Episode 354

Brandon Dawson

354. 10 Steps to Explosive PI Firm Growth (From an Inc. 5000 Firm Owner) w/ Brandon Dawson, The Thumbs Up Guys


Brandon Dawson shares 10 proven steps behind 279% PI firm growth and how the Thumbs Up Guys earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 list.
354. 10 Steps to Explosive PI Firm Growth (From an Inc. 5000 Firm Owner) w/ Brandon Dawson, The Thumbs Up Guys

What does it take to go from being “forgettable” to one of the fastest PI firm growth in the country?

For Brandon Dawson and the Thumbs Up Guys, the answer came through 10 intentional steps — each one focused on building a brand, culture, and system that compound results. From transforming Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward into a household name to earning a spot on the Inc. 5000 list, Brandon reveals the strategies behind 279% growth in just three years.

We discuss:

  • How building a sticky brand identity turned four last names into the Thumbs Up Guys
  • Why dominating one marketing channel early gives PI firms momentum to scale faster
  • How reviews, client referrals, and proactive client communication fueled PI firm growth
  • The intake standards and culture initiatives driving 96%+ conversion rates at a fast-growing PI firm

VIP PIMCON Tickets:  Pimcon.org

Guest Details

Brandon Dawson is a founding partner of Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward, better known across South Carolina as The Thumbs Up Guys. Since 2020, the firm has expanded to four offices, secured over $100M in verdicts and settlements, and earned more than 1,200 5-star reviews. Recognition on the Inc. 5000 list for 279% growth in just three years underscores Brandon’s expertise in scaling PI firms through culture, marketing, and intentional leadership.

Chris Dreyer and Rankings Details

Chris Dreyer is the CEO and founder of Rankings.io, the elite law firm marketing experts - for all your digital and traditional needs. 

Transcript

Brandon Dawson:

I got an email from Inc. 5000. In this year, almost in the top 25% of the fastest growing private companies in the US.

Chris Dreyer:

Brandon Dawson and the Thumbs Up Guys leapt nearly 600 spots on the Inc. 5000, placing them among the top 25% of the fastest growing companies in America. But getting there meant learning some hard lessons along the way.

Brandon Dawson:

I represented this guy and I worked my tail off for him. I thought, "Man, people will remember me forever." Well, a couple years later, he gets in a really bad wreck and he needs to hire an attorney again and he cannot remember my name.

Chris Dreyer:

I'm Chris Dreyer, Founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the award-winning digital marketing agency for personal injury attorneys. This is Personal Injury Mastermind.

Brandon Dawson:

After that I got super intentional about-

Chris Dreyer:

Today, Brandon breaks down the 10 proven steps that took his firm from forgettable to one of the fastest growing private companies in America. Before we dive in, do me a solid, hit subscribe. All right, let's go.

 

How building a sticky brand identity turned four last names into the Thumbs Up Guys

 

Brandon Dawson:

We actually started off with our four last names, Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward. We went to the first ad company that we worked with and we said, "Man, there's a problem. This is a lot of names, a mouthful. No one will remember." And they said, "Oh, just lean into it." And we tried that for about a year and no surprises there, it didn't really work.

Chris Dreyer:

Step one, drop your ego, build a brand.

Brandon Dawson:

No one can remember MDSW, Miller, Dawson, Sigal, Ward. And so we ended up hiring another marketing company who we still work with today, Whitehardt. And they had what they call their sticky brands, and they really just kind of leaned into it. And it's one of those things where I'd be lying if I told you right away, we knew it was genius, but we knew it was better than what we had. And over the last six, seven years of using it, we've realized what a great brand it is and actually how much it truly represents what we stand for.

Chris Dreyer:

The thumbs up, it's like a positive, good feeling, it's like a winning signal. It makes me think though on the flip side, that Happy Gilmore movie where, I don't know, and maybe it's Billy Madison where he gives the thumbs up, but then he does the reverse like, "Hey, sounds good," and then does the down. You know what I'm saying? If you don't want to do something, yep. There's a lot of ways to play with it. So how are you using it? You said Whitehardt, so TV, outdoor, how are you using it?

Brandon Dawson:

All of the above. Really, it's been kind this slow morph over time of really trying to eliminate the Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward nomenclature and just kind of getting that out of here because it can create brand confusion. And that was some tense conversations with my partners. I'm saying, "Look, we have to have brand continuity. We can't be Miller Dawson, Sigal & Ward, and the Thumbs Up Guys." I've been pushing, our marketing director has been pushing over the last couple of years, to really kind of get rid of Miller Dawson, Sigal & Ward and focus on the Thumbs Up Guys.

So it started with TV, heavy TV, billboard, radio, obviously. Google has been a pain in the ass trying to get with putting Thumbs Up Guys and they'll try to change it, and so we've been fighting that. And then they'll say, "Well, we need something with the Secretary of State saying this." And they're like, "Well, that's not something that's offered here and we're trying to show we own the brand." And so you're always kind dealing with different battles.

Chris Dreyer:

That's great. I mean, the continuity and then it's memorable, it's simple, it's easy to say. I kind of wanted to lean in. I just had James Helm, top dog on. We were talking about, "How would you invest $100,000, how would you invest $1 million? How would you invest $10 million in today's environment to get these leads?" What would you say, "Hey, here's my core stack for a firm today?

 

Why dominating one marketing channel early gives PI firms momentum to scale faster

 

Brandon Dawson:

What we did early on, we had a limited budget. You have to dominate one channel.

Chris Dreyer:

Step two own, one channel before expanding.

Brandon Dawson:

You cannot spread that out across TV, radio, billboards and social or PVC, right? I think you really have to say, "All right, if I've got $100,000, I need to be able to dominate." And early on, you know this, you can't spend $100,000 on TV in one month and then go off and expect that you're ever going to get any calls from that, right? It's just not going to work. So TV, I tell everybody, if you can't spend for 12 months, really 18 months without expecting any ROI, then it's probably not for you.

You have to have that long outlook there. You've got to go to maybe some paid leads, GMB, PPC. That's really where you're going to get that quick kind of fix where you can get a case in. You can immediately say, "All right, it costs me this exact amount." We look at case acquisition costs, but when you're doing TV, radio, billboards, buses, all the branding plays, we can't attribute a case to any specific thing.

And we'll even we will have people come in and we talk to them and say, "How'd you hear about us?" And I remember before we were even doing a lot of billboards and buses, they'd be like, "Oh, you're on the billboards and the buses." And we're like, "Not really." But they think they see you everywhere and they do. And they think they see you in certain places that maybe you're not even. But it shows you that the more places you are, the more you just have to keep hitting them over the head and reminding them that you're there. So yeah, I mean, I think that initial stack for that first $1 million to $3 million is SEO, PPC. Number one thing there is focus on the things that you can attribute early on and then start to scale and grow that brand.

Chris Dreyer:

I think there's so much wisdom in what you just said. I heard Guy and Conrad, they have a podcast, and that Guy was talking about how when you advertise more and the brand's more prevalent, you actually get more referrals too, because you're top of mind for the referrals. Have you seen kind of that impact? So not necessarily just the TV, the billboards, but you're starting to get more people mention and refer to your firm?

Brandon Dawson:

Absolutely, yeah. I mean the number one, one, two and three, typically two of those are going to be made up of former client or current client, word of mouth, those sort of things every single month. And that certainly is a huge testament to our former clients and current clients being reminded that we are still their attorneys.

Chris Dreyer:

Step three, re-market to every lead.

Brandon Dawson:

Years ago I represented this guy, and this is when it was just the four of us. And man, I took his case all the way right up to trial and we settled it, and I think the case might've settled for $20,000. They had a lot of warts on it and I worked my tail off for him. And I thought, "Man, he and I have a great relationship. He will remember me forever." Well, a couple years later he gets in a really bad wreck and he needs to hire an attorney again, and he cannot remember my name. And he sees a billboard and it's my old firm that I started off with, and he almost calls them and he talks to his mom and his mom says, "Well, yeah, that guy, he did a really great job for you."

And he's like, "Yeah, I can't remember his name." And she's like, "Well, why don't you see if you can find an email from him?" Thank the Lord she told him and there was some old email and he found it, and we signed it up and settled that case for a quarter million dollars. And back then that was a huge, huge case for us. And I just wonder how many of those actually happened where they never made it back to us. And so it was this reminder that even if you do the best job and you think you're the most amazing attorney and they're never going to forget you, if you're not remarketing to them, they will forget you.

And we like to think of it, "I'm so memorable, right? Everybody's going to remember their time with me." That's just not true. And so after that, I got super intentional about marketing to our current clients, not only through traditional means, but keeping them in text campaigns, email campaigns, mailers, even just trying to get more involved in the community. Anything you can do just to remind those people, "Hey, we're still out here, we're still doing it." But certainly TV, radio, billboard, all that helps with the reminder out there, too.

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, that was incredible. That's systemic marketing, compounding and all the things that you're doing there. Such a great story. You're taking that all the way and then it comes back around, that's awesome. We got to touch on the 1,200 reviews. I mean, very rare do I see firms that have above 1,000. I mean, it's very rare. So anything in particular that's different, that's out of the box? I know it's a combination of a lot of things, but is there something that you saw like, "Oh, we're doing this a little different?"

 

How reviews, client referrals, and proactive client communication fueled PI firm growth

 

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah, I think it started with that mission and vision to deliver that five star client experience. And that was through exceptional client communication, access to high quality medical care and then just absolute badass lawyering. And so it starts there and the team buys in on that, right? And number one to me was exceptional client communication. That's the one thing that people, I think can tell. They don't know if you're a great attorney or not. And I think we have some absolutely amazing, top notch trial attorneys over here that are amazing attorneys, but most lay people don't know whether or not they have a great attorney or an okay attorney. But what they do know is, "Did my attorney talk to me? They call me, do they care about me?"

Chris Dreyer:

Step four, make reviews your number one referral engine.

Brandon Dawson:

And so that to me was the number one touch point, was, "Let's do that right on the front end. And then if we treat our team members great and really pour into them, then that's going to trickle down to our clients." And so we really started with a culture first initiative.

Chris Dreyer:

Step five, and this one is tied directly to step four, put culture first.

Brandon Dawson:

And I think that trickle down has been a huge, huge part of that. I mean, we have people over here that are recruiting their friends and that are at other firms saying, "Hey, come over here, it's awesome." I think that is really kind of the secret sauce. We obviously, it's like anybody, we're out there, we're trying to encourage our team to get Google reviews. We'll do sessions on how to ask. I think that a lot of people get it wrong and they only ask at the end of the case. I think you can ask at any point in time if you had a great experience.

We certainly incentivize our team where people kind of get their name in the hat throughout the year for certain acts. And it can be, there's probably 30 different things that can get their name in the hat. And then at the end of the year, we'll pick a couple names out of there and then we'll send them on a five days, all expenses paid vacation, PTO and everything. So that motivates as well, but that also goes back to culture. We want people to work hard and to play hard. And so again, I think there's just a combination of all those things that really do go back to driving those, and those real reviews.

Chris Dreyer:

It shows the referrals, the internal referrals, just the culture from top to bottom and that's amazing so congrats on that for sure. Let's talk about the intake side, the sales side, tech stack. What's your intake look like from a staffing perspective? How do you think about intake?

 

The intake standards and culture initiatives driving 96%+ conversion rates at a fast-growing PI firm

 

Brandon Dawson:

My biggest baby is intake. I've loved intake and our intake manager, she's just an absolute A player and we would not be where we are without her. She's actually our first hire back in 2020, and so huge shout out to Haley for putting up with me. You got to be dialed in there, I think we all know that. People listen to this podcast, they know that you've got to know your want rate.

How many cases are you signing up by each vertical and really making sure that you're closing? Knowing that, "Hey, maybe I'm really good at closing a certain type of client, and Chris, you might be a lot better at closing this other client," and working as a team there team. We look at it obviously from an individual perspective. We use Litify, can see everybody's, "What's their conversion rate, what's the team's conversion rate? Is anybody not doing well?"

Chris Dreyer:

Step six, set goals that scare you and measure your progress.

Brandon Dawson:

Obviously, we're using AI to audit calls and there's still a lot that it can get better there, but it's helpful to be able to look at a call and say, "Hey, did we miss something here?" So Haley's over there constantly auditing. We actually do paper audits as well. They have to hit certain phrases, certain reassurances when they're talking to people. And so Haley's going through, listening to calls, having them listen to calls, grade each other, doing training calls. Every week they're doing a huddle, "Hey, how can we improve? What did we miss?" Those are all the things. I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day and he's got a $30 million plus law firm. He's like, "Man, I wasn't tracking my net-new."

And what that means is, you know this, but it's your signed cases, less the cases that you close with a fee and that you got rid of without a fee or for whatever reason, and knowing are you actually gaining each month or are you actually losing cases each month? And I would say also track that by case type. Are you signing a bunch of auto cases or you sign a bunch of comp cases? Whatever that vertical is, make sure you know which one. And the reason I say that is it helps with that hiring, having the right amount of people on the bench.

If you're net-newing 20, 30, 40, 50 cases a month, well, you need to be hiring like crazy. If you're net-newing negative, you've got some problems. That's a recession warning indicator. So I always, always look at that. I don't look at it month-to-month and react, but quarter-to-quarter, year-to-year, look at that and kind of know what's going on with your firm. I think it's a really good way to kind of find some holes in there. And that's why, I mean, last year we had, I think it was a 96.4 conversion percentage.

Chris Dreyer:

On the wanted?

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah.

Chris Dreyer:

Whoa, that's super high. That's incredible. I've never heard it that high, honestly. Most try to hit that 90 percentile or 92%.

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah.

Chris Dreyer:

So 96.5% is insane.

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah, last year, I mean they absolutely killed it. And I'm over there going, "Hey, if it's a want, even if for some reason you couldn't really track them down, that's still a want." We want to be honest. And it's like playing golf. I'm not a big golfer, but sometimes you duff a couple off the tee and you go, "Ah, I'll redo that one." Certain ones, y'all did everything you could and know that not every case is going to be converted, but I've been so proud of that team and Haley. Like I said, dealing with me texting, being like, "Hey, it's Saturday at 9:00 AM and what's going on with this case?" And she's already on it.

Chris Dreyer:

You got the prime time hours, I guess those are your noon to 5:00, typically. I know there's some seasonality there too, but how are you? I mean, you love it, right? So it's the game for you, so you're already on the leads, too. But I mean, how are you guys handling, say evenings or weekends, kind of some of those off hours?

Brandon Dawson:

Yes, I mean, you're exactly right. There's certainly peak hours and intake has been a tougher position to continually staff, you get a lot of burnout there. And we have some tremendous team members in there. But really, getting people in there that can convert at the level that we want and that are able to live up to the expectations that Haley and I have, it's been hard to keep people in there. And so I think this is that culture of you want to have a bunch of A players, so you can't let anybody slide in there. We've certainly tried to make sure that we incentivize them with pay and all that at a higher level because they're converting at a higher level.

But to answer your question, typically it's 7:00 to 7:00 during the week. Obviously, that shifts a little bit with how many people are on staff. So it's constantly trying to tweak that to say, "All right, well, Mondays are busier than Fridays and 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM is actually busier than 10:00 A to 12:00 P, maybe." Looking at those stats to figure out when can we get people in here? And then on the weekends we're 9:00 to 5:00 on the weekends and always looking to expand that. And of course, we have rollover coverage, so there's no call that's going to voicemail. You can't have unanswered calls. I think we all know that at this point in time.

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah. The other thing too, that I hear just from your explanation of intake is you have incredibly high standards, just everything you talked. And I've heard Hermosy talk about this, the leaders being the people with the highest standards should lead. It's because, "No, our standards for our wanted rate is not 92%. It's whatever the target was, 95% or 96%." And you got it because below that wasn't acceptable.

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah, it's always raising that bar, right? You do have to recognize that you can push it too far. So there's this fine line of pushing just enough and then also saying, "Hey, look, I'd rather say that the target this year is 97% and if we got to 96.5%, that's better than saying it's 92% and we got to 93%." So one's a loss, one's a win, technically. But in reality, we'd much rather take the 96%. So we need to make sure that the team knows, "Hey, this is exceptional." And so same thing, like I said earlier with how we reward on the Google reviews and do stuff like that.

With the intake team, we look on a quarterly basis and if they meet their goals, they'll do spa days, dinners. I really want them to kind of treat themselves. People, if you give them money, a lot of times people won't spend it on themselves. And I think this is a good excuse for them to say, "Yes, we're going to pay you over here, but we're also going to have a treat-yourself day where we're paying, you're doing and you get to go do that." And so that's been a fun one. I think they've really enjoyed that.

Chris Dreyer:

I think that's going to be my top takeaway just for myself. So I'm going to take that as well, because I agree with you. And then people want to share the experiences of what they happen, not the bonus check. They're not going to tell their friends about the $100 bonus, but they will tell them that, "My boss sent me to a spa."

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah. "Yeah, I got a full massage, nails done, facial, all that." There's not many firms doing that. But yeah, I think the second or third year in a row that we've won Best Places to Work, and that's a huge testament to our HR and really trying to focus in on what is it that our team wants? Sometimes you can listen to them, what they want. Sometimes you have to read the room and figure out, and it can be as simple as adding pet insurance and adding Gympass.

We have a younger workforce and they love Gympass. I think that costs us $1,000 or $2,000 a month. I mean, it's not an insane number at all, but they love it. And there's a lot of ways you can do stuff for not a lot of money, but with a lot of intentionality. And I think that's really been one of the things that we've always tried to do, is just be super intentional and show up and listen.

Chris Dreyer:

Quick pause, Chris here. Brandon's got so many incredible insights. You can hear them live and in person on stage at PIMCon, the Personal Injury Mastermind Conference, October 5th through 8th. It's not too late. He'll be there with some of the fastest growing PI firms in the country. Get your tickets today at PIMCon.org, link in the show notes. Okay, let's get back to it. Step seven, hire to your weak spots.

Brandon Dawson:

Hire your weaknesses. There's some things that we absolutely hate to do, and you know what we do? We avoid them and we put them off to the side, they never get done. And you know this from boot-strapping your own business. Early on, you have to do all the crappy things. You got to take out the trash, you got to write every SEO content blog. And it might be things that you're good at but you don't love. Hire those weaknesses as fast as you can and free yourself up to do the things that you love. And I think those are some things that will really, really propel your business.

Chris Dreyer:

Super smart. I mean, I would want to work for you with you. I mean, you're so right though, in so many levels. And you kind of get refreshed. That'll probably help with the burnout and stuff, too.

Brandon Dawson:

Absolutely.

Chris Dreyer:

Talk to me about the team, talk to me about finding great talent, keeping great talent. Obviously, the keeping great talent, we've hit on it. I guess it starts with that five star, people, your staff's referring other good talent. How do you approach that side?

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah, that's absolutely the best way to find talent, is referrals in-house. We paid some headhunters a time or two, and that's expensive. And so I would rather pay somebody in-house, maybe give them a bonus to say, "Hey, if you recommend somebody that you love and you want them over here," those have been our best hires hands down. And we're happy to pay $1,000, $2,000 if they're here for a year or six months, that sort of stuff. So those have been the best hires we've had.

Chris Dreyer:

Step eight, always be hiring.

Brandon Dawson:

I think you also have to always be hiring. You're always looking, depending on your size, and that's something that Kyle is always doing. We're always trying to keep somebody in the pipeline. For the longest time and in our business, this cashflow is the biggest issue. It's the old revenues for vanity profits or sanity and cashflow is king, and it's easy to sit here and say, "Well, I can't afford this person." And you're trying to stay as lean as possible. And hopefully you can get to a point where you can have a little bit excess. And Bill Biggs, a buddy of mine, I'm sure you know Bill, he was like, "Brandon, you always need to have somebody on the bench." And whatever position that's in, because you never know when somebody is going to leave.

Just like in sports, any team, they're not running 11 V 11 in the football team. They have backups to backups, and you never know when somebody's going to get hurt. You never know when somebody's going have to take a leave of absence. And that hurts. That hurts a lot more when somebody leaves and you don't have any bandwidth to take on those cases. It's not good for your clients, it's not good for your team. And so we've really tried to be intentional about having one or two people on the bench and we're slowly bringing them along.

And yeah, is that more of a bleed on cashflow? Sure, but we're bringing them up better, those younger attorneys. We're able to train them so they're not getting kind of just thrown right into the deep end. Same thing on the case manager paralegal side. We're able to home grow a lot of paralegals, take them from that case manager side if they want to go do litigation and send them to different seminars, let them work with the experienced paralegals that we have. You never know when great talent's going to come across you, so soak it up when you can.

Chris Dreyer:

I think that's a great piece of advice. And then the immersion of the less experience in how you're nurturing that development. I went through that same thing with the recruiting side. It's like you hit these inflection points where you need a lot more bodies and maybe even if you have a bench, because we've been tried to be intentional about that. And I went through a round and it was like, "Geez, I just paid a full salary for a recruiter if I had it in-house on three or four hires." And I'm like, "What am I doing?"

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah, that's a rough check to write.

Chris Dreyer:

It is. I think, "That pain happened and now I've solved it." It's just one of those things that aren't talked about a lot. Have you thought about the capital side? I guess Esquire Bank is probably the leader there. They legit have a monopoly on the financing side. Have you thought about using any of that to maybe pace it up because now you got the model, you got the brand? Anything on that side?

Brandon Dawson:

Yeah, we use Advocate Capital just for case costs. After a while you start to realize, you're like, "Hey, I'm loaning out $1 million in non-interest bearing case costs that I may or may not get back." And so that was another way, back to that whole cashflow is king, is freeing up cashflow. Obviously, you have to do that within your state bar rules and figure out what's got to be in your contract, all that sort of stuff. But that's been a great way for us to free up almost an extra six figures every month in cashflow that we're not having to front load and carry for that whole time. But in terms of growth, we haven't leveraged at all, we have not borrowed any money. It's all been kind of bootstrapped.

Not to say that's the right way to do it, but at this point in time we've said, "All right, if we're going into a new market," so we went into Columbia, so we're in Charleston, South Carolina. Columbia is just up the road a couple hours, different DMA. And we said, "All right, do we have enough money to basically just eat a couple hundred grand every month?" And we said, "We can do that." Go back to that TV conversation earlier, you've got to be in it for 12, 18 months to see any ROI. My hope is that Columbia will start to be able to feed itself. And then we have two revenue producing markets, and then we can say, "All right, well, if Charleston is what we're living off of," I know you're big real estate guy, "Use that Columbia market to then be our cash cow to go fund another market or another market."

And so that's kind of the vision that we have internally, is if we can avoid having to go borrow a bunch of money, then sell finance. But there's certainly a great case to make. I mean, if you know your numbers, I've certainly said that as well. "Man, if we can borrow for X and we can get an ROI of 20X, all right, well, that starts to make sense." And this year, the last probably year, we've really tried to scale up internally with the CFO, a controller, and doing some other stuff there to really look at those sort of pieces. Because at the end of the day, I like to think I'm pretty smart, but I want to be surrounded by much, much smarter people. And I've been really blessed to hire some tremendous people around me that can help us scale up.

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, I remember when we hired our CFO and I never thought in a million years I would have a procurement policy. What the hell? But no, I agree with you. I'm bootstrapped too, and I think that's the way to go. And you also respect the dollar, too. Wanted to touch on the attorneys, though. Your attorneys, nurturing them. Talk to me about the attorney side, the legal side to kind of develop the talent on the attorney side and kind of just that piece of the coin.

Brandon Dawson:

We've always had a core value of always be growing. It's kind of like the ABG is what I called it, always be growing. And what that meant was, man, if you want to go to any seminar, whatever it is, if you can say, "Hey, this is going to make me a better attorney," we're going to send you. We just had a bunch of people out in San Francisco, AAJ. We're going to send a bunch of people to Trial Lawyers Academy. There's all sorts of things we're always sending people to. That's one thing you can do to grow your team, but also hiring great talent in-house to help train.

Chris Dreyer:

Step nine, match the case to the right closer.

Brandon Dawson:

We have pods and we have mentors inside of there, so every attorney has a mentor that they're going to go to, they're going to talk about their cases. Every case is going to get ranked. As soon as it comes in the door, and Chad Dudley has breached this for years, you rank it as a B under the Pareto analysis, you figure out where that's supposed to go. And it can only get moved down with supervisor approval, you can always move it up. Anything in that A bucket is going to get round tabled.

We've gotten to a point where we're large enough where we have our A minuses, our A pluses and our stars. The A minus is kind of a separate meeting because it can get a bit tedious when you're having hundreds of cases trying to get talked about. But those big cases where we're focus grouping our top cases, those are cases where you really make your hay. You could say, "All right, well, that's great. We got $5 million for that case." What if it's a $25 million case?

Chris Dreyer:

Right.

Brandon Dawson:

You okay giving up a $20 million case? No, absolutely not. And so you really, really have to get dialed on those top 1% of your cases and make sure that you're maximizing value there, because I think that's really what separates the best from everybody else. And so just trying to identify those early, get those in the right attorney's hands and then taking those cases to trial. We've had a couple seven figure cases here this year, I think six or seven.

And pretty much all of those have resolved either right on the doorsteps of trial or the week before trial, where for whatever reason, we were finally able to come to a number. But that number is significantly higher than what they were being offered. But I do think you really have to make sure that you're not settling anything early, that you're going the extra mile and putting your best cases in the best attorney's hands.

Chris Dreyer:

Step 10, lead with a vivid vision.

Brandon Dawson:

The other thing that I think is huge is doing a vivid vision. Cameron Herold's book, Vivid Vision, and then work backwards, right? If you want to be a $30 million law firm, what does that look like? Does that mean you need 80 people and how many attorneys and what's your staff makeup? How many cases you need to be signing? And then work backwards and go, "All right, where am I today and how do I get there tomorrow?" It's no different than when we're driving from here to Columbia, I put it in the GPS. I know where I'm going, I know the turns I have to make. Make sure that you have a road map for where you're going. Don't just say, "Oh, I want to be a $30 million law firm." That's all well and good, but what does that look like? How are you going to get there?

Chris Dreyer:

Couldn't agree more, I think that's incredible. And then that is the top 1% type of mindset, too. Brandon, this has been amazing. I got one final question. For the audience that has questions about the pod, wants to connect with you, wants to refer you a case, what have it, how can they get in touch with you?

Brandon Dawson:

Shoot me an email. It's just my last name, Dawson@mdswlegal.com can visit Inpain.com, that's probably the easiest way. You can track me down there. Give me a call, 843-885-8000.

Chris Dreyer:

 

Brandon Dawson and the Thumbs Up Guys exploded, leading them securely in position that's the fastest growing firm in South Carolina. You've got the 10 steps, now it's your turn to put them to work. You got value today, hit subscribe. Catch you next time.

 

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