you've never worked a way to check your own read, to verify that your read is the healthiest or the one that makes the most sense to you. 

I want you, when you look at your own situation, when you're listening to this episode, I want you to pick something that you've been waiting on, that feels a little gray or vague, and you wonder if there should be some action, but there's inaction because you don't have clarity, you don't have the truth. I want you to decide something in your world or whatever comes to mind, hold it in your mind, and I want you to say what you're actually waiting for. What do you need in order to make a move or make a decision or decide how you're going to move forward? What are you waiting for? And then ask what would have to happen to produce that thing that you are waiting for. Then push at the thing that would need to happen to produce the answer for you. 

So often, when I'm talking to owners, I will hear them say something like, I don't know how much longer I can take this. Maybe it's to do with an employee, for example. Or why can't they just get it? Or it's like they're passively staying in something, in an arrangement that is not working for them or for the firm. And they aren't making a call. They're just drifting and letting month after month after month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year in many cases, they're letting that go by while they're just staying in the energy of, I don't really know how much more I can take this. I'm like, well, you've been taking it for two years, so I'm pretty sure you can keep going.

The problem is, they don't have an anchor or a line in the sand. They don't have anything. So they just keep riding the wave, and they're also buried. And they don't really have a lot of time to deal with it. 

But these things take effort. When you need to get to the truth of something, it takes effort. Just like we talked about earlier, just a few minutes ago here. You're going to have to do that. And when you don't do that, you waste so much time, so much energy, so much money that you didn't have to waste. But our brain takes the path of least resistance and will tolerate a lot to avoid effort. It is hard to sit down and figure it out, right? But that is what it requires.

Now, of course, when you have a partner, that is very helpful. But you're not screwed without a partner. You can sit down and you can put forth the effort. You can ask yourself high-quality questions. You can get to facts not feelings. You can give yourself some sense of structure that will help produce something more concrete about what you're facing, what you're looking at, and how to make decisions around it. 

So I always tell them, like, what's the line in the sand? Like, what's the trigger going to be, you know? Also, I hear this with actually, when people who want to work with us. So they really want to work with us, we send a proposal. My team is ready to go. And when someone comes in, that's a big deal. Our team, we are boutique, advisory, and consulting, and coaching. We don't just take anybody all the time.

So we think somebody's going to come in and then they're like, "You know what? I just don't know if it's the right time because of X, Y, and Z." And listen, it may not be. I'm not pushing up on that. But the truth is, they're just going to keep saying that and keep saying that and keep saying that and keep saying that. I could tell by the way that they're talking.

And so then I'm like, "Hey, yo, it's totally fine. But you need to decide for yourself what is the point at which you would move forward for yourself? Because clearly, we've talked, it would be so helpful for you. Now, if now is not the time, that's okay. But don't just live in that energy. Don't just live in that, like, it's not the time. I need more space. I need X to be in place first. I need Y to be in place first." Like, none of that is true, by the way. People come in, and I say this lovingly, the hot mess that they are, we work with them, and we get it organized. There's no perfect time to walk into Velocity Work. 

So that's an example. But it also does the first example I was giving you, it's the same thing. To what end do you tolerate what you've been tolerating? There's other things in the firm. There's things with your clients that you just, you tolerate, you tolerate, you tolerate. So, I think when you're living in this limbo energy and deferring things with no real concrete basis for it, you will stay in that energy. That is how that will work. Because the world is never going to hand you this opportunity like, "Here you go. Now, here is plenty of space to go determine what you would like to do with X." That's never going to happen. 

As you guys know, if you want something, if you want to take time for something, you have to take it because the world is not going to give it to you. So no matter what you are dealing with, whatever kind of decision is in front of you that you are delaying for whatever reason, make sure you love your reasons for delaying it. Because I'm not saying that there's never a time to delay something, but it shouldn't be just because you should be able to stand on your own two feet as to why. Now, y'all are lawyers, so you can justify anything really well. But this is what I mean is, you and only you know if the reasons that you're giving are the truth or they sound good and they work. They're good enough to allow you to keep deferring or deflecting or delaying. 

So you've got to be on to yourself. And the more awareness you have that you need to be on to yourself, every single one of us needs to be on to ourselves. When you start to say something, or when you justify something, or when you make a quick decision that there's not an ideal result right in front of you, but you make a quick decision, you know, in the example earlier today, not to do something, you're going to delay it, you're going to defer it, play that all the way to the end. Do yourself a favor, figure out what that means for what's not going to be on the table for you that could be on the table otherwise if you did move forward with the decision. You have to look at it from different angles. You have to bring structure. You have to bring high-quality questions when you cannot get data. When you can get data, get the data, still ask high-quality questions. 

So, we're going to go deeper because you'll see where there was depth to the conversations that I didn't go into here. I want to save those because there's so, you guys will see yourself so much in these scenarios, and it's going to help even further when you're really thinking about a specific angle.

But just for today, just for today, as an introduction to this whole topic, let's all just wake up a little more to the fact that the truth is very hard to see from within our own world, the truth about our world, the truth about decisions, the truth about how we could move forward. It is very difficult to see when you're standing inside of it. That awareness alone will prompt you to wake up and look at things a different way, approach things a different way. And that's a good thing, right?

There's no perfect recipe for success. I try to give you tips and hints as I can, but if you don't have the awareness that the truth is hard to see and if you are just running with things without checking on them, without seeing where your bias is, without getting facts or anchors of truth in front of you, you're not going to be taking your best right next steps.

So just be aware that may be a risk that is happening for you. It is, because it does for everybody. And see where that's happening for you. Where do you have hunches that maybe that is true, that you don't have anchors, you don't have facts, you don't have the truth? Being awake to that will change everything. It will shift something.

You will start digging in to figure out what questions you can ask yourself. You will start digging in to get data maybe you've never actually looked up before, but it's in your software somewhere. You will do something different if you wake up and say, "You know what? I am just riding this out. What am I doing? I'm just busy. I'm going with the flow. And meanwhile, I'm tolerating this thing, or I'm feeling this sense of anxiety, or, you know, insert whatever here." If you hear, when you hear this episode, if you see yourself or find yourself in any of what I'm saying, don't sit on it. Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up.

And for me, waking up sometimes is just, when I drive, that's my best thinking is done. On drives, I'll just think and ponder and explore and ideas and insights come that then I know I can go sit down with, then I know I can work with, and clarity starts to come. So, all right, everybody, I hope you have a wonderful week. I'll see you here next Tuesday.

Hey, want to watch the video of this episode? Head over to Velocity Work’s YouTube channel. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

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