James Farrin:
So many clients have not worked with a law firm before. They’re not here. They’re not watching us work. Who knows what’s in their mind.
Chris Dreyer:
Business leaders are taught to think big picture, but if you’re a lawyer, you know, the devil’s in the details.
James Farrin:
And so we, we want to think hard about how we can make sure they see what we’re doing and. It’s all meant to generate this higher level of appreciation among them so that they will refer us business going forward.
Chris Dreyer:
You’re listening to Personal Injury Marketing Mastermind, the show where elite personal injury attorneys and leading edge marketers give you exclusive access to growth strategies for your firm. James Farrin runs north Carolina’s most prominent personal injury practice, which has recovered over a billion dollars for his clients. He’s meticulous, always looking for ways to make his firm better, faster and more efficient that led him to found GrowPath, which creates case management and client intake software made specifically for plaintiff firms. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder, and CEO of Rankings.io we help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Being at the forefront of marketing is all about understanding people. So let’s get to know our guests. Here’s James Farrin, president of the law offices of James Scott, Farrin and CEO of GrowPath.
James Farrin:
Well, my dad was in an international business. He was a bit of a role model for me. So I think I always saw, uh, The business value is being exemplified by him. And so it just felt like that was a, an important, uh, career. And so when I found myself going to law school, I of went by default. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Uh, with a law degree, I just couldn’t figure out what to do. And I, I went there almost like a fish out of water, and I think it was just a matter of time before, uh, I think I was able to pull in the, uh, The genetics of a business person in, into, into my life and, and add it to the practice of law, which should I think has served us pretty well.
Chris Dreyer:
Absolutely. So, so you’ve got kind of that immersion from home and, and yeah, and we’re just entrepreneurial by nature, but, you know, I kind of want to jump over to, you know, you’re known around the Carolinas for your TV ads, uh, that have started Robert Vaughn, Eric Pierpoint, judge Joe Brown, you know, tell me how, uh, tell me the story of how those started and how they evolve into a key part of your business strategy.
James Farrin:
Well, I think when I decided I was going to be. Personal injury attorney. It seemed to me that the big time was going to be, uh, people who were on TV. That seemed to be how you got a lot of cases, how you got some notoriety. So I think I was always. Interested in, in going in that direction. Uh, so when I, I had early in my career, uh, big, uh, results Excel, and I decided to plow that money into a TV campaign. And I thought that the market masters campaign, which is the one that we used was the most innovative. I liked it because I thought it looked professional really well-polished and frankly, I didn’t have to be on the. On the, as myself, I think that would have been, I’m not that great of an actor and it would have, I wouldn’t want to be bothered in restaurants, by people, you know, we’ll see, you know, seeing my, having seen my face on TV. So it’s allowed me to live a life of an anonymity in and take advantage of the benefits of their really professional polished campaigns. And so we started that, that back over 20 years ago and it’s a…The commercials kind of were an immediate hit, took off, built us some, some notoriety. And then of course that led to the necessity of really getting good at running our law firm as a business, because suddenly we are dealing with questions of scale, lots of cases, and having to have good technology. So by going on TV, I don’t know that I laid it all out, uh, in my head at the time, but that led to, you know, lots of cases, Indus led to the need to become really. Effective at running operations in a strong businesslike manner.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I’ve got a couple of follow-up questions on there, so I’m more of a digital marketing guy and many of our clients do TV and I’ve always wondered, you know, what are some of the foundational. Recommendations when it comes to TV in terms of, you know, minimum, minimum budgets, even consider it, um, just, just some of the basics. And I have always heard, you’ve got to, you got to advertise during the news and sports because that’s where people watch live TV. You know, what are just some, some general advice to those looking to maybe do TV to in today’s, uh, time period.
James Farrin:
Well, it’s still an effective medium. Uh, we’ve, uh, been doing it for a long time. Uh, I’d say the, the actual, the, the amount that you need to spend depends on the size of the market. Obviously we like being in the top three to five positions in the market, uh, because. Yeah. One, if you’re pretty far down the list, uh, you just don’t get enough visibility and your, your messages drowned out. And so I think that to be effective, you have to sort of say go big or go home and be a strong player there. I think. I’m a big believer in, I think TV is a direct response vehicle, uh, for, at least for us. We’re, we’re looking for people who have been hurt. Most people are that they’ve never thought about who their lawyer’s going to be. If they’re going to be, if you know, if they happen to get involved in a serious wreck and need a lawyer. A lot of people have not bought who that person is quite a bit in advance. Right. So what we want to do is catch people in the moment when they’re in need. Uh, and we do that by running lots of daytime TV commercials. Now there’s other schools of thought, which is go to, to more of a branding approach and run commercials, uh, different times of day, evening news. Uh, I have found that less cost effective, uh, for direct response. I’m a big believer in just running, uh, on the air broadcast commercials. Uh, during the day in, in, you know, in heavy frequency, uh, it’s, that’s, that’s a formula that’s expensive, but it does work. And I think it leads to, if you can afford to do it, it can lead to a good number of cases on an effective cost-effective, uh, basis. The problem is if you don’t have that kind of money to spend and you can’t be in the top. Echelon in GV Mo uh, and in a market. Well, then you’ve got to go and look into other places where you can still get cases, but not, uh, not us, but it’s not as big of a budget overall budget commitments. So that’s, and I will say that, of course, you know, we are living in an era of a gradual erosion of the. Of broadcast TV, right? Cord cutters, streaming, streaming devices, digital more, you know, there are lots of, lots of other ways of getting cases, which are becoming increasingly important. I still think TV works well, but play it out 10, 20 years, probably much less.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And you know, that’s interesting, I’ve, I’ve always heard of TV as a branding play. I’ve never really heard of it as a direct response, but a play. And I think maybe those are some of the individuals that are less experienced in the media compared to yourself. And you can see the true impact of advertising during the day. And I, I, myself, even though we do SEO, I’m an omni-channel. Multi-channel approach to advertising. I think it’s important to power that overall flywheel, you know, whether it’s, you know, the top of funnel strategy or middle or bottom, I think they all kind of compliment each other. And if they use your scene multiple times, you have a greater likelihood of converting that lead.
James Farrin:
Yeah. Well now I will say TV is also a branding play. You’re you’re wanting to get people inculcate your name in there, but our belief is they. Are likely to call you if you, if they remembered they already know the brand and then they see the ad when they’re in a time of need. And when they’re thinking about what should we do that? That’s my belief.
Chris Dreyer:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I see too, just from an SEO perspective that, you know, if your brand is stronger, even if you’re not ranking number one, you may capture the click through just because they recognize the brand work or Google ads that were local SEO. Um, any of those mediums and those channels, I think are real.
James Farrin:
Point of emphasis for us is creating a culture where we attract people who are not only good at what they do, but share common values. And it’s my experience that if we, if we have a strong culture, a well-defined culture, we attract people who fit in that culture. They tend to be happy and productive and thus more likely to stick around. So I think that. It’s it becomes a, you know, very closely tied to business principles is having a strong, strong culture. I think I see myself as that. That’d be one of my primary responsibilities is defining the culture and then enforcing it and cheering it on and warning people for acting appropriately. So I think that gives me great joy and satisfaction. I think there’s a huge payoff. Uh, and you know, again, when you have a couple hundred people working for you, you can’t be replacing too many. You don’t want to lose any superstars. You want to be replacing people, uh, too, too often, or it’s just going to be impossible to manage. So having a strong culture is really a key to cohesion.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. And I didn’t have this prep, but are there certain things that you look for? Are you involved in maybe the final, uh, the final hiring stage? Do you do personality assessments to see if they fit within a particular, um, you know, there’s disc and predictive index and strength finders, you know, what are some of those things that you do to see, you know, when you’re going to hire someone new, if they’re, if they’re going to be the right fit,
James Farrin:
Uh, we’ve used some of those profiles in the past with varying degrees of success. A lot depends on the position. Uh, what w the thing that we have done is we’ve actually written a book. I call it the JSF way. It’s got 24 behaviors, uh, pay attention to detail with that we, that I think defines the model employee. And so we have. Defines this culture. And then we talk about it all the time and we try to hire on it, hire based on it. So we’ll send prescribed prospective employees, this, a PDF of the, these behaviors and, you know, ask which have been resonates. So I guess rather than do a personality test, maybe through behavioral questions and otherwise our HR department and all of our interview workers are screening to see not only the people have the technical. Ability to be good at what they do, but do they fit in this mold? Are they one of our tribe? And I think by having our behaviors, which I find vinyl used to be too amorphous and ambiguous, what does quality mean or professionalism? I don’t know, but by defining. These values in terms of behaviors is pretty easy to recognize if somebody is a good fit or not. And so that’s more than anything. I think what we look for in our hiring in our interviewing process, I don’t, I myself will do some interviews, but that tends to be for a high level position. I’m a big believer in having at least two people in on final interviews. So to minimize the, uh, you know, we all make mistakes and we all have biases and sometimes we can be swayed by it. Or just someone we like, uh, I think having at least two people in the room for final decisions maybe, uh, reduces the risk of a bias and making an error, uh, that way. Uh, anyway, that’s, that’s my, that, and knowing what we’re looking for in terms of our behaviors are the two things that I think are, uh, help us in our hiring process.
Chris Dreyer:
North Carolina is one of several states where direct mail advertising is not restricted. I wanted to know how does James team use direct mail and how do they see the value of that channel compared to others?
James Farrin:
yeah, uh, we’ll use it. Uh, and like it very much, as you mentioned, it’s not available for lawyers in all jurisdictions. Some places the public records are redacted so that you can get the information. Others, there are waiting lists or ethical. Requirements that that practically make it impossible. But in our state, North Carolina, it is permissible. Uh, and we’ve used it, uh, aggressively. We get our, some of our best cases from, from direct mail. We have, uh, dozens of different pieces that we send out to people depending on what type of, uh, injury they may have suffered. What kind of accident they’ve been in? We, we we’ll FedEx people, huge package with. Pages and pages of information for, if we think it’s a high quality case or potentially high value case. So we have a whole bunch of different packages that we will send to people depending on the situation. They’re in try to customize it as much as possible. What I like doing is AB testing. We’ll, we’ll send, we’ll try a different creative approach to a piece and send it to half, half the people over time, and then see which, which of our two pieces. Tends to get the best response. Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s fun to constantly iterate and create more impactful, uh, pieces. And this, as you mentioned earlier, that part of marketing is synergistic. So w P B, if we’re well-branded on TV, people are gonna be more likely to search for us on the web. And they’re also more likely to respond to our direct mail packages. So I, I like it. Uh, very much. I think it’s, it’s, uh, it’s a great way of getting cases, uh, and you put a lot of time and energy into it. It can have great, great dividends pay. Great dividends.
Chris Dreyer:
And, uh, you know, shifting over, you didn’t have PR you have perhaps one of the most famous cases, you know, a class action lawsuit for, uh, about 18,000 African-American farmers who were discriminated against by the USDA, uh, you and your team ended up winning, um, 1.2, 5 billion for that case. Um, you know, how did marketing and outreach play a role in that outcome? And then, you know, how could this. Approach change the landscape for class action suits.
James Farrin:
Well, that case, it sort of seems to me that the work that you do, you do a good job at it, sort of prepares you. So you may not be aware of it for another challenge. So if in fact that we had run a high volume operation advertised well had developed all these systems and ways for processing large numbers of cases had sort of prepared us for this opportunity. And it led someone to approach us with the chance to get involved in the, this black farmers, uh, discrimination litigation. Fairly early on. Uh, so we, we got involved, took a risk, a real risk that it was because there was no guarantee that a law would be passed that would allow these claimants to, uh, go forward with their claims. But we, we decided we were going to go, go for it because the cost seemed so noble. Um, the farmers had really been discriminated and treated poorly by their government. Uh, our government for many years. And it was an opportunity to sort of prove ourselves on a national stage and really stretch ourselves and try to take on something bigger than we’ve ever done before and be part of the historic case. So for those reasons we got into the case, it called upon our logistic skills, uh, in organizing things we had, yeah, there were 18,000 people who we ended up helping with other firms in the claims process, but there were. 90,000 potential claimants out there, there. So there was a ton of people that we had to communicate with, put in our, in a database, uh, keep abreast of developments in the case. So it caused Eric Sanchez who against my right-hand person, sort of the technology guy at our firm. He, he, he had to figure out how to manage this case, manage this beast and to communicate effectively with all these people. And so he drew. The lessons that we’ve learned over the years, doing that. And it actually caused him to come up with some ideas for a new software that would enable us to do even better. Uh, after that case resolved, I think he started, he had to, he saw the limitations of our existing software and have to sort of make it work, uh, with all sorts of workarounds and teaching himself access programming. It was just a, uh, uh, a whole. Herculean task if you had to take on. And it made him think when that was over with, he could build something better for me, for just to run our law firm with on soft skills.
Chris Dreyer:
Was that the discovery of GrowPath? Is that how it, it kind of formed into its own entity?
James Farrin:
Yeah. That was the inspiration for GrowPath eras. He thought coming out of it, we’re done. We find it. We got this case behind us. I found it, this is Eric saying, uh, speaking and I found it frustrating to have to use this software that really didn’t work. Optimally, let me, he surveyed the market to see if there was something out there that we thought would be better. He thought, no, you know, we really want to build something will work for, for all of our needs it’s and so he took, uh, we gave him a budget and a team of developers, and then he and Mae built. This group has software for just for our firm, uh, just so that we could run better. And after a couple of years we launched, we switched over and we went to over the course of a weekend. We moved all our data into GrowPath and we started using it. And we found that as we proceeded people at our law firm liked it. Their work was more efficient, more effective. I liked it because I could see that our average case ages were coming down because we were able to spot bottlenecks very easily. We were able to work more efficiently and effectively. And so we saw case values going up or holding and, and velocity, your case, resolution speed, going down significantly. And so I was really pleased with it. I had some employees say, if you took away rope, hazard, break my heart. So we we’ve found that it wasn’t. We thought we had a good thing. And so that, that led us later on to open it up and, and, and market it to through other personal injury law firms as well.
Chris Dreyer:
There’s a ton of options out there for case management software. So I asked James what sets GrowPath apart from the others.
James Farrin:
Well, I’ll speak for myself. What I like is running the farm and we have thousands of cases. I want to be able to look at a glance and see what each person who who’s got. The case responsibility is, is doing what’s overdue. We have matter trackers that we’re able to customize and set up. So we it’s very easy to see. Who, you know, who’s doing what or more importantly, who’s got a lot of things backed up and I can dive into the case and see why. So I like that. I also like reporting I’ll S I I’m able to get email alerts whenever a case of a particular. Magnitude is, comes in or an intake comes in and I’m able to be alerted to it. So I eat there just an unbelievable amount of reports that I can customize and get delivered to me via email or anywhere. I prefer, I don’t like looking at dashboards personally. I talk to prefer even PDFs and emails sent to me. So that’s how I like to see my, my data. And so I get it sent to me the way I like it. Uh, it’s. I like lawyers, like they can dictate into, into it with a Chrome extension and they’ve got the, so it’s makes them more efficient instead of having to type out all the notes that they want to type if they can. But for a lot of people, it’s much easier just to dictate into the, into the software. It’s it’s it’s good stuff. It’s cool. We we’ve, we really, you know, we like it, reason ourselves. It’s fun because Eric got the guy who started. Uh, GrowPath. Uh, he’s continual, he’s also still involved in our law farm operations. So he’s constantly improving the product based on, you know, we have our, our own skunkworks project, which is our law firm. Right. We see things that we can do more efficiently and better. So he’s constantly, uh, developing the software. We don’t have to wait on a bunch of people in the foreign country or, you know, to put us in, uh, in their queue and respond to our. Development requests we’re able to, to move really quickly. And so anyway, it’s, it’s, it’s been, uh, been, uh, really great. I think the last thing I’ll say is that, uh, that I’ve really seen the benefit of is during the pandemic where we had to deploy so much of our workforce remotely, you know, having cloud-based software certainly is an advantage, but GrowPath was super helpful. And here’s why we have in it, a productivity tool, which allows us to measure in paralegal, attorney, whoever we want to measure. And measure their performance. And what we do is we measure their performance against themselves in many instances. And so we were able to see what they would do pre pandemic. And then after the pandemic, when we switched to, you know, when they’re working from home, we could go in and say, well, here’s what they did in the last, in the last two months per day, how many emails, how much screen time you have all sorts of stuff. Uh, and we were able to establish that as a baseline and then compare it with what they were doing. From home. And that gave me a lot of confidence. I can see there’s some people we saw who were clearly goofing off. They were spending a few and they were not doing much for a few hours. Their productivity was off being able to identify that, get rid of them a as a law firm, owner and manager with a hundreds of people. And especially if you deployed remotely tremendous peace of mind and managerial power by knowing. Who’s being naughty and who’s being nice. And we found 95% of our employees were able to work effectively and productively from home. But I’m sure glad to be able to measure that and validate it as opposed to just take someone’s word for it and to find, you know, the people who weren’t working out so well. And then either making them come back to the office or, or terminating them. So that, again, that was just another benefit.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, I absolutely love that because I think that most remote companies will just look at utilization and time tracking. And I, I really feel it that’s flawed because one person could be more efficient than another person. You know, I, I like the fact that you’re looking at the outcomes and the screen time and the things, the actions that they’re taking, um, just, just significantly more valuable. And I can imagine that when you went to remote. Uh, you know, w when the pandemic hit that you guys were set up in an advantageous way, just having that already established.
James Farrin:
Yeah. And the key thing is anything that is being done in the software, which for our workers, working on the cases, that’s most, everything can be measured and that weekend, and we can design that as the basis of our productivity measures. So the productivity measures are real based on what we value as important. Uh, in terms of interaction with the software application,
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. And you know, you talk a lot about data and running a data driven business, you know, just, just top level, you know, what are some of the metrics that personal injury lawyers, uh, should pay attention to?
James Farrin:
I’m a big believer in analyzing the fees per month. A lot of times lawyers will look at on a particular case, how much. The fee was going to be, which is a very important measure. You want to compare your marketing costs versus your, uh, revenue. So, you know, the return on that return on investment is an important analysis, but I like to go a little farther and also figure out how long it took to get that result. So if I can get a $2,000 Shi in six months, That may be better than a $3,000 fee in 12 months, especially if I’m able to replace that $2,000 fee with another one after this, after six months. So it’s not, it’s not just the amount of the fee, but it’s the velocity that I th that I like to measure it. So I look for practice, practice areas where we can, where our fee per month hits a certain level. Uh, and when the fee per month, Dips below a certain level. I think, well, those are cases that are not worth taking on anymore. So that’s, you know, I, I think I emphasize those speeds per month, more than some other law firm leaders. I’m a big believer in
Chris Dreyer:
that. Yeah. And I’m, I’m going to slightly get this off here, so I apologize to anyone listening, but, uh, so that, that reminds me of Jay Abraham. He always talks about, you know, the, the three ways of generating more revenue, one, you sell more. Or you increase your fees. And then the third one that he talks about as velocity is, is more quickly
James Farrin:
And, uh, yeah, and I think Chris, I posit that amongst attorneys and law firms, the philosophy is, is completely underappreciated. Uh, and, and it’s, it’s, uh, powerful. Uh, the effect can be really powerful if you could enter clients, love it. They love getting there. You know, you’re not, not. Compromising the value of the case. We’re looking at reducing waste or delays that add nothing to the value of the case time on desks or files, just sitting on the desk, not advancing. And so without compromising the value of the case, if we can shave two or three months off of it, versus our competitors, our clients are going to be ecstatic and, and happy, satisfied about it matters a lot to our clients. And I think it should matter a lot to us. The other thing that, you know, we think about a lot is trying to create cultivate a client experience that is sure to lead to referrals, uh, that, that that’s another great way of, uh, building a business, right. Is generating a strong army of refer satisfied people who are willing to refer cases to you. And I think we’ve thought about a ways over the years, too. Be intentional about our client experience, uh, and how, how we conduct a dispersal. It’s carefully orchestrated very the ways we talk to clients at various stages in the case, very, very carefully orchestrated. I have a three person communications training department who listened to calls and coach people on their language and how they communicated with clients. Why so that we can do a better job at expressing ourselves. And that’s important because I think there’s a direct correlation between how we communicate and how our clients perceive our law firm. When we first started doing this, we wanted to please clients, but we kind of just hoped that they would appreciate us. And after awhile, I think over time we could thought hard about what messages we need to communicate, to show our clients what we’ve been up against and what we’re able to accomplish for them. So that. Their impression is not accidental. So many clients have not worked with a law firm before. They’re not here. They’re not watching us work, who knows what’s in their mind. Uh, and if they’re satisfied at the end. And so we want to think hard about how we can make sure they see what we’re doing, and it’s all meant to generate this higher level of appreciation among them so that they will refer us business going forward.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that’s super smart. And I think so many people work so incredibly hard to get the lead that they don’t nurture it and turn those clients into the evangelist for those referrals. So I think that’s incredibly powerful and super smart and yeah, it just kind of compounds with those referrals and. The, the other question, I, you kind of triggered me when you said, you said eliminate waste and lean, you know, the kind of that six Sigma philosophy, and that’s a bit different than other firms and just eliminating some of the unnecessary steps to make the case settle a little bit more quickly. You know, are there anything, you know, on that front, is there something that comes to mind in terms of something maybe that you’ve been eliminated to shorten the, the, uh, that timeframe or, uh, could you speak to just eliminating waste a little bit more, um, to increase speed velocity?
James Farrin:
Yeah. Well, I’ve read the books on Toyota manufacturing principles and. Uh, thought that they, they made a lot of sense. We would try to apply them to the law firm. I think what we found is there are a couple areas that can create a lot of delay, unnecessary delay in case one is a mistake early on, uh, can cause a case whether you don’t identify the right insurance policies or miss a lien or something like that anyway, or you miss a medical provider. Can cause, you know, you think you’ve got all the records and bills in and you don’t, and now you have to go back to square one and get the one that you missed. So, uh, or it can hold up a case where we’ll be stuck in the trust account and you can’t disperse the funds because they’re just things that haven’t been done. So anyway, mistakes early on can, can delay things. So I think one, we want to pay real careful attention to. Getting things right. The first time so that we don’t end up creating a backlog down the road. The other thing that I think was a big lesson for me is, and this came out of these, these lean studies that a lot of times we create delays by batching our work. Uh, and I must confess I’m, you know, by nature of habitual backdoor. I used to, when I was doing all, all of this myself, I would send demands out on a Friday. And so they, you know, during the week they would come in, I had other stuff to do, and I knew Friday mornings when I would get their review review, the medical records and bills, dictate the demands and get them out, get them out the door. Uh, that’s not efficient, you know, that is not lean. And it will cause us some waste and delay because what happens if a file is ready to go out on Monday and just sit, it’s waiting for me to get to it on Friday. And so it’s better in a perfect world. If you can. Reduce that time on desk. Uh, and so we, what we try to do is get our attorneys to avoid batch work wherever possible, and deal with things as soon as possible. Uh, and so that requires some rewiring of habits and changes of habits, but was trying to create a mentality where delay hurts. And so batch work, uh, is much slower. Uh, and, uh, that, that was a sort of a surprise to me. It’s something I have to learn from reading these principles.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I, and I’ve read the Toyota principles too. And you know, one of the things that just completely I’ve, I’ve heard just so frequently the exact opposite, right? Like you want to batch and it makes me think of just email. So, so let’s just take email. Cause that could be an incredible, uh time-waster. Um, You know, is that a situation where you still want to maybe, Hey, only answer emails from. Eight to nine in the morning, or, or is it an efficient thing for customer service where you’re getting back to baby the client immediately? What’s your thoughts on just email as it comes to batching versus, you know, maybe when they’re ready for response?
James Farrin:
Well, I guess I depends on the type of email. First of all, we can’t be at our desks the whole time. And so emails are going to come in and they’re going to pile up. Uh, I, I like having a quick scan to see if I can hit delete if it’s something that I can deal with later. Uh, and if it’s something that’s a, a client request that will flow down a case, I’d like to be able to deal with that as quickly as possible. So if it’s, if an adjuster has sent me some information just is my name’s on the phone. Letterhead. And it’s not obvious, it’s not a case that I handle. It needs to be routed somewhere else. To me, that’s a priority to spend, to get with, to figure out who that needs to go to immediately so that they can deal with it. It doesn’t do much good to lose a day to get to that. So I try personally, I try to bash where I can, but also identify a time sensitive and, uh, matters that can be dealt with quickly. But email management is. Well, that’s hard, right? We bombarded with so much all the time. Right. It’s hard to keep track. And, uh, so I I’m sympathetic to the batching because if the temptation, because if we don’t do some of that, all we’ll be doing is being chained to our desk or mobile device or responding to emails. And that’s, it’s hard to have creative time and meeting time when you’re. You know, when you, when you’re you’re that way. So I think triaging the, the email and figuring out is a delete deal with later, like in my next batch or something that can be immediately passed on to someone else. That’s kind of how I try them. Thank you.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I like that. The Eisenhower matrix, uh, you know, urgent and important, urgent, not important. It makes me think of all those types of things. And I, I guess the big takeaway too, is, uh, you know, for, for many executives, they should probably have an executive assistant that they could assist with those types of things on the non-essentials, uh, travel.
James Farrin:
Um, just general things. Yeah. One of the joys of. Being in our position, right. When you can run, run an organization. And yet I have all these people working with you, you get the help you need on Ms. Clerical stuff. So you don’t have to have
Chris Dreyer:
absolutely. And we’ve danced. We’ve talked about so many wonderful things when it comes to just operation software technology marketing. Now I’ve got one final question here, you know, what’s next for James Farrin?
James Farrin:
Wow. Uh, well, I don’t know. I still like what I’m doing. I enjoy the challenge of growing the firm. I guess at this point I don’t have to work, but I choose to work. Cause I like it so much. I like working with quality people like building something great. For me, one of the big challenges will be trying to create an entity that is successful even when I’m not. At the helm running it day to day. And so I’m thinking about how to create another generation of leaders and mentor them and empower them so that hopefully they can take this great thing that we’ve built and extend it.
Chris Dreyer:
I think there’s a lot of really remarkable advice here. What strikes me most is James’ attention to detail on something like how his intake team communicates. Having someone work with them to create a cohesive message and a consistent experience across their clientele. I’d like to think James Farrin from the law offices of James Farrin and GrowPath for sharing his story with us. And I hope you gained some valuable insights from the conversation you’ve been listening to personal injury marketing mastermind. I’m Chris Dreyer. If you like this episode, leave us a review. We love to hear from our listeners. I’ll catch you on next. Week’s PIM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to master personal injury marketing.
