As law firm owners, you are fundamental pillars of the American justice system, diligently contributing to our economy with your entrepreneurial zeal. Yet, a glaring oversight persists in the financial planning industry—your unique financial needs are frequently ignored. In this post, I discuss why law firm owners require a specialized financial framework that brings genuine, measurable value to their businesses and financial futures.

Here is my journey, the challenges I encountered and how those experiences forged a financial model that caters specifically to law firm owners.

From Education to Financial Planning: A Career Redirection

My professional journey began in education. With a dual degree in biology and education from Cedarville University, I spent five years imparting knowledge to 8th and 9th-grade science students in Cincinnati. Despite my dedication to teaching, the financial sector continuously intrigued me, likely because my father and grandfather were both financial planners. Ultimately, my entrepreneurial drive led me to step out of the classroom and into financial planning.

Challenges in Entrepreneurship

Launching my own business was far from simple. I encountered numerous early mistakes, including poor cash flow management and ineffective marketing campaigns. My teaching career had instilled patience and resilience, but running a business demanded an entirely new skill set, particularly in financial planning and marketing.

Law firm owners face similar challenges. The demands of legal practice make it difficult to simultaneously master business growth. Issues such as inconsistent revenue, demanding clients, and operational pressures often lead to reconsidering whether returning to a larger law firm might be the easier path.

Finding My Niche: Attorneys

As my business evolved, I recognized the power of specializing and chose to focus on attorneys. This decision was not arbitrary; many of my initial clients were attorneys. I observed that law firm owners grappled with unique financial challenges, such as fluctuating revenue and time constraints, challenges that traditional financial planning models fail to address.

The Inefficiencies of Traditional Financial Planning

Conventional financial planning models do not cater effectively to the needs of law firm owners. Typically, the process involves a complimentary consultation, followed by transferring assets for management, and then incurring fees. This model presents several inefficiencies:

1. Disruptive Asset Transfers:A disruption to your entire investment strategy.
2. Hidden Fees:Growing fees that do not necessarily correlate with increased value.
3. Lack of Continuous Value:Ongoing service and advice are often minimal despite the fees.

Creating an Effective Financial Model for Law Firm Owners

Our goal was to devise a financial model that stands in stark contrast to traditional methods—a flat fee monthly membership offering consistent, genuine value without necessitating asset transfers. This innovative model presents several advantages:

1. Flat Monthly Fee:Predictable expenses without any hidden charges.
2. Proof of Value:Regulatory requirements compel us to justify our fees by demonstrating the ongoing value we provide.
3. Comprehensive Services:From cash flow management to tax planning, we address all crucial financial aspects specific to law firm owners.
4. Flexibility:No long-term commitments are required. You can opt-out anytime, ensuring you are never trapped.

Effectiveness Through Real-Life Examples

Consider one of our clients in Florida who had not heard from her investment advisor in over two years, despite ongoing fees. Our flat-fee structure eliminates this inefficiency by ensuring regular, meaningful communication and guidance.

Another client managed to save over $150,000 in one year by automating and structuring his draw schedule. This initiative stabilized his cash flow and significantly boosted his savings.

Why This Model is Essential

Assess your current financial needs as a law firm owner. Are you receiving the financial guidance necessary for business growth and achieving your life goals? Our specialized financial planning model is designed to meet these needs, offering the tools to not only grow your business but also reduce stress and enhance your quality of life.

Conclusion

Your law firm deserves more than generic financial advice. Our flat fee monthly membership ensures personalized, effective financial planning to help you thrive. Do not settle for a one-size-fits-all solution; experience the tangible benefits that tailored financial planning can provide.

Are you prepared to take the next step toward financial freedom and business growth? Schedule a call with me today, and let’s collaboratively build your financial future.

Resources

• Book a Call with Darren
• Wurz Financial Services
• The Lawyer Millionaire: The Complete Guide for Attorneys on Maximizing Wealth, Minimizing Taxes, and Retiring with Confidence by Darren Wurz
• LinkedIn: Darren P. Wurz

Transcript:

Darren Wurz [00:00:00]:
Why on earth do we work with law firm owners? That must be interesting. Welcome to the Lawyer Millionaire, where we deliver financial planning insights for ambitious law firm owners so you can enjoy more time, more abundance, and less stress, even if you’re still growing your practice. I’m your host, Darren Wurz, and today I’ll share the story behind why we work exclusively with law firm owners, the mistakes we made early on, and how we’re doing things differently to bring real, tangible value to your business and financial future.

Intro [00:00:35]:
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 Wurz from Wurz Financial Services.

Darren Wurz [00:00:49]:
Believe it or not, I actually didn’t start out in the financial world. My first career was in education. I got a degree in biology from Cedarville University, a dual degree in biology and education, and pursued my first passion, which was education. Got a job teaching 8th and 9th grade science in Cincinnati. Interesting stuff, you know, but I always had a passion about finance, probably because I was raised by a father who was a financial planner, and his dad before him was also a financial planner. So, you know, I kind of wanted to do my own thing, though, being the oldest of two by eight years, you know, the independent child. So I pursued a job in education, but eventually I decided to leave the classroom and dive into entrepreneurship. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.

Darren Wurz [00:01:50]:
I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, from poorly managing cash flow to figuring out how to market myself and doing just the worst ads that anyone has ever seen. I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way, and I’ve learned those the hard way. And I can bring now that expertise and that experience to the clients that we work with now who are law firm owners. So, yes, it was very interesting. I had some very wrong ideas about starting a business as a teacher. I thought that, well, first I taught for five years, and the reason it was five years is because then I was vested in my retirement plan. So I was like, okay, and I’ll have some funds I can use to help me get started or whatever. And as a teacher, you’re paid throughout the summer, but you’re not working through the summer.

Darren Wurz [00:02:46]:
So I was like, great, I’ll have like a month or two months. I can ramp up my business, and by August, things should be humming along. Come again? No, it would try two years before I actually started making a profit. That was one of my first misunderstandings about building a business. And, you know, many of you have been here the same way. What was it like for you starting a business? You know, maybe you just were successful right out from the gate, but I imagine there were some difficult years in the beginning there. And, you know, one of the interesting things about a financial planning business is it’s not as work intensive. So you do have time to learn about business building and marketing and things like that.

Darren Wurz [00:03:34]:
And I did a lot of that. I’m very self taught in terms of business growth and marketing. And not just self taught. Read a lot of books, worked with a lot of really great experts in terms of how I’ve built my own business. But you can’t do that as a law firm owner as easily, because you’re running the business and your time is really in high demand. For me, there were moments. There were moments I hit rock bottom, definitely moments of doubt where I wasn’t sure if I’d made the right decision. Maybe you’ve been there.

Darren Wurz [00:04:10]:
I work with, I have clients who face these decisions, who are facing these decisions, wondering if they should just go back and get a job at a big law firm. But all of those experiences, what I call my rocky story, are what shaped me into the business owner. I almost said law firm owner. No, the business owner that I am today. And they gave me the insights to help other business owners, particularly law firm owners, avoid the same pitfalls. But you know what? As I grew my business, something finally clicked for me. I learned about this idea of niching and really dialing down to a very specific target market, and I decided to focus on attorneys. There wasn’t anything very specific about how I came to that decision.

Darren Wurz [00:04:59]:
A lot of my early clients were attorneys. So I said, well, this seems like it’s a natural fit. Let’s explore, you know, this area. As I started to investigate it, I noticed that this industry, lawyers, law firm owners especially, were being completely overlooked by the financial industry, completely overlooked by financial planners. No one, and I mean no one, was serving them in a truly meaningful way and still isn’t. I mean, we have many imitators, but we’ve really been pioneers in this space of building a financial planning practice that works only with law firm owners here at the lawyer millionaire. So why do we work with law firm owners? Why? Well, there’s a couple reasons why we love law firm owners. We love working with you because you represent, number one, really, the backbone of America as small business owners.

Darren Wurz [00:05:54]:
You’re part of the fabric that keeps our economy going. And in fact, most lawyers do work in small law firms. And what I love about law firm owners is that you guys are growth minded and entrepreneurial, just like me. You know, that’s one of the reasons I wasn’t happy as a teacher. I, you know, one of the reasons, actually, I became a teacher is I wanted, I like designing things. I like designing curriculum. I liked designing lessons. I liked creating projects and things like that.

Darren Wurz [00:06:25]:
So that was a lot of fun for me, but I was bogged down by a lot of the administrative tasks. All the crap that you have to do that is not really related to, you know, the core fundamentals of what you’re focused on. So I just, I discovered that, you know, coming into owning a business and running a business, I was like, wow, you know, I was really meant to do this because it was like, I get to create something. It satisfies that creative gene that I have. And I love that about law firm owners, that law firm owners are very ambitious. I’ve always been very ambitious myself as a straight a student through all of school. It was just very, very high achieving and to a fault. Right.

Darren Wurz [00:07:15]:
You know, but just always really wanted to shine and do really well and achieve, you know, and so I love that. I love the drive, the ambition, the passion that law firm owners have for what they do. And, you know, you’re not just running any old business. You’re running a business that makes a difference. I really believe that law firms are especially small. Law firms are a backbone of our justice system and upholding our justice system. You guys are the fighters out there for people’s rights, protecting the rule of law, helping people in their time of need. You know, maybe I would have been a great attorney in another life.

Darren Wurz [00:07:56]:
I don’t know. But, you know, I realized that law firm owners were facing some very unique financial challenges. I didn’t know this at first when I first started venturing into the legal world, but I’ve learned so much. Having worked with so many law firm owners over the years, inconsistent revenue really seems to be one of the top struggles that law firm owners have. Are you struggling with inconsistent revenue, the big swings, not knowing how your cash flow is going to go, demanding clients, that’s another one, right? And just having a demanding practice in general and the constant pressure to grow your practice while at the same time needing to manage operations. And yet, no one that I saw and I researched, no one was stepping up to help them create a financial strategy that really works for their specific needs. It was a huge gap in service, and I knew that we needed to create something that could make a difference. As I dove deeper into industry.

Darren Wurz [00:08:54]:
I noticed something more disturbing. The traditional model of financial planning was not built for law firm owners. It doesn’t work because here’s how the traditional model works. You get a free complimentary financial planning consultation with a financial planner. They give you a complimentary financial plan, right. It’s just really just a retirement calculator in a fancy PDF or booklet. Then they say, okay, now we need to transfer over your assets. They transfer you transfer your assets over to their custodian.

Darren Wurz [00:09:31]:
Right. And they might say, we don’t take custody of your assets, but they need you to transfer them so then they can manage them. They disrupt your entire investment plan. You move all your investments over to their platform, then they charge a fee on your investments. They say that they’re managing your investments, but really they just stuck you in a model and they’re not doing really anything. And they give you financial planning, but their financial planning is just the first two weeks, and then they travel the world on your fee and you hardly hear from them again, one of my clients is a very successful law firm owner in Florida, and she expressed to me that she had not heard from her investment advisor in over two years. Come again? Hello. Why? And meanwhile, you’re paying this person for what? What value are they delivering to you? And it’s especially bad when a vanguard indexed portfolio would have outperformed their active management with less risk.

Darren Wurz [00:10:40]:
That’s really bad. What are you paying for? What are you getting? Most financial advisors operate on this model, this investment based model. Now, there are some really great investment based financial advisors out there. Don’t want to knock everybody. They’re focused, however, only on managing your assets, mostly. And this creates a problem, right, because once they get the assets under management, then where are you going to go, right. It’s difficult for you to leave. They promise comprehensive financial planning, but often it’s just a sales pitch.

Darren Wurz [00:11:10]:
The truth is they’re more interested in growing assets under their management because that’s how they get paid. And, you know, they didn’t sit right with me. Law firm owners need more than just investment advice, and here’s why. So many law firm owners are cash flow rich, but not asset rich, and so they can’t access higher levels of financial planning that they really need. I work with, with these folks all the time. They’re attracted to me because of this reason, right. They don’t have necessarily a multimillion dollar portfolio to manage, but they’re making, let’s say, $700,000 a year, but they barely have $300,000 saved up. That happens all the time.

Darren Wurz [00:11:54]:
I see law firm owners in that position all the time. They need financial planning. They really do. Let’s define financial planning. They need cash flow management, they need tax planning, they need insurance management, they need profit. They need, they need, they need ongoing advice on every aspect of their finances. They need business planning. They need real strategies.

Darren Wurz [00:12:24]:
They need real comprehensive strategies, not just, here, manage my portfolio. Okay, great. We realize the bigger impact that we have with folks because I can put you in a vanguard portfolio and you’ll do just fine. Right. If you want some more sophisticated strategies, like alternatives and all kinds of fun things, we have access to those and we can get those for you. And we’re experts in those. But, you know, the basics really are the way I make. We make the most difference for our clients is helping them to be more financially successful with how they’re managing their cash flow, with how they’re growing their business.

Darren Wurz [00:13:03]:
That’s better. That’s a bigger difference. If you don’t have the money to invest in the first place, who cares about investment management? But anyway, so we set out to create something completely different. And our model is this. It’s a flat fee monthly membership that’s focused on delivering consistent, real value to law firm owners. So you simply sign up, you become a member, you pay our monthly fee, and you get access to us, to all of our services, to all of our resources, all of our benefits. Just like that. You don’t have to transfer any assets, you just become a client.

Darren Wurz [00:13:38]:
Boom. And you can stay a client as long as you want or as short as you want, as month to month. There’s no long term commitments required. This model. Now, by the way, if you do a monthly membership model, the regulators, SEC, state regulators require you to show proof, to show evidence that you are delivering value on a monthly basis. So we have to actually justify our fee to regulators. We have to show that we have done work for you every single month. How many investment based advisors are doing that? But that’s why we want it that way.

Darren Wurz [00:14:18]:
We want to be focused on delivering monthly real value to our clients, helping them manage cash flow, optimize taxes, maximize profits, create sustainable growth in their business. It’s not about grabbing assets. It’s about giving law firm owners the tools they need to be successful and achieve financial freedom. Our clients have seen the impact of this approach firsthand. We’ve helped so many law firm owners streamline their finances, reduce their stress, and get a clear path towards growing their firm. And that’s the real joy that we have is in working closely with our clients. One client we have just shared with me that the most valuable thing we did was helping him determine and create a schedule and automate his draw for how he pays himself. He pays himself with payroll, but then he also takes a draw and setting that draw up on an automated, consistent by twice a month schedule.

Darren Wurz [00:15:20]:
We did that. And it was just that one thing was a small thing. There’s so much more. I think there’s so many better things that we’ve done for him. But for him, that was just a huge game changer. And now his cash flow is stabilized. He’s growing his investments. He’s growing.

Darren Wurz [00:15:36]:
He has saved over $150,000 in one year. Whereas before he was struggling to find any money to save anywhere and spending $40,000 a year on Amazon. But because we were able to give him structure, to give him counsel, to give him advice, we were able to deliver an amazing outcome. That’s the value, that’s the real value of what we deliver and what we want to do. Helping law firm owners not only grow their businesses, but live better, have less stress, build a life of abundance and freedom. You don’t have to settle for a one size fits all plan to be left feeling like just another number. I challenge you to think, you know, think about. Think about the needs of your law firm and whether or not the financial advice that you are getting is really helping you grow your business and achieve the life that you want.

Darren Wurz [00:16:41]:
Let’s just do a little comparison. Most financial planning firms, the average fee, let’s say, is a 1% fee. Let’s say you have a million dollar portfolio. 1% on a million dollar portfolio, that’s $10,000 a year. You don’t necessarily realize that you’re paying that because it’s coming out of your investments. That’s the trap. Here’s the worst, more nasty trap. It’s reducing your investment growth.

Darren Wurz [00:17:12]:
And it might not seem like it’s reducing your investment growth by much, but a 1% drag on your investments can add up to tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars over time. And that fee is growing. When you hit 2 million, if you’re still at a 1% fee, you’re $20,000 a year. Are they giving you twice as much service and value at that level? Why should they be paid twice as much? I don’t know. Doesn’t make sense to me. And maybe they reduce your fee, but that fee is ever growing, right? With a flat monthly fee, it stays flat you can pay it out of your business as a business expense if we’re doing business planning, right? So it’s just a lot more attractive. Now. If you want to deduct it from your investments, you can.

Darren Wurz [00:18:04]:
But that is going to detract from your growth, right? And we don’t like that. We want to help you grow as much as possible. So think about that. Think about what you really need as a law firm owner. Are you really getting that from your current financial advice? Is that really helping you grow your business and achieve the life you want? At the end of the day, your business should be a source of wealth and freedom, not stress and uncertainty. That’s why we created the model that we have. It’s not about just managing assets. It’s about delivering real, actionable financial planning designed specifically for law firm owners like you.

Darren Wurz [00:18:38]:
And we love it. It’s so much fun because we know what we do. We have an exact blueprint of the value that we provide and the deliverables that we’re going to provide, and we know that they can be life changing for some people. If you need help creating a plan that’s truly tailored to your needs and goals, we are here for you. Let’s talk about how you can grow your firm and maximize your profits. Schedule some time to chat with me. Schedule your introductory call down in the show notes. I’d love to see how we can work together to build your financial future.

Darren Wurz [00:19:17]:
This has been the lawyer Millionaire podcast. I’m your host, Darren Wurz. Thank you so much for joining me here on this journey to expand your business, maximize your profits and secure your financial future. I can’t wait to connect with you again next time. Until then, take care and keep pushing forward.

Outro [00:19:40]:
Thank you for listening to the lawyer millionaire. Click the follow button below 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.