Chris Dreyer:
Most personal injury firms run a version of EOS or scaling up, but as you scale past 100 or 200 people, those traditional systems begin to break under communication bottlenecks and meeting bloat. Recently on Tommy Mello's podcast, former Tesla President Jon McNeill broke down the algorithm Elon Musk's five-step operating system for stripping out waste and scaling Tesla and SpaceX. Today, I'm breaking down how to apply Musk's five-step framework directly to your personal injury firm. We cover why you must question every intake requirement before trying to optimize it, why the real operational objective is fewer touches per case, not fewer employees, and why speed is the single most valuable asset in your entire firm.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury. Let's get into it.
The first one is question every requirement. Why does this requirement exist? Why is this actually necessary? Instead of trying to optimize, for example, a process like why does it even exist in the first place? I was thinking of Marie Kondo's Cleaning Your Closet, like can't I just throw away some of these old clothes in this junk instead of trying to organize the closet and push everything to the right, can I just throw it away? So that's actually first is the question, why does this exist. The second one is delete every possible step. So the second thing is, I'm sure many of you have read the Toyota Way or looked into Kaizen and maybe Kanban systems of production and throughput and visualizing how the work gets done.
When I build an org chart, not an accountability chart or some bullshit from EOS, an org chart, an organizational chart, you're basically visualizing throughput and you're mapping out the processes of where are your constraints. That's what an org chart does. And people, Steven jokes with me, all these people, all HR at our company, I'm in Pingboard, which is an org chart builder, every single day because I visualize throughput.
There's a book called The Goal that talks about visualizing throughput and identifying constraints. And so on this, it is like delete every possible steps. First, you got to have the steps on the board. I think it's a sticky note style, put it from left to right. If I'm thinking about my agency, I'm thinking about the finances first, the capital. You have to have capital first, then I got to have people, and then I go to attraction, which is marketing, and then I go to sales and I can break this down further. Even when it comes to SEO, the first thing I got to do is generate content that can be optimized and then, I got to build back links to it to get it indexed and endorsed. And there's all these sub-functions of this. So that's like looking at these steps and questioning do you actually need to do this or can you delete it.
The third is, okay, so let's just say you've cut to the bone as much as possible. Well, then you can simplify and optimize. You can clean that closet, you can color-code them, you can do whatever. It's a lot easier if you have a lot less shirts, right? It's a lot easier if you have a lot less processes that you can really refine and make one perfect like you're onboarding. The fourth is accelerate cycle time. If you have less steps, the journey, it's not as long. I think of time on desk, time on desk for a personal injury attorney. How do you accelerate cycle time there that makes the consumer happier? They get paid quicker, right? You as the PI attorney, if you get paid quicker, you can put that money back into marketing to feed the beast. And then last but not least is automate and automation comes last. You don't want to automate a process that shouldn't exist. So that's why it's last.
Let's take this for a personal injury firm, an auto accident firm. Number one, the question every requirement. So some of the things that come to mind for me, and I'm not a personal injury attorney, but this is what comes to me. Why do you ask 25 questions before signing up an individual? Can you reduce the amount of questions on the intake? Why does an attorney have to review a case before the engagement? Why do we have to wait for a police report before beginning the work? Why does a case manager actually have to manually request records? Why does this require a meeting? All of these things, that's just upon the initial. These are the things like why do you do these? Has technology advanced to where you can handle this differently? Maybe through you can take, we know Hormozi's value equation at the bottom right in the denominator, you want to reduce effort and sacrifice by the client.
One of the things that I was thinking about in question every requirement is it's like how Tesla does when you buy a vehicle at Tesla. When you go into to buy a vehicle at an auto dealer, it's a horrible experience. I send my assistant and he spends all day there, right? It's such a terrible experience. I can't remember the last time I went. You go there, you want to buy a car, you got to negotiate, then they pull some bullshit psychology, they got to talk to their manager and then you got to fill out three hours of paperwork versus Tesla. First of all, you can do it online and it's like 10 minutes. It's a much better experience. So what I'm saying is what are the experiences that you do that you make your client go through the ringer on that you could take that off their plate? Why do you do certain things? You need to question every requirement. That's how you become better.
So that's number one, but I want to get you to think more about this. I just gave you some on the front end on the intake. I'm not even talking about more on the law side. That's just the front end, some of the things. Okay, so next is deleting, so you're questioning things. It's redundant approvals. You've already pre-qualified somebody, you want to get an awesome attorney on there, like why? The handoffs. Why does it have to go to multiple people? Can this person do it? Can meetings that don't change decisions, the things that could be done asynchronous, the unnecessary attorney touches. Just because you have the bar card doesn't mean that you have to do these things.
Next is delete. The objective isn't fewer employees, it's fewer touches per case. That's the objective. Then you go to simplify. You want to qualify and sign a client as fast as operationally possible, as ethically possible. So what are the things, and that's just on the front end, how can you eliminate complexity? Then, there's the accelerate. Speed. When I think of all of the things that have value, I think of speed. I was up all night last night thinking about this, and this is the psychopath in me. Speed has the most value. Okay, so think about the dream outcome that an injured victim wants. They want paid as much money as possible as quickly as possible. You could take a settlement where it's finished and they're super happy, but if it takes two months for them to get the check, they're going to be upset. Speed. If they know they can get their treatment and their pain managed through an injection faster than going to 10,000 doctors and ultimately, they may have to get injection. And look, I'm not an expert in pain management, I'm just using that as an example. It's a better experience.
And why create friction? Why have them drive into the office? Because you want to shake their hand, right? Can you do a Zoom meeting? Why make them drive into the office to pick up their check? Can you ACH it? I understand there's intangibles and belly-to-belly, shaking their hand and building a relationship. Your side of the coin, right, get them to do client testimonials and get your wearables, that's for you. How can we accept speed has value. It's why people that win the lottery, they take the bulk money upfront as opposed to drip-feeding that for years. It's like why there's the consumption of fast food over the dining experience. It's why when you guys order DoorDash, we all pick that top little button that delivers it faster. It's why Jimmy John's, which is a shit sandwich, is in business, freaky fast, it's speed.
So for accelerate, time on desk. What are the measurements of speed? It's why we measure that on the front end and time to answer. So number four, accelerate and number five, automate. Can you immediately power-dial call a form submission as opposed to having a human have to find the number, dial it? Can you pre-text automatically? Can you automatically feed the contact information, everything into your CRM or your case management system? Can you automatically, once an e-sign goes out, trigger an onboarding experience, maybe a medical records request? It's automatic. I think the bigger opportunity here is most of us, including myself, we get in these scenarios where we're just like lemmings. Well, this is how you run a personal injury law firm, this is how this coach and this person told me. But if you don't start to drill down and innovate, you're just like everyone else. And if you do things differently, by the nature of doing things differently, you automatically stand out.
I'll give you another scenario. Everybody's heard that JG Wentworth call uh-uh, uh-uh, I don't know the exact number, but you can hear the jingle and I was thinking about their business model where, well, they front the money. I was thinking about, okay, well, could a personal injury attorney, especially for an auto accident, they're injured, they're not at fault, they got insurance, can you front the money. I understand that hurts your cash acceleration cycle. It's a better experience for the client. So at the point of you've settled, can you just send them the money before you've actually received the cash as opposed to having them wait two months? That's better. I think that would be value prop. I think I would appreciate that. I know there's ways that you can borrow and send them these, "Oh, you need money now for your car and yeah, we could introduce you to a person and it's 20%, 25%, 28%." Fuck, right? That's highway robbery. Can you take on some of the burden? Can you show...
You can't make guarantees of what you can do versus other people, but could you say that, "Hey, here's all these other firms. Once we settle, most of the times most firms wait for the money to come in, but we disburse your check upon the settlement, even before we receive it." Man, I got to imagine that these people that have been injured, that have been waiting, they're the ones that have suffered. Wouldn't that be a cool benefit? I think that that's why it's incredibly important to look at parallel industries in the professional services space. That's why I'm a big fan of Greg Alexander. He's an individual that Collective 22, he just thinks differently, but he works with professional services companies. That's a guy you could go listen to the Lean Startup podcast. Go look for Greg Alexander's episode, that's a good one.
I think that when you look at parallel industries like dental or the veterinarian clinics or healthcare, obviously we don't want to do the bad things that they've done to eliminate client service, we want to be more that Will Guidara Unreasonable Hospitality, but maybe they do things they process and they do intake more quickly. Maybe they use technology a little bit differently. I think that's why it's important to get out of the mold of just the PI and this is how it's always been done mindset.
I'll give you another example of this, and this is from McNeill to performance reviews. And I was talking to this with my producer, Nick. "Hey Nick, performance reviews, typically even when I hear a performance review as an owner, I'm kind of like roll my eyes. It's freaking annoying. If you're a top performer, go F yourself. I don't need a performance review. You know I'm the baller, right? I've proven it every single day, not the last week of the actions that you can remember that I did. I've crushed it all year for you." And so I'm questioning why do we do performance reviews like everyone else? Why?
And there's a question, Tesla, for example, Tesla says they do a single question for their performance reviews. They have an individual create a list of everyone they work with and they put a check mark next to who are the individuals that you would like to continue working with, that you enjoy working with? And the check marks are your top performers, but if there's not a check mark, there's a field that says, "Well, why?" "Well, this person's a Debbie Downer. This person has a ton of errors. This person constantly is late. I can't depend upon them." It allows you a point of reference to investigate it, but I think it's more telling and there are just all these things. There are all these things that we do in business. Well, why does an EOS level 10 meeting have to be a frigging hour and a half? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? It has to be an hour and a half. That's on your calendar every single week. You need an hour and a half every single week. You can't have the data already pulled up, have your issues already prepared in advance?
You have to say, "Is this rock on track or off for five minutes every single week?" Are you kidding me? Nah. Nah, bro. I'm not doing that. Okay? I'm going to do two 45-minute meetings. They're going to be more effective than your hour and a half. So every single week you have an hour and a half, I'm gaining 45 minutes on you every single week. And I just think that the bigger you grow, the more opportunity there is to make an advancement, to innovate. And this has got me going this morning. I got my Venti Black at Starbucks and my producer, Nick, wanted to talk about intake today, but instead I'm talking about the algorithm and business operating frameworks. But I just think that it is my job as the host of this pod to challenge you, to not get you in the frigging loop.
I'll tell you one other thing that drives me absolutely bonkers. When I listen to podcasts and I've got ex-attorney and you listening, you personal injury attorney listening, I want you to take this into consideration. When you go on multiple legal podcasts and you talk about the same thing, snooze fest, because if I've listened to one of your other pods, I've heard the same stuff. I want to go deeper. I want to hear something else because we're all psychopaths, we all listen to all your pods, and I think that's our job is to basically get deeper, to not do the status quo, to try to learn, to try to innovate. And that's my job as a host. That's my job to get you guys to think differently. This is a long riff, but I hope you enjoyed it. Appreciate y'all.
If you want to pull ahead in personal injury, you have to break out of the mold and stop running your firm on assumptions. Put your entire operation through the algorithm, question every requirement, delete redundant touches, ruthlessly accelerate cycle time, and never automate a process that shouldn't exist in the first place. In this business, speed has massive value. When you strip out operational drag, eliminate bloated 90-minute meetings and cut cycle time on desk, you build a firm that outpaces everyone else by simply working smarter and being intentional in the systems you build. That's it for today's episode.
Personal Injury Mastermind is powered by Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury law. We've made the Inc. 5000 nine years running. We're founder-owned led, so our only job is your growth. We handle the full marketing engine so you don't even have to think about it. If you want to be the firm injured people call first for auto and mass tort cases, book a complimentary growth audit at rankings.io.
I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
