Motivate Your Team: Bonus Incentives for Law Firms

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart. Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And this week we're going to talk about bonus incentives for employees, how to motivate your team, specifically how can we assist in how we can help the attorney motivate their team and help them with some guidance on compensation plans. Because I've been doing this a long time, Steve even longer, and we can tell you we've seen some crazy ways that attorneys think of to compensate their staff with bonuses. It's quite interesting to see what they come up with. And they all say what, Sarah? It's a simple—

Oh, it's a simple, don't worry, it's a simple method.

It's not. Simple method. It's a simple method. It's easy. And then you get their spreadsheet and it's like, oh, okay. Steve's nodding his head. Have you had that experience too, Steve?

Oh my gosh, yes. You know, there's a stipend for this and a stipend for that. And if the wind blows from the east, they get that much. And if it's 40 degrees and comes from the west, they get that much. Yeah, these spreadsheets can get pretty detailed and then it changes. They change everything when they find out something's not working and they don't tell you. And then you got to catch it up. And it's, you know, their, their, their intentions are good. I think that's way cool that they have these wonderful intentions. But, you know, to me, when you're starting out with an incentive program and a rewards program or a bonus program, let it come from your heart, not from you feel like you have to do it because your employees will sense that. And so build it gradually as you go along instead of just saying, here, we're going to give you a bicycle stipend and we're going to give you a parking stipend and da-da-da-da-da, you know, really think it through and let it come from the heart.

Compensation bonus above and beyond. I think what you just said is kind of interesting, Steve, because there's the models that exist out there. And then some people say, I think what you're saying too is they want to do it differently. How do you do it differently? Or can I just stick with the adage of the eat what you kill model and I'm just going to do it this way and you—

No, yeah.

—percentages.

What I always find fascinating is they'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, it's real simple. We'll say, how do you track it? And they'll say, "Well, we have a spreadsheet that we track it in and can we have a copy of that so we can take a look at it?" And even if the spreadsheet is formulated perfectly, we'll take that spreadsheet, tie it back to the records in QuickBooks, the data—

Right.

And then suddenly it's not so perfect. Even if you have to back in all the numbers that have been paid, sometimes the calculations aren't correct 'cause the calculations might have came out of Clio or LeanLaw or whatever software they're using. And things change or whatever, and then it's not accurate. And then they're stuck with maybe they've overpaid this one, maybe they've underpaid this one. And now you have to figure out how to book it in because you want to tie it to the accounting records. You don't want to not tie it to the records because that's the— follow the money, right, Sarah? It's the source of truth. So you want to follow where the money is.

Follow the money.

And a lot of times they're built on different— they're built differently. Like they'll have different ways of building out how they want to compensate. And how do they want to really to show performance? Because you might have one attorney that's doing really well and billing out a lot, and you might have one not doing that. So it needs to be a fair incentive program that they can calculate. You need to have some kind of a method. Even for us, like if we're going to do it with our team, we can't just willy-nilly do it. We have, you know, a calculation based on— for us, we don't have— they're not driving business into the firm. So it's a little bit different than with like attorneys may do it on, but they may not. I mean, it, it could be that they— that you got one rainmaker. You're not going to bonus out the rainmaker with the worker bees doing all the work, right? You got to find a way that's fair.

So you're, you're kind of— I think what I— the way I'm sensing it is we're leading into the motivation of why we would bonus.

Yeah.

Steve's saying from the heart. I think what you're trying to get at is, is the equalizing of it. Like, what are the opportunities I do feel, and I don't know how you all feel about this, I do feel the unspoken opportunities that happen that are just almost expected but yet given and/or possibly not given, depends on each firm, the differences between each firm, is all the professional development that goes on.

Yeah.

I, that is a way, a form of a bonus of being able to offer these opportunities who pays for what, who's doing what. That is— I wholeheartedly feel that when you're putting this together, and we're experiencing this, so this is not coming from a space of like, I know how to do it. Mm-hmm. Lynda, you probably could share in this. There needs to be a way to display it so it's understood at maybe every pay stub or every interval on it, almost like a monthly statement.

Oh my gosh.

Here are the things that we've done because you said in the past, Steve, bonuses are paid and a lot of people leave the moment they have it.

They quit after it. It's like the kiss of death sometimes. We see it with firms and—

Yeah.

It's sad because I think too, well, we had this conversation with an attorney because it was all about $10,000. Remember, they were going to leave to another job for $10,000. And they didn't factor in that this attorney was paying their CLEs, paying all these things.

100%.

100%.

All the trips, 100% that needed to be. They were like a required thing, but yet at the same point, there was no, uh, a 50/50 or per diem, nothing like that. It was just, yeah, the gestures, I guess, of that.

So you can leave for $10,000 and find out that you really lost out because you left a job that maybe it wasn't comp— the compensation wasn't money, there were other bonusy things that you got. Maybe you got to go to conferences, maybe you got to do things where you got your CLEs, maybe the company retreat. That's a thing that costs the firm a lot of money and that's a factor. They get to go on a vacation, you know, maybe it's not the same as a vacation, right? Yeah. 'Cause I'm looking at it from the boss's perspective. I'm not looking at it as the employee where they might not feel that it's the same. But I think sometimes you take them someplace to take them to a trip where they're getting education too. That's a plus for them. They're enhancing their knowledge base too. But when it comes down to it, when it's in the employee's perspective, they don't see it as the same as cash.

Well, so one of the law firms I worked in, we devised a system where we, we had the, the problem with the revolving door going on all the time.

Mm-hmm.

And so, I sat down with the managing partners and I said, how about with each pay stub, if we also have an attachment that goes with it that says, this was your pay, this is what the firm spent for the CLE, this is what happened for the company retreat, this is the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this is what your value to the company really was. It started changing things because they forget.

Yeah.

They forget that they went on the company retreat or yeah, we went, no big deal. But that value for your share of it was $5,000 or whatever. Along with that, also asking employees, how do you want to be rewarded? What speaks to you? And you keep track of that.

Mm-hmm.

And then you share that value with them. So, yeah, you made $30,000 this year in your salary, but to the company, your value was $75,000 because of all of this. And all of a sudden, they become part of that whole process.

Mhm. So what about— okay, this is— I'm in my brain, what I was going to ask, and it's interesting that you bring this up. When you ask a person what they want and you hear, I just want the cash, I just want the cash, but yet the culture is we have a kitchen filled with this, we have, uh, offerings that are this, we have you know, these types of packages that we do. We do 100%. Most law firms really are doing about 100% on health insurance, depending on the firm, right? The firm size.

Sure.

Some are not. So we have all of these things and you want— So you want that all taken away and you want it because we heard this in this piece with this attorney. And the two important factors, which obviously were not going to be met, was one of them was definitely not equity. That was not happening. Sorry, no equity here. Non-equity is fine, but no equity here.

Well, when they say I want equity or I want cash or whatever, then the next step is, is how do you want to earn that? What's the path to get you there?

Okay. But then do you withhold all the perks? So do you withhold them from going? Yeah. Do you withhold them from going to the company retreat? They wanted cash. They get the cash.

I think you, it depends on if you require, you know.

Yeah, it's a fine line. It's a negotiation, right?

Do you require them to come to the company event or not? You know.

Well, that's the thing is some things are required for culture. So this is where I'm getting like kind of confused myself when trying to support a firm and the balance of the asset. It goes both ways, I guess I'm trying to get at is, just because you asked for it doesn't mean you're gonna get it.

Right, right.

Right? And you are working here. I mean, gosh, the first day you got the job offer, I'm sure you were excited to work in the firm, right? So where has that gotten lost with all the added benefits? Now maybe it goes back to maybe you're not feeling heard enough. Those are different things, right? Those are fixable things. But it's not like you're walking into the Grubhub on your app and going, I'm going to pick this menu item and this menu item and please tailor it to this. And sure, there's only so many constraints that can happen. So the realistic model to help figure out how to best compensate and motivate the team has felt to me as it's getting murkier and murkier. And to me— Yeah. I personally think any bonus structure needs to be tied to production and quality of work.

Yes.

Not—

I have to do something, right? Because they talk.

Sure, sure.

So if you don't have some structure to it, you can't just go, well, I like this person so much, I'm going to give them this. And this person, yeah, they're kind of dry. I'm not going to give them as much. You can't do it that way. You have to have a way to do it with the client. It can't be too crazy though. You can't go like you said— You can't have it too complicated. You can't make it so that it's, oh, I pay, this one's Blue Cross here, but I didn't pay. You can't go into that because it's too hard for us to even model it out to a—

Or stipend, Lynda, to your point and to Steve's point earlier. These people are on the health insurance. This one doesn't wanna be, they wanna be on a stipend for this.

Right, well, or this one rides a bicycle, this one rides the bus, you know?

Yeah.

Yep.

Which is a common thing in most cities because of the benefits of the credits that you get for that. But really in the complexity of it, Like you're saying, both of you, it's how is it meaningful? How is it product-driven, result-driven, and how does it benefit the collective, not just the individual?

Exactly.

Which is the hardest part. Oh yeah, I don't know.

Well, and I think it's a building block sort of thing. When you have a new employee, give them a questionnaire. When's your anniversary? What's your favorite color? When's your birthday? What do you like to do on your day off? Those sort of things so that you can send them little little gifts along the way to kind of build that trust and all of that. And it's a building block thing into the bonus structure program. And to my comment about asking them, what do you want? That doesn't mean you're going to get that $10,000 worth of cash because it is a whole company, a whole environment, if you will, of things that has to benefit everybody. Yeah. And so, you take that feedback. And you sit down with them, the team, and you say, okay, this— there's this idea, there's this idea. What are we all going to do to pull together and what's the decision here? If you kind of include them in the process and yet you are the final decision maker because, you know, you've hired a good bookkeeping accounting firm, you've got your numbers, your KPIs, all those sort of things going, you'll know what's going to work and what's not going to work. And it kind of includes them in the process because that old program of eat what you kill, get your big year-end bonus, Those days are over, folks. I mean, you're just gonna have a turnstile going.

Okay, so— But don't you think, don't you think though, Steve, that bonuses are expected in this day and age?

Yes, they are. They're just expected.

And this is where I wanna play devil's advocate a little bit, 'cause I agree, Steve, those small gestures, they mean as much to us as giving them as the person receiving them. Yeah.

But I guess—

Because a lot of thought goes into them.

Yeah, yeah, we do. We put, like ourselves, I—

You tell me you like it. Yeah. White freesias. You're going to get white freesias on your birthday.

You know what I mean?

Steve, I like diamonds, just in case you want to know.

And, you know, I'm so glad I don't know when your birthday is.

October. Here's my devil's advocate in the wish list thing. And it is a conflicting thing. It goes both ways, right? It really does. But the trust is being built in both segments. But the, the lack of clarity, I feel like, or the lack of appreciation from the employee side to these small gestures or these grandiose gestures, and they're not like elaborate, like I'm buying you a car kind of thing, those get lost in the equation of what is the true value I'm being paid. And that's where, again, concerned With how in this new space with this new generation, and it's not just this generation, it's pushing into bleeding into others. What does this market look like? As we all know, the market has shifted from where it was just not that long ago. It's starting to do that.

It really is. I think there's more jobs. I think more, I think you're seeing the economy kind of shift. I think you're seeing more jobs not being available, that there's less jobs available.

I agree.

People, which is good, is good because we've had the opposite, right? Where anybody could do whatever they wanted to and we were like, oh my God, don't leave. We got here, here, here. And now it's like—

Hard to keep you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which in a way too, I think, and I don't know if this is a generational thing because, you know, Steve and I come from another generation that he would handwrite a thank you note and all of that. That was a whole process into You know, my mother taught me that, right? So in today's world, you— I think sometimes the small little things are more appreciated than the monetary things and the bigger things. Those seem like they're expected. So we're not even going to say thank you that we got a Christmas bonus, but we do say thank you for the little tiny, I don't know, plant or candy we sent you. And it's—

Because you remembered, you remembered them as a person.

Yep. But I agree with you. It's just hard. It's a mixed message to employers.

Yeah.

That's where I'm kind of going with this. It's very hard to understand. A friend of mine—

I'll just give candy.

Yeah. A friend of mine was telling me she gave a gadget, but then there was a large sum of bonuses that were like within like the same timeframe. More thank yous on the gadget. No, no thank yous.

On the big bonus.

On the actual bonus, which then what does that mean, right?

Well, you know, Lynda, you said they all talk to each other and they do. I've witnessed it and it broke my heart.

Yeah.

Being on the management team in these law firms, it broke my heart to see the attorney open their envelope and then run down the hall to see what the other person got and compare. And it's like, no, this is not what that's about.

Private, right?

Yeah. Such a weird culture and it's such a weird time.

So weird.

Weird expectation. Like, I don't know. I—

I wanna go back to our days, Steve.

Yeah.

I can remember my first bonus. I worked at Blue Cross and I got $100 and I was like, oh my God, they gave me this $100 more. I love that. I didn't expect it. I was like, I didn't think it was coming. I had no clue and I was so excited about it. That's so different than today. It really is. And I mean, and I didn't expect it the next year just because I got it once. Didn't mean— and it had, you know, it was a not-for-profit. So I mean, it had to do with that or whatever, however they did their calculations back then. But it was just a big deal. Like, that was the first time that ever happened to me. And I was— I had other jobs and never had it happen. So the first time I had a professional job, and that was my first experience. It was such a big deal. You know, I'm going back to 19—

My king.

Yeah, you know, it's the same thing, you know, every, every kid on the baseball team gets a ribbon.

Oh, well, we didn't have that either. See, I mean, that was— and I— was it you, Sarah, tell me they don't play dodgeball anymore? I'm like, what?

No, no, I wasn't—

I grew up then. I hate dodgeball. I know.

I don't think they— I don't know. They do. There's dodgeball. But, but okay, so I just— while we were chatting, I wanted to see what Gemini was going to offer, and I thought this was an important thing I wanted I'm going to just take this one section out. It says important considerations for a firm, right? Company budget. Is it suitable and aligns with your financial abilities?

Very good.

Which is great, right? Like Steve, I had a feeling. Tax implications, because there is tax implications. We've seen—

No, we just write them a check, Sarah. It doesn't go through payroll.

Oh, geez. Yeah. I know.

That's a big no-no.

Any lawyers listening that run a firm, you have to put it through payroll.

You have to put it through payroll.

Especially at Christmas.

This one surprised me. Company culture. Tailor your bonus program to fit the unique needs and values of your organization. Wow. Okay, that—

It's— So what does that mean?

Well, I guess you'd have to look at what is the culture that you're trying to design here? Because you're right, Steve's like, you run down the hall. Well, what's the value add then? Is the person here doing more than the person here? Is there culture differences? That's how—

And maybe you give everybody $500 so they all have the same amount. Then you— Glass ceiling. Like, what is this?

It, you know what I mean? And that's where it's, it's very tailored and custom to that person. It's different for partners too, because you have—

Yes.

You know, we're not talking about the partner level, we're talking obviously about the support level and what's the clear path so that maybe you can retain. But we all know retention is different for every single individual right now in our worlds. And it, it just like it is for companies at will, you know, this position is no longer— we hear about the layoffs going on. Yeah. So I, and, and look at the jobs report is indicating April is a lot softer. There's not as many hires. So just the indication, not quite yet out that night. I mean, I know that jobs report is not—

Well, look at, look at as an example, and this is okay to talk about because it's public information, but just in this week's news, A very popular airline in our country is laying off 2,500 employees and dropping cities.

Yeah.

And it's the most— it's the busiest, largest commercial airline in our nation.

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, that's always when it starts.

Yeah.

When you see that happen. When one does it, they all do it. I mean—

Yeah. Yeah.

They had so much of our tax dollars, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

They were bailed out during COVID But that airline just came out of probably 40 or so years of paying an annual profit sharing, healthy profit sharing to every employee. And now they're laying off and cutting cities. And I'm like, whoa.

Yeah.

You know?

'Cause that's only gonna drive prices up. I mean, that's just the scarcity of flights, right? Unless there's another airline out there that's picking it up.

That's in to pick it all up, yeah.

So what about the subject of— since that just came up— profit sharing in a law firm? Is that allowable? Is that doable? How does that work?

Well, we see it as offered as a means in lieu of bonuses, is doing it that way in the profit share.

And that kind of pulls the team in the same direction in a lot of ways.

Well, some are doing it on the 401(k) 401(k) side, which is an avenue, but it's not always widely adopted. We heard about it from our friends that do financial planning. And it's true. There are, there's these small benefits we see, like life insurance, disability insurance. I mean, Lynda's got a comment on, she's always told me, I forgot who you said it was, a former boss or who was it that told you about insurance for disability or life insurance? Who was it that told you that in your—

You mean the one that we just did or—

No, the, you said in the life of your, you had a boss somewhere or somebody in your ear saying, in case something happens to you, you must have this to shore yourself up. I think it was disability insurance.

Oh yeah, disability. Because I, and I remember saying, why, why with this kind of a job that we have, like, what's gonna happen? Am I gonna fall off my chair? But you, what about your, right, your eyesight? I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen to you that you won't be able to work. So you have to, you should just always have that. I mean, it's interesting. But how do you, because that can be a form of compensation, right? So Yeah. All of these extra perk things have a value. I like your idea, Steve, of putting it on the pay stub. I don't know how exactly you would do that to give the value or attaching, pinging an attachment somehow.

Funny, I, Steve, that, that you said that. I, on one of the things I serve on, I was pitching that. I, because it isn't fair to the owners of firms that this is a lost in translation moment.

Translation.

Right. And I, and that kind of surprised this group and they were like, oh, never thought about that way. It's to me, it's really important at this point.

Yeah.

Having done a lot of—

I'll tell you when we did that, when we implemented that in the law firm, there are a lot of eyes opened. They're like, oh wow.

And that's your side spreadsheet, almost the exact same thing as your side spreadsheet.

Right.

Format, right?

Well, I probably could ask the Gemini thing something different, but I really felt like it would be nice to know what are the motivating factors to support a holistic approach. And I think it's a well-balanced way of looking at it as much as possible. But it might not be something to your point, Steve, that you offer 20 years ago, a profit share model, and you continue that because that's just what you do. It might be something that we might have to adjust.

And that— well, I mean, yeah, in the environment now where employers are starting to require employees to come back to the office.

Oh, yeah.

You know, one of the big things that you could really have an impact with and not miss the boat on is extra time off, earn extra time off. So they go back to that 4-day workweek, or every 3 weeks they get a couple days off or whatever. You know, to still have that some piece of freedom that they enjoyed before.

Get off or work from home.

Either or. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It depends, I guess, on your workflow and how much business there is and all of that.

A work from home company already. You don't have really an office. What do you do in that situation?

You work 7 days a week.

Yeah.

You're the owner. You're the owner. I know I'm kind of feisty today, aren't I?

Well, you are. But the value of it, Lynda and I were faced with this recently.

Sure.

Oh, okay. That's interesting.

Yeah. I think of it as a perk that you get to work from home, but it depends on the person, right? So some people don't see it as a perk. They see it more, maybe they miss going to work in the structure of dressing up. Going out, getting to work. I don't know.

Me sitting in my car in traffic?

No. Sitting in your car in traffic, paying the gas price, which is really high right now.

Going up.

I mean, it's going up. I mean, these are things.

But I mean, if you have an office already, like the structures that we've seen, firms do have offices.

Thereby you teach them how to pay for those benefits as well. When I owned my day spa, I did that program where new employees got that questionnaire. What do you like? What color? You know, what turns you on? All that sort of stuff. And then we had to— we had trouble with retention of clients. And so I, I implemented a program where the employees had to pre, you know, really encourage— somebody was in there getting their massage and they had to encourage them, let's book your next one before you leave today. And we would start— we started tracking all of that. And then we turned that into bonuses for people. And, you know, you had this much retention and you had this much retention and so on. And it kind of became a measurable thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What gets measured gets done.

And it's transparent, right? You have the way to— so that's the other hard part is the measure on— we've seen this, there's measure to it. And then there's that part that you brought up, Steve, where it's like, and we do a little bit like this over here and a little bit. Well, okay, that's— and as an accounting person, that little bit here and a little bit there is like 5 tabs of a spreadsheet we don't want to be doing.

Yeah, right.

It needs to support your— because now it's a negative loss. Like, it takes me 5 hours to do your so-called simple bonus and it's a negative loss. What's the point of it?

Right, right. Is it necessary to be that complicated?

Yeah, exactly.

The end result worth the complication of it? Because we've seen some that I'm like, oh my goodness, we've seen some where they say, oh, here's a spreadsheet. And then if you look, the formulas aren't correct. So they made a spreadsheet, didn't, you know, their lawyers making a spreadsheet so they don't, and they don't all, and like, wait a minute, there's a whole line missing here. They're putting it in, but it's not getting calculated. And that can happen really easily when you use a spreadsheet. I mean, that's, That's why you don't want to, that's why you wanna tie it back to your numbers and make sure everything works accordingly, that you put it in and back it out. And we've seen some firms that have a lot of people that are non-equity partners and then it gets really complex when you have a firm with a ton of—

Really messy. Yeah. Okay, so here's something when I, in my Gemini thing search right now, types of bonus incentives. So you could structure it slightly different in that you have performance-based, spot-based, spot bonuses, meaning exceptional work at that moment, you get rewarded.

I like those. Those are good.

I like that a lot. Isn't that—

there's the profit share one that we talked about, the sense of ownership, shared success, like you were saying, referral bonuses. Well, there's that retention bonuses. So that— I think that's interesting that you may lay out a bonus structure, because I was curious, like, how do you evolve a structure? So I was just asking it what the heck Retention bonus.

That'd be an interesting one for an accounting firm. So how long do you keep a client? If you're losing clients, does that affect your retention bonus over the keeping? Because we all know the keeping one can be, because it's expensive to do the onboarding, offboarding and all that. So keeping a client, although that also falls into the pattern if you're not doing it properly, we all have those pile of clients that are old legacy ones that are paying nothing, peanuts compared to the ones that you have that are new, right? So.

Well, in this way it's written as in the individual who stays with the company for a specific period of time.

Oh, so retention of them.

So retention in the business in the sense of like your loyalty to it, which I think of that as, um, I think you, Steve, or Lynda, I can't remember now, bringing it up on that paid time off thing. You, you see it in translation of you get tenure based on—

that's kind of how it used to be though, right, Steve? We—

Yes, it was.

Stayed working until like 30 years, you got like you know, you got a watch or whatever, but you got, you got bonused for being there for legacy bonuses, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I guess you could overlay them or participate in different levels of them. So you have your base one, but the exceptional work, like maybe a case didn't go to trial, didn't go to litigation in that sense of whatever that line was for you as a firm, and you were able to get it settled outside of that moment. So maybe that, because of that exceptional work, you get bonus for that separately. That's the spot moment or the recognition moment. And in your handbooks, it really needs to probably laid out that they're discretionary in all those same terms.

Mm-hmm.

But we still have those that think that it's just expected. We still have a lot of that, so. The cadence of how that works. It's hard. It's not an easy thing to slice.

It is. It is. And it's very— it's always like you said, it's different everywhere. It's customizable depending on so many things. For those of the people that work in mid to large size firms.

Yeah.

Or if you're an accountant or bookkeeper listening to or watching this podcast and you support a mid to large size firm, sometimes they have a vehicle in place because of the size of the firm And because of the type of clientele that they work with, who tend to be more like large corporations and things like that, they have a great opportunity to do follow-up surveys with their clients. What did you like about us? What didn't you like about it? How was our intake process? How was our paralegal department? How was the, you know, the front desk receptionist or whoever, you know, and you can have that feedback and you can build bonus and incentive programs based on that as well. Because their client retention is very important, just as it is to us.

Mm-hmm.

So, yeah.

It's also important to do those, those bonus, uh, those, um, surveys throughout the case. So if some of these cases go on, yeah, wanna know in the beginning, how did the receptionist, how was your first impression? Then maybe send 'em out kind of randomly. Then midway, how's the attorney doing?

Yeah.

Those kind, how they do with communication. Cuz we all know that law firms not sometimes not very good about communicating with their clients. The biggest complaint I think people have. So maybe if you're trying to fix that culture of not calling back or not responding quickly, is that something you're trying to correct and have that in place so that you can start to see? It might be eye-opening to see because then you get a happier client at the end of the day, which may refer you to somebody else.

I like how you're saying it, both of you, but I like how you're saying it, Lynda, in that because nothing's more fun than like I had a survey and it was like 20 minutes. It said, I don't want that.

I give up on it, don't you?

I just say, I'm just like, all right, you, you're already taking too much of my time. Yep. I like how, like, I'm just, I just have 2 questions to ask you. Simple questions. Yep. 2 simple qu— I think that's important. And, and like why you're doing it. Not, it's not a penalty thing. It's just, we wanna make sure that we're meeting the needs of, of you. And what's interesting is the conversation I was having with a friend, she was telling me that when she was working with this family law firm at one point, The conversation with the residing attorney that she did all the work with was great. That person left. So then this is funny to me, and I didn't think it's funny in a nice way. It was mean. I thought the conversation went from this person, the client, to the receptionist who then always had to, or the assistant who always had to go say, let me go ask. So she's like, am I paying twice right now?

Right, exactly.

For that one moment of a phone call to ask one simple question. Or a text message that, you know, it's fascinating, but it is impactful to what happens when you do have someone leave. Who gets the credit for those cases? Where does that go? So to your point, Steve, this mid-market space, it is structured, but we also need to know the structure of movement between them and how— Sure. Yeah.

And here's an important one that we haven't talked about yet. What about involvement in the community and charity?

Yeah, some are, some firms are really big on that. Some depend—

Intuit does that. Intuit does that with their— they have a, you get to pick your charity, you get to go do it for the day. They pay you for the day to go do it, which I thought was so cool. I saw them doing it.

That's kind of, I like that.

We had a whole, I, we were, we were escorted around and during council and they, they brought us in the room where they had like the food bank people and a whole group of people. They, they had structured it so you could pick one. And the food bank people, they were all there. They had donated a room to that space. They had all brought all the food and they were packaging it all up for our people and to bring it to the homeless. I thought that was so cool. I really did.

Yeah.

It actually, not only were they, they weren't just throwing money at it, they were actually people doing something to help people, which was cool.

Yeah. Yeah. It was impressive.

Well, and that's like in the Airstream club that I belong to, I host this rally every fall in a small town in Western Colorado. And when we first approached the town about bringing in a massive amount of Airstreams for this big function that they have every year, they weren't that interested in us. But then we added a food bank drive to our rally.

Nice.

And they can't have enough of us now because we got in the newspaper there. And the food bank in that particular town, they get a lot of people traveling through, their cars break down or they don't have enough money for food or whatever. And we were able to give them a whole truckload of food as well as $900 in cash donations. And they just love us now and, you know, they can't have enough of us. And so, you know, what is it that fills the hearts of the people that work for you too? Because that can mean as much to them as a $500 bonus, you know.

Well, you never know whose heart you touch.

Yeah.

And you never know where it will go. I just saw something posted recently and I was like, oh my God, that's amazing what the CEO of Ford is doing for a former high school friend of mine. But you just don't know. And the fact that that wasn't the intent, it was just the intent was to support that family. And I think it's—

Or being in tune to what's going on with your employees. And maybe grandpa just had a major heart attack or something and you learn about it.

I didn't mean to.

Never mind.

No, no, no, no, no. Like a thumbs down for grandpa. Oh my gosh. Just remember diamonds.

But knowing what's going on.

You want diamonds.

The pulse of your team and what's going on and when they're having a hardship, you know, jumping in and helping.

Yeah.

Well, you can't put a price to that.

You can't. And what's interesting too is knowing like how we support you from the accounting side with our law firms. And when we see something happen to you as a business owner, it does hurt us or it does impact us. And we've had this recently come up and we were like, oh my God, it was gut-wrenching.

Like our family, they're part of our family. Like we say we're part of the firm, but in this case, definitely part of our family, you know, and we care about this person. So it was, you just don't want to see it happen. And I think that, and this is another subject, because when you look at bonusing employees and people coming and going and leaving firms, sometimes we look and we say, oh my God, so-and-so left. Wow. And that's really gonna hurt. And you know, what can we do to help? What can we do to help from the outside?

I like that. Yeah.

Other than creating the termination check and making sure it's all handled compliance-wise, how can we help?

Yeah.

There's only so much we can do, but it's, you do feel it when you see, and if one person leaves, we saw this a lot when it was job scarcity. One person leaves and they go to another firm and they take 4 or 5 people away from a mid-size firm, that can hurt. That can hurt. You know, with the bigger firms though, I think sometimes too, the bigger law firm— law firms, you don't get that same culture. There's a whole different dynamic to it than what we—

There's a lot of— there's a lot of segmentation in the larger ones.

Yeah. It's kind of automated too. They have to come up with something when you have a volume of people. Like, you're doing a project with an 80-person firm. I'm like looking at this going, oh my God, do any— they can't possibly all know each other. It's a huge law firm. Multi-state too. Yeah. Yeah, big. Yeah, it's big, but it's gonna be a different scenario if it's still all one firm. They must have a whole different plan for that.

Yeah.

Because it's different. It's big, big. So I guess it depends. As a smaller firm, you might be able to lead with your heart because you work intimately with the employees, 1 or 2 staff people up to 5 or whatever, where it's mid-market space, it's kind of different, but you still have a touchpoint with the entire firm. But then when you get bigger, it's gotta be different.

Has to be. I'm thinking now, this sounds funny, but I'd love to know what Gary Vaynerchuk does. Yeah, honestly, because from his heart. Yes. And but then, but there's expectations, right? And you'll have to ask Gemini, Sarah.

I have to ask Gemini later.

You might not know.

Notice she, Steve, just in case you wanted to know, the AI, I call him she.

Oh, okay. Okay.

I love it.

Well, we have a firm that one of our clients that it was Virtual Assistance Day or it was Assistance Day or something a few weeks ago. I'm sorry, it's escaping my mind what the day was. But she made a comment about how in her firm it's her job to recognize all the employees for Secretary's Day or Boss's Day or whatever and all that sort of stuff. And both Joy and I were in the meeting with her, Joy that works with me, we were in the meeting and I said to her, Well, what happens on this assistant's day? Because you're the assistant, you're the firm assistant, the firm administrator, whatever. And she's like, well, it's kind of weird because I'd have to remember myself and send myself some flowers.

Oh, that's so sweet.

I know. So, after we got off the meeting, I said to Joy, I said, let's send her some flowers for that. And she got them and she didn't happen to be in the office that day. And I guess the managing partner called her and said, well, why? Why is Numbers Matter sending you flowers on this day? And she's like, because they know that it's Virtual Assistants Day or whatever. And you know, that meant so much to her. Again, back to that, what really means something to them? You know, would $100 mean something to her or did those flowers mean a lot more? I think the flowers did. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So it's tuning into what people want and what motivates them and makes them wanna stay with you. Diamond Steve.

What's that? Diamond Steve.

Oh, here we go. I'm gonna have to go shopping. I gotta start shopping and saving all summer now, Lynda. Sarah, I'll be calling you.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

Yeah.

Oh man. Well, I'm just, thanks for talking about this today.

Yeah, this is a good topic 'cause I think it's something we will have with our clients. So it's a good topic and I think it, And if anybody's listening that's like, oh, I've got this great plan that works really well, we'd love to hear from you.

I was just going to say a call to action here. If you liked this or you've got more ideas, you know, we can talk about this again.

Yeah.

You know. Absolutely. All right, Tiara.

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Thank you.

See you all next week. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.