Chris Dreyer:
It's easy to think you need to dominate an entire city or an entire state and take every single case in your practice area to build a seven-figure firm you're chasing. You don't. Trey Harrell breaks down the actual math.
Trey Harrell:
You really only need a half a percent of what's available. I only needed a half a percent because in 2022, there were 51,000 and some change motor vehicle collisions in the state of South Carolina with injury.
Chris Dreyer:
Trey owns Trey Harrell Law Office in South Carolina. He's doubled revenue three years in a row, and he didn't get there with a big leap. He got there one step at a time. This is Personal Injury Mastermind, powered by Rankings.io, the performance marketing agency for elite PI firms. I'm Chris Dreyer, CEO of Rankings.
Why capturing a small percentage of personal injury cases can still generate seven-figure revenue
Trey Harrell:
Half of a percent of that is 256, and if you have an average case fee of $7,500, which most PI firms have a much bigger one, but of $7,500, that's $2 million. Right? That's more than enough to grow your PI practice.
Chris Dreyer:
Today, Trey explains how he turned $10,000 in savings into two million in revenue, expanding into new cities, and why staying hands-on and intake still matters at scale. Let's get into it.
Trey Harrell:
We've doubled our revenue for the third year in a row. When I left the US Attorney's office, it was in 2020. Nothing was going on, right? And I had two young kids and a wife who did not work outside of the home. And you had to figure out what you were going to do to make a living. And we just hung a shingle and figured out what we could get across the threshold. So, the fact that we've been able to double revenue as a result of that since 2020 is just a godsend and we're so blessed.
Chris Dreyer:
That's awesome. Can I ask, I just wanted to just touch on that. The cash acceleration cycle for PIs is horrible. Right?
Trey Harrell:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
It's best case scenario, six months. Most of the time it's 12 to 18 months before the checks start flowing in. Looking back, do you save some money on the side, do you get some leverage? How do you get through that first part?
How Trey Harrell approached personal injury law firm growth before investing heavily in marketing
Trey Harrell:
When you're talking about that kind of cash acceleration and how you do it from a bootstrap scenario, you've got to look at cases, or at least the way we did, as, if I write these three wills, that gets me X and I can do Y with it. The way we started and the way we did it was we had a very little savings, 10 grand. We had sold an old boat that we had to set it up, but it was, you had to focus on what you could get in the door and what you could handle. Because it's not just taking anything, it's taking something you can handle.
When I say threshold, what I meant by that was, we were able to do... I come from an insurance family, so I understood auto accidents pretty well. I was a US attorney, so I could handle criminal defense stuff. And just being around, I was an economics major, so I understood the estate planning world. So, I utilized those three things. If an immigration case came in the door, I referred that out.
Chris Dreyer:
I was on Hormozi's launch for his recent book, and he was talking about trying to get the CAC, your cost to acquire, back within the second month. And I'm like-
Trey Harrell:
That's not happening.
Chris Dreyer:
Not going to happen for PI.
Trey Harrell:
No.
Chris Dreyer:
So, a whole different ballgame, because he was talking about these models. So then you get that early win and you can go deploy it back to marketing. And I'm like, well, the only thing I could think of was maybe, someone utilize a debt and doing an Esquire Bank thing.
Trey Harrell:
But those banks, when we were trying to move into that, they weren't interested if you didn't have a very high amount of cases or a very high amount of revenue already. When we finally went the bank route or whatever is, I went and relationships I built over time with a local banker and got a very small credit line, and then showed the revenue and got a bigger credit line, and then showed the revenue and got a bigger credit line, and just consistently did that to utilize it. Because in this business, you've got to be authentic and you've got to be true to yourself, and people are going to see through it if you're not consistently delivering on your promises, right? I mean, you do it for your clients, I know numerous folks who've worked with you and brag about you regularly and what y'all do.
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you.
Trey Harrell:
They stick with you. You have clients year over year and the same clients come back because you've delivered on what you promised.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, we do our damnedest.
Trey Harrell:
There you go.
Chris Dreyer:
Don't hit 100%, but we do our damnedest, so thank you for that. And I want to lean in, you mentioned a couple words there, and what I was hearing is authentic. And you said the breakthrough moment was realizing you didn't want to copy the big firm model. So, how'd you translate that into your positioning into your marketing?
Trey Harrell:
Well, I think that when you're going through marketing and you're figuring out what you're going to be and you're trying to build this brand, you've really got to lean into yourself. I'm a big country music fan as well. There's a good Dolly Parton quote that says, "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." And so, when you're trying to figure out and build your brand, you've got to figure out who you are and lean into that as you're trying to grow the firm, because it's such a big piece of it. Because if people aren't going to say, "That's so you," then you're doing it the wrong way. It's so crucial that you maintain who you are and focus on your market, know your market, and go after your market. There's some people that aren't going to call me for an auto accident. I'm not going after that person. I'm going after the sliver that'll call me, and that's how we've been able to grow our practice the way we grew it.
Chris Dreyer:
I read this book, Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street guy, and I read his sales book and it was... well, one thing, now he was the epitome of on the extreme and cheat and all the fraud and everything, but he had a, trust the company, trust the product, trust the individual. And I think that when you're being authentic, it automatically lends itself to trust. So you go to your website, you go, you listen to you and you're telling these stories, and it makes me, without any background, it's like you trust you. You know what I mean?
Trey Harrell:
I appreciate that. Let me tell you, talking about telling stories, I got a great story. The reason we're focusing on PI, the way our firm ended up focusing on PI is hilarious. We were driving across 526 in Charleston, South Carolina. It's a beautiful area, you're looking out over the water, it's great when you're going over from Daniel Island to Mount Pleasant. And an alert popped on my phone, mine and my wife's phone, her phone or my phone, and the same alert popped on her phone where an attorney in our market had just settled a 10, 11, $12 million matter. Right? And I looked over at my wife and I said, "Honey, don't worry. One day we'll get ours." And she snapped back at me and said, "Yeah, and it ain't going to be in estate planning."
Chris Dreyer:
That's awesome.
Trey Harrell:
So, at that moment, it was one of those things where you got to dial in and you got to get focused. And she knew that, she knew I preferred auto accident, she knew that's what I really wanted to do. I grew up in a family where my dad and my grandfather were both insurance agents and my uncle's an insurance defense lawyer. So, I understood that world and she knew that's what I wanted and that was just her gentle way of pushing me, and it's worked out, so.
Chris Dreyer:
You can't just throw that softball out there about my dad, my uncle on the other side. How does the dinner table, how does that go? Do they needle you? Is it all like, hey, or they kind of get it? I always say this, it's insurance job to pay what they think is reasonable and to try to prevent overpaying and everything.
Trey Harrell:
Well, I can tell you, I get that, asked that question a lot. "What's the dinner table conversation like?" And my dad is an independent insurance agent. He's an insurance broker, right? And so he consistently sees his clients get messed with and says to them, "Hey, you need to go get an attorney. You need to talk to an attorney." To my dad's credit, he doesn't write any more business with that provider anymore, or those providers as it happens, he moves the business around. My uncle took a pause on practice. He was leaning more to the PI world. A lot of the people that are coming from the insurance world see the problems with insurance. Majority of the time, they do not care.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's go back. So, you decided to go auto, PI. When you're thinking about this strategy, you think, I'm going to go to pure auto, truck, motorcycle, MVA? Am I going to go PI? Am I going to go slip and fall premises? Because PI in and of itself is a big category. How did you break down that conversation?
Trey Harrell:
It was the same philosophy. Whenever we decided to focus on dead on auto accidents and that's what we were doing, it was the same philosophy as the threshold, you just narrowed the focus in it, where, let's go figure out what we can do, how we can help people, what kind of model we can grow, and do it. I'm of the idea that as you're narrowing down on something and focusing it, do not be afraid to refer the case out to another attorney and learn how to do it. That's how we got to where we were, is I would get a case and if it was something that I hadn't handled before or there was some kind of little complex issue, I'd call a buddy of mine and say, "Hey, let's work together on this," and I'd learn. And then the next time, I don't have to refer that case out. I got better.
But as we get into complex issues and complex matter, we're quick to open up the team to help because A, it helps your client, which is the most important. And B, half of a watermelon is better than all of a grape. Right? So, when you're referring and you're working this and you're building it around, you're consistently treating the client better, you're consistently growing your practice and learning, and you can do it.
And prime example, I can sit down and research that point of law and study it and cram it, or I can refer it, have somebody who knows how I was going to do it to help my client, and then go find two, three more cases. Right? That's kind of the way that I looked at it to grow it in that manner. You just got to niche down and niche down until you get to what you're really, really good at, and then you expand on that.
Chris Dreyer:
You hear co-counsel on a referral. Most of the time, the co-counsels just ship it and then you get the check in the mail. Is this the same thing? You're co-counsel and actually doing what it's intended, like sitting with them, or?
Trey Harrell:
If they want us to sit with them, I mean, they become the quarterback. We're still a part of it, but the litigator becomes the quarterback in this scenario. But the client has built the relationship with us, and that's why a lot of people don't like lawyers when they just hand stuff off. So, we've got the relationship with the client and we're able to keep and foster that relationship, which A, breeds referrals, right? Because we're still building that relationship, we didn't turn our back on them. We got them a great result because we weren't afraid to hand it off, but we're there as much as they need us.
And let's be honest, a lot of really good litigators just want to be litigators. They don't want to go out and find the client and do the handholding and do that kind of stuff. I like doing it. I like talking to my clients. They're great stories, not all clients, right? Some are annoying, but I enjoy talking to a lot of them. They've got a lot of good stories and that's just the way I've always been. And so when we hand it off, we're as involved in the litigation as much as we need to.
Some of the lawyers, particularly as we've gotten a bigger firm, some of the younger lawyers we handed off to, they don't have the resources. So we're still there to be able to finance it and they're able to focus and do what they've got to do to get the best result for the client. Because remember, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is doing what's best for your client.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible, I love that.
Trey Harrell:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
And it shows, right? You got 400 plus reviews in the last few years and you got multiple locations now, Charleston, Greenville, Somerville.
Trey Harrell:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
Talk me through that. You decided, hey, going auto. Before you're talking about taking the stuff that you could work on the threshold, I believe is your language. But how do you think about marketing?
Trey Harrell:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
Right? You already mentioned a big part, the systemic and the referral side to the compounds, but where are you deploying the dollars? How do you think about advertising?
How local referral relationships supported multi-office expansion without overextending
Trey Harrell:
I think advertising is a consistently changing beast. And Babe Ruth once said, "You can't win games on yesterday's home runs." Right? And so you've got to consistently figure out how to hit another home run.
Why we're in Greenville. I can handle Greenville cases from my Charleston office, but we got reached out to by, I had a handful of calls of referrals from former clients who referred us to their cousin, and they were in the upstate of South Carolina and they said, "Oh, you're only in Charleston? Oh, I need a lawyer up here." So, we opened an office in Greenville. I mean, once that happened twice, you figure out, "Hey, I don't want to lose these clients. I don't want to lose this opportunity." So, we were able to put together an office up there. We're able to have folks in there and help people and we're able to help more people and grow our practice up there.
And I look at it as the way I think about marketing is, you also have to consistently know your market, right? It changes and it evolves, but you have to be tuned in and know your market. And you don't need, particularly when you're a smaller firm like I am or growing firm, you don't need the whole pie. That's what the 800 pound gorillas who we all know, they're going after that whole pie. You don't need a half of a pie. You really only need a sliver.
And I can tell you, I told you I was an economics guy, so I got some data to back it up. You really only need a half a percent of what's available in my market in South Carolina. I only needed a half a percent, because in 2022, there were 51,000 and some change motor vehicle collisions in the state of South Carolina with injury. Half of that is 200, or sorry, half of a percent of that is 256. And if you have an average case fee of $7,500, which most PI firms have a much bigger one, but of $7,500, that's $2 million. Right? That's more than enough to grow your PI practice. That's well more than enough.
And so, if you really figure out and focus on where you can go and who's actually going to call you, right? If you can focus on that and niche down and focus on that, you can go get that, because all I need is a half a percent of the auto accidents in South Carolina with a small average fee to be able to make ends meet very well for me and my staff.
Chris Dreyer:
That's great. I love that mentality. I love the data component, thanks for sharing that. Of those 810 in your market, you got Sync, you got Joy, do you build relationships with them? Do you get cases from them and/or refer to them? I heard Dan Morgan, one of the things that he said at my last event that I found really interesting was, they started taking their turndowns and sending it to another firm, and then they started getting some checks back in the mail. And I thought, well, that's pretty good, a lot of our firms just turn them down and they just don't even give a second look, but maybe send all your turndowns to who knows.
Trey Harrell:
Hey, that was another reason of how we started growing, was I built relationships with guys I went to law school with. One of the big guys in my market was my roommate in law school, and I went to him and I was in his wedding, he was in my wedding.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing.
Trey Harrell:
Actually played high school football together. He's speaking at. Pem Con, Brandon Dawson. And I went to him and we were talking, he was like, "Yeah, if that's what you're focusing on, we'll give you these." They don't send them to us as much anymore because they've started handling the smaller cases themselves, but it's that scenario that, yeah, that's what we did. And if I had something that I thought we might need more resources for or something, I'd quickly send it over to them.
You've got to build relationships, particularly in the legal community, particularly in the PI community, because a lot of times what's best for the client is most important, A. But B, it's the PI world versus the insurance tort reform world. And if we're not working together, if we're not doing the things we've got to do, if certain lawyers aren't staying in their lane, you're going to get bad law. And if you get bad law, that's bad for the client. So, you've got to work with other folks in your area to make sure that you're doing the things you've got to do to fight the good fight on all fronts.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible mentality, that's the half glass full. I think that's so fractured on the PI side, right? And that's where they have a lot of these issues with tort reform. I mean, there was a major threat in Texas recently and they luckily staved it away and you saw what happened to Florida recent, a year ago.
Trey Harrell:
We had a fight last year in South Carolina. It was terrible, but folks realized that it's better to let a jury decide, a jury of your peers decide than a group of legislators in Columbia decide.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, great.
Trey Harrell:
So, they followed the Seventh Amendment. It was kind of nice.
Chris Dreyer:
That's great. What's intake, sales, tech stack look like? What's CRM? How do you think about sales and intake?
The role intake discipline played in both early survival and long-term firm scalability
Trey Harrell:
Intake is crucially important. If you're trying to build a PI firm, you have to have it dialed in. You have to use Intake Accelerator with Lead Docket, and it is crucial to what we do. We use Casepeer for our case management, they speak very well together and it's very clean. But I learned early on that intake matters, because if you can get a fish on the line, if you can't get them in the boat, it doesn't matter. Right?
Chris Dreyer:
Mm-hmm.
Trey Harrell:
You've got to focus on it, you've got to do it. And when you're growing and when you're starting, I remember leads would come in at 9:00 on a Saturday while Gamecocks were playing football, and I'd pick up the phone and call that lead and try to sign them up right there. I have a very understanding and patient wife, because we'd be at dinner and a lead would come in and I'd go take it. When we first were starting out, my cell phone would ring in the middle of the night and it wasn't, "Who's calling?" It was, "Get up and go answer the phone." It was those kind of things. And so when you're looking at it from a sales perspective and you're starting out, you've got to do everything to make your intake fluid and flawless, because if you don't get that fish into the boat, you ain't going to eat.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. The intake accelerators, I hadn't heard that. I've heard of Lead Docket and Casepeer. Do you have the in-house staff, are you using like third party?
Trey Harrell:
I've got a dedicated intake coordinator and she's phenomenal. She started as our receptionist, moved up to a case manager, and then we moved her over to intake, and she's just been phenomenal at that, and so she oversees it. And if we get calls on the other thing, I'm not afraid to hop on the phone with a lead if we get draw over because again, if you can't get the fish in the boat, nobody's going to eat. Right? And so, we've been doing that. My marketing director was my first hire who actually I think set this up for us, and she hops on the phone regularly. Ally, she's phenomenal. We've got a team who's very focused on getting the fish in the boat. I hate to say that over and over again, but that's the easiest way to think about it, is getting the fish into the boat and understanding that sales fixes everything. Right?
And so, when you have a dip in cash or when you have an issue like that, if you're signing up a bunch of cases, you're comfortable leaning out on your credit line a little bit because you've got those cases you know that you're going to get paid in six, eight, 10 months.
Chris Dreyer:
Well said. Yeah, and I think it's smart to... One of the things you said, "Hey, I'm answering the phone day, night at the beginning," and then first hires the marketing director. I think a lot of times people go to the opposite side and it's like, well, you got to, what is it, the chicken and the egg? You got to get the leads first before you can try them and have those opportunities. So, I think that's super smart.
What's the future look like? What's the vision? What's the, I can bring you back on in a couple years and we can say, hey, what are you thinking about?
Trey Harrell:
Yeah, I hope I'm still under that. It's just the consistent growth that we're able to have. I've been blessed to build my practice to where I can spend time with my family, with my wife and my kids, and I have the ability to let my staff take time off when they need to take time off. I don't want to shy away from that as we grow, but yeah, like any business owner, you don't want to stay stagnant, you want to keep moving forward. And whatever God puts in front of us, we're going to keep going after and keep doing it, and that's kind of the goal.
I look at things as my grandfather used to tell me, "Get to the next step." Think of it like a staircase. You want to get to the top of the stairs. And I don't know, I think I know what the top of the stairs is, right? A massive mega firm, all that. But in order to get to that point, you've got to get to the next step and you've got to slowly focus on that and have singleness of purpose to get to that next step.
And so for me, I think the next step, I don't think we're going to double revenue again this year because that'd be ridiculous, but maybe another significant growth in revenue, because as long as we can do that, we can keep going. Another aspect that would be very important to me for what the next few years look like is maybe not having to refer out as many cases, having the staff and that we're able to do things and utilize it and work it all in-house. But you got to be smart enough to know what you don't know, and as long as we have a question or a hiccup, we're going to hand it over.
Chris Dreyer:
Very well said. Trey, this has been amazing. For our audience listening, maybe has a case in South Carolina or wants to get in touch with you, talk shop, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Trey Harrell:
We'd love to. You can find us on any social media @treyhelps. You can find us online at treyhelps.com. You can feel free to shoot me an email at trey@attorneyharrell.com. But I'm happy to talk about anything, happy to go through it, give any advice. And it's funny, I'm so glad you have lawyers who come on your podcast give out their email addresses and whatnot, because I have taken advantage of that, and it's helped me do what I've done. So, don't be afraid to reach out.
Let me end with this, right? The one biggest piece of information and advice that I received came from my father and my grandfather. It was, "Don't ask, you don't get." Right? Always, always, always ask the question, take the shot, try to figure it out. It goes to anything. If I didn't ask my buddy who I went to law school with to send me referrals, my practice wouldn't have grown. If I didn't ask my wife why she's standing over in the corner all alone initially, I wouldn't be married. It's those kind of things in life that you have to focus on. So always, always, always don't be afraid to ask the question because if you don't ask, you don't get.
Chris Dreyer:
Boom, that's the pod. Thanks, Trey.
You don't need the whole market, you need the right cases handled well with systems that can support the next step forward. That's exactly how we think about growth at Rankings. We help personal injury firms build the demand that they can actually handle in the markets that are ready to win without forcing scale before the foundation is there. If you're serious about growing your firm with control, hit me up at Rankings.io. Thanks for listening.
