#568: How to Build a Law Firm You Can Sell, with Victoria L. Collier

Episode Notes

Transcript

Zack Glaser:

Hi, I’m Zack.

Sara Muender:

And I’m Sara. And this is episode 5 68 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Zack talks with Victoria Collier about law firm valuation and the mindset shifts that can help you build a firm that you can someday sell.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, Sara, we get into mindset shifts here, and I love those sorts of things where it’s like the glass breaking and you’re like, oh, shit, if I just looked at it that way. And I think that a lot of times coaches do a really good job of hopefully helping people see some of those mindset shifts. So I imagine you’re pretty familiar with those things. What are some mindset shifts that’s tough to say a hundred times, that you think are kind of imperative for lawyers running their business?

Sara Muender:

So you and I did, we had a conversation, we did an episode together several months back. I don’t remember what number it was, but you interviewed me and it’s sort of the same thing. I kind of repeat this over and over again, but one of the most common mistakes that I see small law firm owners making is they see themselves as the business because oftentimes it’s their name of their law firm is their name. So that kind of plays into that mindset of I am going out as a solo regardless of whether or not they end up with staff, they tend to see themselves as the business. And so they tend to be very married to the business day in and day out, and their business is always on their mind. They’re always thinking about what needs to be done and what client work needs to be done. So the first mindset shift that I tend to help people with when they get into coaching is to see themselves as serving a function in their business. Oftentimes, they’re serving multiple functions in their business, but instead of seeing themselves as the business really recognizing that they’re building something of value here, they’re building a living, breathing separate entity that can give them options one day, which is what I’m sure that you and Victoria talked about.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, we do. We do. Obviously our names are on the business. A lot of times it’s the Glaser firm or Zackary t Glaser, attorney at law, and that kind of puts a little pride in our work. What’s the negative? What’s the real world negative of seeing myself in the business or what are some more of the negatives?

Sara Muender:

Well, just to clarify, I don’t think that it’s unwise to have the name of your business be your name. So let me just make that Clear.

But going along with that is when you see yourself as the business, you tend to do everything and you tend to take responsibility for everything in the sense of fulfilling it. And so again, doing it as a business owner, you have to take responsibility for everything that happens in your business. But delegation becomes a lot harder when you see yourself as the business because then you become the bottleneck in many of the functions and processes. So that’s one downside. The other downside is a lot of people see their business as their baby, and I like to coach people around the mindset of, I understand you’re not ready to give your baby up for adoption, but

Zack Glaser:

We can’t leave it on the doorstep just yet.

Sara Muender:

But when you sell your business, ultimately it kind of is giving your baby up for adoption. So we have to start with the mindset of let’s pretend like your business is more of a teenager, and so it’s not relying on you 24 7, how can we empower this person? How can we empower this entity to function and work like a well-oiled machine potentially even when you’re sleeping? So that eliminates a lot of the pressure around having to be responsible for everything because it opens up opportunities to delegate and to create systems and processes and efficiencies rather than doing it all yourself with your own two hands.

Zack Glaser:

And that’s the thing that you’ve got me thinking about here is if I think of the law firm as me, essentially, then I hire people to help me do the thing, whatever. But if I think of my law firm as a business, then I hire people to do the things in the business that need to get done. And that’s, it’s a little twist there for me. I start thinking about processes. I stop feeling bad having somebody else do things, asking somebody to do honestly their job because that’s what we put out in the processes. Yeah,

Sara Muender:

That’s a correction that I make all the time with people that I coach. They’ll say something along the lines of, well, I really need this person to do this for me. Or they’re looking at hiring and they’ll say, I need to hire someone to do this for me. And I say, correction, you’re hiring someone to do something for the business, not for you. But I have to keep reiterating that because again, it’s the shift of you. It’s not you that people are working for, they’re working for a business, they’re serving a function, the business just like you are. So it kind of puts everyone on the same even playing field, if you will too, in that it eliminates that hierarchical talk about difficult words to say, structure.

Zack Glaser:

We’re just doing all the difficult words today.

Sara Muender:

How about accountability?

Zack Glaser:

That makes sense. And what I have to say to that is, Sara, where were you when I was running my law firm? Why didn’t you come hunt me down, find me and teach me all this stuff?

Sara Muender:

Well, I’m here with you now, Zack, so if you decide to open another firm, don’t do that. We need you here.

Zack Glaser:

Well, if anybody out in Podcast Land is deciding to open another firm, we certainly have people here that can help you with that.

Sara Muender:

Sara, this conversation is so important. Whether you’re thinking about starting a firm or you have a firm and you’ve had one for years, you’ve got to listen to this because you really are building something that’s going to give you options one day if you do it right, starting now.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. And you can avoid the place that I remember my father and I were at where he was like, I don’t know you. You’re my retirement plan.

Sara Muender:

Zack, what pressure?

Zack Glaser:

Awesome. Thanks. I’m glad you depended on me, buddy. Well, without any further ado, let’s get into my conversation with Victoria Collier.

Victoria L. Collier:

Hi, I’m Victoria Collier, and I am the owner of Quid Pro Quo, which is a business that helps lawyers value their law firms and ultimately sell so they can have a life after law.

Zack Glaser:

Oh, man.

Victoria L. Collier:

Before that,

Zack Glaser:

Keep going, keep going, please. Yes. Yes.

Victoria L. Collier:

Before that, I actually owned my own estate planning and elder law firm for 18 years, and I sold it in 2020. And so I’m excited to be here today.

Zack Glaser:

So, well, Victoria, thank you for being with me. So you, as they say, I don’t know how to say it any other way, you eat your own dog food, you walk

Victoria L. Collier:

The walk and talk the talk,

Zack Glaser:

Walk the walk, talk the talk. Yes. I think that’s a better way of saying you have been through the selling your firm and the creating a firm with value, and I think that’s valuable as well.

Victoria L. Collier:

I did. I started my own firm right out of law school. I was an older student and I had been a paralegal in both the military and in the private sector. And so I was probably a little overconfident when I started my own firm, but I did it and I was happy to do it. And then yes, I built it up and then was fortunate enough to be able to sell it for actual cash in my pocket instead of just closing the doors so many other lawyers have done.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, I think that’s important because it’s not, so when I was practicing with my dad, I would always ask him about something like that, what are you going to do when you retire? And first thing he would say, I’m not retiring until I can’t walk up the steps of the courthouse. Which I mean, if that’s your thing, that’s perfectly fine. And the second thing he would say is, Zack, you are my retirement plan.

Victoria L. Collier:

That was a little pressure on you, I imagine.

Zack Glaser:

A little bit. But at the same time, I was so used to disappointing him that this

Victoria L. Collier:

One You thing,

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, it was just one more thing. But really I wound up having to wind down the firm. We made certain provisions and kind of sold as much as could be sold, but really when I was going through that process, it was really easy to look at it and go, I bet we could have done better. I bet we could have been smarter. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how people might want to set themselves up. And one of the things that I think you have spoken on, written on and talked about is the law firm’s internal leadership team can directly affect its scalability and it sellability. What are the biggest red flags buyers see when somebody’s trying to buy the firm, when the team is weak?

Victoria L. Collier:

Yeah. I would say identifying gaps in the workflow. The processes of once someone hires you, getting the work done and getting them out the door. And often we see that in duplication of tasks where we have different people that might be doing the same things and they’re stepping on each other’s toes. We see lost files, and yes, people still have paper files. It all comes down to ultimately not having written procedures on the workflow, or we have written procedures that no one’s following or that they’re so outdated or that people are just doing their own thing. They’re usurping them no matter what. You really find these weaknesses when people take time off. And so you see, oh, well, this isn’t getting done, or this is getting done in a different way or whatever. The problem is, and this is one of the big red flags, is that when people are not taking time off, nobody on the team takes time off. That from a buyer’s perspective, that should be a red flag.

Zack Glaser:

That makes a ton of sense to me. I’ve never really thought about that. I’ve never been in the shoes of the buyer, but so having people be able to take time off because that would be indicative that we can operate without this person. And ultimately what we’re trying to say is that you can operate without me as the owner.

Victoria L. Collier:

Absolutely. And so if the owner’s working 50 plus hours a week, that’s a red flag as well. And so often buyers don’t ask this question, but they should be asking this question. And that is, how often do your team members take off and how long are they gone when they take off? And same question for the owner.

Zack Glaser:

I think back again to my own personal experience, and I remember my father and I going on vacation together, and one of us was kind of on for that day, and I would be up in a condo doing work and looking at my father on the beach out with the family, and then we would kind of flip that because we couldn’t take time. We didn’t have those procedures

Victoria L. Collier:

In place, enjoyed those vacations. It sounds like

Zack Glaser:

It was nice. I guess that’s the thing is we thought that was doing well. We thought that like, oh, hey, well, we’re vacationing together and we’re able to cover for each other. We thought that was good. So what is good? What would kind of that leadership structure look like? That would be correct, because I didn’t know any better.

Victoria L. Collier:

No, and the fact of the matter is it was good. I mean, you were on a vacation, a number one, you took a vacation, you were able to pay for the vacation, and you took the time away even if you were working on it. It’s still leaps and bounds above what so many other lawyers are not able or they just don’t do, and they just are at their office seven days a week every week. But it can look different than that. It can look different from yours. I’m going to tell you the pie in the sky, and then of course, scale back from there. But when you know have a real business that can operate without you is when you can go away for 30 days as the owner and have no contact with the team at all

Zack Glaser:

30 days

Victoria L. Collier:

And payroll has made, clients are being taken care of, and there’s money still coming in the door. I have clients that will take time off, but there’s no money coming in the door. And so there’s a distinction there, clearly.

Zack Glaser:

Well, and I think that’s what scares the crap out of people when they do. They’re like, I can’t take time off because not only am I paying for the vacation, but I’m not making money to pay for the next vacation as well.

Victoria L. Collier:

Right, exactly. Or even payroll for your staff. It’s still there working

Zack Glaser:

Or payroll for my son. Yes. So that’s, man, 30 days is amazing. I would love that. I never got that. How do I do that?

Victoria L. Collier:

So I could tell you, I did it twice in the year, 2016 I think it was, or 2018. Anyway, I did it the first half of the year, and I did the second half of the year and the first half, it was disastrous. It changed my entire world, both in a good and bad way. And then six months later I did it again, and it’s as if they had no idea. I wasn’t even there, the team. And they questioned why they came back and I questioned, why did I come back? Hence the proceeding. We would hence the proceeding of selling my firm a few years later. But how it starts, well, before you take that time off, that 30 days, and you have to have trial runs with shorter periods of time, obviously. But really fundamentally, Zack, it comes down to having the trust in yourself as the owner to be able to train and delegate to other people. Now, people will say, I don’t trust other people. What you’re actually saying is you don’t trust yourself to train and delegate to other people.

Zack Glaser:

Why you got to say it like that, Victoria? Because

Victoria L. Collier:

We all have to take extreme ownership of our own actions

Zack Glaser:

Because that right there just got me. I’m like, yeah, I don’t trust other people. Wait, oh, son of a bitch. I don’t trust myself to teach other people.

Victoria L. Collier:

That’s Right.

Zack Glaser:

How to do the thing and to write the processes. That hurts, but it’s right.

Victoria L. Collier:

Yeah. So we know it’s easier to put it off on someone else, but it always starts with us when we’re the owner of the firm and it ends with us with the owner firm, and when we sell the firm, we’re the one that pockets the money. So we should be incentivized to do it that way.

Zack Glaser:

So is that the first thing we should think of? If I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, okay, I just started this firm, I probably want to sell it someday, is that the first thing we should think of is let’s get some processes together?

Victoria L. Collier:

Yes, processes first. Well, okay, you’re going to hear this both ways. And I have said it both ways and I believe it both ways. And so I don’t think that there’s a right or wrong, and I’m not talking out of both sides of my mouth. I unintentionally. And so here’s the thing, when you’re a sole practitioner and or have a legal admin person, the objective is to get money and help people. And then you just do more of that and you are holding all the hats, you’re doing all the things, and you don’t need processes in place doing it, right? You get wiped out tomorrow, your firm’s gone closed anyway.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, dad used to say, that also doesn’t matter to me. I’m dead right

Victoria L. Collier:

Closed. It’s done. When you start hiring people and you want consistent results for your clients, and you want efficiency, and then ultimately you want profitability, that’s where processes need to start being designed. And it should not be the owner creating the processes. It should be the person that the owner is training as they’re training them to. If we’re having a conversation and I’m telling you how to do something, I’ve started saying, now let’s record this. So that way it not only has a video training that we can put in a database, and also now with ai, it can transcribe it right for us. So now we have it in video and in text format, and then whoever I’m training can go and create a checklist for that. So now we have the text process, we have the checklist, and we have the video that goes with it. It’s just too easy today not to be able to record our conversations, which is in fact training. And so that way, everything that I do can get recorded and put in there. So process is yes, first, but not from the beginning. It’s as you’re training people to do their job because you have to ask the question, why do we need the processes?

Well, if that person leaves, why should I have to sit down again and go through this again when I already went through it? It’s in writing or should be already from the first time I did this. So that’s number one. That’s from your own efficiency and profit perspective. Secondarily is it’s still there when I go to sell the business. Now I can say we have our policies and procedures in place and we have people who follow them.

Zack Glaser:

Well, because I guess one of the things that we’ve glossed over a little bit is that the idea that a practice that has procedures, because a practice that has clients doesn’t necessarily have value. So it’s a practice that has procedures that has value. Can you kind of talk me through that a little bit? If you don’t mind? I see your face going, I don’t know that I agree with you, Zack. Well,

Victoria L. Collier:

I mean, I say yes and yes. Practices that have clients certainly are valuable. That’s a book. People are buying books. That’s a book of business, sorry. Businesses that have procedures is looking more like a business with value because those procedures. But the reason you saw this look on my face is to your specific point is a business with procedures has value. And my face was kind of ah, because it depends on the buyer. It only has value if it’s valuable to the buyer. So if I’m a buyer that is a sole practitioner that wants to come in and be you, I just take over your practice, then yes, the procedures are very valuable. If I’m a larger firm that just wants to absorb you, I already have my own procedures and things like that. So your procedures may not be as valuable to me as they have been to you. Does that make sense?

Zack Glaser:

Yes. So how do I make myself look good to that? I feel like that’s going to reduce my value then in that person’s eyes, it

Victoria L. Collier:

Doesn’t reduce your value, it just doesn’t add value. And so how you can make it seem more valuable, if not in dollars and cents, is that you’re presenting in a more professional manner. If I am more professional in this area of my business, then I’m also more professional in other areas, which just carries over the credibility. So then therefore, my financials must be better. My relationships with my clients and my referral sources must be better because we’re professional in one way, we are in others. If I don’t have policies and procedures and I’m winging it, then I’m also sloppy in other ways too. Maybe I don’t have client notes. Maybe I just haphazardly talk to my referral sources once every three years. So it’s transferred credibility.

Zack Glaser:

That makes sense. I don’t want them to walk in and see me disheveled and sloppily dressed. They think, well, where else is he sloppy? And so not having the procedures and just winging it the entire time is being sloppily dressed.

Victoria L. Collier:

That’s right.

Zack Glaser:

Okay. So what then is the most surprising? Because all of this is surprising to me, newsflash, what then is the most surprising or underestimated part of the sales process you see that you run into?

Victoria L. Collier:

First and foremost, the fact that law firms can be sold. Now other businesses is actually still surprising to most lawyers out there on both the buy and the sell side because we’re just so used to lawyers dying at their desk or falling while walking up those stairs and breaking the hip and not going back, or just handing off the firms to their colleagues, their friends, and just being so grateful that someone can take care of their clients, right?

So after we get past the shock of this can be sold, then it’s really the next surprising thing is the different financing options. And that actually the SBA will give you a loan to buy a business, a law firm, and a buyer’s. I mean, a seller is willing to receive cash in hand for sure. So that’s the other thing is that people do in fact pay cash for law firms versus the old style, which is, well, I’m just going to pay you pennies on the dollars that come in based on your book of business, your list, your website, your phone number. Now, that still happens when we are buying a book of business, but when we actually have a real business that has teams, systems and processes, predictable cashflow, net profit, that is very decent, people are paying cash a hundred percent upfront for those kinds of businesses. So I think that’s probably the most surprising.

Zack Glaser:

That is surprising. It is. So that takes a mindset shift. That takes, what does that require for us to start thinking that way?

Victoria L. Collier:

First of all, it depends on if you’re on the seller side or the buy side, but let’s just say we’re on the buy side. We have to, I think, get away from the shared risk conversation. The buyer comes in and says, well, I need the seller to have some skin in the game and to make sure that this is still successful two, three years from now. And that’s always been the conversation. And still sometimes that’s the conversation that the SBA lenders have as well as, well, we want the seller to stick around for a while. Well, let me tell you this, that seller has been there for 20 to 30 years and I’ve been a seller. And so when that switch turns to, oh, I sold my firm, they might be there in person, but they are not there in mentality.

They Are somewhere else. And so you don’t necessarily want that person there, and they have built this business that you, for some reason, feel is desirable to buy. And so they’ve already put in all the risk. They’ve built the foundation, and I would say this to the buyer where the mindset needs to change. And that is the buyer should not be relying on the seller to make the business successful after the sale. The buyer should be doing their due diligence to say, is this a solid business? Is it something I as the buyer have the skillset to maintain or scale? If I do not have the skillset, or if it does not have the solid foundation, then I should not buy this business. And so it’s on me as the buyer to make it successful, not on the seller. They’ve already made it successful. That’s why you’re looking at it.

Zack Glaser:

That makes a lot of sense to me. But it is a mindset shift that makes a lot of sense to me. It’s saying you’re making a business decision to buy a business. It’s kind of the difference between buying a business and kind of buying a book book of clients of like, oh, we will give you a percentage based on what this does because you should have done the, I guess the thing that it requires in the mindset shift is like you said, to do the due diligence to treat it like buying a business.

Victoria L. Collier:

Yeah, exactly.

Zack Glaser:

But lawyers don’t always do that. We’re not always taught how to run the business in the first place.

Victoria L. Collier:

And most lawyers are not good business owners to begin with, and now you’re throwing them into buying businesses after they’ve owned their own business, hopefully a little bit. But yeah, and the biggest fears hadn’t this question, but the biggest fear from the buyer standpoint and this whole risk thing is, well, you’re going to lose all your clients. You’re going to lose all your staff and you’re going to lose all your referral sources. And My thing is, well, don’t be a dick and you won’t lose any of those things, Anna.

Zack Glaser:

Yep, that seems right to me. Just don’t lose it. Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. And I think that’s important is that it’s also really easy for clients to stick with the same person. The same in my office. People didn’t, my clients didn’t deal with me day to day. They dealt with my assistants, they dealt with the people that I had trained, and so if I left, they really didn’t give a shit.

Victoria L. Collier:

Well, in many practice areas you’re seeing clients aren’t coming back anyway, like personal injury and criminal and family law. I mean, they might come back once, but it’s not like it’s a lifetime client like estate planning. I had my clients come back for six different things throughout their lifetime. But I mean, come on.

Zack Glaser:

Okay, so we’re talking about the purchasing of the business from the buyer’s side. Somebody could potentially go into debt doing that. So that makes me think of debt of the business, like the actual business taking out a line of credit or a business loan within. How does that affect our long-term value there?

Victoria L. Collier:

From a seller’s perspective? I own the firm, I have debt, and now I want to sell the firm. I mean, I’m speaking realistically here. I owned a law firm. I had debt and I wanted to sell the law firm. And so really first and foremost, just know that most buyers do not want to buy the debt. And so you either have to pay it off at closing, depending on if there’s guarantees that the business has made against it and things like that, or you assume it and you take it with you. And certainly the third option is that the buyer assumes it. I was lucky in my case, my buyer assumed mine, but it reduced my purchase price for sure.

But let’s assume that they don’t assume it because most don’t. And so where it affects it is where I have seen it has negatively affected it is number one, if you have to operate based on lines of credit, then the buyer’s going to come in and be like, do I need to maintain debt in a line of credit? Is this not self-supporting? Where did this happen? Is it the business or was it your decisions, bad decisions, things like that. Now, they’re not always bad decisions, like PI law firms regularly have a line of credit because they’ve got the big hits and all that kind of stuff. But even then, I would say that a solid firm even has predictable cashflow based on the number of new cases they get per month, the average case value, and how quickly they settle. And so they should know, and at some point maybe not have that line of credit, but just the first thing is it creeps doubt in the mind of buyer. So it could maybe get rid of some opportunities that otherwise were there. The second thing where I’ve seen that’s real is that the debt is such that the seller has to get a certain amount from the business when they sell it in cash

To pay off the debt and the value’s just not there. Or the compensation structure of the deal doesn’t come up with that much cash, plus the cash you need to pay the taxes on the sale. And so then what happens is the seller just doesn’t sell, and they’re like, well, I just got to keep holding onto it until I can pay down my debt along the way, and then I’ll get to a point where I can sell it. So then they’re strapped to their business that they don’t want to be at, which then generally means that it’s possible that they’re going to sink it, and then they’re not going to be able to sell it for what they want to anyway because they haven’t put their heart in it because burned out.

Zack Glaser:

Well, so I mean, the answer can’t be, don’t take out a line of credit.

Victoria L. Collier:

The answer is, when doing so, do it responsibly and

Zack Glaser:

Run your business well.

Victoria L. Collier:

Yeah, and run your business. Well,

Zack Glaser:

The answer may surprise you. It’s run your business well. Okay. And I am contractually obligated to ask everybody about artificial intelligence now and by the artificial intelligence gods. So you talk about using AI to increase a firm’s value, or you have talked about that. So what specific AI tools or workflows would actually make a law firm more attractive to buyers?

Victoria L. Collier:

First of all, it’s very different depending on the service type you provide and what you can use. But I would say fundamentally, all law firms can use AI for automation and should be using AI for automation. And then secondarily for content creation to minimize human time. And what I mean by that is I come up with a topic and I have AI create 10 different blogs for me on that same topic, and then I go in and edit that, or I have it create my webinar, my blog, my article, and some short video for me. So I’m maximizing my ideas and my content using AI to do that, whether it’s in marketing, whether it’s in creating my policies or procedures and advertising for a new hire, things like that, administrative things within the firm.

Zack Glaser:

Are you seeing a different kind of due diligence conversation now that people are trying to sell firms that have been operating using ai?

Victoria L. Collier:

Not yet in the way you would expect. I do see in due diligence, firms are asking, what software platforms do you use and how are you using them? But not yet have I seen anyone ask and say, how extensively do you use ai? In what way do you use it? And specifically, are you writing briefs in case things that could actually leave us legally liable if they’re not cited properly?

Zack Glaser:

Should they should

Victoria L. Collier:

Asking those questions?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, they should be asking those questions. Yeah,

Victoria L. Collier:

Absolutely. And they should be asking the questions. If there’s multiple lawyers, do you have an AI policy? And do you know if your lawyers are following them? Because you could have rogue lawyers that are out there using it all day long, but your firm has a stance that says, we don’t do that. Right. So what checks and balances do you have in place to assure that your policies are being followed? Whatever those policies are.

Zack Glaser:

Okay, let’s take ourselves in a time period from selling the firm to sold the firm

Victoria L. Collier:

Chay Ching.

Zack Glaser:

So how do people go to the second career? How are people transitioning from lawyer to whatever they want to be? That’s not professor or something like that.

Victoria L. Collier:

It differs greatly. 80% of people who sell their businesses regret it after 12 months because they haven’t done enough mental preparation as to who am I outside of this law firm? And So the preparation really needs to start way before the sale. But I will say this, that those that are most successful do have lives outside the law firm before they sell the law firm. And so for myself, I wasn’t running away from the law firm because I was burned out and all that kind of stuff. I was running towards something. I mean, I bought a farm. I started growing hemp, and my children were involved. I personally have so many interests that I didn’t lose my identity, so many parts of me. But it is sometimes the exclusive identity of someone, and that is difficult for them to walk away from and shift. And that will often display in ways when we’re negotiating a sale that they will actually sabotage the sale because they just cannot see themselves beyond that dotted line. They don’t see themselves sabotaging it, but I can see them sabotaging it,

Zack Glaser:

And I can see where, like you said, starting that journey earlier can be helpful not only for them personally, but for the business. Because if you start being able to take 30 days off, step away from the business for 30 days, first thing, you’re kind of doing a trial run of having sold the business. Second thing, theoretically you got to do something for those 30 days. You got to find something that entertains you that’s not walking into the Courtroom and yelling at younger attorneys.

Victoria L. Collier:

That’s right. Now, sometimes that’s vacation, sometimes that’s other hobbies. Sometimes it’s actually working on the firm, just not working in the firm. And many of us don’t do that enough. But yes. But that’s a good introduction into what does it look like when I’m not there every day?

Zack Glaser:

What’s one thing that you wish that every law firm owner knew about before selling their business? Before building a business that’s actually sellable.

Victoria L. Collier:

Everybody thinks about it at the very end when they’re done, but it’s something that you actually should be doing every single day. You should be building it to sell every single day, not just when you decide to list it.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think you sit there at the end and you’re like, well, shit, I should have done this for me. I should have kept better books. I should have. So okay, you’ve done this many times. You sold your own firm. What mindset shift changed everything for you?

Victoria L. Collier:

For me, it was when I realized that I own a business that offers legal services versus I’m a lawyer with my own practice.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, that’s a fundamental adjustment, isn’t it?

Victoria L. Collier:

It’s because in one, I’m a lawyer that owns my own practice. I really still just own my own job. I just own my own job. I don’t have a boss just,

Zack Glaser:

And I think that there are a lot of people that that’s what they want to do, but I think like you’re saying, it’s just a mindset shift to get you to the other one. It’s just a little adjustment.

Victoria L. Collier:

It is. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do the other, but every decision has a result or a consequence or an action. And the action I want is to sell my business versus quit my job later.

Zack Glaser:

That really reframes it Well for me, lemme wrap up here and ask one last question of if someone listening to this is thinking, all of that sounds like me, but I want to sell my firm. I don’t know how exactly, don’t know what steps to take. What’s the very first thing that they should do out in podcast land right after listening to this episode?

Victoria L. Collier:

Well, I would say that they should get a valuation of their law firm that not only gives them the number of what it’s worth, but also dives into the strengths of the firm and the areas that need attention that make it more valuable and desirable. So those are two different things. One’s valuable and one is desirable to others that actually want to buy it, even if it’s down the road, because this is what we call the valuation. We can’t get down there if we don’t know where we’re starting here. So that’d be the first thing I say is just get a valuation.

Zack Glaser:

So follow up question to that. Apparently I lied when I said last question. How did they get a valuation?

Victoria L. Collier:

Well, they would contact qui pro quo, of course, in our law firm. Sorry. Our website is quid pro quo law.com.

Zack Glaser:

Awesome. Well, Victoria, I really appreciate you going through all this with me and explaining all this stuff to me. I’m not the, I sell law firms for a living brain. I’m the processes guy. So this is all, a lot of this is very informative for me. Thank you.

Victoria L. Collier:

You’re welcome. And thank you for having me on.

Zack Glaser:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

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