Lessons from an Entrepreneurial Lawyer: Trish’s Path to a Million-Dollar Firm

Trish Butcher:
May of 2024 this year we moved into a 5,000 square foot building that my husband and I bought as an investment. I just, I'm that kind of person that I don't like paying other people for things that I could be putting back in my own pocket. And the financial advisor, his team grew and he moved with us. And then on the other side of our little building was two commercial insurance agents, my brother in law, and then our good friend that we've known our entire life and they moved with us and they're upstairs. We brought our whole tailgate with us.

Ali Katz:
I love it. I love it. That's so great. I love it so much. And so, yeah, just, you know, for everybody that's hearing this, for two years you were out of your house. For two years you were in somebody else's space and now you're, you know, in your forever. Very likely, it seems like your forever space with your community and with, with the people that you love to work with. And.

Trish Butcher:
And we grew from a team of two to a team of seven.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. Amazing. Over that time. And you've retired your husband from his corporate job and now he is your COO, CFO.

Trish Butcher:
CFO.

Ali Katz:
Great. So what I really wanna chat about today is. Oh and you did all this kgnowing nothing about estate planning whatsoever just four years ago. So I just wanna like make sure that you all are hearing that Trish knew nothing about estate planning four years ago. We supported her to learn estate planning and really to build this law practice into a business.

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.

Ali Katz:
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. If you're anything like me, you are going to love today's episode because we are talking to Trish Butcher about how she built her law practice from scratch into a million dollar plus business, bought her own office building, built that out and did it all within just four years. We're going to hear her exact path from start to where she is now. If you are like me and you love stories about how they did it so that you can live into. If she can do it, I can do it, which is one of my mantras. You are going to love this episode.

Ali Katz:
Let's dive in, and I'll see you on the other side.

Ali Katz:
Okay. Hello, Trish. Good to see you. Thanks for being here today.

Trish Butcher:
Hey Ali.

Ali Katz:
Hey, so let's just start with when did you join us? What were you doing before you worked with us?

Trish Butcher:
So I think I joined Bootcamp in February of 2020, so literally right before the pandemic hit. So perfect timing.

Ali Katz:
Did you know. Did you know the pandemic was like. Was that. Were you aware something was happening when you joined us?

Trish Butcher:
I think they had just started saying that there was, like, a virus in China, but, like, very much like, oh, no big deal. Good. It's we're untouchable kind of thing.

Ali Katz:
Yeah.

Trish Butcher:
So. No, but I mean, even more, I. I owned a gym, all women's gym, previously, and closed it in November 2019. So if we want to talk about perfect timing and just maybe, God tapping me on the shoulder and telling me that the COVID was about to happen.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. And had you been using your law degree at that point at all?

Trish Butcher:
I was of counsel for a firm in another town. I went to law school in Atlanta. I went to Emory, and then I worked for the Medical association of Georgia for several years, five years in total. And so I represented about 8,000 positions. And I was a more of a regulatory attorney and then a lobbyist, and loved it, but did not love having a boss. I know you find that hard to believe with me. So in 2016, my husband and I were very tired of being in Atlanta.

Trish Butcher:
My boss and I were no longer seeing eye to eye, and so I quit MAG and we moved back to Athens, which is my hometown. And so I was still doing some legal work on the side, but not. Not a ton. So I pretty much took a hiatus, had my son in 2019, so I think that's when.

Ali Katz:
And started the gym that year too.

Trish Butcher:
No, I started the gym in 2017, closed it in 2019. So it was open for three years. My lease was up. I decided not to renew it. It was a great experience. I call it my on the ground MBA, actually.

Ali Katz:
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. You had a little bit of. A little bit of business, and I.

Trish Butcher:
Was in great shape.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, that's. That's the nice part about owning a gym. Not so much with an estate planning practice. Did you know that you were going to do estate planning when you found us?

Trish Butcher:
No.

Ali Katz:
Oh, what did you think you were doing or going to do?

Trish Butcher:
Business, well geared towards healthcare professionals. Because that was my entire background, was working with physicians and healthcare professionals. And that's what I was doing for the other firm as well. So it was the LIFT business. I thought that I could really do that for medical professionals and that could be my niche and like, you know, maybe do estate planning on the side or something like that. And I think I worked with, my first couple clients were LIFT business somewhere in the health industry, customers. And then from there it was like a complete 180 to estate planning and then gradually just grew it from there and there. But yeah, and I mean, yeah, it's ironic looking back because I was always very interested in estate planning and I think that grabbed my attention as well because of my grandmother's estate plan and how that epically failed. But I hadn't really considered it because I had no background in it, so.

Ali Katz:
Got it. So then you joined us in February 2020 with the Bootcamp. And when did you become a full fledged Personal Family Lawyer?

Trish Butcher:
August.

Ali Katz:
Okay. So that year now we're like full on in COVID.

Trish Butcher:
And death is on people's minds.

Ali Katz:
Yes. And you and you decide, okay, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to build my practice into a business because that's really what the commitment to being a Personal Family Lawyer is. And. And did your sister go in with you right away as well?

Trish Butcher:
Pretty much. I mean, I'm pretty sure she joined me maybe in September at the latest. That's how long it took me to wear her down.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. Yeah. And she came in and you established Arch legacy. And why Arch? Is that your family name?

Trish Butcher:
No. You're just not a football fan.

Ali Katz:
No, I'm not.

Trish Butcher:
We're in Athens, Georgia, where the University of Georgia is. And their symbol is the arch. So it was, it was alluding to Athens and to the University of Georgia without being like in your face Athens or the University of Georgia. So even if you don't get it. It sounds nice, but. But originally it was Butcher Health Law when I thought I was going to just be doing doctors and LIFT business. And then after about, I think like a year of that, I looked at my sister and I was like, I think we need to rebrand.

Ali Katz:
And it's so smart. But yeah, right? Yeah, maybe especially when you're talking about death and now it's not tied to your name. You're really creating a saleable business. This has become a real firm and now we are in 2024. We're really exactly four years later. Congratulations, happy anniversary. And yeah you, I imagine next year is going to be your million dollar year.

Ali Katz:
You're going to be close this year and then next year is going to be the breakthrough to a million. But to me far more important than that, this year was the year you bought a building. That happened this year. You're sitting in your office building, right?

Trish Butcher:
Correct. My office, yes.

Ali Katz:
Yeah.

Trish Butcher:
So yes, this year. So we started out in my house. So it was me and Stephanie and she was paralegal, I was attorney. And then we kind of split CSD and all the other duties together. So I'm super fortunate to have had her pretty much from the get go because I literally don't know how I could have done it without her because she knows more about trusts than I could ever know at this point. She's done so many WealthCounsel RLT intensives, I don't even know. So we started out in my like little home office and clients came to my house. And then May of 2022 we moved into an office with a financial advisor who specializes in special needs planning.

Trish Butcher:
So really good combination. Just a good friend of ours and so we each had like two offices and then, and then May of 2024 this year we moved into a 5,000 square foot building that my husband and I bought as an investment. I just, I'm that kind of person that I don't like paying other people for things that I could be putting back in my own pocket. And the financial advisor, his team grew and he moved with us and then on the other side of our little building was two commercial insurance agents, my brother in law and then our good friend that we've known our entire life and they moved with us and they're upstairs. We brought our whole tailgate with us.

Ali Katz:
I love it. I love it. That's so great. I love it so much. And so yeah, just you know, for everybody that's hearing this, for two years you were out of your house. For two years you were in somebody else's space and now you're, you know, in your forever. Very likely it seems like you're forever space with your community and with, with the people that you love to work with. And.

Trish Butcher:
And we grew from a team of two to a team of seven.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. Amazing. Over that time and you've retired your husband from his corporate job and now he is your COO. CFO.

Trish Butcher:
CFO.

Ali Katz:
Great. So what I really want to chat about today is oh, and you did all this knowing nothing about estate planning whatsoever just four years ago. So I just want to like make sure that or hearing that Trish knew nothing about estate planning four years ago we supported her to learn estate planning and really to build this law practice into a business that one day, I guess, you know, when you look into the future, do you see selling it or do you see just having it, cash flow and other people running it?

Trish Butcher:
My in game. So my son is five, so we have 13 years till he graduates from high school. I'm counting, counting down. We, the plan is at that point is to pretty much retire. So the goal would be to sell this business, you know, ideally to another attorney. But I'm also thinking that by then it will no longer be only attorneys can own law firms. So I'm guessing equity firms come into the equation at some point there as well. But we're also working on another business.

Trish Butcher:
My husband and I are. That's a little bit different and that's also probably a higher dollar selling business down the road. So we're, there's a couple things in the works, actually two other businesses I guess, if we're being honest. So the goal's.

Ali Katz:
Trish is, Trish is the definition of entrepreneurial by the way. If you haven't figured.

Trish Butcher:
You want to meet someone that doesn't sleep and wakes up at 3:30 every morning with my mind going that's hi, that's me. Yeah. So the goal is to move down to Melee Island, Florida when my son graduates. He has a girlfriend and so he announced that they're getting married at the beach because that's where he's going to live. And when I told him that well we were going to live at the beach, he goes, no, just, just me.

Ali Katz:
Well, he'll want you down there by that time, especially if he's going to have kids. He'll let you, he'll let you share the island with him. Okay, so just want to get into the conversation about you've made really rapid progress and I think a big part of that is because you did the right things at the right time on your own and then you leveraged support at the right times. And so obviously the first support that you leveraged was just learning estate planning, learning life and legacy planning, the way that we teach it and you know, creating the systems so that you weren't reinventing the wheel. But I want to talk today about the technology systems specifically because you got started up with our Accelerator program and we built out your automation systems for you. And when did you get that installed?

Trish Butcher:
I think from the really very beginning. I think I did both when I joined. I think maybe there was a month lag. I think there was like a month lag. I joined PFL, dragged my feet a little bit about Accelerator and then did it the next month and we were with. Y'all were with like old school Infusionsoft at the time. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think Stephanie and I could have done that by ourselves, even having an extra person.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, maybe you could have. I see a lot of lawyers who, I mean you probably could have. You can do a lot. But it wasn't a good use of your resources when you were getting started up.

Trish Butcher:
Definitely not also being a mom too. So I mean, because my son was still really young, but I mean no matter what age your kids are, they always take up a lot of your time and you want to be present. And I think like you were saying earlier with like housekeeping, anything that you can get off your own plate to make your life easier and better is. Is such a big thing to do, especially as a working mom. Now dads too. It applies to you too. I'm not excluding dads, but especially as the mom that's constantly thinking about grocery shopping and what we're cooking for dinner and all that fun stuff and to just have that all built out, it all just ready to go in all automations and not have to worry that we weren't following up with people about certain things. And it definitely makes it a lot easier.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. And there came a point in time when it made sense for you to handle it yourself in house because now you have a team of seven. You went from two to seven and then it just made sense for you to take it over, handle it yourself. What was that turning point that it just made sense for that?

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.

Trish Butcher:
When it wasn't just me in meetings, that's where it really. That's where it started getting complicated. I no longer run the signing meetings. I don't do the consults, I don't do the Life and Legacy interviews. Each one of those is handled by a different person. And now my husband's coming on to do the business meetings and the business succession planning and so there is going to be a fifth person in the mix. And so it just made sense that we'd be able to at that point take over so that we could have multiple users and multiple schedulers and things like that. But until then, I mean that's, I literally was pretty much still doing almost all the meetings other than the consults until August of last year.

Trish Butcher:
So I mean this is, I mean we're still are really September. So I mean we're still kind of new to the "Trish is delegating" and the signing meetings didn't get off my back until really till we moved here. So May. So I've been out of signing meetings for only like three months. So that was really where it was like, okay, like we need Stephanie's calendar for the signing meetings, we need Trisha's calendar for the cleaning sessions. We need, you know.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Great. Well, I imagine you dragged, you said you dragged your feet for a month. Tell me about that. Just because I imagine that the people that are listening to this could be in whatever inquiry you were in back then to say, oh, what was that thought? What was the thought that was there for you?

Trish Butcher:
It's a lot of money. You know, I think it's one of the hardest things that we ever do is make investments. You know, there's the Sam Allens of the world. Hey, Sam. And who are literally like balls to the wall, jump full speed ahead, like go for it. And then there's the people that are super hesitant. I'm somewhere in the middle. Like I am a little bit more calculated and a little bit slower to pull the trigger.

Trish Butcher:
But when I know, I know. So I'm extremely like, it took me five seconds to pick the wallpaper for my office. Like I'm very decisive when I need to be, but I want to make sure it's the right fit first. So I mean it's a lot of money, but it's basically investing in not having to pay someone else to do that for you. I mean at this point I've looked at custom build outs. Those are $30,000 plus, plus the monthly expenses. I've looked at, you know, hiring someone and having it handled in house, which is basically what I do. And that was another turning point of course, is that I have someone else that can handle all that idle.

Trish Butcher:
I barely ever even get on my CRM at this point. That was a huge factor as well. She's a full time employee who does some other things as well. And so I'm paying her a lot more than I was paying Accelerator.

Ali Katz:
To me, that's really the, the, the moment at which it starts to make sense to just handle it yourself is if you have somebody in house. Especially because you all already had all the, we built out the automation for you. Right? And so I think that really what I desire for folks to take away from this, when you are just getting started up, handling your own automation, building it out yourself, is not the place to put your resources. Where is the place to put their resources? What is the like, okay, if you have to choose between putting your resources here and there, like where should they be putting their time, energy and attention?

Trish Butcher:
Networking. Pounding pavement.

Ali Katz:
Got it.

Trish Butcher:
Learning and pounding pavement are the two biggest things to starting a law firm. And your time is not well spent unless you are just that tech savvy person that, that is just your favorite thing in the whole world. That is definitely not where your time is the most. I mean, well, my firm is now in four chambers of commerces, but I'm in, I'm active, highly active in one, but at the time I was highly active in two. Ambassador, I joined country club boards. I like. I mean the biggest part of being in a law firm owner, is that you're no longer just a lawyer. You have to go be a business owner and pound pavement.

Trish Butcher:
In order for your law firm and your business to be successful, that is what you have to do. And that is where most of your energy should be focused on. Because that's my number one rule.

Ali Katz:
This is the best advice. This is such good advice because I don't think a lot of lawyers get this. I think they're like, oh, I should be putting time into my website or I should be like doing webinars. Maybe later you could, you know, you just did a webinar last night, you had or today with 57 people on it. So that happens, that happens down the road. But that's not step one. Step one is as Trish is saying, get out there and get seen in your community. Get known in your community because actually nobody else can do that for you, right? Nobody, you know, somebody else can build your automation.

Ali Katz:
So networking. And what did you say the other thing was?

Trish Butcher:
And learning. I mean, learning, yes, because I came from no background of estate planning, so I had to, I mean I remember Stephanie and I looking at each other going, when do you think this is actually like we're going to feel comfortable with this and stop feeling like, you know when you feel like you don't know what you're doing and you're telling people you do.

Ali Katz:
Afraid of malpractice?

Trish Butcher:
Well that.

Ali Katz:
Oh, imposter syndrome.

Trish Butcher:
Yes, imposter syndrome. Thank you. Yeah, I knew you'd figure out eventually. Yeah, yeah. So I mean I just remember us looking at that. And now I mean Stephanie's trained another paralegal, we have two in house paralegals now and we have an event coordinator for all of our events. And so in a full time CSD then she's the one that knows our CRM like the back of her hand at this point. But again part of that was because we were originally with Accelerator and y'all had already built out of a lot of our automations and so now all we've had to do is just go in and tweak things which makes it a lot easier than building it from scratch.

Ali Katz:
Yes. Well thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I so appreciate you coming and sharing this. My big takeaway that I'm going to share with everyone is put your energy into networking and learning when you're starting out. Let us build your automation and take that technology, maybe even your website off your hands so that when you're networking you come home and you get those leads put into your automation system so that the leads get followed up with and you don't lose the leads which is like the greatest cost that happened to me in the first years of my practice, I just didn't have any follow up systems so we lost all those leads. I'm curious, have you had the situation yet where you met somebody like four years ago when you were first starting out and they just finally are coming in now because of your communication, because of your email newsletters. Do you ever see that happening yet?

Trish Butcher:
Not four years, but certainly like two years. Like two years. We've definitely had people that have been like oh like I've had a direct mailer, like I got your newsletter and I've been following along with you for years and we finally took the plunge or whatever. So yeah, then I think it's accumulation of everything. I think it's the automations, the newsletters, the drip campaigns. I haven't always been the best at newsletters so that I really can't claim 100% but it's social media, it's, you know, it's everything and it all adds up together but it definitely, those automations are really important and people will tell us, they're like, thank you so much for following us up with us. But the best is when people are like, your client services director is really on top of things. She sends us so many emails and I'm like, yeah, that's our automatic system.

Trish Butcher:
That's definitely not actually Sarah, but the fact that you think it is is great.

Ali Katz:
Exactly, exactly. The more. The more we can have things seem like the client services director is great or the universe is sending them a message because they see you everywhere. That's the kind of things that we really love to hear from clients. So, Trish, thank you so much. I appreciate your time today and any last words of advice for the person who is just starting out and going, ah, I don't know what to do. What's. What's your best advice for them?

Trish Butcher:
Just make the investment in yourself and in your business. Because at Arch Legacy, when we work with business owners, you know, it's build and grow your legacy, or as my husband says, engineer your legacy, because he's an aerospace engineer by a degree. So engineer your legacy and then leave a legacy. And in order to build that legacy, you have to commit to building it. And it's scary and it's a cliff. But Ali, I remember those first months of COVID when my son wasn't even quite one. And I did all of the Bootcamp. I told you, I don't do well like sitting and being talked at.

Trish Butcher:
So my son loved to be outside. He just wanted to walk. That's all he wanted to do as a baby. And the number of walks I went on with you in my years, like learning the Bootcamp, you just got to it. And it's. It's scary because it is a lot of money. A lot of things are. I mean, all of the investments I've made over the years, some have been better than others, but you just gotta commit to it and take the leap and invest in yourself, because that's what we're doing.

Trish Butcher:
But you need to invest and giving yourself the freedom to do what you need to do and allow others to handle what they're trained to do. Because I did not go to school to be a software engineer, so I had to. I'm like, I didn't go to school for marketing. Like, you know, I have to remind myself of that occasionally.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, well, you're a really good marketer now, Trish, and you're a fantastic businesswoman, and it's just been a joy to watch you go. So thanks so much for being here and everybody else take your next steps. Remember, free up your time, energy and attention. They're your non-renewable resources. As a lawyer, you can always make more money, but you can't make more time, energy and attention. And so invest in those things that will free up that time, energy and attention. And we'd love to help you to do just that. All right, everybody, I'm Ali Katz. Bye bye for now.

Ali Katz:
If you love that episode with Trish Butcher and you'd love to follow in her footsteps and not have to reinvent the wheel, go to newlaw.co/show and apply to talk with a law business advisor to find out how we can give you everything that you need to build your law practice into a business you love with life and legacy planning so you don't have to reinvent the wheel or go it alone. And I look forward to seeing you on the inside.