SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Welcome to the sales and marketing playbook Unleashed, the premier podcast for innovative growth strategies, hosted by two seasoned experts. Meet Evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group, a master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience. Evan is not just a consultant, he's a force in sales, focusing on mindset, planning, and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services The Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency, an expert in growth marketing. With 20 years under his belt, Craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, Evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices, and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11

It is 2026 and welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook. I'm Craig Andrews and my partner in crime. Still got it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20

I'm doing great, Craig. Glad to see over the holidays. You didn't lose it. Directionally, we're still there. So and how were your holidays and how is your 2026 kicked off?

SPEAKER_03: 1:30

Well, 2026 has just started, so I'm I'm excited. It's a new year, it's a chance for a new start. Uh last year, the holidays, not too bad. You know, I usually take that time to kind of veg out because we're busy all year, right? So we like to just take it nice and easy, nice and calm, and uh, you know, get ready for the new year in which we are here right now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50

Good. And I know we know you're not one for bragging, but is it is it true that last year was it was the best year in your agency history?

SPEAKER_03: 1:59

It was the second best year, but we haven't had that best year in a long while. So yes, it was a great year last year.

SPEAKER_02: 2:05

So and if folks now so and if folks are you know new new to our podcast, would you like to share with everybody uh your your expertise and what you do and how you help your clients?

SPEAKER_03: 2:17

Sure. Uh Craig Andrews with Beholder Agency. We are a growth marketing agency and we help clients who are frustrated with their marketing strategy and looking for a new direction in terms of building their business year after year. Um we do all types of things from a marketing perspective, uh, but we like to make it cater to what their needs are specifically. Evan, sales sales genius. I'm gonna put that on you this year. Sales genius.

SPEAKER_02: 2:44

I thought we talked about lowering expectations for the podcast a little bit. Uh so I I I am the founder president of polling performance group, and I provide sales training and sales coaching for organizations. So they're working with an agency like yours, leads are coming in, but the salespeople are having a hard time converting the leads, or it's taking way longer than it should from first contact to getting a decision yes or no. A lot of my clients are established businesses, and they just haven't leveraged the good work they've done to get enough referrals, get enough introductions, or the marketing is one pillar, but they should be doing networking, they should be going out there, having one-on-ones with strategic partners, and either the folks aren't doing it or they're not having a lot of success, not getting enough meetings with those ideal kinds of prospects. And I come in with ongoing training and coaching, accountability to give the folks within the organization the tools to go out there and successfully grow the business. Awesome.

SPEAKER_03: 3:50

Now, you and I have a lot in common, and one of the things we have in common is law firms. So I'm gonna have you introduce our guest who is really good with law firms.

SPEAKER_02: 4:00

Sure. I I'm excited to invite uh our guest for today's podcast, uh Ron Boxdeller, the founder of Amada. Uh I think that Ron is going to have a unique perspective. He has worked with thousands of solo and small firms uh over the course of the year. So I've seen a lot of right, has probably seen a lot of wrong as well. But Ron, do you want to introduce yourself and give everybody a little bit of background about you and about Amada?

SPEAKER_01: 4:29

Sure, guys. Thanks for having me on the show and happy new year. Um I started Amada 24, I think it was going on our 25th year. We cater to law firms. We provide with a support system for the legal community, providing office space, staffing, and peer community. Uh, three key things to growing a law firm. Uh, we currently work with about 800 attorneys. So we've kind of over 24 years, we've worked with thousands spinning up new solos, um, you know, bringing uh law firms to Chicago and just uh firms that want to break away or and these days just want to reduce their costs. I think one of the biggest things we offer is flexibility. Let's pay attention to how we can you know scale your expenses with your uh revenues.

SPEAKER_03: 5:09

Awesome. So, in terms of Ron, you've worked with hundreds and hundreds of law firms, right? Um what do you see as the biggest mistake that they make uh when they decide to go out on their own?

SPEAKER_01: 5:21

Yeah, the biggest thing when they start to go on their own is they don't write down their objectives, their goals. What do they want to do? Why are they going on their own? They're just you know, you're an attorney, you could just spin up a law firm without rule. You didn't got to be an LC, you could just spin up a law firm. So so many of them, you know, maybe that's one of the there's a lot of mistakes that happen. So many don't even get incorporated. So now they got personal liability if something goes wrong. So that's that's number one. But number two, and probably the I mean a huge mistake is they try to do it all themselves. They think I'm I you know I've been practicing, I've been at this firm, I can just do all these things, I'm gonna keep my costs really low. Yeah, then as we all see, and you know, Evan, we could chat about this forever as the roller coaster starts. They've left their firm, they had these clients, but no client lasts forever, not even in my business. So, how are we gonna replace those clients? And that's where they're like, Oh, I didn't think through that. Now what do I do? And that leads to this stress, and uh, you know, it becomes the job becomes stressful, and you don't like doing it.

SPEAKER_02: 6:17

Yeah, or or how frequently have you seen somebody is absolutely sure that you know four or five clients are gonna come with them, so they go and start their own practice, and then all of a sudden those clients get cold feet, things happen, and then those claims don't come along at all, or they don't last nearly as long. Or I had one client last year um in the IP space, um, and he too late realized that the client was happy to come along with them because they weren't paying their bills at their old firm. So they were happy to start up with a new attorney, have a new attorney do lots of work whose bills they weren't gonna pay.

SPEAKER_03: 6:51

So with that, with that in mind, um, to that to that point we're at, what would you suggest in your situation that somebody would do in this based on the office suggestions?

SPEAKER_01: 7:01

Yeah, I I I go back to I think you need a coach. You go through life, you go through your learning, right? You always got someone that's there, you got a mentor that's helping you. So if you're gonna go on your own, first of all, get a coach. It could be it could be myself, it could be a business coach, it could be another attorney who can mentor you that's done it before, but get someone you can bounce ideas that you can talk as your confidant to share things with and get ideas of you know what they've seen before. You know, in my case, spinning up anywhere from 10 to 20 law firms a month, we could talk to them about here's what we've seen in your practice area. Uh, got an estate planning attorney that's getting ready to kick off. He's actually moving back from the East Coast to Chicago. So we kind of went through with him all the things we got to make sure he takes care of before. And also let's focus on keeping your expenses low. But that's the first thing. Get a coach, get someone that can help you, and then write down your goals. Why are you doing it? I mean, you're already making money, so it can't be just to make money. Define what you want to get out of uh starting up your own practice.

SPEAKER_02: 7:55

So, and Ron, what what are some of the things that you see that attorneys take for granted when they're with the firm? And yeah, whether it's administrative support or other things that when when they open their own shingle, yeah, when when they start working with you, they're like, oh, wait a second. How did we how do they do this? How do they, yeah, what what what are some of those administrative things that that are maybe a surprise to attorneys who are starting to open their own shingle that can take up their time and their bandwidth if they don't get help, don't get support?

SPEAKER_01: 8:27

I think it's that's everything you just said, it's the administrative burdens of I gotta have a computer, I gotta have internet, I gotta have, you know, I gotta protect my client's data, right? I gotta still follow the ABA uh rules of conduct. So I gotta make sure that I'm protecting my client information. What kind of security am I gonna implement? Who's gonna answer my phones or or what's gonna answer my phones or how are phones gonna be handled? How are clients gonna come in? You know, what's gonna be my email setup? How am I gonna make copies? How many if I need to print something, I need to scan something, how am I gonna do that? All these administrators that that if you're leaving a firm, someone's always been taking care of for you. I always like to refer to the attorneys that are leaving Kirkland and Ellis, one of the world's biggest firms. Love these attorneys because when they're leaving, they know what they don't know and they don't want nothing to do with it. So they join a MADA and we are their back office. They got to be some of our best clients, is because they just want to practice law. They want us to do everything else that encompasses running that law for them. Um, so that's kind of the biggest thing. So they don't they think they have an idea, and then they over-research. That's I guess we can get into that. Is if they're gonna do it themselves, they're gonna spend hundreds of hours researching a million things that you know, someone that's already been doing it has researched it a thousand times. They could just tell them here's what the best top three here is all you need.

SPEAKER_02: 9:40

So if you want to make an attorney sick, have them write down how many hours they've spent, then have them multiply that by what they're currently billing to give them an idea of what it's costing them to do all of that administrative work, do all of that research.

SPEAKER_01: 9:56

Yeah, we could have had my partner join this call. He practices law, he's been practicing for 20 years and he's spun up his firm two different times. And we just laugh about you know, now he works at Amada, so he's my partner in Amada, but we laugh about all the mistakes he's made twice. So he didn't learn the first time, he learned again. So now when he's talking to these attorneys that are starting up, he's just telling them, Look, I've done this twice. Don't don't make my mistakes. Let me tell you what I did, and here we can help you avoid these mistakes.

SPEAKER_02: 10:24

Ron, you're you were talking about my ideal clients. Craig will tell you I am best with slow learners.

SPEAKER_03: 10:30

Wait, are you talking about personal actually? I think I think to that point, and I know one of the things Ron and you and I have talked many times. I don't I don't want to limit you to just your office spaces, right? I want to talk about the virtual side because I am a person who works with cunt clients across the country. Evan works with cunt clients across the country. We both may have to have presence in different cities, depending on what the client is. Talk about how Amada helps with presence beyond Chicago.

SPEAKER_01: 11:04

Yeah, let's kind of go back. So, you know, in our show, the 1958 lawyer, the reason I named it the 1958 lawyer, because that's in 1958, the ABA put out a pamphlet that talked about attorneys are making about the same amount of money per hour as a lawyer, or I'm sorry, as in a plumber. And so we need to look at a different way to bill. So that's where they came up with the billable hour. So that was like the last major change, at least in my view, in the practice of law. So if you come fast forward to today, the last since the pandemic, we've seen major changes in the practice of law. So the idea that you need to have a physical office for everyone on your team, that's a it's a waste of money. That's a old, outdated concept and mindset. Today you can practice law, you still need some kind of a presence. So in Chicago, you need a presence, you need a physical presence of some sort, which is what you're talking about, Craig, the virtual office programs. Um, that you you can your mail is going there because you don't want to give up your personal um address to anyone. You don't want to give out necessarily you try not to give up your personal cell phone, but you want to have someone answering your phones. You want to be able to get mail there, and you don't want to have to come into the office every day to open the mail or deposit checks. You want someone that can do those, and that's what allows you with the virtual office where you're paying a couple hundred to three hundred dollars a month to have that presence and still have access to an office, a conference room as you need it to meet with your clients. A drastic savings in in your bottom line, but it also allows you freedom. Now you're not wasting how many of those hours, Evan, that we could take away that you don't have to multiply times your hourly rate that you no longer have to spend on administrative work if you don't need it.

SPEAKER_02: 12:41

Or driving in the car to a physical office or doing those kinds of things um when you don't need to. I I've actually you know Craig knows this uh managing partner as well. The managing partner who was lamenting as COVID was coming out, he had 15,000, 20,000 square feet of office space, was trying to force his attorneys back, and they basically said, We'll go somewhere else. Yeah, if you make us physically come back to the office, yeah, but we're an hour and a half away. Well, we don't need to do it, we're not gonna do it anymore.

SPEAKER_01: 13:12

Right. If times have changed, so there's major changes going on in the practice of law, just like any other business or industry, there's major changes going on. We got great upheaval with AI, there's so many things that are coming out. We don't necessarily can't predict the future like maybe 20, 30 years ago, it was a little slower moving. Things are moving really fast now in the practice of law. So, you know, gear yourself up for that and and try to minimize your long-term commitments.

SPEAKER_02: 13:37

So going back to something that you said before, uh, in terms of you know, it not making sense for attorneys to make copies and do those kinds of things. What are some of the things that lawyers should be delegating sooner than they think and things that they should be keeping their hands out of so that they can do a better job building up their practice?

SPEAKER_01: 13:58

Yeah, I say this. If it's not billable, if you're not billing your client for it, you shouldn't be doing it yourself. It's fine to oversee and inspect, but someone else should be doing it. And we can go back to you, get strategic partners, have an accounting firm, have someone that's doing your bookkeeping. You don't need to be doing your own bookkeeping, overview, oversee what they're doing, but don't spend your time doing it. Definitely shouldn't be out making copies, you know. Maybe not even initial drafts. You know, with AI today, you can use a product like a next Lexus Nexus, which we partner with, and use someone else, someone else's resources to spin up an initial draft, and then you take it from there, then you could take and review it, review the citations, make sure everything's correct. But there's no reason for you to spend two, three hours doing an initial draft. You could spend an hour or two hours reviewing and make sure it's correct and it's what you want, but reduce your time. Um, don't just researching anything that has to do with having an office space, you should not be doing those things. You don't have to. There's resources out there that you can partner with that can save you a ton of time, and time is money when you're in the practice of law. So that is what time is your product.

SPEAKER_02: 15:05

Yeah, one of the concepts that I'll talk with my clients about is the difference between pay time and no pay time. Pay time is the stuff that you're able to either bill for or the prospecting things that you're doing that are directly leading to bringing in clients, and no pay time is everything else. And if you're spending too much time doing those no pay time activities, you're either working 60, 70 hours a week or not nearly as profitable as you should be.

SPEAKER_01: 15:30

I'm glad you brought up the two things that are pay time, which is prospecting and finding new clients, because that's the one thing that so many attorneys that I work with don't want to do. So instead of doing those things, they find busy work, which is administrative work, fill their time to justify in their head that they're working. But that's really not working. They need to be out finding those clients, those prospects, building those relationships. I would say within a MODA, you know, or 800 so attorneys that are currently clients, they're getting 80% of the work from referrals from other attorneys. Yeah. Just go out and build relationships with other attorneys. If you're a uh probate attorney, you should know a bunch of personal injury attorneys because when they have a case that has a minor, they have to open a probate account. That's instant business for you. So find attorneys you can compliment each other and get work from them. That's where you spend your time. And if you're not doing that, then you're actually practicing law. I'm glad you brought that up, Evan. It's huge. Stay off the roller coaster ride, which creates the stress and it just makes you miserable.

SPEAKER_02: 16:29

Right. And that kind of goes back to something you said at the beginning. When attorneys go out and first start their own practice, they should have a plan. They should have a goal for how much revenue they want to bring in. How many files is that? How many clients is that? How many folks do we need to be in front of? And then working that plan versus the strategy that unfortunately I see a lot of folks who start their own firms have, which is hoping and praying. Those aren't really good sustainable strategies if you want to build a good long-term practice.

SPEAKER_01: 17:00

Makes you feel good for short term. That's right.

SPEAKER_02: 17:04

And I don't have to talk to strangers when I'm hoping and praying.

SPEAKER_03: 17:07

Right. And I think that ties in as well from a marketing perspective when you think about this plan, right? So having an appropriate plan applies in marketing, applies in office spaces, it applies in sales, because at the end of the day, we all could be going down three different roads, which never leads to growth. That's just a bona fide fact. And I think that I love what you have going here. Before we round out and finish, if you can give us kind of one more story, I know I'm putting you on the spot here, a story in terms of somebody who's found you've had success, and still with you.

SPEAKER_01: 17:39

Yeah, and I got a great story, and I'll bring this, I'll tie this into marketing. So I got a law firm that found me maybe Josh, eight years ago. Became great friends. So he built his firm. He had a handful of attorneys at that time. He has, I think there's 18 total attorneys now in the firm. They're an Amada client because he just loves the convenience. He don't he's learned that he don't want to deal with anything administrative, and he don't want to hire an office manager, which is$70,000,$80,000 a year. So he avoids all those expenses, stays with the Mada, runs his firm very efficiently, but he does a lot of his own marketing. This is where it really gets funny because we're uh two weeks ago. So during the holidays, we went out for dinner and he started talking to me about how uh leads have dropped off. And he's got a great online presence. He's done a really, really nice job, but things have changed, and I think things have changed with AI, and that's where he's targeting. Like what has happened to my, you know, I look at his phone volume where he was doing 11, 1200 minutes uh a month in incoming calls that we answer for him. Um, and that's just how long the receptionist is on the phone talking to his clients, doing onboarding. Wow, so it dropped down to about in November and December. We've seen both months were any like 450 to and almost 600. Major drop, the only thing he can isolate as the change was AI and how people are searching has changed. The problem, as I talked, told him during our dinner, was you're not using a professional marketing firm that can see what's going on well in advance and help you adjust. You're trying to do it yourself, which means you're spending at least 20 hours a week. You know, besides spending up new new new marketing materials. Um but you're also trying to focus on that, and that's just it's not what you do. You're a great lawyer, and he's a very good lawyer. He's an excellent boater, he's a great pilot. I mean, he's got a he's you know, he's a little renaissance man, he can do most everything, but he really doesn't understand what's going on in marketing, and he needs a marketing firm that he needs outsourced resources that are experts at what they do.

SPEAKER_03: 19:44

Yeah, and I think that's part of the change that you referenced earlier in the conversation in terms of since COVID, right? The world's different. You know, I'm a big Marvel fan, so the snack that happened in Marvel changed everything, right? Um and so we we have to look at the world differently. Now, from a marketing perspective and a sales perspective and an office perspective, just from the case of how can we be more efficient and do more work is a huge deal across the board.

SPEAKER_01: 20:11

Absolutely. You bring in, understand your sales cycle, understand how you're going to continue to get new clients because no client lasts forever. And let's say it's business B to C, if that's the kind of you're a divorce attorney, uh, you know, in certain areas, your clients are with you for I don't know, six months to two years, right? And then that deal, it's it's over, the case is over. You got to have someone else backfilling that. So you always got to be able out there talking and understanding how to do that. But you also have to have that marketing piece that's coming in and saying, Okay, I got someone else, I got other resources that are even when I'm not focused on marketing, I'm marketing. Other resources helping you with those things, so you bring in all those things, and then and then and then we look at the administrative of running the firm. Don't do that, just focus on bringing in new clients and getting the work done. I love the simplicity, I love it.

SPEAKER_03: 21:00

I love the simplicity.

SPEAKER_02: 21:02

Okay, keep it simple, stupid.

SPEAKER_01: 21:04

That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_03: 21:05

That's a huge thing around here.

SPEAKER_01: 21:08

But you bring that up. So I I was a Marine in my, you know, coming out of high school, that's all I ended up playing for my college. And KISS was like a big uh acronym because you know, none of us were very smart. Like, look, just this is all you have to do, and that was like, okay, I got that.

SPEAKER_03: 21:25

Exactly. And so, Ron, we're getting ready to break away here. Give us three tips. Well, first off, first give us a brief understanding of your podcast so that we can and where where they can find it. Secondly, give us three tips that a break uh law firm can do when it comes to a MATA.

SPEAKER_01: 21:43

So 1958 lawyer, you can actually get anywhere you get your podcast, Apple, uh Spotify. Um, the idea behind it is we talk to other lawyers who have built up their firm. We talk to uh service providers that assist attorneys on how they assist, so you can get a little background. But the big thing is that we got a show coming up later this week, and it talks about an attorney who's been with us seven years and he was broke. He actually comes out and talks about having 200,000, 250,000 in debt and not telling anyone and just having to deal with that as a stress level until recently, this past year in 2025. He's he landed a couple big cases, so he's finally out of debt, and he feels like everything's changed. Now he can pick and choose his cases. So it's there's so much more to it. Um, so that's what you learn about, and that's gonna get talked to. You learn about other attorneys that have gone through things and understand some of the pain points they had. That's what our show's about. Um, three things that I think you when you're starting your firm is first of all, write down what you want to accomplish with your firm. Once you can understand what you want to do with your firm, now you can focus on how to accomplish those things. So write things down, set out your goals, find the resources that are going to help you do things so you're not spending your own time doing those things. If it's not practicing law or finding new clients, you shouldn't be doing it other than reviewing the work that others do. That's a that's a that's a huge thing. And then have fun, don't forget to enjoy your life. I tell people I wrote a book all about it, you know, have fun when you're out there uh living your life. Write your goals of personal goals. What do you want to accomplish? Those are very, very important. So don't just spend time being a lawyer and get burnt out, which we see all too often. Enjoy life, don't forget about that. That's why you're doing it.

SPEAKER_02: 23:19

So and Ron, how how can people find you? How can they find Amada?

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

AmadaOffices.com, that's our um email or website. Uh, you can always reach out to me directly, Ron B at amadoffices.com. Um, which I think I'm on LinkedIn, so just look up Ron Boxeller, you'll find me. We've been doing it 24 years. We've got a great presence, and we got a you know, a lot of a lot of firms we've worked with over the years.

SPEAKER_02: 23:42

So, and I've got to say, but before we wrap up, I am a personal client of Ron's. Uh, I I use their virtual assistant services and has been a lifesaver for me and my business.

SPEAKER_03: 23:51

I we appreciate it. All it all that means, Ron, is that when I call him, he actually answers the phone to me.

SPEAKER_01: 23:58

That's what that really means. Well, that's been great. It's gonna be a great year. I wish you guys all the best in 2026. You the same.

SPEAKER_02: 24:06

Best to you as well.

SPEAKER_03: 24:07

So, as always, Evan, we're the sales and marketing playbook. And what this year, if you don't pick up anything after all the other times we've done this, this is the play, this is the podcast that gives you the plays to be successful and grow your business. That's what our focus is this year. And if you didn't pick that up last year, you better pick it up this year because it's a brand new year. Evan, you got anything else to say before we break out?

SPEAKER_02: 24:28

Just keep it simple, stupid, put into action what we recommend, and you'll have your best year ever.

SPEAKER_03: 24:34

Boom. That's a promise. I'm Craig. That's Evan. That's Ron. I hope that's in the right order. Uh, and we will talk to you guys next time on the sales and marketing playbook. Keep winning. Bye-bye now.

SPEAKER_00: 24:51

Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting, and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the sales and marketing playbook unleashed on all major podcast platforms and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.