How Leadership Unlocks Financial Success for Law Firm Owners with Scott Mason (Ep. 73)

In the latest episode of *The Lawyer Millionaire Podcast*, we dive deep into the intersection of effective leadership and financial success for law firm owners. Special guest Scott Mason, a recovering attorney and former C-suite executive, unveils how the timeless lessons from Greek mythology can enhance law firm profitability through effective leadership.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

1. The Power of Greek Myths in Leadership

Scott Mason brings a unique perspective by linking Greek mythology to leadership, impact, and influence. He believes that these ancient stories serve as potent transformational metaphors that can guide modern leaders.

For instance, the myth of Demeter and Persephone brilliantly illustrates partnership dynamics and the impact of these relationships on business success. In law firms, understanding and improving these dynamics can lead to increased profitability.

2. Key Traits of Effective Leadership

Mason identifies resilience, creativity, and connection as the hallmarks of effective leadership in law firms. These qualities not only foster a productive work environment but also pave the way for financial growth and a successful exit strategy.

a. Resilience: Law firm owners must navigate the ups and downs of the legal industry. Building resilience helps leaders withstand challenges and catastrophes with grace and determination.

b. Creativity: Innovation is vital in the legal field. Leaders who encourage creativity within their teams are better positioned to find unique solutions to complex problems.

c. Connection: Deepening connections with both the firm’s mission and its clients reinforces trust and loyalty, which are crucial for long-term success.

3. Hidden Costs of Poor Leadership

Scott Mason emphasizes the often-overlooked expenses associated with ineffective leadership, such as retention costs, decreased productivity, and lower-quality work. He shares that talented employees are even willing to accept lower pay to work in environments where they feel respected and valued.

A compelling example includes a non-legal client of Mason’s whose business underwent significant improvement after prioritizing leadership development and focusing on community and professional engagement.

4. Charisma: A Learnable Leadership Skill

One of the most captivating parts of Mason’s analysis is his focus on charisma. Often thought of as an innate trait, Mason argues that charisma is learnable and essential for effective leadership. By connecting the logical messages in one’s head with the emotional feelings in one’s heart, leaders can cultivate a powerful and engaging presence.

Crucially, Mason advises law firm owners against coming across as boring, arrogant, or pompous. Instead, expressing genuine care and love for clients can instill trust and loyalty, ultimately driving financial success.

5. Actionable Strategies for Law Firm Owners

To foster effective leadership and unlock financial success, Mason suggests the following strategies:

a. Invest in Leadership Development: Offer ongoing training and development opportunities for your team to build resilience, creativity, and connection.

b. Embrace Charisma: Work on developing your charisma by aligning your intellectual messages with your emotional expressions.

c. Focus on Emotional Connections: Prioritize building strong emotional connections with your team and your clients to enhance loyalty and productivity.

d. Create a Positive Work Environment: Retain top talent by creating an environment where employees feel respected and valued.

Conclusion

Effective leadership is crucial in transforming the financial landscape of law firms. By drawing lessons from Greek mythology and emphasizing qualities such as resilience, creativity, and connection, law firm owners can achieve unparalleled financial success and secure a promising exit strategy.

Resources:

Connect with Scott Mason:

About our guest:

Scott Mason is the Myth Slayer: an attorney and transformational executive leadership coach for lawyers looking to uplevel their careers or leadership skills—and have a future that is epic. Based on his trailblazing signature framework, Scott will help you or the leaders in your firm/organization become:

More connected to themselves, each other, and your mission.
Creative—leading to innovation and consistent achievement of organizational goals.
Resilient, especially when times are tough.

After graduating from Columbia Law School, Scott worked for 20+ years as an attorney and senior executive in the government and non-profit sectors.

Drawing on years of organizational executive experience, decades as a practicing attorney, and success at running a small business, Scott’s is a 2x TEDx speaker and his insights have appeared in book compilations and online magazines as well as on television and countless podcasts. The first of his four-book series, Vision’s Dawn: A Leadership Epic, which retells Greek myths as allegories for leadership transformation, is scheduled for release in late 2024.As a professional speaker, Scott also sits on the Board of Directors of the National Speakers Association (NYC Chapter); his high-energy speeches, panel presentations, and workshops have electrified diverse audiences both in the United States and abroad. He is also a member of the Career Advancement & Management and the Attorney Mindfulness and Well-Being Committees of the NYC Bar Association. Scott has also hosted 5 podcasts; two of these shows have been ranked in the top 5% of listeners globally.

Transcripts:

Darren Wurz [00:00:15]:
Can lessons from greek mythology actually make your law firm more profitable? Welcome to the Lawyer Millionaire podcast, where we help ambitious law firm owners expand their businesses, maximize their profits, and grow their wealth, maximizing profitability. Most of us think more clients and more billable hours. Well, in fact, better leadership can actually increase your profitability without the need to bill more hours. Scott Mason is here today to talk with us on lessons on leadership from greek mythology and how charisma can actually make your firm more profitable. Interesting stuff. Scott is a recovering attorney and former C suite executive. He describes himself as recovering attorney who now helps attorneys become better leaders and live lives that are epic. All right, well, we’re here now with Scott Mason, the man, the myth, the legend.

Darren Wurz [00:01:20]:
And there’s a reason that I’m saying that. My big question, Scott, let’s just dive right in here. What on earth does greek mythology have to do with running a law firm? Help me out.

Scott Mason [00:01:38]:
You know what? Believe it or not, although they seem like they are completely separate subjects, and greek mythology might itself seem like it’s arcane and has absolutely no relevance to the practice of law, let alone building wealth or setting yourself over an exit strategy or any of the other things. Becoming a better leader that you need to do in order to really succeed as a practitioner. Greek myths actually are tied intimately to the concept of leadership, as well as growing impact and influence. Greek myths were never just told as funky little stories the way they are now. They’re presented too often in school as these stories that are stuffy, told by old men from thousands of years ago, that you have to sit and endure just to get through the class, that’s not what they were really about at all. They were leadership transformation tools. It’s my contention, as a matter of fact, that the metaphors and the lessons that they teach are the most potent leading leadership transformational metaphors and provide the most important leadership transformation lessons in history. We may not realize it, but there’s a reason that they’ve lasted for thousands upon thousands of years.

Darren Wurz [00:03:03]:
Yeah, yeah. Could you just give us a quick example of what you’re talking about?

Scott Mason [00:03:08]:
Sure. A common example is, or common situation that a lot of people that are in business, in particular Facebook, especially partnerships. And in this case, I would point to, for instance, a duo of lawyers that are in a business partnership together co own a firm or some other sort of venture. There is a very famous story, one of the foundational greek myths, about the goddess Demeter and Persephone. Her daughter Persephone, was responsible for blossoms going emerging into the world. Demeter was responsible for ensuring that the plants grew to become harvestable crops that people could eat. The God of the dead, Hades, one day decided that he wanted to marry Persephone. So he kidnapped her.

Scott Mason [00:04:04]:
Persephone vanished without a trace. Demeter suddenly was unable to populate the planet with full grown plants that people could eat, because the blossoms were unable to bloom without her partner. Demeter and Persephone were business partners. Their business relationship was deeply intertwined. They could not operate without each other. When the God of death, in other words, the God that represents the destruction of a partnership or the destruction of some sort of human connection, took one business partner away, the other business partner had to figure out how to function without the entire business collapsing. And in that story, by the way, the entire agricultural system of the planet collapsed. In other words, Demeter was completely unable to service her clients.

Scott Mason [00:04:59]:
Her business ended. How Demeter was able to reunite with Persephone, what that meant for their business going forward, is a tremendous and eternal lesson for leaders anywhere. That’s just one example. Every single story makes a similar point. Wow.

Darren Wurz [00:05:18]:
Wow. I’m not familiar with that particular one, so. Thank you, Scott. I learned something new already.

Scott Mason [00:05:25]:
Good.

Darren Wurz [00:05:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s very interesting. Let’s talk about it in the context of law firm ownership. Can you define for us what effective leadership looks like in a law firm?

Scott Mason [00:05:40]:
Yes, it goes without saying that financial growth, financial remuneration, and setting yourself up for a successful exit strategy are the end goals. But it’s my contention that these are actually byproducts of successful leadership. Successful leadership in a firm context, in my opinion, is one that is marked by three characteristics. First of all, resilience, the ability to function as a business or as an attorney, or as a firm through the ups and downs of business world and client preferences and all the other things that just you face if you’re operating as a business and a capitalist economy. Number two, creativity. Creativity needs to manifest itself across the board. Creative legal practice and a culture that encourages creative legal practice, for instance, is going to ultimately increase the quality of the legal output that the lawyers in that firm are able to either produce themselves or drive their associates to. But furthermore, innovation is the direct result of creativity.

Scott Mason [00:07:02]:
I doubt anyone will seriously argue with me that the pace of technological, social, cultural, and a whole host of other changes is only accelerating. The pandemic actually pushed a lot of this forward. And so if you are in a business of any sort, but especially if you are in a law firm, the ability to innovate is a massive financial as well as leadership advantage. And let’s face it, lawyers tend to be risk averse. And so if you’re able to bring into your leadership an internal and an external acculturation to innovation, you’re going to be a massive leg ahead. Finally, connection, connection to the self, connection to those that you serve, is again, indescribably important element of successful leadership. You hear stories all the time about lawyer burnout or about people feeling dissatisfied and unhappy, which again, drives down the success potential of a firm. I’m in a committee of the New York City Bar association that deals with career management.

Scott Mason [00:08:16]:
This was a topic of an entire discussion recently. Are you connected with who and what you are in the mission of your firm, and are you connected with clients? A lot of times, particularly at the associate level, but sometimes even at the partner level, there’s not a connection between the work being done and the actual needs of the client. If you have that resilience, creativity and connection, your law firm will succeed.

Darren Wurz [00:08:42]:
I love that. Those are three very interesting points. Creativity. Okay. Yeah. I mean, traditionally, the traditional thought or perception, I think that maybe the public has of lawyers and law firms doesn’t probably include creativity. Would you agree?

Scott Mason [00:09:01]:
I think that. Laughter says it all.

Darren Wurz [00:09:06]:
Yeah. But these are important for any business, especially for law firms, where maybe these are not the traditional norms of operation.

Scott Mason [00:09:14]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Darren Wurz [00:09:18]:
Well, let’s talk about that, developing that leadership potential and why we have these three things you’ve mentioned. Why is leadership development essential for law firms, not just to grow, but also in terms of their bottom line and financially?

Scott Mason [00:09:37]:
Look at all of the hidden costs that are associated with poor leadership. Actually, before we think about looking at them, it’s perhaps important to make a foundational point. All of the costs and expenses associated with running a law firm are not necessarily reflected in the p and Ls, or perhaps even the other financials, at least immediately. They may appear slowly down the road and in a way that is hidden, but they’re not obvious. What do I mean by that? And I’m sure you of all people would agree with that with this. Retention costs, the cost of having to pay, for instance, staff overtime if everyone’s quitting, or the slower work output that comes with having to ramp people up, or the costs associated with transferring all of the, you know, all of the payroll and biddenness benefits paperwork around. I mean, admin, stuff like that actually can really add up. That’s not even to mention sort of passive decreases in productivity, output, or quality.

Scott Mason [00:10:58]:
That, again, add expenses that you don’t necessarily see as a line item in a p and L. But they, none the less, are there what ultimately drives those hidden expenses? Poor leadership. Think about it. If you have as a practice group head or just a rising associate, someone who’s amazing, but they feel like they can’t get appropriate direction from you, that you’re micromanaging them, that they are being treated outright abusively, as many lawyers sadly treat their associates, are they going to sit and say, I’m an amazing talent, let me sit here and be treated like garbage and abused? Or are they going to say, wow, I’m top talent. There are places I can go that will respect me. My contention is that they will, and I say this as an attorney that did exactly this, to the shock of some of the attorneys that, quote, unquote, led me. I had opportunities to go where I was treated with respect, where I could work for people that showed true leadership. I did.

Scott Mason [00:12:10]:
I didn’t stick around being abused or micromanaged or ignored or any of that sort of stuff. And that’s leadership again. People like me leaving not only opens the door for poor quality people sometimes to come in and replace them, but all of these hidden expenses that I was talking about, including hidden expenses associated with lower quality work and more revisions, all that sort of stuff, all of that can happen simply because of leadership.

Darren Wurz [00:12:38]:
Wow. You make a great case. And the money part of it is why we’re here on this show, of course. So the productivity, I think people will take a pay cut to go work somewhere else where they’re happy.

Scott Mason [00:12:56]:
Yes, they certainly will. And I’ve done it myself, and I’ve worked with clients that are more than happy to do that. I have a call coming up with a prospective client who can’t wait to look at all of their options. And this individual, by the way, had already taken a pay cut to go from a law firm position to an in house position because she wanted to be happy.

Darren Wurz [00:13:20]:
Yeah. Hard to put a price on that, for sure.

Scott Mason [00:13:25]:
Yeah.

Darren Wurz [00:13:27]:
You know, you’ve been working with a lot of law firms in this regard. I’m curious, from your experience, if you could share the. Maybe an example or a story where you’ve seen leadership or the lack thereof, make a significant impact.

Scott Mason [00:13:46]:
I’m actually going to. I have some clients outside of lawyers as well, so lawyers are the. Maybe the yolk of the. Of the egg, but then the white around it is our other clients. And I think the best example of this is one that is in another profession. This is an antique dealer, and leadership was really not this individual strong point. He was and always will be, like many lawyers, a major subject matter expert. And that’s how his business initially grew its mark.

Scott Mason [00:14:23]:
Now we’ve worked together to develop a number of different professional and business building skills. Leadership is at the core. And by the way, when I say leadership, I don’t just mean of those that are within your direct employ. I also mean leadership vis a vis your external partners, your vendors, for instance, and leadership within the community, as well as leadership within your profession. So it’s interesting, when I first met this individual, he didn’t have a clear sense of his financials. He was overwhelmed. He thought he was making a profit, but it didn’t seem like it was much. And he didn’t have any sense as to how to get ahead.

Scott Mason [00:15:05]:
He knew. He knew as much as more successful competitors, but how could he get there and even exceed it? Focusing on leadership as a multidimensional project as well as an internal development project, which sometimes annoys him, but he knows that it’s true and necessary, has put him in a position where he was going. His business, I think, was getting around between 100 and 5200 at the absolute max. When we first started working together about four years ago, he told me he thinks he’s going to make 800,000 this year. And so. Right, like, that’s a pretty significant.

Darren Wurz [00:15:47]:
Yeah, yeah. That’s wonderful.

Scott Mason [00:15:48]:
Right? It goes as to what happens. This person is on the board of the National Speakers association. He’s written a book, he has a YouTube channel, like all of this sort of stuff. He has been approached by people in his business networking group saying, well, you’re the successful one in the group. How do we do XYZ? That’s the impact of leadership development on bottom line. And you think about, with all of this influence out there, things are only going to grow further from here because he’s already established himself as a premier presence in his space.

Darren Wurz [00:16:20]:
Yeah.

Scott Mason [00:16:21]:
Wow.

Darren Wurz [00:16:21]:
That’s really inspiring.

Scott Mason [00:16:23]:
He’s my hero. He’s what I call a leadership Olympian.

Darren Wurz [00:16:28]:
Yeah, yeah. And I love the point you make about leadership not just being within your organization, but outside of it and how you’re interacting with your referral network, with your community and things like that. That’s really an interesting take.

Scott Mason [00:16:43]:
It’s a pivotal one, one of the components of the signature program that I have, that is, a leadership development program, involves developing charisma. And when you made that point, it couldn’t help but remind me of a very tragic story involving a. An attorney that was in a business networking group that I was in for many years. Every morning at 07:00 a.m. the members of this networking group would stand up and talk about what they did for a living, and they basically did a pitch for themselves. And when he stood up, it was clear he was smart and competent. But you could see people suddenly being interested in their cold scrambled eggs or the windows and the clouds outside suddenly seemed to have these really cool artistic patterns that people were fascinated by, and no one was interested in him. Years later, he called me up to talk to me about something.

Scott Mason [00:17:54]:
And as he was talking to me, he referenced what, you know, what I do. And actually, I realized I couldn’t remember at all. Having heard him speak for years with an utter and complete lack of charisma, he was not positioned to be a leader in this group in my mind or anywhere. I couldn’t bring him business because I couldn’t remember what he specialized in. And so that goes as to the importance, again, of leadership, externally being a necessity to build your business, charisma being an essential part of it, both internally and externally.

Darren Wurz [00:18:37]:
Charisma. Okay, so that’s kind of an interesting, surprising aspect of leadership. How do you acquire charisma if you’re not really a super outgoing person? How do you develop that skill?

Scott Mason [00:18:55]:
I love that question, because it goes as to a fable that everyone seems to hold, which is that charisma is either something you have or you don’t. It can be taught. And I say this, Darren, as someone who empathizes with that boring lawyer that I talked about a few minutes ago, because for decades, I had none. When I would stand up and talk, I’d be angry, dull, bureaucratic. I can’t imagine having inspired anyone or anything to action. And that includes people that I might have encountered in various capacities in the courtroom. And so I had to learn it. I didn’t just have it.

Scott Mason [00:19:47]:
Now I actually teach people how to be charismatic, like I mentioned, as part of my program. And occasionally I will get this question or something similar to it. I’m an introverted, I’m shy, Darren, for those who are not able to see this recording, and even now I’m sitting down, I’m a six foot one, tall, fairly muscular male, and I will get all the time. I’m a 72 year old, five foot one right 98 pound lady with a creaky voice. How can I be charismatic or some version of that? All of these things supposedly keep people from being charismatic. Our stories that we tell ourselves, I tell people the following. First of all, shatter your myths about what charisma is. It’s not just having a big personality or being dramatic.

Scott Mason [00:20:42]:
That’s a lie. So disabuse yourself of that lie. Number two, always be intentional about the message in your head, but most importantly, understand the feelings in your heart. Oh, that’s good. Yes. And then connect them. When the brain and the heart connect, a powerhouse voice valve emerges and charisma gushes out. Finally, and this is pivotal.

Scott Mason [00:21:09]:
No matter what you do, when you learn how to fully self express that way, to have those emotions thrown on the table and thrown on the table with pride. Darren, never, ever back down or look back. And by the way, I learned all of that from greek myths.

Darren Wurz [00:21:39]:
Fantastic. I love that. The head and the heart in connecting those two. I think so often, as business owners, we stay in our heads so much, thinking about all the things we need to do, thinking about the message we need to bring across to our clients and to our prospective clients, and we forget to bring that more central.

Scott Mason [00:22:03]:
Darren, it is so true, especially as attorneys. Law school doesn’t reward charisma. It rewards those who are able to identify issues and quickly in an exam setting, be able to explain them and examine all the sides of the issues and address whatever the relevant points are for that exam. But when you’re out in the world, business is moving fast. There are, especially because of the expanse of technology and the easy access that people have through tools like Zoom or through podcasts or online cles, things like that. All of those things make options for anything that any of us do, easily available to anybody. So, again, is that ability to be the most knowledgeable something that a client or a strategic partner or an employee is necessarily going to understand? They might. But let’s keep it real here.

Scott Mason [00:23:05]:
Many, if not most people make decisions, at least in part, and I would argue big, big, big part, on emotion. Yes, they do. Right. Are they paying enough attention to you? Are they feeling you enough that they want to actually work with you, even if they think you’re smart, if they’re not feeling you, they’re going to that person they connect with. That’s just. That’s just being. That’s the plain truth.

Darren Wurz [00:23:32]:
Right, right. That can be especially true of legal services, where someone may be, knows they need something, but it may seem like going to the dentist it’s like they know they need a service, but they don’t want to do it because it hasn’t been made exciting and interesting and valuable to them.

Scott Mason [00:23:53]:
Exactly. And think about the reputation we as attorneys have. Boring or arrogant? Pompous. Like, one thing that I tell any client who might be inclined this way to avoid at all costs is throwing around sat words. For heaven’s sake, don’t sprinkle your language with Latin. Don’t throw around. Maybe mention it once. The prestigious awards that you want, or the fancy law school, people might think whatever they might about that, but really what they’re going to care about is whether you care about and love them, whether you’re going to be behind them.

Scott Mason [00:24:31]:
On LinkedIn recently got a message from someone talking about how he had worked with, wanted to work, or was considering working with commercial attorneys and turned away from the attorneys that he was working with for a while because they were so pompous and arrogant and difficult to deal with. That’s not charisma. That’s just being irritating.

Darren Wurz [00:24:53]:
Yeah, charisma. So tell us, like, how you would describe charisma in a few words.

Scott Mason [00:25:01]:
Well, I will admit it’s one of those terms that everyone seems to have their own definition of. So we will just use my own definition for the purposes of this show, which is the ability to command attention in order to achieve a positive outcome. And I repeat that because there’s a couple of elements in here that I want to make sure people get the ability to command attention in order to achieve a positive outcome. Hitler had a type of charisma, but he’s. That is called dark charisma. That’s not what we’re talking about. That’s right. Slaughtering people and starting world wars is not a positive outcome.

Scott Mason [00:25:43]:
So just for the purposes of anyone that I work with in this conversation, we’re talking about doing something constructive, like having a worthy client, or your client, whoever they are, succeed in prosecuting their case or being defended, or having a good negotiation outcome or whatever.

Darren Wurz [00:25:59]:
Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Well, Scott, great ideas. Great thoughts. You really have given me, and I’m sure our audience, some really interesting things to think about. Unfortunately, we’re coming to the end of our time, but I want to give you the opportunity to share anything else you’d like to share with our audience.

Scott Mason [00:26:17]:
Just remember that if you are able to throw aside whatever toxic myths about being a lawyer or a leader you might be carrying with you, step into the, and really seek to develop within yourself and within your team resilience connection and creativity. And then as a natural byproduct of that, see your charisma ignite, you will be able to build the sort of financial success that you want that will create a legacy for you, and it will also set you up for a successful exit, which, hey, as we get older, is something that we all need. It’s been a true pleasure to have you here, and if anyone is interested in finding out more about me, go to myfreedomrocks.com. that’s my freedom rocks.com dot all right.

Darren Wurz [00:27:10]:
Well, there you have it. Scott Mason, myfreedomrocks.com the man, the myth and the legend Scott, thanks so much for being here today.

Scott Mason [00:27:19]:
Thank you. You’re a great interviewer.

Darren Wurz [00:27:22]:
I appreciate that. Thanks. Well, a big thank you to Scott for coming here today and telling us all about leadership and greek mythology. And thank you so much for being here with us today. Be sure to check the show notes for the links and for Scott’s information if you want to get a hold of Scott or learn more about him and all the great work that he does. You know this conversation, the big takeaway I have is this interesting connection between charisma and effective leadership and financial success and how that can actually catalyze that for you. Another fascinating idea is that effective leadership can actually help to transform your law firm into a sellable asset. And that’s actually a big part of what we do here at the lawyer millionaire.

Darren Wurz [00:28:09]:
We believe that maximizing your law firm’s value is incredibly important, and you know, it’s your biggest financial asset, probably. And so that is actually a big focus of our financial planning process, helping you maximize your law firm’s value. If you want to learn more about how we do that, go down to the show notes and click the link for an introductory call with me. I’d be happy to tell you all about it. Well, this has been the lawyer millionaire podcast. I’m your host, Darren Wuertz, here to help you expand your business, maximize your profits, and grow your wealth. Thank you so much for listening. Come back and join me next time.

How Leadership Unlocks Financial Success for Law Firm Owners with Scott Mason (Ep. 73)

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