Thaddeus Wendt:
We've been a mid-sized firm intentionally, strategically, for a long time, because we didn't want to be the big mill.
Chris Dreyer:
Every ambitious firm owner eventually faces the same crossroads. How do you scale up your volume without compromising your standards? Expanding into highly competitive states requires massive capital and a machine to handle the intake, but how do you prevent that machine from just burning and churning cases? Today's guest is making aggressive moves to compete in the changing personal injury landscape, and he's pulling back the curtain on the exact strategies he's using to dominate his markets.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. Today's guest, Thaddeus Wendt, co-CEO of Feller & Wendt. Thaddeus transitioned to being the co-CEO back in 2024, needs confronting and changing PI landscape and making moves to keep the business moving forward. Today, we cover how Feller Wendt is scaling deliberately, the massive marketing engine fueling their growth, and a whole new paradigm shifting approach to cases that is helping increase the speed of their cases and generate larger checks from the insurance companies. Let's get into it.
You're scaling up, you're over a hundred staff members, and you mentioned, you're like, "Hey, I'm piling head on right where the competition is," and I love that. Right where the money's flooding in in Arizona, you got Utah that they just had their ABS, I think it was a sandbox. Are you thinking more like compete on the B2C or, "Hey, let's be the ones that can collect and litigate because we've got so many marketers coming around there," or is it basically just build a great business and lead on both ends?
Thaddeus Wendt:
And it's all of that. I'd say though the last is probably the most primate. The primacy for us as far as what we're looking at, it's the primary focus. We were really intentional about, look, we want to grow. We've been a mid-sized firm intentionally, strategically for a long time because we didn't want to be the big mill, and again, no offense to the big mills. I think they have their place and their need, but we've never wanted to be that. And so we even decided as a group, we're going to scale up, but how do we do it and make sure that we're not just burning and churning cases, because we've got to feed the marketing beast? And our marketing beast is crazy. We just approved a 1.68 million marketing budget for quarter two. Well, we did that a couple of weeks ago in our quarterly, but we did a couple of things.
We identified two KPIs that really keep us from, as long as we can maintain our goals on those and targets, we don't think we're a mill. The first one is what percentage of cases do we settle for policy limits? And our target is above 60%, which there's been one quarter since we've started where we were under and we were at 57%, but we've stayed 60 or higher. That to us is our rubric that says, "Hey, you're not a mill. Your teams are working. They're working with efficiency, effectiveness. We do focus on speed, but we're not a mill."
And the other one is deeply rooted in speed, which is time on desk, and for our pre-suit teams, our target is to be at or under nine months. We're at 8.3 right now. Our litigation, we even have a focus on speed there. We like all our cases to be tried to a jury within 18 months, and that doesn't always happen. It's a little bit harder to control on the litigation side, but we're inside two years on almost everything. That's another thing that tells us too, because I do think the mills are kind of interesting. On the pre-suit side, it feels like they just burn and churn them, and on the litigation side, and they'll let those things sit there for three to four years.
So those two things for us are what... And again, I'm probably overly stereotyping and generalizing about what I'm calling mills, and that's probably not terribly fair and no offense to anybody, but we just don't want it to look like that, and those were the two metrics that keep us from looking what we think those firms look like.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's great. A non-attorney, I'm always looking for different KPIs,, and I think I heard Amanda Demanda on a recent pod talk about tracking, she called it tenders, the full policy limits similar to what you're doing. I think it's a good signal too. You drop below, it's like, "Hey, maybe they're not respecting us. Maybe we need to try more cases." Or I don't even know the nuances, but I think it's definitely predictive. And then the time on desk, the big thing is you don't have to worry about product market fit, right? It's contingency fees, but the horrible thing is the cash flows is awful. So tracking time on desk, I love that you track both pre-lit and lit. I think that's incredible. It's super smart.
Thaddeus Wendt:
Well, one thing that we try to get, especially out of Fireproof, Mike and his integrator, they claim that they can predict within 2% accuracy. That's a KPI of mine as a CEO. I'm still chasing that 2%. We're at about probably about 7% accuracy right now, but you can't be accurate if you don't know your... You've got to really have an idea and a sense of what that time on desk is, and you've got to be honest about it too, because if you're not, then your predictions and your modeling is all off. But yeah, that cashflow is a problem. And if you can push those policy limit numbers though, or tender numbers, and you know what your time on desk is and that's a pretty firm number, then you can still cash flow pretty well.
Chris Dreyer:
We all know that cashflow is the oxygen of a contingency fee firm. If cases sit stagnant, the business suffocates. Thaddeus manages the risk by obsessively tracking time on desk, aiming to clear the pre-suitcases in under nine months, but doesn't hit those numbers by just nagging adjusters or working his team to the bone. He does it by completely re-imagining the medical timeline. Let's look at how he dramatically reduced his firm's bottlenecks by turning the traditional medical path on its head.
Let's dig into this a little bit because I think there'd be a lot of value here for our audience. What were some of the things that really had an impact on the time on desk?
Thaddeus Wendt:
Yeah. Well, the first was getting the data and getting our teams to actually put in the data that we used to get the end data. To be able to build out the formulas, you have to have the underlying raw data in there, and so we had to really get the teams to understand how important it was to always report and record within our case management system, which is Filevine, the data that helped us get our dashboards that told us what was what. Once we knew where we were, we had a problem. When we first started out, we were pushing 13 months on the pre-suit side, and we had the typical problem on the litigation side where we had cases in the hopper that were sitting there for five years. We're just like, "Oh my gosh, this is wild."
Once we understood what the problem was, it allowed us to start to develop some strategies, and we've developed two really radical strategies actually, and I believe they're truly radical. I know some people use that hyperbole, but we call it fast track pain management and quick litigation. I used to call it quick and dirty litigation. We dropped the dirty because it doesn't sound good when you're talking to your clients and you tell them you're going to go quick and dirty litigation. They're like, "Wait, what?" So we're quick lit.
We actually do that on my pre-suit side. So both of these are strategies that we use on the pre-suit side. Fast track pain management is a big paradigm shift. We basically take the typical treatment path and turn it on its head, so instead of my clients going to conservative care and treatment and sitting with a chiropractor for three months and then going to a physical therapist for three more months, and then finally, because their issues don't resolve, they go get an MRI and, "Oh my gosh, yeah, you've got some problems in there. Let's go get you over to a neurosurgeon or a neurologist and get you some pain management."
We start with pain management right out of the gate. Maybe that's why we call it fast track pain management. We literally have a network of providers that we've developed this. It took a while to develop that. We had to convince them this was great for the clients primarily, and then great for them, great for us. It's a win-win-win, and it really is. It's one of the rare win-win-wins. And you will have to go on another podcast to go into all the details, but it's highly effective, and it's a massive paradigm shift because my clients, if they qualify, if they have the symptoms, and we've got a whole list of symptomologies that, okay, this person might qualify for pain management, we let the doc determine that.
But we do telemed. My clients never have to leave their couch, comfort of their home. Don't have to drive anywhere in pain. We do the telemed. Doctors identify, "Yep, you're potentially a candidate for pain management. Let's schedule an MRI." So that's the only time they've got to get off the bed, go get an MRI. Can't figure out how to get that to their house yet. Once we do, we'll do that. But then once they have the MRI report, they go and they set up one more touchpoint. That's with the pain management doctor. Not the PA, not some assistant, it's the actual doctor. Sit down, go through the imaging, identify what their treatment options are up to and including pain management where appropriate, and then doctor walks them right back and gives them an injection right there, and we resolve a ton of those cases just with that.
It's more expensive because it's like emergent ER care, but you're getting treatment faster than anybody else that I know of. It's effective, it's more expensive, but that actually helps us pop those policy limits, and I think it survives all scrutiny from defense as long as you're fearless. I think jurors get it. They don't want to wait six months to go see the local neurosurgeon. They want treatment right now and they're willing to pay for it, so that helps.
And then the quick lit side is kind of tied in because insurance is resistant to this, right? So we just file suit. And man, we're just settling a ton of the cases because I am convinced the insurance companies don't want this to go in front of a jury and don't want to create jurisprudence around it, because it's the right way to do it. You get your clients on their feet faster, get the policy limits settlement faster, and then you can give them that money and say, "Now go pursue whatever other treatment you want in addition." You want to go to a chiropractor? Go ahead. You have the cash to pay for it. You want to go to your PT? Go ahead. Use your health insurance, use your cash, do whatever you want. You're in control, and so we get great outcomes for our clients.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm not an attorney, so bear with me on this question. So I heard John Morgan on a recent podcast, he said something that I've asked a few times. It's like, okay, after three months, they're still in pain. Go get the MRI. Send them to the doctor to go get the MRI, and I've heard other people say push the MRI sooner. But you're saying, "Hey, just start treating immediately." Is the MRI a key metric to track? Why as the non-attorney, why are they pushing the MRI? Is it because the fees associated with it and a different specialist?
Thaddeus Wendt:
No, everything that we build is off of what our client needs, everything. The whole plan is built off of that. You've got somebody, just imagine you just got into this collision and you're hurting, you're at home. You wake up in the morning, you hear about it all the time. People felt great, then they go to sleep, they wake up and they barely get out of bed. They're in pain. And who wants to go roll into a chiropractor and get manipulated and this and that? Maybe it works, and then you're going to go home. They'll say, "Oh, you're going to be in pain for two to three weeks, but we'll work through it." Meanwhile, keep your job, take your kids to school, go to all the sports, take care of the in-laws, whatever it is. You still have to live life. It's terribly onerous, and that's assuming that you physically can do it.
So that's why we switch this and say, "Hey, don't even get off the couch. Stay at home, take the day off. We're going to have the doc call you." And it's for their convenience, but also the efficacy of it as well is so much higher. You're talking to a neurosurgeon. Can you imagine that? You're not talking to a chiropractor, you're not talking to a PD. You're talking to an MD, board certified neurosurgeon that's going to talk to you right there, that's done the surgeries, that's done the pain management, done the treatment, and knows if you need it or if you don't. Because that's the other thing too. We work with ethical treatment providers. We're not trying to create injuries. We're trying to identify if there is a pain management need, and if there is, then we execute on it.
If not, we send the client right to the chiropractor or the physical therapist or whatever it is, and what's the harm? They had one Teledoc, that's all, and it's actually a diagnostic Teledoc. Great, it helps. The MRI is a requirement of the MD. The MD's not going to do, obviously, they're not going to be able to fully determine what your needs are or aren't until they get that MRI. They've got to have it because that's your best indicator of those soft tissue damages, ligament tears, disc herniations, disc bulges. You see that with an MRI, so you got to have... Our network, we spend a lot of time on this and training, training ourselves, working with the practitioners, but we have an amazing network of providers that do a really good job of taking care of our clients and really telling us when they should get treated or not get treated, and more importantly, not telling us, telling the clients that, and then we can take care of them. So it's really effective.
Chris Dreyer:
Again, not an attorney, but if I was in an accident, that's what I would want.
Thaddeus Wendt:
That's what we said. We went to our clients and we were like... You talk to them all the time and they want to see people quick. And then you're like, "Oh gosh, we can tell we've handled a lot of these cases and it looks like you need pain management. You need to go to your health insurance provider and find out who's in your network and then call." And then they'll call us back and say, "Yeah, they can see me, but not for three months, four months, five months." And it's like, okay, well now the insurance is going to use that against us as a gap of treatment. That's why this fast track pain management just fills so many gaps. It really is so effective, but it's a giant paradigm shift for attorneys because I started up my firm with a, "We're going to go the most conservative care and treatment first because I want to be judicious with your dollars."
When you really run the numbers, and I've done financial presentations on this, I'll get you more money in your pocket faster by going through a more expensive fast track pain management, because at the end of the day, your net expense is far less than if you do the conservative track. Now, that's not 100% of the time. I'm not comparing the person that got into a little fender bender and needed four chiropractic visits and then they're done. I'm not suggesting that we'd punch them through fast track pain management or financially it's going to compare. But for the grand majority of our cases with the forces involved and the mass, the Delta Vs, and it's pretty serious, the injuries, and they need pain management. Pain management gets them back on their feet.
The other nice thing about pain management, it's diagnostic in nature. So what do I mean by that? A good neurosurgeon or a neurologist will take a look at an MRI and say, "Okay, I'm hearing what you're telling me hurts, but I'm not actually seeing anything here. So through my training, through my experience, I'm going to subject you to this injection and we're going to see if it works because maybe the MRI just didn't pick it up. But your symptomology and everything else, all the other evidence says we need to try this, and if it doesn't work, we can check that box and we can move on to the diagnostic, which would be another injection. And you go through a couple of those iterations, you might end up with some RFAs, radiofrequency ablation, and then maybe even a surgical option. But by that time, you've diagnostically gone through that pain management journey, and again, you've started that journey in two weeks instead of six months. And so man, even if you end up being a surgical candidate, you get to that point far quicker with our process than you do with a traditional treatment path.
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you so much for laying that out. That was so helpful, so thorough. I think our audience is going to benefit a ton. That was really eye-opening to me too.
Processing cases with that level of speed and precision requires a massive pipeline feeding the engine. Earlier, Thaddeus casually mentioned that his firm approved a $1.68 million marketing budget for a single quarter. As marketers, we know that kind of capital isn't deployed lightly. I wanted to look under the hood of his operation to see exactly which channels are driving their case volume and why he's so passionate about building an internal marketing team. How are you deploying capital for marketing? What channels do you like to obtain cases today?
Thaddeus Wendt:
Man, I wish I had my marketing manager here. He'd be a lot more sophisticated with the answer. Here's what I did though. I wanted all my marketing to be in-house as much as possible, and we're not still there 100%. I'm still convinced that's the better way to go because now I have my marketers for 40 hours a week instead of I'm fractionally shared with whoever else, so that was one big thing. That 1.68 does include the salaries of all of my marketing department and they're awesome. We've got a viral content maker, so we're doing the social media channels. We've got billboards, big box TV. We call it a 360 kind of funnel. a Lot of people know what that is in marketing, I know you know what that is, and we really pursue that.
We don't believe there's any one specific magic bullet. We've got to be out there in all the different channels, and then we're constantly evaluating and split testing and R&Ding. And marketing is so crazy. I just really respect people that can get up every day and do marketing because I think I, at some point in time, would just feel overwhelmed and defeated and just quit, but thankfully, these folks have the acumen and the fortitude to be able to continue to push it. And then some of it is, honestly, we get a lot of leads from lead generators too, which ironically, I believe is actually my greatest competitor. I don't think it's the other law firms in the area. I think it's lead generators, and then I pay them to compete against me. So they're a necessary evil right now, but I've commissioned my marketing group. I'm like, "Hey, the end goal, the long-term goal here, so we're not going to use them anymore. We're actually going to compete against them and we're going to be better than them," and that's our long-term goal.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, I agree. I think the one thing about the lead gen, that they're a direct competitor to us too. It's the agency side. You bring it in-house as a competitor, and then we got the lead gen, then we got the agencies. Honestly, I don't really even think the agencies are much of competition. Yes, there are some good providers, but really, alternative means to solve a problem, lead gen or in-house, just not wanting to use our services. But the lead gen, it's kind of interesting, you can't fault them for a go-to-market strategy in a new market because they already have pipeline. Because any marketing that an agency does, even if we're trying to spin up Google ads, Facebook ads, whatever paid media, which would be certainly faster than the social or whatever is going to take some time. I think that's the one where they gotcha.
Thaddeus Wendt:
Yeah, they can deploy so fast and saturate so fast. And let me say too, organizations like yours, we still use, and you're great because what do you bring? You can bring the vision that my internal marketing team, they can get myopic. They don't get that. That was one thing I realized was amiss. When I brought everybody in, all of a sudden, I was like, "Well, crap, how do we know we're on the cutting edge?" My team is so focused on what we do, I don't know if we're on the cutting edge, so I have to tap into your company and say, "Hey, help us understand what this landscape looks like nationally, regionally, statewide." You've got better metrics and optics. My team can use some resources to try to tie into that, but it's difficult. You're playing in the game across a bigger sphere, and so that's invaluable information for us as well.
Chris Dreyer:
So your markets, again, you said Idaho, Arizona and Utah. I believe those are the three. So if someone has a case in one of those markets, they want to refer to you, they had questions about the pod, maybe they want to pick your brain a little bit more about the pain management and the fast track things that you discuss, what's the best way to get in touch?
Thaddeus Wendt:
Yeah. Easiest thing to do is just email me at thaddeuswendt@fellerwendt.com, or seriously, give me a ring. You can call me at 801-499-5060, and I'm always happy to talk about it. I've been a part of a lot of organizations that try to keep the secret sauce, and I've hated that. I really think that there's a lot of value and strength in numbers and sharing, so even the quick litigation and the fast track pain management, if anybody wants to talk to me about that, I'm more than happy to share. I wish the entire plaintiff's group would switch over to it. It would really empower us and give us a ton of leverage against the insurance companies. But hey, thanks again for the opportunity too. I really appreciate it.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I really enjoyed the convo, so thanks for coming on the show.
Thaddeus Wendt:
Absolutely. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Dreyer:
Thaddeus Wendt is proof that you can scale a massive multi-state firm without resorting to the typical burn and churn mill model. By keeping a hawk eye on two simple metrics, the percentage of policy limit settlements and time on desk, he's built a highly profitable machine that actually prioritizes the client's physical recovery. If you want to grow deliberately, you have to hunt down your operational bottlenecks and be willing to completely flip the paradigm, just like Feller & Wendt did with their medical approach.
Thaddeus also talked about feeding a massive marketing beast to take on the most competitive markets in the country. If you're ready to build a beast of your own, you can't rely on cookie cutter campaigns. You need a team that knows the personal injury landscape inside and out. Head on over to rankings.io. We delivered the elite SEO and performance marketing that puts your firm in front of the high value cases you actually want. Let us battle it out in the digital trenches so you can focus on winning cases. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
