Husband and wife Attorneys Brent and Teri Westbrook share how tracking key data enabled them to double their law firm's success, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn their tips for transitioning from lawyer to business owner as they discuss the entrepreneurial journey that took them from 12 to 40 cases a month. 

Tune in to the Your Practice Mastered podcast as MPS and Richard James talk with this impressive legal duo about the mindset and strategies that grew their firm.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: a million. I can remember it was COVID. I'm pretty sure. Um, it's all running together, but I think it was COVID and like things were just stagnant. You know, we realized when we can look at it from a bigger picture, we were gaining market share and all these other things, but we reached a point where we were like, Do we, how far do we want to keep pressing this?

Do we get smaller instead of being in growth mode? And that's something that we've always, you know, tried to figure out and balance is like, how big do we want to get? Do we want to scale it back a little bit? Things felt really overwhelming in that time, but I think stayed the course and learned a lot of lessons.

All kind of plus one on that. I mean, I think that when, you know, the nice thing about it, when we were going through that journey and trying to make these decisions, we were coming at it from a place of trying to maintain profitability. So it was more of a, I know I can be profitable at this. Top line number, you know what I mean?

Do we scale a few things back and make some adjustments, maintain a little better profitability till we kind of wait this out. And then, you know, the decisions you're making once you get the systems in place are better decisions to have to make, you know, but there's always going to be, you know, setbacks and you just readjust and keep plugging along.

I think.

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MPS: Hey, Law Firm Owners. Welcome to the Your Practice Mastered Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm MPS.

We've got with us two amazing guests that have a wonderful story, husband and wife. Both attorney team Brent and Teri Westbrook. And I'm excited for today's conversation. Michael, how about you?

MPS: Oh, I'm super stoked. And Brent and Teri, welcome on. Super excited to have you guys here.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Hi, thank you. Thank you for having us good to see both of you

MPS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, look, one of the things we like to kick off and you guys can do this individually or together, but let's start by giving the audience a little icebreaker. What's something that maybe not everybody knows about you?

But that's what we do now. And it's great. We love kind of being out of ways and having that as our second, you know, not job, but, you know, how about you?

Yeah, I was going to say the same that we were in St. Louis and when the pandemic hit, we moved out to a farm and we're on 40 acres and just kind of leaned into farm life with our daughter, Savannah.

She's seven. Yeah.

Richard James: So Savannah digging it.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she loves it. Yeah.

Richard James: So is it like an active farm where you raise your own food or no? Like,

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I mean, we could. I'm we tend to name the animals and then we eat them.

Richard James: I was just going to say like, you do that, it's no naming the animals, right? So I was wondering how Savannah dealt with that.

We bottle fed our cows, so like, they're used to us. We can like, go out in the field, call them, they come up to us, we pet them, like, they're like big dogs. Yeah.

Richard James: That's great.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: But we get eggs from the chickens, so, we have a garden. So.

Richard James: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that we want to eat Fred. Yep. I get it.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Yeah. No. Yeah.

MPS: Yeah.

Richard James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

MPS: That's awesome.

Richard James: All Sorry. I just took a weird turn there, Michael, go ahead. I derailed

MPS: alright. That's what you do on these podcasts, you know. No, I'm just kidding. So, Brent and Teri, why don't you tell us a little bit, obviously, there's probably a lot to it, but some of the broad strokes of Your entrepreneurial journey as a law firm owner. Why don't you give everyone just a little context?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I'll defer to you, Brent. Okay.

All of those things. And then, you know, we decided to make a move. I think in a bankruptcy firm where you're doing mostly consumer bankruptcy cases, at some point, you're probably going to go out on your own, you know, at least a lot of lawyers are if they kind of feel that entrepreneurial bug.

And I certainly did. So, we came we moved, bought a commercial building here in St. Charles and I started out and, you know, just had that spirit of, we're gonna do whatever it takes to succeed. I was in here doing direct mail campaigns on Saturday, every Saturday. I'd get the list, you know, sign my own letters And address them.

So, and Teri really had or at least one of us kind of had to be available because we were running to doctor's appointments all the time. You know, we just couldn't, you know, be in court every morning. Hey judge, sorry, another doctor's appointment, you know? So, when she was doing that, daughter was sick.

And I felt like, you know, once we came out and started learning about the systems to implement. And really we learned all of the information that I was trying to get on my own as applied to a law firm where it was just, it really I think shortened our progression time to, yeah, just to grow and have a better work, life, balance as we're raising our daughter.

Richard James: So a couple of comments, Michael, real quick, a plus one. First of all, like that entrepreneurial journey, you know, Brent, that you talked about, about on Saturday, stuffing envelopes, putting direct mail out. I mean, like, that is so stereotypical of the entrepreneur heart, right? And so that there are other attorneys out there that are just like you, that are, you know, they're doing the same stuff.

They're doing whatever they have to do. And maybe it's not direct mail today because it's not as sexy as it once was. Maybe they're trying to figure out a Facebook ad campaign or go on TikTok or whatever it is for them, right?

But they're spending their Saturdays trying to figure out how to grow their business because, and they're going, which brings me to my second point, they're going out to the world to find this place of information where they can figure out, okay, this is what business owners should do. And then they try to translate that into what that means for a law firm.

But I'm curious, Teri, while Brent was going through this. So you have a bar card too. Were you practicing? Did you have a job to bring it? You know, what did you do? Did you race Savannah like full time? Like what did your life look like? And how did you finally come into the fold?

Everything was good, but we didn't really have a need to bring me in and I was scared to let go of my job and my income and all those things, but then when Savannah was born and my job required me to be in court like five days a week, and I couldn't do that anymore. And so then I paired back to part time where I wasn't doing court appearances, but I was doing correspondence, discovery, other things on the side and did that for a while.

Just to kind of keep things afloat by that time we enjoyed the program. We had started learning about these processes. So while I wasn't working with Brent, I was kind of building things out on the back end. Like while he was doing direct mail, I was doing all the other stuff. And so we got to a place then where I could officially go in with Brent full time.

Richard James: Right before the pandemic.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and we've been full time ever since. I don't really do the lawyering with Brent, I do more of office management and processes and workflows and those sorts of things.

Richard James: I dare ask, which do you think is more important? The lawyering or the processes and the business management, office management?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I think they're both necessary.

Richard James: There you go. Good answer. Good answer.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I mean, one can't exist without the other. Not well anyway. And so my parents were, you know, they've owned a business my whole life. My grandpa started it, my parents run it now. I was used to, you know, couples working together. I was used to working Saturdays, working Sundays, having dinner at 9 PM as a family, like, I grew up in and around that, so it's just been a natural.

Yeah. It works well for us.

Richard James: Michael, I know this is about Brent and Teri, but I'm curious, you're an entrepreneur and you obviously grew up in a family where you've saw that too, right? Work Saturdays, work Sundays, work together. How did that affect your view? You're now going to be married. And I think you and your fiance are almost never apart.

Is that right? Did that affect your view as you were growing up as well?

MPS: Well, obviously, for me, it actually helped gain perspective on how things should look to an extent, and also maybe how things don't, shouldn't look in some areas too, right?

Richard James: Are you suggesting that my wife, my East Coast Italian bride and I ever fought or argued or had disagreements in the workplace?

MPS: No, I couldn't fathom that. Yeah. No. The funny thing is, it's. Go ahead, Teri.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Oh no, go ahead. Go ahead.

She doesn't necessarily have an interest in this kind of stuff. She likes to do what she does and we built a system that works for us. Same thing, Brent and Teri sounds like for you guys, you built a system that works for you. You both have your roles in what you do in the practice and you're both very good at doing those things.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: When I think what we realized or the unintended consequence of going out on your own and being sort of entrepreneurial minded is that once you go out on your own, you realize it's a lot harder than you thought it was going to be. But then you also realize you're officially unemployable because while it's 10 times harder, you also are probably never going to be able to transition back to like clock punching and asking for vacation and all of those things.

I've often thought too that it's harder, but it's also better. I don't know if that sounds weird, but it, you know, but that's how I would summarize it.

Richard James: I remember when Michael told me he wanted to be an entrepreneur, this was at like age 12, but that's what he told me. And I remember sitting him down and telling him, listen, you know, this is great. Congratulations. But you officially made a choice in a career where you'll work 80 hours a week for yourself to avoid work 40 hours a week for somebody else.

Right?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: 100%. Oh, yes.

Richard James: And so it's just the reality of being an entrepreneur. Now, look, we can build the systems in a way that we can gain our freedom. And that's what this is all about for sure. But Michael, sorry, I've derailed us so much. Where do you want to go next?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: My god, there have been a million.

Oh, yeah.

I can remember, it was COVID, I'm pretty sure. It's all running together, but I think it was Covid and like things were just stagnant, you know, we realized when we can look at it from a bigger picture, we were gaining market share and all these other things, but we reached a point where we were like, do we, how far do we want to keep pressing this?

Do we get smaller instead of being in growth mode? And that's something that we've always. You know, trying to figure out imbalances like how big do we want to get? Do we want to scale it back a little bit, things felt really overwhelming in that time. But I think we stayed the course and learned a lot of lessons figured out how to convert virtually and do all of these other things, and I think that it, I don't know anybody that's gone through that doesn't run their business better, that isn't a better attorney, A better business owner.

Hundred percent. Yep.

I'll kind of plus one on that. I mean, I think that when you know, the nice thing about it when we were going through that journey and trying to make these decisions, we were coming at it from a place of trying to maintain profitability.

So it was more of a, I know I can be profitable at this top line number. You know what I mean? Do we scale a few things back and make some adjustments, maintain a little better profitability till we kind of wait this out. And then, you know, the decisions you're making once you get the systems in place are better decisions to have to make, you know, but there's always going to be, you know, setbacks and you just readjust and keep plugging along. I think.

Richard James: I'm curious,

Brent and Teri Westbrook: You can get it done, I'm sorry.

Richard James: Go ahead, Teri, please.

Well, what is the problem? How can we adjust it in this new climate? And I can't I would just have felt really lost and blind without having those numbers that we follow to keep us on track.

Well, and like afterwards, how important is it that you have, you know, six months of expenses set aside when you go through something like that?

Like it just hits you over the head with, you know, all of those things we know, you know, it really, you know, it's, this is why that's important and why, you know, in a good time you're, you know, you're not necessarily seeing the importance of those things.

Oh, well, here's why this decision now has this ramification, right? So, you know, as a business owner, there's more, always more and more problems but I want to come back to one interesting thing.

Well, actually I have two questions. First question is, okay, you decided to, nah, you didn't say keep it small, keep it all but to scale accordingly, do you still maintain this mentality now that you feel like you've got a machine that you can steer based on the information, or have you started to now see that the market has changed? You want to open it up again and start to grow again? What's your mentality there?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I think we're ready to grow. Yeah.

I think for those few years, we were just, you know, Scared to bring people on. And then it was, you know, so up and down, we didn't want to have to make decisions to let people go then. And so now that we feel confident that things are on a different path and trajectory, I think we're ready to let it rip.

Richard James: So, Michael they brought up one other point that I'm curious you could pivot off of wherever you want to go, but they talked about, you know, the numbers the information, the dashboards, the whatever, the statistics that we're able to tell them, we'll call them KPIs that were led them to know what was happening in their business.

You know, we work with attorneys day in and day out. And a lot of times we run into attorneys that that may be listening to this, that, you know, they're intelligent people. They always got straight A's. They were the smartest person in class. They're looked upon for advice and they don't want to be wrong or they don't want to admit they don't necessarily know something.

Why do I need to know how to have these numbers in this dashboard and these simple KPIs we're talking about?

MPS: Yes, and I think what I find is that just that it is that simple. And I think that to an extent, some attorneys believe it's almost too good to be true because it's so simple that they attempt to overcomplicate it. And then what overcomplication does is leads. to indecision or lack of action because now we've overcomplicated it.

Now it's difficult to achieve. So I think just understanding and realizing it really is that simple from a numbers perspective, at least to just start taking the numbers, start reviewing them. Start jotting them down and you don't have to overcomplicate it, right? You don't have to go get fancy software to do this first.

Richard James: So Brent and Teri, as a plus one on that, like if you, if an attorney is sitting here listening to you and they're like, Oh, well, yeah, I get it. You said lead set shows hires. Well, that makes common sense. Why do I have to know that? Or they're pooing the ease of it or they think that they already know everything there is to know.

And they're not, you know, ready to make that change. What do you say to them? And did you feel a little bit like that too? I don't know. I'm curious.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: So, I mean, I'm sure I'd heard that at some point, but I certainly was not focused on it. And I wasn't, you have to really get that intense focus on the key drivers of your business and know that the work you're putting in is going to efficiently move the needle and you know, in a law practice, there's so much going on.

Yeah, I think that it's, I think that if you asked any attorney that doesn't track those things, which is a lot of attorneys and that's, we all start, we were the same. I mean, everybody starts there. Like, what's your close rate? They'd be like, Oh, 80, 85 percent for sure. Maybe low.

MPS: Thank you for saying that. Yes.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: It's like humble pie when you're like, Oh, they said they were going to call back. They didn't call back. That's weird.

I mean, I know so many people that have spent way too much on PPC and all these other things. And if you don't track it and you're not paying attention, you're just throwing your money away. So...

Richard James: I've heard say that before.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Yeah, been.

Richard James: you've actually seen people in our world in our environment that you know what they're spending money on isn't working because you're 95 percent coming because you have all the data because you've been looking at it and tracking it and you're going they're not paying attention to something because they're spending money in an area that's just not working the way that it used to and you know what's true because yes, Because you have the information available to you, is that correct?

If you see that, you know, this month is okay, but we have no set appointments, you know, that's down or that, well, we have all these set appointments, but nobody showed up. What happened? You know, you can kind of forecast like it's going to be a bumpy November if we don't fix these issues and figure out what's going on.

And, or conversely, you're like, Oh my gosh, we have how many consultations this month? Like, You know, and then figure out we might need more staffing to process these cases in the coming months. So it just allows you to have a better overview of what's to come.

Richard James: You know, I'm gonna sound like the old guy in the room, right? But I remember that Dan Kennedy used to tell me this story about how before technology for sending direct mail pieces out and all this fancy equipment, he had a cat that he would just have him stick the tongue out and lick the envelope, right?

And so I used to have to get gobs and gobs of data out of the CRM, send it over to somebody overseas, have them put it in Excel and do all their Excel magic with it and send it back like every night so that we can have a feasible report and there was no dashboard or anything fancy. And so, when I look back at what we had to do back then to make things work and what's available at the law firm owners fingertips today from a technology perspective, there's almost no excuse to not have access to this information. Would you agree with that statement based on where technology has come?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Oh yeah.

Absolutely.

I mean, it can save you so much time for so little cost of investment, like spend a couple hours on a weekend. You can figure it out.

MPS: Yeah. I think that's spot on. I mean, there's, it's also crazy to just think about how far technology has come in just that period of time. It doesn't seem like that long, but wow, when you put it that way and you had to send your data out to someone to put it on Excel, they get that dashboard back.

That's kind of wild to fathom.

Richard James: Yeah, Michael. I know you're the one that's into a technique. You're the one that's like, what do you mean the AI machine didn't just take all that and do it for you? I don't understand why that didn't Yes, I know.

MPS: Right.

Richard James: I know, count your blessings, someday you'll be telling this story about how you had to tell the AI what to do and your kids, your grandkids are going to go, what do you mean you had to tell it?

Doesn't it just know what to do? Right?

MPS: Right.

Richard James: Yeah.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I think there's been several. I think we keep, you know what I mean, you keep having those aha moments, but, you know, to be honest, I think, one of the biggest AHA moments that we had was when we went out to Arizona the first time. I mean, I really was when we went to a partner's club meeting and started learning about the systems, I went from a place of like, Oh my God, how am I going to, you know, I mean, how am I going to continue to grow this thing to like, Wow, we're really lucky to have this opportunity and this is, you know, what we can make happen, you know, in our business and it can, you know, serve us and kind of accomplish what we wanted to accomplish and felt a lot better about it.

And I think that. and groups like this are more common now, but five years ago it wasn't quite as common. And I think for attorneys, it's like you almost needed permission, somebody to give you permission to focus on the business as much as you focus on the lawyering.

And I felt like when we went, we got, we kind of got that confirmation that's what we should be doing. And we came back and We set a goal. That was what I was thinking of for the AHA moment of filing 20 cases a month, like, which, you know, now is kind of funny, but at the time, like that was, and Brent was like, we'll never do it.

There's no way. And I was like, yeah, we'll do it.

Richard James: How many cases were you filing when you set that goal?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Well.

Maybe 12 to 15, probably a month. I would guess. Yeah.

Richard James: And so you set it at 20, you thought that was never gonna happen. And how many did you file on average this year?

Richard James: Okay. So, yeah. Setting a goal. What a great, I do have a question for the attorneys listening. And this isn't a promotion of our world, never. I want to make sure that this is clear. You can go to anywhere, but how important is it for you believe for them to plug in some groups somewhere where there are other law firm owners, not just attorneys, but law firm owners that are trying to figure this stuff out together.

How important was it to have peers around you to try to guide you while you're going through this?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Huge. Yeah. I mean, you know, like we were talking about earlier, we've probably heard or read, you know, What we're supposed to do or something that may work in our business, but the key is the execution of it. So when you have a group that.

I love poop Cat..

yeah, that whole.

Richard James: Shout out to Charles.

And it makes it much easier.

Yeah. The people that, you know, we get to talk to every Friday cause there's going to be times as you grow that you're just so bogged down that you can't think about implementing something new or spending an hour messing with ChatGPT or whatever it is that you're doing.

And then you talk to your peers and they're like, well, I did this and I did this and I did this. And it just reinvigorates you and re inspires you to find the time. And we have, you know, people that we talk to that we aspire to. And then there's people in the group that started where we started, that we kind of try to like tell what we did.

And so it's just like such a good group. And so whether it's this or your local bar, whatever it is, you know, We wouldn't be where we were without this like groupthink that we have with everybody.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

MPS: Yeah, I'm it's huge, right? You've got other people that are running the same race as you. They're all trying to accomplish a similar type of goal. And you've got the accountability built into that. So having that accountability to be able to meet with a group on whatever basis that is, right? You've got that built in and it holds you accountable to implementing, holds you accountable to new ideas, holds you accountable to innovation.

I just think it's so important. It can be really lonely to run the race alone, and it can be very difficult to find the right information, get the right guidance. So having a group there is just so crucial, I think, to at least taking things to the next level and helping you continue to grow that goes for law firm owners that goes for any entrepreneur, right?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I think looking at just constant focus and looking at those KPIs. And the numbers that you know, drive your business and you know, focusing on those where, if you can identify something that's off, if you can identify, Hey, these changes that we made over the last week worked and we can see it in the data, those things I think are really the. Yeah, if you were going to boil it down to kind of one.

Yeah, I just think that oversight and you know, I can remember one of our first meetings we went to and Rich was like, you could wake me up in the middle of the night and I could tell you these five numbers. And I was like, I don't even know where we bank.

And then, you know, track and make sure that you're on pace for those goals is the best way to move the needle. And then just get buy in from your team with not necessarily daily, but you could do daily or weekly or monthly meetings to go over those things and improve and inspect what you're expecting and all those, all the things you say.

And, boy, that is such a powerful statement. I mean,

Brent and Teri Westbrook: I do think we're privileged because Brent has, there's two of us and it's super hard for when there's only one, so you just got to find that person or carve out the time because I don't know that he could do that, but I also couldn't tell you anything about the bankruptcy stuff he's doing. So, you know, I think we're lucky that we can do that because there's two of us and we can implement it that way.

Richard James: Somebody has to do it though, right? So either you have to find, you have to replace yourself as the lawyer. If you don't have a husband and wife team like you have and yes, you know, husband and wife teams, I get to say congratulations and my condolences, right? Because it works both ways. So, but if you don't have a husband and wife team or a great partnership of some sort and you're on your own, Somebody has to be committed to the numbers and the data.

Because you just said it, Teri, best, it not be done, right? Somebody has to do it. So Michael, I know we're coming to the end. I don't want to steal any more of the time that you have allocated.

MPS: No. This has been awesome. Brent and Teri, what's got you guys fired up? What's got you excited today? Could be personal, could be business. What's got you excited?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Go ahead, you've been excited lately.

So we're, yeah, so we're kind of redoing some of our processes. We're redoing our intake process a little bit. And I'm super excited for that. It's, you know, And also our signing appointments, just how we handle those. So we're redoing some of that. We got some information from actually one of the other firms in our small group that's had success and they're kind of ahead of where we are.

Richard James: Is that the simple numbers, straight talk, big profits.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Yep. So, one of the businesses he talks about a lot, Jack stack with SRC, that company is actually in my hometown of Springfield, Missouri. And I knew Jack stack's daughters growing up. But anyway.

I've just been the focus has really been for me on as, the workload has been increasing so much with this growth.

And so I think that these changes that we're making are going to finally be that last, like push over the line to get him elevated and up above those things. To where he can be, you know, on the business more than in the business officially. So I'm excited about that.

Richard James: Well, I'm so excited personally that you guys are on this journey. You've been on it long enough to know now that it is a journey. It's never ending. It won't stop. I've got news for you. I've been on a little bit longer than you and it does not stop. And if you're fortunate that Savannah decides to want to go into business with you at some point it gets worse.

Cause, cause you right go from playing golf.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: She wants to be a dog groomer, a Broadway star. So, so far.

But, for me, it really is great. You know, your parents gave you a example of how to run a business as a family. You're doing that for Savannah. You're providing not only a solid income for yourself, a great foundation for your clients to benefit from, and you have the ability to decide whether you're going to grow or you're not going to grow, albeit you said that it feels like you're growing, whether you want to or not right now anyway, because everything is working.

So I just want to say congratulations on your journey. And thank you so much for joining us today and giving some inspiration to those who would be listening and whether they be a husband and wife team, or they're on their own, or they're out there hunting, and they now see, okay, there is a path to be able to take step by step and make these changes and plug into some organizations somewhere that can inspire me to keep going.

Michael, anything you want to add?

Brent and Teri Westbrook: They can email me at Teri@WestBrookLawGroup.com. I check Brent's email, so you might as well just email me.

Richard James: That's good.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: That's a system we have. I've been thinking of that.

MPS: Yeah, there you go.

I love it.

But

Brent and Teri Westbrook: you can just email me directly.

Make sure nothing gets missed.

MPS: Perfect. Well, we appreciate you guys for popping on into the law firm owners listening. Thank you for taking the time to listen. We got the gentleman's agreement around here. So we invest our time, money and resources into making this content for you, which we love doing. This is not your first time listening or watching.

We just kindly ask that depending on the platform you're listening or watching on, you hit that subscribe or follow button, turn those notifications on, drop a like down below for Brent and Teri and comment. Let us know if you've got any questions for them or this episode created any questions for you, but we appreciate you tuning in as always in Brent and Teri, thank you again very much for popping on

Richard James: Bye both. All right.

MPS: Yeah, thank you.

Brent and Teri Westbrook: Bye.