How a Panic Attack Led Law Firm Owner Marco Brown to Financial Independence (Ep. 104) |

In the fast-paced world of law, financial independence might seem like a pipe dream, especially when saddled with overwhelming debt. Yet, Marco Brown, the distinguished owner of Brown Family Law, has a story that proves otherwise. Transitioning from a staggering $450,000 debt to financial freedom was no easy feat, but it provides valuable lessons for law firm owners aiming for prosperity.

Recognizing the Financial Elephant in the Room

Despite owning a top-rated law firm in Utah, Marco faced a common yet daunting issue: substantial debt accrued from educational expenses. In his own words, “It really did seem insurmountable,” and it’s a scenario many law firm owners find themselves in. However, the turning point came from recognizing that financial success isn’t just about earning well; it’s about how you manage and strategize your finances.

The Turning Point: A Panic Attack’s Silver Lining

For Marco, the wake-up call occurred in the most unexpected of places—a shower-induced panic attack. This intense moment of clarity offered a glimpse into a future that pushed Marco to change course. It wasn’t just about addressing financial instability. It was about shifting the mindset towards managing his law firm as a business entity rather than just a practice.

Structured Financial Discipline: The Catalyst for Change

Marco’s path to financial independence was guided by a structured financial plan, which included utilizing Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. The framework helped break down the intimidating debt into manageable chunks. This method wasn’t just about cutting corners; it was about smart financial strategies—paying off loans methodically and creating a system that emphasized savings and reducing unnecessary expenditures.

Scaling and Systems: The Business Mindset of a Law Firm Owner

In any business, especially law, transitioning from a solo practice mindset to a business owner mentality is pivotal. Marco’s evolution involved embracing a systematic approach to client acquisition, revenue management, and sales. Reading transformational books like Grant Cardone’s “Sell or Be Sold” armed him with the techniques to elevate his firm’s operations, focusing on improving sales processes and closing deals effectively.

The Balance of Freedom and Success

For Marco, success did not mean working harder; it meant working smarter and reaping the benefits of a well-oiled machine. Transitioning duties, delegating effectively, and ensuring his team excelled meant that Marco could achieve the time freedom many law firm owners desire. Despite the success, the passion for his work remains the driving force, highlighting a crucial takeaway: enjoy the journey, not just the destination.

Conclusion: Crafting Your Path to Financial Independence

As Darren Wurz, host of The Lawyer Millionaire Podcast, notes, achieving financial success as a law firm owner requires disciplined changes in financial habits. Marco Brown’s journey exemplifies how strategic planning and the right mindset can lead to not only financial independence but also a thriving business that continues to grow.

Connect with Darren:

Connect with Marco Brown:

About our guest:

I still remember the day a good friend called and asked me to help her get divorced. Hers was a very difficult situation, and while I had never done a divorce before, I knew I needed to take her case.

The night before I met with her, I stayed up until 3 a.m. reading everything I could about family law. Whatever I read that night worked because we got a great result.

Honestly, I had never thought about being a divorce attorney before my friend’s case. After her case, however, I was hooked.

At this point, I have to back up for a moment. I grew up in a little village in Alaska (and by little I mean 85 people little). Kids from places like that don’t become successful lawyers. Thankfully, however, my parents expected big things of their boys. They expected us to be like our grandmother, who had a doctorate and was a special education professor. We were to be educated and serve our communities. That was our duty.

I had searched since I was young to fulfill that duty, and I had done okay at it. I served a mission for my church in Italy. I worked full-time with intellectually impaired individuals for years. I clerked for judges in the third district in Iowa after law school.

All of that was great, and I loved it. But it wasn’t until I helped my friend that I found what I had been looking for in the law. Helping families successfully transition during such a difficult period was necessary, fulfilling, and important work.

Since finishing my friend’s case, I have dedicated myself to becoming the best divorce and family law attorney possible and developing the best family law firm in Utah.

Outside Work

When I’m not working, I hang with my family. My beautiful wife, Demaree, has a doctorate in vocal performance. In other words, she sings opera (yeah, she’s the one everyone likes, and I’m the lawyer). My son is a ham who loves bowling and often refers to himself in the third-person.

I also read. A lot. Like geek amounts a lot. It’s usually about history, law, or business. I don’t read much fiction, but when I do I prefer Steinbeck and Kafka. (I already used the word “geek,” right?)

I cook too — Italian mostly, because it’s awesome. My favorite food is pizza. (Not Domino’s or Papa John’s; the real stuff you find on spaccanapoli in Naples.) Pizza is how we know God loves us.

And to keep weight off while I read and cook, I hike or lift weights.

When possible, we vacation as a family in Europe. There’s nothing quite like walking the old streets, smelling the pastries, visiting the museums, and soaking in the amazing cultures.

Thank you so much for letting me introduce myself. I hope our website and our firm provide you the knowledge and service you need to be successful.

Areas of Practice

Divorce/Family Law

Litigation Percentage

100% of Practice Devoted to Litigation

Bar Admissions

Utah, 2010
New Mexico, 2008
U.S. District Court District of Utah, 2008
U.S. District Court District of New Mexico, 2008
U.S. Court of Appeals 10th Circuit, 2008

Education

University of Nebraska College of Law, Lincoln, Nebraska

J.D.
Honors: With Distinction

Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

B.S. – 2002
Major: Psychology
Minor: Italian

Published Works

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: The Decisions and Its, N.M. Bar Bulletin,, Mar. 1, at 9., 2010
Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, A Book Review by Marco, N.M. Bar Bulletin, Sept. 22, at 10., 2008

Honors and Awards

Utah’s Outstanding Family Law Lawyer of the Year, 2015

Professional Associations and Memberships

Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Utah State Bar Association
American Bar Association
Federal Bar Association
New Mexico Bar Association

Pro Bono Activities

Chair of Davis County Domestic Violence Coalition, 2012 – 2013

Ancillary Businesses

Mediation: Utah Mediation Services

Languages

English
Spanish
Italian

Transcript:

Darren Wurz [00:00:00]:
You can never outwork your stupid spending. No matter how hard you hustle, if your financial system is broken, you’re gonna stay broke. Welcome to the Lawyer Millionaire. Helping law firm owners scale profitably escape the daily grind and turn their firm into a wealth building asset. Most law firm owners believe that working harder is the key to financial success. But what if the problem isn’t how much money you make but how you manage it? Today’s guest went from drowning in $450,000 in debt to financially independent. Marco Brown is the owner of Brown Family Law, a top rated law firm in Utah. And he’s here to share how a panic attack in the shower changed his life.

Intro [00:00:48]:
We are on a mission to help lawyers and law firm owners maximize wealth and achieve financial independence. Welcome to the Lawyer Millionaire with Darren Wirtz from Wirtz Financial Services.

Darren Wurz [00:01:01]:
All right, and welcome back to the Lawyer Millionaire podcast, your one stop shop for law firm owners looking to escape the daily grind and enjoy the benefits of hitting the multimillion dollar club. And we have a special law firm owner with us today who has done just that. Marco Brown. Welcome to the show.

Marco Brown [00:01:21]:
Hi. Thanks for having me, Darren. It’s great to be here, man. It’s fun to talk.

Darren Wurz [00:01:25]:
Absolutely. So I want to talk about your journey. You were once $450,000 in debt. Most law firm owners would be drowning in stress or quitting, but you dug your way out by growing and scaling your practice. Be honest with us. Did it ever feel insurmountable?

Marco Brown [00:01:45]:
Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely did. In the beginning it did. So you graduate? I graduated about $160,000 in debt from law school. And then my wife right after that, she started a doctorate program. So we accrued debt for that. So it was all school debt. And that seemed kind of nasty.

Marco Brown [00:02:07]:
But then we had the other debt that went along with it, and it really was. It really did seem insurmountable. The way we chose to deal with it, though, was to just pick off pieces of it and then pay down the pieces. Right. So we used Dave Ramsey’s total money makeover and we just started doing that. It was like, okay, here are a couple credit cards. We can pay those off. And those are like really quick wins.

Marco Brown [00:02:32]:
And then we started, when we started with the 160, $180,000 in student loan debt, it was like, we’re going to pay off this loan. So it wasn’t 180,000. It was like 20,000 or 15,000 or 35 or something along those lines. And that, that felt surmountable Right. Like, we could do those things, and then we just kind of piled those on, and then eventually, you know, we. We slayed the dragon.

Darren Wurz [00:02:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, so many law firm owners, even though they. They make great money, they build a practice that’s generating millions of dollars, they still struggle to get out of the debt and. And start to actually start to accumulate wealth. So tell us about that. I mean, you built a great practice that generates great income, but it was also the Dave Ramsey that helped you as well. Was that critical to that success? It wasn’t just the fact that you made a lot of money and were able to pay off the debt.

Darren Wurz [00:03:27]:
You needed that Dave Ramsey program and a structure for that.

Marco Brown [00:03:32]:
Right, exactly. So that was a nice thing about Dave Ramsey, whatever you think about him. And I’ve kind of moved on in my thinking from Dave Ramsey, but during that period of time, that was incredibly invaluable because it gave us a framework to solve the problem that we had right then and there. Right. And if you have a problem, you can’t solve a thousand problems. You can’t solve 10,000 problems. You can solve one problem. So just solve that one problem and then move on from the problem.

Marco Brown [00:04:00]:
And that’s what we did. So gave us that framework, and that was fantastic. But that was part of it. So, you know, you can cut down to zero, but you can increase your revenues to infinity, essentially. Right. So what we did during that period of time was both of those things. So we cut. I think we lived off $35,000 that year or something.

Marco Brown [00:04:22]:
You know, a family of three and running a law firm. And then we also, like, radically increased the. The number of hours I worked and the clients and so on and so forth. So we did both of those things simultaneously, and that was really what enabled us to do it, because we paid off all the student loan debt in, like, a year. And I never made any. Never made that kind of money before in my entire life or paid off that sort of debt. But both of those things combined were really what helped out.

Darren Wurz [00:04:52]:
I love that you have to be willing to make some dramatic changes and realize what is enough. Right. Like, if we do this and have that framework, anything’s possible. And then you just start to accrue exponentially on the other side, which is really where the magic happens. Right?

Marco Brown [00:05:14]:
Yeah. And I mean, yes, it can happen. Now, what happens with a lot of people that I’ve seen, because I’ve talked to a lot of my attorney friends about this, is they’ll pay off debt and Then they just go back to their old ways. Right? So Scott Adams has this great saying that the author of Dilbert, it’s that losers have goals, winners have systems. So you can have a goal and you could reach it, and then you’re just going to go back to the same system that you had before. So you need to change the system. Right. And that is play better defense, don’t spend as much money, and then play really good offense all the time.

Marco Brown [00:05:49]:
You just need to continue that. And doing those two things together is really what changes your trajectory after you’ve paid off the debt.

Darren Wurz [00:05:58]:
Right?

Marco Brown [00:05:58]:
That’s the secret sauce. That’s the system.

Darren Wurz [00:06:01]:
Yeah. Fantastic. Cool. Cool. Let’s talk a little bit about your business, because you’ve built an extraordinary business. You know, many law firm owners struggle to see their firm as a business. What were some of the big mindset shifts for you that helped you go from being a lawyer with a firm to really a true business owner?

Marco Brown [00:06:22]:
So I’ll do this. I’m going to tell you a little story about the impetus for this. So in 2015, when we were. This is before we paid off the debt, this is really the impetus for paying off the debt. And then the mindset shift in the law firm as well. I was a pretty good attorney. I won Divorce Attorney of the year here in Utah. I was voted on by my peers in the bar, which was a big thing, and that was great.

Marco Brown [00:06:50]:
But two days after I won that, I realized that I had all the same problems that I had before, so didn’t really change anything. And then. And then a couple, you know, like a week after that, as I’m kind of mired in this, you know, in all of this and, you know, negativity and whatnot, again in the shower. And this. This had happened to me before, but I get in the shower and I’m cool for the first, like, five minutes. And then I start thinking about cases and I started thinking about everything I have to do that day. So I just get super stressed in the shower, right. And my heart starts to palpitate.

Marco Brown [00:07:24]:
My chest constricts. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, it’s bad. It’s bad. And I start getting this. This thing. It starts with the crown of my head and it’s going to envelop my face, and it is a stress headache. And this happened.

Marco Brown [00:07:36]:
This happened to me relatively often. I was not in the best physical shape at that point. You know, I. I was not doing well. So this starts to happen, and I think to myself, oh, man, it’s going to.

Darren Wurz [00:07:47]:
It’s.

Marco Brown [00:07:48]:
It’s doing it again. Then. This time was different, though. The shower was different because I was shown my future. When I was about 60 or 65, I was dead, and I was in a casket. And I looked out from the casket to the people mourning me. And I had kids there that morning, me that I didn’t even have at that point. And that lasted for about 10 seconds.

Marco Brown [00:08:15]:
And, like, I can tell you that this was exactly what was going to happen to me. This was my future. And I thought to myself, after I got out of that, I thought to myself, no, I’m not doing that. That’s not going to happen to me. I won’t do that to my family. I won’t do that to my really, really small team at that point. Like, I’m not going to do those things. So then I had to change everything in order to not, you know, be so stressed that I was going to die of a heart attack 25 years later.

Marco Brown [00:08:46]:
And that was really what got me thinking, okay, I should probably need to minimize the debt, because the debt is a lot of. Is very stressful on me. And if I’m not going to sit here and do the same thing for 25 or 30 years, the same cases and the same, you know, kind of grind, then I need to think about my practice differently. Like, I’m probably going to have to grow out of that so I don’t have to do those cases all the time, or I can do very few of them or I can do none of them. Right. Like, I have to rethink what that looks like. And so I started that process, and in doing that, I started reading, you know, actual business books and looking at the way other law firms had become businesses and how other businesses functioned.

Darren Wurz [00:09:27]:
Yeah.

Marco Brown [00:09:28]:
So I could kind of emulate that. And it was a long. It was a, you know, a fairly long process, but that was the real impetus for it, and that was the beginning of the journey. Wow.

Darren Wurz [00:09:41]:
Wow. So the debt wasn’t just, like, because you were young and starting out, this was really kind of carried itself through into, like, you had already established your firm, you were running a firm, you were very successful, but you still had this burden. And all of a sudden, you kind of had this moment of clarity where you’re like, okay, some things need to change.

Marco Brown [00:10:06]:
Yeah, absolutely. So by this point, I had messed around with debt, the student loan debt specifically, for eight years. Right. I’d been out of law school for, I think, seven at this point. And then we paid it off on Year eight. But I had done everything under the sun to defer and income based repayment, all of these. And then it was, it was only when like, hey, you need to minimize your stress, otherwise your heart’s going to give out. And I thought, okay, I should probably stop messing around with this and actually pay it off.

Marco Brown [00:10:37]:
Right. And that was it.

Darren Wurz [00:10:39]:
You know, I love that. There’s something so powerful about just simplicity. You know, we overcomplicate our lives. And so many people that I talk with, so many law firm owners, even though they’re making tremendous money, they’re still like living paycheck to paycheck. It’s crazy. So yeah, there really has to be something that transforms in you where you’re like, you know, and then that’s the secret sauce. Right. If I can be a little bit more simple in my life, then I actually really start to accrue wealth and then I can really have some cool things in life.

Marco Brown [00:11:20]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly. I mean, you could think about it like when I was a kid, when I was about 18, 19, I was morbidly obese and I had to lose a whole bunch of weight. So I lost like 85, I think 85 pounds when I was 19, 20. And then in my adulthood, I’ve always had to watch my weight because, you know, if you’re morbidly obese as a kid, it’s not like it just leaves you. So I think a lot about human nutrition. I work out a lot. It’s just kind of in my mind. But you think about it like this.

Marco Brown [00:11:51]:
It’s like eating. Eating is like 90% of maintaining healthy weight. Right. What you intake into your body and the output is important. Right. But it’s not, you know, it’s 10 important. And 90 is just the caloric intake, man. So you, you really, when you think about spending, right.

Marco Brown [00:12:11]:
That’s your eating. So there’s nothing like you can never outwork your like stupid spending. Just like you can, you know, there’s no amount of running that you can do to outrun a fork. Right. It’s the same thing. Like eventually you just kind of have to stop spending or stop eating and then you can get a handle on stuff.

Darren Wurz [00:12:33]:
Yeah. You know, I have known, I’ve been in this industry a long time and I’ve seen a lot of different people and I’ve had a, an insider’s view into their world. Right. As a financial planner. And what I’ve seen is that some of the most tremendously wealthy people that I’ve worked with are not necessarily the ones who’ve made the most money. They’ve just lived simply. I’ll give you a great example. Like these two, this couple I worked with, they lived in such a way that they only needed to live on one of the spouse’s salary, and they saved the entire other one they never made.

Darren Wurz [00:13:10]:
I don’t think either of them ever made six figures. But they retired multimillionaires simply because they were able to maintain that discipline. We’re reading this right now. In the Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel talks about how the biggest trick in life is just to get the goalpost to stop moving.

Marco Brown [00:13:30]:
Yeah.

Darren Wurz [00:13:31]:
And if you can do that, wow, the world really opens up to you.

Marco Brown [00:13:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. When you look at jobs, and you probably know this better than I do, but when you look at jobs like which jobs produce the most millionaires, I think engineering is number one. And then teachers, I think is number two, which is insane, absolute jack crap. Right. But the thing is, from day one, they force you to set aside a certain amount of money to invest. Right. And so you’re compelled to do that type of thing.

Marco Brown [00:14:09]:
And it just produces over time. It accumulates and it produces. And that’s what most attorneys do, don’t do on the. On the financial side, because I have a lot of. Again, I have a lot of attorney friends. I’m very successful, successful ones. And I do their divorces. So I actually get to see their finances, not what they say their finances are or their finances actually are.

Marco Brown [00:14:27]:
And, you know, they just. They spend money like they’re drunken sailors. And that’s. That’s what does it.

Darren Wurz [00:14:34]:
No, you’re not. And, you know, it’s funny because I was a teacher, so I was in that system. And it’s like, in Ohio, 13% of your paycheck goes into your retirement, and the state matches. So you have 26% of your income. And, you know, it may not be a lot of money because you’re only making, like, 60, 50 or $60,000, but if you’re doing that every single year from the age of 24. See, here’s the thing about Warren Buffett, and we were talking about this on a previous episode. Warren Buffett, yes, he’s a great investor, but he’s not the world’s best investor. The thing is, he’s had time on his side.

Darren Wurz [00:15:17]:
He became a millionaire at age 30 because he started investing at age 10.

Marco Brown [00:15:25]:
And he didn’t become a billionaire. I don’t think he became a billionaire until into his, like, 50s. Right, yeah. And he’s old. Like that’s just one of the things. Like it’s.

Darren Wurz [00:15:37]:
Yeah, time does that in a very powerful way. Yeah. Okay, so let’s. Oh, you mentioned books. What were some of the most transformative books? Maybe Top one or two. That really helped you make that leap into the next level of law firm ownership?

Marco Brown [00:15:58]:
The next level of law firm ownership was really Grant Cardone’s books. So I mean, I’ve read, I can’t even, I can’t even tell you how many hundreds of business books. But the ones that have been most transformative for me are Seller Be Sold, all of Grant’s books, but Seller Be Sold especially, and then the Closer’s Survival Guide. I’ve read that book 24 times. It’s the best business book I’ve ever read. Like, bar none.

Darren Wurz [00:16:24]:
Okay, awesome. We’ll put those in the show notes. What were like the really huge takeaways that, that, that were powerful for.

Marco Brown [00:16:35]:
Yeah. So both of those books have to do with selling and closing. Right. So Sell or Be Sold is kind of the general philosophical outlook on selling. And attorneys have it’s kind of fraught relationship with selling. So all we do is sell. Like we’re just salespeople as attorneys. We just sell high end stuff like concepts and arguments and so on and so forth.

Marco Brown [00:17:02]:
But we look down on people who sell physical objects, like, you know, used car salesmen. And we shouldn’t because used car salesmen have a lot to teach us about how to sell effectively. So we, like I say we have this kind of fraught relationship. The part in lawyering where lawyers don’t sell well is when they’re acquiring clients and they see that as like the dirty thing. Right? They see that as the kind of used car salesman thing. And that’s just stupid. Like that, that outlook is just, it’s destructive and stupid. So you know, when you, when you read Grant’s book Sell or Be Sold, it’s like a general philosophy on selling and life, how life is a sale.

Marco Brown [00:17:46]:
Like almost everything in life is a sale. And then the Closer Survival Guide is the closing part of selling. Right. So selling is the emotional side of things, getting people to want to buy from you. And they, they do that because they know like, and trust you. And then the closing part is actually getting people to give you money. And that’s a logical process. That is, okay, I want to buy this thing, but now I’m scared and how do I get, how do I, how do I get over being scared? Well, you’re helping Them getting over being scared.

Marco Brown [00:18:17]:
So you’re going through very specific objections and reactions to objections to overcome those objections. And so it’s much. It’s more of a technical book. There’s some philosophy on closing, but it’s more of a technical manual on if they say, oh, you know, I don’t have the money right now, then this is how you react to that. Right. And that, for me, was super transformative because the missing link in everything that I was doing was being really, really excellent at client acquisition, including closing clients. So that. That.

Marco Brown [00:18:50]:
That changed everything for me when. When I. When I read those books and started implementing that into our sales process and into our law firm.

Darren Wurz [00:19:00]:
Yes. Yeah, boy, we’ve talked about that on the show with several of our guests. It really is important, and it’s. It’s the same in the financial world. I, you know, was very much an outsider coming into the financial world, and I kind of had a very. A distaste of, you know, the sales, you know, person. I didn’t want to be that person. But when you really realize that sales is not convincing someone who doesn’t need what you have to buy it, that’s manipulation.

Darren Wurz [00:19:33]:
Sales is simply, you have a solution that this person really needs, and you’re helping them to see that, and you’re walking them through that. When you see that, that sales is really just. It’s. It’s a professional necessity, and it’s not an evil. There’s certainly a bad way to do sales, but there’s a very good way to do sales.

Marco Brown [00:19:53]:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So I think about it the exact same way. So what we do as a law firm is we get people in there, we explain to them exactly what we do, then we get them in for a consultation, and then we make the determination of whether or not we can help them. And we are the best people to help them. And once we are convinced of that, then we sell. Right. And then we close.

Marco Brown [00:20:16]:
Because at that point, I tend to think we have a moral obligation because we’re better than everybody else at what we do. And if we’re the best at it and we’re going to help them better, then let’s do it, like, just tell them that and then convince them of it. But we have lots and lots of people, and I tell my people all the time, like, if this is not the type of person we can help, then you trying to sell them is just you lying to them. And we don’t lie. Like, we’re not doing that.

Darren Wurz [00:20:43]:
So.

Marco Brown [00:20:43]:
So yeah, it’s not that manipulation. It’s like, can we help you? Yes. Okay, then we’re going to help you. Can we not? Okay, then we’re going to send you someplace else, to someone who can.

Darren Wurz [00:20:55]:
Yeah. Now, are you still doing the sales, or have you now trained other people in your firm to do that process for you?

Marco Brown [00:21:03]:
Yes, So I train and other people do that at this point? Yep.

Darren Wurz [00:21:09]:
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So let me ask you this. As you’ve grown your practice, do you feel like now you have more of that time freedom that so many law firm owners crave?

Marco Brown [00:21:20]:
Yeah, absolutely. The more money I’ve made and the better my leadership has become and the bigger my team has become and the better at sales we’ve become, then, yeah, I have tons more time freedom than I used to when I was in the third thick of things back in 2015, which, you know, is that great shower incident we talked about. They got 112 active case files, and it was me doing all of that stuff, and I had no time for him. I literally had zero. I didn’t have time to work out and didn’t have time to do anything. I had time to go, like, go to church on Sunday with my family, and that was about it. Right. But every other waking moment was doing work, and that is absolutely not my life now.

Darren Wurz [00:22:04]:
Yeah. So. So many law firm owners struggle with that, getting out of that casework, because there’s this. There’s this lie we tell ourselves that no one can do it as good as me, and we’re afraid to hand it off to somebody else. How did you overcome that?

Marco Brown [00:22:21]:
This is. This is probably the most intractable problem when it comes to attorneys, because attorneys, you know, they think they’re the best at everything. Right. We’re smart people. We do this. But let’s assume that’s true. Let’s just assume that that’s actually true and you are better than any person you could hire to do the thing that you do. It’s not true, but let’s just assume it’s true.

Marco Brown [00:22:48]:
Do you have a decision to make? Do you want to do that thing for the rest of your. That same thing for the rest of your life? Or do you want to train somebody who’s 90% as good as you to do that thing so you can have more freedom? Okay. That’s what you got, and you have to make that determination. And if you don’t want to do it, if you want to be the guy or the gal that does that for the rest of your life, more Power to you. I don’t want to be that person. I want to train people to be really, really excellent, realizing they probably will never be as excellent as I am. But that’s okay, you know, because that, it allows me to spend more time with my family, to serve more people, to make more money, to do all of these other, other things. And I just, you know, I have to accept and be okay with it.

Darren Wurz [00:23:38]:
Yeah. Boy, I love that. That question that you, you posed, right? Do you want to stay here doing this or do you want. That’s it? Right? Like you ask yourself that because it’s one or the other. And you know, I. People are going to make mistakes. We, I’ve, I’ve done this in my practice, brought in, you know, team members, planners to now do the client work. And no, they’re not going to do it perfect every time they’re going to make mistakes.

Darren Wurz [00:24:11]:
But guess what? There are some things that they’re going to do a whole lot better and that they’re going to be actually more passionate about and more excited about and stuff that you hate to do. They’re going to be like, zealous to do it. Have you found that?

Marco Brown [00:24:27]:
Yeah, yeah, they absolutely will be. Now, what I had said before was assuming that, that it’s true that they’ll never be as good as you. But the thing is, man, you’re going to find people that are better than you at the thing you. At the thing you do, unless you are literally just absolutely world class at it. But, and I was, I was pretty dang good as a, as a divorce litigator. But I got people under me at this point that are better. And, you know, that’s okay. Like, I don’t, I don’t have a big ego with that.

Marco Brown [00:24:54]:
Like, I get to do other, other stuff. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. You will find people who are better at you at different aspects of your job. And your job at this point is to lead them to do the thing they do best and to do it continuously at an incredibly high level and then find somebody else who does this other thing better. And, you know, then you put together a team, an amalgamation that serves your clients better than you ever could.

Darren Wurz [00:25:24]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, in order to stay the best, you really have to like, stay at the top of your game. You’ve got to continue to learn and stuff like that. And, you know, the next generation, eventually they will, they will become the experts and the pros, and that is perfectly fine. Now, what do you say to the workaholics among us, Right. Who, even though we scale and even though we bring in team members and we’ve offloaded so many tasks, we just keep finding for ourselves to do, right?

Marco Brown [00:26:07]:
Yeah. So this, this. Actually, I’ve changed my thinking on this a little bit, so I don’t think that’s bad, actually. It just depends on if you’re doing the thing you like to do and if you’re doing the thing that’s actually highly valuable. If you’re just sitting around doing busy work all day long because you want to feel busy. You know, it’s like Arnold Schwarzenegger says, busyness is bs, man. Like, busy busyness is not. Okay, so if that’s what you’re doing, then, like, knock that off.

Marco Brown [00:26:37]:
But if you’re growing a team and making them excellent and you’re doing just as much work or slightly less work, but you’re doing the work that you want to do, that you are really good at and passionate about.

Darren Wurz [00:26:53]:
Cool.

Marco Brown [00:26:53]:
That’s awesome. Like, if people really enjoy their work, like, do a lot of it, that’s totally fine. And, you know, then there are some people that. That don’t want to do that, and they want to go, like, sit on a beach in Puerto Rico and. But they’ve worked really hard and they’ve created a great team, and that’s absolutely legitimate because leadership is the most. The highest leverage activity and the most valuable activity you can possibly do. Now, the change of my thinking was that, like, I used to do this in the sense, in the idea that I would just spend six months of the year in Italy or something where, you know, we now own a house, because I could actually do that, but I don’t want to do that. Like, I thought about it, like, I don’t want to do that sort of thing.

Marco Brown [00:27:38]:
I want to spend like a month there or a month and a half a year, because I really do like being around my team. I really do like marketing. I really do like serving people in what I do. And I’m just going to try to do higher and higher leverage activities and just realize that that’s who I am.

Darren Wurz [00:27:54]:
And I like that 100%. And you need that purpose. You know, this is why so many. We look at, like, the world of business exit and selling. 85% of business owners who sell their businesses regret the decision later because they didn’t. That was their, like, whole meaning in life. And it gave them purpose. And then they sell it and they’re, like, bored.

Marco Brown [00:28:22]:
Yeah, they thought the money was the purpose of the thing, it’s like, well, yeah, I guess. But no, no, it’s not. It’s you serving other people is the purpose of the thing.

Darren Wurz [00:28:32]:
Right. So how are you thinking long term about exit in the future of your practice? Is it something that you would sell one day or do you want to? So I get, I get two camps, right? People who want to sell or people who want to like make it as much of a passive income asset as possible so they can have as much time, freedom but still maintain some involvement. What does that future look like for you?

Marco Brown [00:29:02]:
Yeah, this really does depend on who you are. So I have friends on different ends of the spectrum. What I can tell you is that I will never stop. I will stop when God puts me in a body bag is when I will stop. Because I just don’t want to. I don’t want to retire. I don’t do any of that kind of stuff. There are very specific, like familial reasons that I don’t want to because I watch my dad retire and they just fall off a cliff health wise and everything.

Marco Brown [00:29:30]:
Meaning, you know, meaning in his life wise and whatnot. So that’ll never happen. I do want time, freedom, I do want those things, but I don’t think I’ll ever sell. I try to build this place so I could sell one day in order to maximize the value of the asset. Right. As it were. But really what I’m doing is just trying to maximize how the thing functions because I want it functioning well and I want a team around me that I really enjoy. And then when you do that sort of stuff, you also tend to maximize the enterprise value.

Darren Wurz [00:30:05]:
Yes. Music to my ears. Are you a certified exit planner? Because you sound like one.

Marco Brown [00:30:11]:
I’m not, but I’ve read the books.

Darren Wurz [00:30:13]:
Right, yeah, that’s what it’s all about. And that’s what I’ve been trying to hammer away is like, you know, plan for exit, even if you never exit. Right. But in doing that, you are creating the most profitable, the most efficient and most well run business that you could ever possibly have because you’ve, you’ve thought about transferability and if you are not around, there’s, there’s stuff to run it and maybe that means you’re not around in the sense that you’re going to take a month off and travel the world or something like that. So, so I love that.

Marco Brown [00:30:42]:
That’s fantastic. That’s exactly right. And I gotta tell you that it is super when you work to maximize a business, even if you don’t sell it. It is super cool to know that your business is worth more than like the PI firm down the shop that everybody knows but is actually not profitable because they run a, like just a garbage business.

Darren Wurz [00:31:03]:
Yeah. And unfortunately so many, many law firms are just not well run businesses because they’re so owner dependent and the liquidity is horrible. They’re like a bad quarter away from bankruptcy. So I mean, you can really stand out as what I think I’m trying to say here. Right. There’s so much opportunity to really stand out in that way.

Marco Brown [00:31:31]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely true. I mean, we are, and it’s weird, we’re very poorly run businesses on the whole, but we also are part of a cartel, so we have ready made profit margins. I always say that if you can’t make at least 15% profit margin in a law firm, it’s because your IQ is less than 70. Right. It’s just, it should be easy, but it’s just not. And that’s kind of, I’m sorry, that’s kind of insulting. But what I’m trying to get at is that most people just don’t think of their law firm as a business when it’s fairly easy to think about it as a business. But we just never, we’re never taught to think that way and we never do.

Darren Wurz [00:32:18]:
Right, Right. Well, folks, start thinking about your law firm as a business. You will stand out in the marketplace. It will be transformative for you. Marco, thank you so much for joining us. Do you have any last pieces of advice you want to pass on to our audience?

Marco Brown [00:32:36]:
I think one piece of advice that changed my life when I transitioned from me doing it to then growing and creating a team that I loved and creating an actual business that served a lot of people at scale, was that I made a commitment to get paid 100% for the work I did. Because before that I was probably getting paid 50, 60 cents on the dollar. And then the moment I made that commitment to get paid 100, everything changed. It freed up tons and tons of money and I fired a whole bunch of bad clients that I, that I shouldn’t have had around. It also taught me to think as a system. Like, what’s the system for getting paid 100%, how do I solve my most intractable problem? And so on and so forth. It just, it changed everything. And when I talk with my friends and they do, or other attorneys, because I talk with a lot of attorneys around the United States now about these sorts of things, when they implement this and they start getting paid 100%.

Marco Brown [00:33:39]:
Everything in their life changes and everything in their business changes.

Darren Wurz [00:33:42]:
Yes. Marco, music to my ears again. We’ve worked with a lot of clients and done a lot of things for them. But you know, the biggest thing that I hear, it’s the most simple thing I think. But they’re like, boy, the most powerful thing you did for us was help us think through and systematize and automate our cash flow and make sure we’re paying ourselves first, an automatic regular amount every single month. That you’re right. That right there changes everything. And you know, I got a lot of those ideas from Simple Numbers by Greg Greg Crabtree and the Profit First System.

Darren Wurz [00:34:25]:
But Michael.

Marco Brown [00:34:27]:
Yep.

Darren Wurz [00:34:28]:
Powerful, powerful. Thank you so much Marco. In closing, where can our audience go to learn more about you?

Marco Brown [00:34:38]:
So I have a website, but that’s my Brown Family Law website, so that’s not it. Just go to LinkedIn and search Marco Brown and that LinkedIn is the one social media that I give myself and I’m actually on there and I write all the content. All the other stuff is like marketing stuff. But LinkedIn is where I actually go and talk with people and talk about the business of law.

Darren Wurz [00:35:01]:
Yeah, you have a lot of great posts regularly, got a great following. I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re doing something. Something well on LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Marco Brown and how he built a thriving debt free law firm, you can find him at Brown Family Law. Check the show notes for links to his website resources and where to connect with him online. My challenge to you today is this. A small change in your financial habits can make multimillion dollar differences in your life. Having a financial framework that supports your goals is the starting point.

Darren Wurz [00:35:40]:
And here at the Lawyer Millionaire Founders Network, we help with just that. We help law firm owners create a system for their business and personal finances to get unstuck and create massive wealth. If you’re ready to do just that, we’ve got the strategies right here. Schedule an intro call with me today and learn more about our membership benefits and how our simple law firm owner cash flow framework can change your life. You’ll find the link in the show notes. Well, that’s a wrap for this episode of the Lawyer Millionaire. Remember, your law firm should be an asset, not just a job. Take control, build wealth and create the future you deserve.

Darren Wurz [00:36:27]:
See you next time.

Outro [00:36:33]:
Thank you for listening to the Lawyer Millionaire. Click the follow button below to to be notified when new episodes become available. This content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. This content is not intended to represent investing or tax advice. Always seek the advice of a qualified investment or tax advisor with any questions you may have regarding your own financial circumstances.

How a Panic Attack Led Law Firm Owner Marco Brown to Financial Independence (Ep. 104)