From $250k to $750k: How Not to Fall Into “The Crack”

Brett Trembly:
It's like as soon as we get comfortable, we stop finding new money because it's like our brains are like, okay, I've made it to this level and so I don't need to take the next step.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, I'm going to hold on to what I have. I'm going to hold on to what I have and that's going to keep me safe. And it's actually the opposite.

Brett Trembly:
It's a fear base. You know, a quote that I love speaking to what you're saying is that decisions change reality. So people that sit around waiting for reality to change, it doesn't work that way. Like you're saying, as soon as you make a decision, things start organizing for you.

Ali Katz:
Welcome to the NewLaw Podcast for Entrepreneurial Lawyers. Here at Personal Family Lawyer, we want to help more families and business owners make eyes wide open legal and financial decisions. But we cannot do this without you. Which is why we started this podcast to find those of you ready to offer a better way to serve your…

Ali Katz:
Welcome to the NewLaw Podcast for Entrepreneurial Lawyers. Here at Personal Family Lawyer, we want to help more families and business owners make eyes wide open legal and financial decisions. But we cannot do this without you. Which is why we started this podcast to find those of you ready to offer a better way to serve your clients. So if you are a legal professional who wants to help improve the legal and financial well being of your clients and offer a service model that differentiates you while meeting the needs of your community, and rest easy knowing that you are running your law practice like a real business, then join us on this journey by subscribing to the show and find out how you can use a new law business model to love your life as a lawyer.

Ali Katz:
Hello. Hello. I'm here today with Brett Trembly, the CEO and co-founder of Get Staffed Up and of course a lawyer. He founded Trembly Law in 2011 and grew that firm into a multi year recognized Inc. 5000 company. And then in 2018, before COVID, before the pandemic, before we were all remote, Brett co founded Get Staffed Up, a virtual staffing company for law firms. And it has quickly grown into the largest virtual staffing company for lawyers in the United States and has made it to the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies, number three in human resources, number five in Miami, number nine in Florida. He's been a super lawyer in Florida and he is providing hundreds of international jobs through Get Staffed Up. And on a personal level, many of our Personal Family Lawyer firms love working with Get Staffed Up for their remote services.

Ali Katz:
So if you want to learn how to use remote support overseas, international remote support, less expensive to be able to expand your capacity to serve, free up your time, energy and attention, you're going to love this episode.

Ali Katz:
So Brett, thank you so much for being here with me today. And I'd love to just start with hearing about your path to becoming a lawyer. Is it something that you always knew you wanted to do or how in the world did it happen?

Brett Trembly:
Not really. So there aren't any. Any lawyers in my direct family. I had an uncle or have an uncle through marriage who's a lawyer. And when I was young, I had asked him a few times if I could go watch one of his trials. I was obviously interested somewhat. Look, as far as I can recall, being very honest with myself, the reason I went to law school is I like the idea of not growing up yet. I did five years in college, so I did, like, a victory lap.

Brett Trembly:
And my last year, I ran for student body president and I won. And I only had three hours each semester. So I had this year where I just was, like, fun. It was just like pure, pure fun. And I was. I was a student, and I wasn't ready to stop being a student. And I'm like, law school in Miami sounds like a heck of a lot of fun, you know? Cause I'm. I'm from New Mexico.

Brett Trembly:
I'm from, you know, the southwest, very rural area. And it just seemed like a good education. What's that?

Ali Katz:
College? You were already in Miami for college?

Brett Trembly:
No, no, I'm sorry. So I went to college. I went to college in New Mexico as well, and I had never really been out. And it seemed like. Just seemed like pure fun to me, you know, I never. I never looked at law school like, oh, it's going to be so hard. I'm like, I don't really care, you know, just study a little bit.

Ali Katz:
And it was. It was a way for you to have more school, not enter the workforce quite yet. And when you were applying to law schools, like, did you apply other than in Miami and. Or did. Was that just, like, the best one, or you wanted to be in Miami?

Brett Trembly:
I had known a little bit about University of Miami because I had a sports law program, but it was so expensive that, you know, I was just going to go to University of New Mexico. Like, that was the whole. Again, it was just about continuing to be a student. It's like my excuse to not grow up and enter the workforce. It makes sense at 23, which I felt was, like, just too young still. So on, like, the week before the application deadline, I get a letter in the mail from the dean of undergraduate students at my fraternity house. Somebody checked the mail, and it was a letter that said, if you're going to business school or law school at the University of Miami. You can apply to be almost like a glorified house dad, you know, a live in graduate assistant at your fraternity, because, UM is a private school.

Brett Trembly:
And so we will give you its free room and board, a free meal plan, and 50% of your tuition. So this thing was worth like 80 grand a year. And my parents, you know, my. My dad had a business when. When he sold it when I was 10. Our family had a jewelry store for a very long time, but after that, he was a teacher, my mom had sat there. So 80 grand was more money than anybody in my family even made individually. Right.

Brett Trembly:
So I'm like, you know, so I applied on the last day to, um. I got in, and I had never been to Miami. I got in, like, I don't know, April, August hits, and my dad and I jump in a car, I drive out here and move out here for the first time.

Ali Katz:
Wow. Well, that was a really nice gift from your fraternity.

Brett Trembly:
It was paid by the university, the undergrad, in other words, because Miami's a private school. Right. So it was like I had the opportunity through my fraternity, but it was paid for by. By undergraduate, so. But what a. Yeah, so I lived in the fraternity house all three years in law school, which had, you know, there was work to do and it had its up, pros and cons, like, everything.

Ali Katz:
Yeah.

Brett Trembly:
But, you know, it was. It was a great time.

Ali Katz:
I mean, wow. Wow, what a gift.

Brett Trembly:
I almost graduated with honors. But I always say that if you had a ratio for amount of hours studied, you know, into your GPA, I. I would have been like valedictorians, because I never got caught up in, like, the whole rankings. And like, I just didn't get it. It didn't matter to me. It's not why I was there.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, you were there for fun. You were there.

Brett Trembly:
I was there for fun. I was there to, like, experience new things. And I found the trial team, which I love. So I put most of my time into that. I mean, I'm not a lazy guy. I wasn't a slouch or anything, but I. It's just like, I didn't ever envision myself at a big firm and. Or even practicing law because I didn't know if I really wanted to be a lawyer. I just knew I wanted to go to law school, especially in Miami.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, and so did you when. If you didn't envision yourself practicing law, did you envision yourself being an entrepreneur? Was that, like, because your family was entrepreneurial?

Brett Trembly:
Yeah, exactly right. I see I was the kid who used to sell. I stole pens from my dad's jewelry store and I sold them to my classmates for 25 cents.

Ali Katz:
Yeah.

Brett Trembly:
Without asking my parents. Right. I did the donut sales at parades, I did the garage sales. I was always making my own money. So I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and be in charge of myself. And then eventually the law merged with that.

Ali Katz:
At what point did you realize that, oh, this is a good business, being a lawyer is a good business?

Brett Trembly:
Not until the business started doing well.

Ali Katz:
But you came right out of law school and launched right away or did you go to work for someone?

Brett Trembly:
No. So I work for kind of an interesting guy. Out of all three years in law school, and then for three years out of law school, solo practitioner. I mean, look, there's, there's, like I said earlier, there's pros and cons with everything. So I could say all the bad things. Like I practiced door law. He tried to, you know, like I was doing a med mal deposition one day and estate plan and I'm like, what am I doing? I don't.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, you didn't even know literally what you were doing.

Brett Trembly:
Yeah, no, exactly. That said, I mean, this guy practiced even though he was blinded like halfway through his career, you know, interesting guy. I learned a lot, but it was still him. He would get up at like 5 in the morning and, and then by the time he got to work at nine, he had already like put in three hours of work. And again, because he was blind, you could just hear throughout the office. He had a program that would speak to him. So every time he hit like W E R T, it said it out loud. And he just would bang away at that keyboard for eight hours a day.

Brett Trembly:
He would only stop to eat real quick, you know, handle some questions or a consultation, and then he'd go home. And like I kind of always knew, like, this is not the life that I want. I'm not going to be the grinder that's putting in. I'll put in 12 hour days, but it's not going to be purely on legal work. I'm just not built that way.

Ali Katz:
Yes. So you, so you go to work for him and, and you see, here's a guy on his own with you, maybe some other staff, taking whatever walks in the door. And at what point did you say, I'm not working for this guy anymore, I'm going to go out on my own?

Brett Trembly:
You know, I told him about two years in that I was thinking about starting my own law firm. And he was like, he did what every employer does. Well, let me, let me make some vague promises so I can keep this person around longer and see what the lowest amount I can pay them to keep them around. You know, and I'm not saying that in a bad way, just like. But then we never had conversations. I think he would live and die by his monthly revenue. Cuz sometimes he'd be talking about bonuses and the next month he'd be like, everybody's getting fired. It was very erratic, you know, up and down.

Brett Trembly:
And then eventually that October, I, you know, I just said, I made my decision, I'm leaving. And thank God that I did because if he had said, all right, well we're going to make you a partner, we're going to pay you this much. I can't even imagine where I would be. You know, I really needed to go through my first two and a half years were really a struggle. I was working day and night. I was. When I would pick up a case, you know, it's true. Solos as you, you know, we've got like no time to do the real legal work. Struggle to get payments and, but still networking. I mean, we can talk about all those things, but I can't imagine where I would be right now.

Ali Katz:
The struggle was important is what I hear you saying in order to figure it out.

Brett Trembly:
The struggle was important. Right. But, but I think comfort is the enemy of progress. And so let's say, because when I got out of law school in '08, he was paying me like 50, $53,000 a year. And then three years later I was making about the same, plus originations. But I didn't, I didn't know how to originate. I wasn't forced to go do that. So let's say he's like, well, we're going to pay you 80 and make, and make you put you on a partner path or something.

Brett Trembly:
Maybe the next year I'm making 85 and then 90 and like, you know, I have a firm and I have associates, so I'm not, there's nothing wrong with that model. But I just, I can't imagine like me and myself where I would be. Maybe I would have been like, okay, but just like a little bit more, a little bit more. And maybe I would have never had my own firm and you know, the type of person I would have turned into because the struggle and learning how hard it was was very important.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. And I think people are so afraid of that struggle that they stay in situations that just ultimately are not the right situation for them or they're unwilling to say what they want. You know, when, when negotiating with somebody like, you know, the guy you were working for, perhaps now in this case, you as the, as the employer, and they just, you know, kind of stay in situations and get resentful or, you know, feel victimized by their situation instead of rising up into, okay, I'm going to go out on my own, I'm going to face the struggle, or I'm going to actually negotiate for something that I want. And it seems like maybe at that firm, that wasn't even a reality because when you went out on your own, you weren't. Were you a door lawyer in the beginning or did you, did you specialize right away?

Brett Trembly:
I did not make that mistake. I said, I'm. I'm going to be a litigation firm because that's, that's mostly what I did. And I, again, I had done trial team. That's what I liked. I was tired of waiting for businesses to get sued or get in trouble. And that's when I really got back to let me help business owners. And I developed the proactive side of things with our general counsel program, you know, corporate law.

Brett Trembly:
And that's really when the firm. Well, when I started hiring people is when I got to one level. And then when I, you know, brought in that general counsel program is when we really took off.

Ali Katz:
What I'm hearing is that you didn't really take. You started hiring before you "really took off".

Brett Trembly:
Yeah, those, those two and a half years, Ali. So I, I know I, I didn't sort of take you through the timeline in a linear manner, but I started in, in, you know, today's what, November 6th. My law firm anniversary is November 1st, so we just hit 13 years.

Ali Katz:
Amazing. Happy anniversary.

Brett Trembly:
But for the first two and a half years, it was me, myself and Irene. Like, it was just. I did everything. I answered all the phones and I was, again, I was miserable. I was stressed. I hired my first. Just any employee, right. She was a law student, but she worked for me 30 hours a week.

Brett Trembly:
So semi, part time.

Ali Katz:
How soon?

Brett Trembly:
Two and a half years.

Ali Katz:
So for the first two and a half years, just you. Irene is you. I mean, myself and Irene, me, myself and I. So now you're two and. And when I think about it, that seems maybe, maybe, maybe I did it a little bit, a little bit sooner. But that was about the right, you know, timeframe for me as well. Where were you financially at that point when you brought somebody in for 30 hours?

Brett Trembly:
We were doing eight to $9,000 a month total in gross revenue. And I couldn't. I could not get past that. No matter what I did, I hired that person, and I doubled it immediately. I went from 9 to almost 20. Like 18, 19, 20. And I never looked back. So the thing I like to give myself credit for is I didn't get scared and be like, oh, I can't do that again.

Brett Trembly:
That was a fluke. When she went back to school, I'm like, well, let me hire my other person. Right? And she was like, finishing paralegal school, and she did a lot of things for me. And then I hired an intake person and we went to 30,000 a month, but only because, you know, Ali, I joined a mutual friend of ours, you know, mentor, you know, our RJon Robins program.

Ali Katz:
Would you love direct support to help you grow your law practice into a business you love? Go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years plus, to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.

Brett Trembly:
And one of his coaches was like, you gotta fucking hire someone. Sorry for the F word on your podcast.

Ali Katz:
Well, they use a lot of that in RJon's program, so it makes sense. You're channeling.

Brett Trembly:
But, you know, and thank God, because I didn't know how hard it would be to get the business up and running out of a little bit of arrogance and a lot of inexperience, because I think most of us, Ali, were like, we're good students. It's kind of easy. We get through law school. We pass the bar. I'm like, we're high achievers. Like, things. Things happen. And so I went into this without one iota of doubt that I would be super successful.

Brett Trembly:
And when I hit those ceilings, I wouldn't know why. And it was just a numbers game, you know, a non, non emotional numbers game.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. If we can get to. The sooner we can get to that realization, I think the better. It's very difficult to do that, especially if we have inherited money, trauma, or a concept that I teach on a lot called money dysmorphia. And I think one of the best things that I can convey to lawyers is that if you have the right practice model, the right business model for your practice area, and those are different. Right. Litigation has a whole different practice model. Business model than a wills and trust practice as an example.

Ali Katz:
You know, I think as you, as you were saying with your general counsel program, that's when things really took off. That's a new business model. When you have the right business model for your practice area and you're using your time, energy and attention the right way. As a lawyer, we don't actually need to worry about money.

Brett Trembly:
Right.

Ali Katz:
The money is you make as much money as you need in order to hire all the support that you need. Now there is the issue of bridging between where you are now and where you want to be and how to find the money to do that. And I see that that's really where people get the most stuck. I would say it's where I got the most stuck. Throughout my business life, whenever I found myself stuck, it was because I didn't know how to bridge that gap. Do you remember how you bridged that gap?

Brett Trembly:
The first major thing, it was easy early on, but the first major thing was hiring an intake person and fixing the intake process and restructuring, like removing myself from that, which was eating up all my time and then charging for consultations because the tire kickers. I mean, look, there's people that, that need legal help and they don't have access to money and all that. There's nothing wrong with that. But how it affected my life was. It was just devastating. That is like if people ask, you know, what are my two hires? I would say an executive assistant, a billing coordinator. Because getting, getting the bills out is just like us lawyers. We hate invoicing people. We hate.

Ali Katz:
Oh, yeah. I never. I ended up creating a business model where I didn't need to invoice because invoicing was worse. I created a business model where I didn't even have to track my time because I just wouldn't. I would feel bad. Oh, I'm billing this person for my learning. Oh, I'm just not going to bill them and just wouldn't get the bills. That. It was the worst.

Brett Trembly:
It is the worst. I've never been in a room where I, I asked, you know, who has, who has $50,000 in AR right now? Who's got a hundred and somebody if the room is bigger than like 15 people, somebody doesn't have a quarter of a million to half a million dollars. It's just like sitting on their computer that they could take a few hours, send it out and start collecting, but they're focused on where do I get my next case? We've got this mental hang up that I can't solve. I don't. Except when you have to delegate that.

Ali Katz:
That's the solve is you make it somebody else's issue. You know, like, okay, great, let me bring on this person in my office who's going to be responsible for collecting money and that's their KPI. So you did solve it. That's how you solved it and that is how you solve it.

Brett Trembly:
I don't know how to solve the mental hang up. I don't think we ever get over it. We quite literally have to give it to someone else to do because for all the reasons you just said and a thousand more, we just won't do it. But where people in the community, like in my networking groups and they started saying like, I'm hearing lots of good things and you're growing. And all that is when I got myself out of the intake. Like when you, when you transition from the solo practitioner that answers everyone's calls, that picks up the phone, that gives your time away to like some. A professional who's setting up your appointments and you're closing, like yeah, that, that is such a huge jump.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, I mean it's really why way back in the beginning when I started teaching lawyers to, to begin with, I began to teach our client engagement system which included this intake process and process for engaging clients. Because that was all something that, you know, somebody else could do a lot of that. And now if you're, if you've got somebody else doing your intake, scheduling things on your calendar and you know how to engage every person that you meet with, it really does be able to start to shift that money equation and you start to realize, oh, it's not a money problem. I don't have any money problems. I just need to engage more clients, be able to serve more clients. It is a people problem and being able to hire the right people and get the right support.

Ali Katz:
And so let's talk about that because that's really the part that you then have gone on to solve through your non law firm business. Get Staffed Up. So tell us about how that came about. When, when did that occur and what's going on with it.

Brett Trembly:
So by, by 2018, um, we had I think probably already like three or four attorneys. We, we were really growing 50 to a hundred percent per year which continued all the way up through Covid. Now, you know, not the same. We're, we grow by like 10% a year. It's just different now. But a good friend of mine, also a lawyer, I invited him to some networking groups. We started creating a relationship. He did real estate closings. He found out about, you know, how to hire offshore staff. And. And I always tell the story. He kind of disappeared for a month, where I used to talk to him, you know, several times a week. He just kind of disappeared. Came back up, like, resurfaced. And he has these four people in the Philippines and one person in Latin America.

Brett Trembly:
And I was like, what on earth? I said, hey, I need a marketing assistant. So he found me one. I went to a legal conference and I started telling people, and I made his first two sales for him. And he was like, why don't we do this business together? And I said, like, where, you know, where do I sign? So it's really been an amazing relationship where I'm the. Like, I'm in the networking groups. I know the people, I preach, I believe in it. And he's the operations. Former military, you know, he. He loves the operations. And Ali, like, people always ask, well, when did you know it was going to go well? It was one of those things where we were on my porch only like, two months in, before we even tried to start making sales, because we spent five months setting up a lot of systems before we started making sales so that we didn't just, you know, fumble all over ourselves because we both had incomes. Right. We both were lawyers and we had our firm.

Ali Katz:
This was your second business? Yeah.

Brett Trembly:
We were on my porch, like, this thing's going to be big. I just. Just know it. And so it was a lot of breaking down barriers early on, which is fun to look back on, like, nostalgically getting on phone calls with lawyers. Like, you can work with people through a computer. There's this thing called Zoom.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. What year was this?

Brett Trembly:
It was 2018.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, '18. So people weren't really down with the remote thing yet. This was super novel. You were really having to. Yeah. Early adopter.

Brett Trembly:
Mostly young attorneys, you know, the older attorneys were just. Would just like, wow. Just. They, like, didn't get it. So imagine you have a business where you have basically one main objection. There are other ones. Like, well, what about the language? Or what about the book? Like, one main objection. And then something happens across the world where everybody has a new collective knowledge overnight.

Ali Katz:
We had the same experience because we were helping people do webinars. We had, like, you know, 11 of 11. We ran 11 webinars for our members in January 2020, something like 542 webinars in 2020, by the end of the year. And so that. That's that's what happened for you.

Brett Trembly:
You get it. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, you know, and back then I think everybody was terrified. I certainly was that first week. Like I went and bought a bunch of groceries. I didn't, didn't know what was going to happen. Didn't know if both of my businesses were going to go away. But then all of a sudden we went from afraid to like, holy cow, this thing is blowing up in a good way.

Brett Trembly:
I mean, everybody needed people and they needed them remotely. And when you hire offshore, so we hire out of Latin America, no longer the Philippines, you get people. The people aren't perfect. We still have turnover. There's people that leave for better jobs. Humans are humans. You can't. There's no robots and you know, yet and all those things.

Brett Trembly:
But it's, you know, cheaper. The English is phenomenal, the education's amazing and you know, people work hard and that's hard to find when in for administrative level positions because if your business calls for a 15 to $20, you know, task well to pay someone in the US that kind of money and expect them to stick around and be loyal and like grow with you. No, they have a life to live. They have families. Like, it doesn't. The economics don't work.

Ali Katz:
And so you've created a reality where the economics work for law firms to have well paid in their country, but economically affordable talent here in the United States to provide remote services. Economic arbitrage in a way that's truly win, win. Everybody wins. As long as the roles can be performed remotely. That seems to be the main requirement.

Brett Trembly:
Look, my law firm is hybrid. So once per week everybody comes in. Of course, we have our offshore team as well. I understand when people are like, but I really want that person next to me. It is a little bit easier to just be able to turn your head and yell at someone and be like, hey, I need this, this and this.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. I mean, look, I've been online myself since I left my office in, I would say 2006. So a long time ago, I went into my office two to three days a week in 2006 because I had a brick and mortar office, you know, then and. But I realized that if I was in the office, I got a lot less done. People needed a lot more from me. And my team really wasn't able to, you know, I just, and I was a mom and I didn't want to be in the office all the time. And I built the systems and the team. So I didn't need to be.

Ali Katz:
So I went home and gave up my office to my client services director kind of, you know, she was the one there with me from the beginning. So I was like, you take my office when I come in. I'll sit with you in the office or I'll see clients and then I'm sitting with them in the conference room. I don't need to have my own office. You have the office and then, you know, I'll have my office at home and then from there. Once I sold my practice in 2008, everything for me has been virtual. So I've been virtual since then. Completely, completely, 100%.

Ali Katz:
It's just made my life infinitely, infinitely better. And yes, there's needed to be some workarounds. Like, yes, I can't turn my head. And although I do have somebody here right. Once I've grown now I have somebody here who comes in every day and supports me here. And a lot of, you know, we do a lot of stuff together. Do you do that? Do you bring the offshore team together with the in person team in any sort of like, let's all get together and have meetings.

Brett Trembly:
We have flown in a good chunk of our staff at different times around the holidays to like come to our holiday party and work out of the office for a week. But not on a, not on a, like a regular basis. It's too far, too expensive. But you were really a pioneer then in terms of remote work because. That never, again. I was like a pioneer in the work with someone else remote, but not work from home remote. I was. That never crossed my mind.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. You know, as a mom of young kids, I knew that I wanted to build my practice in a way where I didn't need to go in all the time. And if I had a whole team there, I was like, why do I need to be here all the time? And I think it's also partially, you know, I think that the smartest business owners learned from adjacent industries and or adjacent practice areas. And I was learning from online business owners back then. And so, you know, I started to get this mental model of possibility that I just think that most lawyers, you know, didn't. Didn't have back then. For those of you that are interested in, you know, what we're talking about here with remote work and remote workers will, we'll link to Brett's company, Get Stuffed Up in our, in our show notes and you can get more information about that there. Let me ask you this because you went to law school for fun, to have fun. When did you start loving your life as a lawyer?

Brett Trembly:
Not until I started hiring. You know, I talked about that first hire and I was still stressed out, but like I had those first few years, new wife, new kid, new mortgage and you know, I hid any sort of economic shortfall from anyone around me, probably out of embarrassment, but also to like protect my wife and stuff. But like I didn't realize until years later how much stress self induced or not like how much I, I put on myself and the effects that can have, you know, later down the road, like anxiety popping up and those things. So once I started hiring and I started growing, I had fewer and fewer bad months. You know, as a litigator, there's always rough moments and there's, you know, rough opposing counsel and bad cases and tough clients. But yeah, so I think starting in, you know, mid 2014, I did a business plan workshop in 2014 in LA in October. And I laid out the for the first time on paper what a million dollar firm would look like. And I was saying yes out loud, but internally I was telling myself, no freaking way, this is impossible, I can't do this.

Brett Trembly:
It's too much like how all, all the things Ali, cause we've had a few discussions on the mental side of things. Like you're laughing because you get it. You see your clients go through it, you coach people through it. And I was the classic case. I was not just some wit. Like I had all the, all the money hang ups. I grew up in a very now looking back, like, you know, poor area.

Brett Trembly:
And once the money started flowing in and it gave me, I could like, oh, I could exhale, I could breathe. I could not be so. Because when you go to hire someone and you need them and you think, okay, well that's another 50k. You know, with everything else, 5 to 6k a month, like where's that going to come from? And you just put that on yourself and you know, it's daunting and it's tough and I think.

Ali Katz:
But you did it. I mean, you had the thoughts. And that's, and that's really what I want to take, I want everybody here to take is that Brett had the thoughts, I had the thoughts. You likely have the thoughts. And the only difference between Brett and me and you is that we did the thing anyway. We hired the people anyway, we found the money anyway. And one of the things that I found, I'm curious if this has been the case for you, Brett, is that every single time I committed, even if I didn't have the money or know where the money was coming from. It showed up. It was like this crazy magic thing that came through my commitment.

Ali Katz:
Now I think as lawyers, we have a bigger gift in this because we actually have a high value service that we can provide to people. Not everybody has that. But I'm curious if you saw that too, where you're like, I don't know where the money's going to come from. And then it showed up, the money came. Or did you always know where it would come from?

Brett Trembly:
I, I would go to a conference, come back and make a bunch of money and I'm like, this is weird. And I'm not the only one that's experienced that. You know, there's an energy that you put out into the world and there's also these weird, I think you'll agree with me, limiting beliefs. Like as soon as we get comfortable, we stop finding new money because it's like our brains are like, okay, I've made it to this level and so I don't need to take the next step.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, I'm going to hold on to what I have. I'm going to hold on to what I have and that's going to keep me safe. And it's actually the opposite.

Brett Trembly:
It's a fear based, you know, a quote that I love speaking to what you're saying is that decisions change reality. So people that sit around waiting for reality to change, it doesn't work that way. Like you're saying, as soon as you make a decision, things start organizing for you. Napoleon Hill talks about it and I don't know how to explain it, but it just happens. It works.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, it's, it's, it's part of what I call practical magic. So, you know, where, where a lot of, a lot of the work that I, that I do with people, not just in the legal field, but outside, is to bridge these practical tools with spiritual concepts. And so practical magic is, is that and decision including for example, putting things on your calendar, that's making a decision. You put something on your calendar and that is a decision made. And that is a tool of practical magic that pull, kind of pulls down from like this other plane of existence exactly what you want. And it really works. And I actually see that that way as well about like legal documents, you know, getting married, getting engaged. These are, these are, these are tools of practical magic.

Ali Katz:
Like when we commit it like, you know, pulls in what we want, estate planning, you know, wills and trusts and all of that. It's like, oh, that pulls down my desires and makes them into reality. And so all of these tools to me are tools of practical magic, calendars and legal agreements.

Brett Trembly:
I'm with you. I, yeah, I've been using calendars to, I used to just schedule my whole, my whole semester. I put like everything I needed to accomplish. Well then I need to do this in March and this in April and this in May and then I'm good. And like it's so simple. And it's like I don't need to listen to podcast to hear that, but a lot of people do.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, of course. Like I, I didn't, I didn't know how to do that when I first started out, although I think in a way I did. I remember I had this of course, you know, analog calendar book for law school and it was just full of all of these post it notes. I, so I think I was actually doing it back then. I just didn't, I wasn't doing it consciously using my calendar to create reality. And I, and I see hiring really in the same way, you know, we use hiring to expand our capacity so that we can live into that capacity. And it's kind of like a forcing function. Oh, I just took on this $50,000 a year person.

Ali Katz:
I better go out and get some more clients or I better learn how to engage my, you know, the people that I'm meeting with more effectively. And then that pushes me into the outside of the comfort zone that I otherwise would have stayed in if I hadn't made that investment. And so I'm really glad that you're supporting people to have this win win relationship of economic arbitrage. That's fantastic. So what would you, and as we're going to wrap, wrap up here, what would you leave the listeners with today is the one most important thing for folks to take away to love their lives as lawyers. If they don't love their lives right now or they don't love the way that they're using their law degree right now?

Brett Trembly:
Our tagline at the, at the business is delegate your way to freedom. So I don't want to just like default to a line, but like, I can't overemphasize how you get further in life by not by doing more, but by doing less. Like stop doing the things that you're and just sap your energy. And not, not in like a crystal ball type of way, but like we all have things in our life that we don't like doing. Therefore, therefore it drains us and we don't perform well. And it's, it's the 80:20 rule, right. Any. Anyone that has studied the Pareto principle, you know, read 80:20 by Richard Koch, and it just so clearly explains, and it's so unbelievably accurate and true, that if you get rid of 80% of the things you're doing, which means, like, your business still needs those things done.

Brett Trembly:
So you have to delegate and you have to train and hire and not, not a thousand people either. You can, you can get there. As I like to argue with, with, you know, five to seven hires. You know, I wrote my book "24 Months to Freedom", and it's been about 18 months now. I'll still get messages on LinkedIn like, hey, I read your book and it was really great. And like, that even I probably have. Have worked with like, 5% of those people who reached out to me, but it doesn't matter. It just makes me feel so good.

Brett Trembly:
I put a lot of effort into that book. I mean, I poured myself into that book and I was very proud. I kind of knew at the end, like, I think this thing came together and it's going to help a lot of people.

Ali Katz:
Great. I love it. What, tell me again the title of the book?

Brett Trembly:
Oh, "24 Months to Freedom".

Ali Katz:
"24 Months to Freedom". I think I have a copy of it.

Brett Trembly:
I think. I think you probably do. Maybe I sent you one.

Ali Katz:
I'm sure that you've sent me one. I have so many books that are piled up here that I haven't read yet. Yeah, just get it on Amazon or should they go to your website? What's the best place?

Brett Trembly:
It's on Amazon. You know, I should have. I joke now. I should have named the book Buy Back Your Time because it's really what I'm talking about. But, like, right at the same time, someone came out that book and that book's, like, taken off. And so I know it's kind of funny, but.

Ali Katz:
Well, I think it's taken off because it wasn't written by a lawyer. It was written by a marketer.

Brett Trembly:
Yeah, of course.

Ali Katz:
He's a fantastic marketer. And, you know, if you wanted to switch from doing what you're doing and, you know, running a law firm and. Yeah. And, you know, market your book, you could. Your book would take off, too. And so, you know, it's just like, okay, what do we choose to do with our one precious life? And so the lucky people are the people that will find your book "24 Months to Freedom", even though you're not focusing your life on marketing. Lucky people listening to the podcast right now. Go get Brett's book "24 Months to Freedom". And then of course, we'll have everything in the show notes so that you can work with Brett if you want. I know that several of our members are working with you and get stuffed up and are really happy with it. And you know, today there's other solutions as well. You know, back then I think you all were like, you, you all were it. And now there's.

Brett Trembly:
We were like, first to market, made a lot of waves. And like anything else in life, success, you know, baguettes, you know, like, it's not. Not a good quote there, but like, you're going to have other people want to emulate that. And it, it's. There's been people coming to the legal arena, which is fine, but like, yeah, I was looking the other day because we keep a running list kind of all these businesses, but every week there's a new business launching with some sort of angle on remote staffing. And there's still, I still think we're in the beginning stages and there's a lot of, a lot of progress to be made.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. And business, people who are building businesses are starting to get hip to the reality that lawyers are a great market to serve. And so there's, you know, so they're like, oh, let's go serve the lawyers. I do think that when you are making a choice between companies, whether it's for remote hiring or to support you to get into a new practice area or to build your business, that looking to the original is a really good idea. Looking the original that has, you know, the experience and has made all the mistakes already and is giving you a proven and tested model as opposed to the one that's. They're just trying to figure it all out on your dime is the way to go. So.

Brett Trembly:
Yeah. Well, that's. That's nice. That's very nice for you to say. Right?

Brett Trembly:
Like, different strokes for different folks. We're not, we're not going to. Yeah. I don't need to be, you know, for, for all people. But, yeah, I think we've made a lot of people happy. We provided a lot of jobs to some amazing people in the world. And I am not being disingenuous by saying this, but that's actually been my favorite part of the business is the people who's. Whose lives.

Brett Trembly:
Like, yeah, it's super fun to help a lawyer because I was there and it makes me feel good. I have a connection. But when you hear that somebody was able to, you know, get an apartment or start a family or save a parent and you're just like, they would have probably never had that opportunity without you. And it is incredibly rewarding.

Ali Katz:
Well, thank you, Brett. Thank you for doing that work. Thank you for being here with me today. I so appreciate it and I look forward to when we get to talk again next time.

Brett Trembly:
Yeah, same. Ali, thank you so much for having me on. Appreciate it.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, Bye. Bye for now.

Ali Katz:
If you loved that episode with Brett and you don't want to have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to how to hire and staff your practice, make sure that the people that you are hiring have the right training and support to help you build your practice. If you really want all the systems done for you and you are either serving in estate planning now or you want to well, I invite you to go to newlaw.co/show and book a call with a law business advisor to find out how we can help you to build your estate planning practice as a life and legacy planning Personal Family Lawyer firm so that we can send you business because we are beginning to generate business for our Personal Family Lawyer firms, not just support you to learn how to do your own marketing. Although of course we do that too.

Ali Katz:
But we're starting to generate business nationwide. Eventually it will be global. And if you would love to be a Personal Family Lawyer and receive some of that business, go to newlaw.co/show and talk to a law business advisor today. Hope to see you on the inside.