Join us on this episode of Your Practice Mastered Podcast where I sit down with James Hausen, one of our four Entrepreneurial Attorney of the Year (EAY) 2023 finalists. James shares his remarkable journey from generating $7,000 to a staggering $700,000 in annual revenue. 

Discover the strategies and personal insights that fueled his explosive growth and how his unique approach can inspire your own success. Don’t miss out on this compelling story of transformation and achievement!

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Well, if the leads can only, highest thing only get up to this much, I want enough money to pay a salary and I think at that time, I was maybe having about 35 hires a month. And so I said, all right, so in order for you to get your full bonus, the number of hires has to be at least,

I think it was like, 45.

Hires and so he comes in July and then August 108 hires.

The numbers work.

​

But just know you're in for an exciting episode today as we get to explore four different entrepreneurial attorney stories. Rich, why don't we discuss EAY? Yeah, so EAY stands for Entrepreneurial Attorney of the Year. Everybody at the end of the year receives an application that we customize for the year, and then they decide to apply, and they apply for a couple of reasons.

One, because they just really believe me when I tell them it's good for them if they go through their business and all the things they did in the year. To examine what worked and what didn't work to, because even if they didn't have a great year, they want to figure out what was broken or three, they had a really good year and they thought they had a chance of winning and they wanted to apply to win and it doesn't matter whether what the reason was.

Interview with EAY Finalist James Housen: A Journey of Explosive Growth

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James Hausen: Thank you. And as I said earlier, it's great to be here. I'm excited about being in this contest and I'm being interviewed right here.

Yeah.

Richard James: You know, James, your headline really, when I was writing them with Michael, I mean, it just wrote itself. went from doing $7,000 in a month to $700,000 in a year in just the, couple of years.

James Hausen: First, obviously back then, I knew what my numbers were. But when I joined this group and I started doing work like one step at a time, you know, the 80-20 Rule focus on one thing at a time, I forgot what was in my past. And then, as I started moving forward, the numbers started getting bigger.

The revenue started getting higher, started getting more of a profit. And then last year, we really exploded in growth. And then, when I decided to go ahead and apply for the EAY contest, I had to go back to my numbers since the application was asking for that and I basically like forgot about it. Like I was in awe like what we did.

I always thought of this, you know, all my life that every tough situation that we find ourselves in, other people have been there in the past. And they always got through it. If you read the books of successful people, which I've always done, they always had tough situations. And I always said, no, it's not going to end here.

I'm going to clear the trees. I'm going to plow through that cave, through that tunnel. And there's going to be a light at the end. And that's what we did. And we didn't look back. We just looked forward. And that's what we did. And here we are.

That is the attitude of a winner, and that is exactly what you just displayed. MPS, where do you want to go? You want to kick us off?

MPS: Yeah, I mean,

So James, I'm excited to kind of break that down and get a better understanding of how you got there.

James Housen's Personal Insights and the Power of Goal Setting

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MPS: But why don't you start by sharing something that maybe not everyone knows about you?

James Hausen: Yeah, sure. So, I don't think I ever told you this before or anyone here. Maybe I have, but I do have a twin brother. Now, when I mentioned that, usually people ask me like, Oh, so you look alike. Did you teachers get you mixed up in school? No, it was none of that. You see, first of all, I'm six, four and he's about five, 10. Okay. So, it was a big height difference and he always thought he was better looking, but I don't know. I think, I am. My wife says so, but that's good news. But today, we both have no hair. So I guess we look alike in that regard. like that

Richard James: movie twins.

James Hausen: I never saw that movie.

Richard James: Was it Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It would

James Hausen: be totally different.

Richard James: Yeah. I think they were twins separated at birth. So here and here, right?

Yep. That's exactly what I'm picturing. That's great. I did not know that. That's great. And I'm glad, I thought to myself, Ooh, I wonder if he's put his twin brother in the audience by chance one of these days.

And I didn't know it, but now I know that you

James Hausen: not know him.

Richard James: I got it. Excellent. That's great. I love it. Yeah, I would have had a lot of fun with the twin brother. I think, I would have, we would have played a lot of practical jokes. I think,

MPS: Oh yeah, it feels like it's real easy to do. It's a, that natural built in.

So,

That's really cool. James, Yeah, I did not know that. So thank you for sharing that.

The Impact of Hiring and Strategic Decisions on Business Growth

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James Hausen: Well, It's a combination of all that stuff, but I had a goal that I wanted to become to. Best attorney out there. I actually have a goal to where we want to have financial freedom, where we don't have to be tied to the business, be worried about the business, be able to take off in the business.

And when I saw the end of last year, where we ended up, I saw the numbers. I knew we're pretty good. And I thought, Hey, you know, I'm gonna apply for this. And I think, we have a good chance of winning. So I applied for it. And here we are.

Richard James: That statement. So, the best gift I tell my mentor this at any time that I see him or get to interact with him, he asked me to send him a fax because my mentor, original mentor is Dan Kennedy.

Great. Be the lawyer. If you wanted to build a business that other people can run and you want to be the investor, you want to get to the investor role. Great. Go build that. And it sounds like, you and your bride made your decision as to what it is you want to build and you're building towards that.

James Hausen: Yeah, I do feel that way. Basically, last, I would say early last year was hell. It was, we were trying to find out of how we can keep up with all the work we had coming in.

We just hired our first remote legal assistant, and I was the only attorney here, and we were working long hours. But I felt that it was something that, if we continued to do, the money would pour in to provide enough money to move on and hire other people. And that's what we did. And then, of course, I joined the closing room. And then, I told Mike about my problem.

He suggested a crazy idea. I hire a non attorney sales consultant. I asked him, how much would it cost? He told me, I told him, I thought, I didn't tell him this, but I thought, are you crazy? I don't have that much money to pay someone, but if you say so, all right. And I went a leap of faith and it more than paid for itself.

Richard James: Yeah. What's your non attorney closed, non attorney salesperson's close rate these days?

Obviously I know what's going on, but that's his baby.

Richard James: Yeah. Chad will take very good care of that for you. I'm confident of that. He's a wonderful young man. And yeah, you were blessed because here's the thing, there were other people that had a chance to say yes to that same opportunity and they said no.

And I've heard them tell me on more than one occasion, darn it, I wish, I would've said yes. You know? Because I think, you know, a message went out simultaneously to a few people at one point. And you're the one that said yes. And so, you took that leap of faith. and I'll, I think, that's what it takes.

And because we took that leap of faith, it opened a few doors of lessons for us and one thing led to the next. And in the last 3 or 4 weeks, we have broken every single record on a marketing and sales perspective that we have had in all the years we've been in business. And it came because we took that leap of faith.

And I think that in business, no, I know that in business, there are times when you have to leap. And just pray that the net shall appear right and that you do it not blindly. You do it with trusting of those who are telling you to leap that they have your best interest at heart. But it was probably hard for you to take that leap, but you feel like it's worth it.

James Hausen: Okay, so first part of my background is that I have an accounting background. So I was an accountant. I have a CPA and so, I knew numbers.

I understood numbers. And I knew where I was, but I also understood that if I got myself out of this console room, and then I started looking at numbers to see where would I be. So I did some hypotheticals, I saw how many leads were coming in, I saw also how many were not showing up, and I did some math.

Well, If the leads can only, highest thing only get up to this much, I want enough money to pay a salary. And I think at that time, I was maybe having about 35 hires a month. And so, I said, all right, so in order for you to get your full bonus, the number of hires has to be at least I think, it was like, 45 hires. And so, he comes in July and then August 108 hires.

Richard James: Well, Michael, we just proved you right. If you fix the clothes, right. a lot of other good things happen. That was a commercial for the closing room right there.

Fix it, get it, not attorney close. By putting a non attorney salesperson in there, what happened is, you gain capacity because you're open, able to open up more slots. The leads would start to convert better just because naturally, you got more people that could show up. Cause you're not booking so far out.

You had a salesperson who was dedicated to sales, not only to be able to follow the script and structure that they were taught, the 19 steps that we teach, but also be able to follow up with the unconverted leads that you just were probably frankly out of time doing to do anymore. Cause you were the only lawyer, the only bar card in your office.

And so, all of a sudden, everything opened up. You thought, if I can get a 30% move out of him, he pays for himself. And you ended up getting 120% move out of him. And it was because we hyper focus on that one key lever. And so, congratulations for you, tip, having the courage to take that leap.

Thank you.

MPS: Absolutely. That's more than exciting.

So what was going on during that time? And what led you to? Even open your eyes and open the door to the idea of finding some assistance or coaching or some help.

And Megan was there. And she was by the booth smiling. I looked at it, I ignored her. Denise stopped. No, that's normal, by the way. I didn't thought she had anything to sell. I thought, I knew everything, which obviously, I don't. And then, Denise pulled me over. And she said, Hey, I'm talking, you got to talk to her.

And I thought, I don't care. Yeah, sure. I'll go ahead. And I told Denise about it and she said, are you sure you can afford it? I guess, I have no choice. I don't know what's going to happen. But when that happened, and I approach it like school learning because I paid my way through college.

We never experienced anything like that before, where we got so much knowledge and so much encouragement. And it was so exciting, just to be there with everyone. I remember being in a room, a breakout session, I think, it was, Laputa was there and some other great people were there. I remember being in a room, a breakout session, I think it was,

um,

Laputa was there and some other great people were there.

And they're giving me advice on what I need to do. And I wrote it down. And I wrote down my goals that year on these postcards that you gave us. And I still got them. I think, I'm at use of my presentation

Richard James: of

Yeah, it's emotional here, but yeah, I couldn't believe what we did, that just by writing down the goals and looking at it every day, and then doing the work and not worrying about what's behind you, but it's looking forward. You just explode. We just exploded.

Richard James: There's so much to unpack there. So first, I love that you said, you put yourself through school.

And so, if you were going to pay for some information, you were going to consume it and you were going to implement it. And so, I am. I'm the same as you, I paid for my schooling. and I, and I, if I was going to pay for something, I was going to use it. Michael and I are cut from the same cloth there.

The program we're using right now, we are implementing as much as we could. And we invested a whole bunch of money into being in that program. And I relate to that. So, I do believe, that's not everybody's story, by the way. Interestingly enough, like we heard from the Graftons in the beginning, they didn't open up the modules and they didn't listen to it in the very beginning for whatever reason.

It's not a CLE conference, right? It's, we're talking about totally different things. Would you agree with that?

James Hausen: Yeah. What this is about running a business. If you're on your own, if you're going to enjoy your job, which is working for yourself, basically, or being an owner, you have to know how to run your business.

Because if you don't know how to run your business, you're probably going to be a slave to your job the rest of your life, or you're just going to quit, which I've seen a lot of attorneys do, and they'll go work for some other law firm.

Richard James: It happens all too often. And Bert Diener said it once he goes, you know, I built my own prison and I wondered why I felt like a prisoner, but I built it for myself because I didn't know what I was doing.

And then, you went about implementing your way towards those goals, and you achieve those goals. And it's such a simplistic concept of setting goals and writing them down, but it really does work. Doesn't it, James?

Yeah, I think,

James Hausen: it's psychological because if you have that in front of your face every day, I put mine in the mirror and I looked at it every day, and woke up in the morning, come into bed, saw it in the mirror.

That's the first thing in my head in the morning and the last thing when I go to bed. Because I knew that goal would help me help us to get to that financial freedom, so a good place where we want to be. And I think, it's important for everyone if they want to be somebody in life to go somewhere in life, to be happy, it's important for them to have goals.

I

James Hausen: Yeah, I think, the first thing we did was we hired a legal assistant to take the work off of me and Denise. And so, she could then start working on the petition. I put Denise on the phones and then we hired a remote phone person, and we started sending more appointments.

MPS: And I just want to say too, that's a very underrated decision that you had to make. And I feel like every business gets to that point where they have to either make a decision to hit the gas or to dial back. And there's no wrong answer to that equation. It's all about what you want and the business you want to build.

And based off of the goals you said, it sounds like you decided to hit the gas and boy, oh boy, did you hit the gas?

James Hausen: Yeah, sure. We sure did. Awesome. It was fun. I love it.

Richard James: Yeah. We call it, keep it small, keep it all right, or you're going to grow. There's no you. My businesses move forward or they move backward, but they can't stand still.

And I'm going to make sure that I I'm off when the kids are on spring break. And I'm off when the kids are off holidays. and. so, I just made the decision to keep it small and keep it all at one point, and that's okay, you can do that. And, by the way, small is relative, right? I was making wonderful income when we were keeping it small, keeping it all.

And now, Michael's 25 and he bought 49% of the company in January. He doesn't want to keep it small. He, wants to grow rightfully. So he's at that age and he hasn't started a family. They don't have kids yet. And as much as my wife and I might want to be a grandparents, I'm not in a hurry.

And that's a dangerous place to be. And it's, not a very fun place to be. And so, I love that you made the choice that you did. And maybe, you didn't quite expect it to go to 108 hires a month after you hired your non attorney salesperson, but here you are. I have a question for you.

Are you scheduling so many appointments now that you are in need of another non attorney salesperson yet? Or are you still able to do it with one?

James Hausen: We're scheduling appointments about 10 days out right now. And if there's an overflow, then I got time because I have other attorneys working for me.

I just tell my phone people, just put it on my calendar, I'll take care of it. I followed the sales script, even though at some part of the sales script, I felt odd saying it. But I got used to it because I say if it works. So I use it.

Well, You certainly have evidence that it works, right?

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

MPS: Good. I love it. Perfect.

Reflections on Success and Looking Forward

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James Hausen: I'm excited about this year. Well, We are only a quarter through the year already.

We got the whole year to go, which is a very long time to get a lot of things done and to reach more toward that freedom by the end of the year.

Richard James: What was your revenue? Did you say, your, what was your revenue last month?

James Hausen: It was $140,000.

Richard James: What?

James Hausen: $7,000

MPS: to $140,000. mean, And that was in a two year time frame to two and a half?

Yeah. Yeah. There's November

Something

Oh my goodness.

Richard James: Wow. Oh my goodness. Congratulations

MPS: James, that's terrific. I mean, I Really, it's a testament to what you guys have done, have implemented. Cause at the end of the day, it's you that took it.

James Hausen: Thank you. I'm looking forward to presenting down there. And remember everyone, vote for me because I think I'm the best. I know, Jonathan thinks that he's growing not this year, but I think, we all are though.

Richard James: This is going to be, and we still have one more to go here. This is going to be a tough year for voting. I, I don't envy those who have to vote.

So, Congratulations on your success. Thanks for sharing today. Look forward to hearing more in May.

James Hausen: Yep. Look forward to seeing you guys.