MBA1808 Guest Teacher – Mike Morse – How to Take Your Business From Unpredictable to Wildly Profitable

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform.

Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Product perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. The business podcast that always got your back every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes I bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Mike Morse and he'll be teaching you how to take your business from being unpredictable to wildly profitable. Mike Morse is a well known Detroit based attorney and best selling author of Fireproof, a book about, you guessed it, how to fireproof your business. Mike Morse built his law firm from the ground up and became Michigan's largest personal injury firm. And in today's lesson he's going to share his story and he's going to show you how you can explode your business by differentiating yourself. Mike's going to share how he went the exact opposite direction of other personal injury lawyers that look dishonest and downright scammy. You're going to love this lesson because it's so applicable to any business that has competition. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with NYQUIL Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. Nyquil Intense Flu the nighttime Sniffling, aching, aching fever. Best sleep with a flu medicine. Use as directed. Keep out of reach of children. So many of us do business in a crowded marketplace. We have competition, which is not necessarily always a bad thing. That means that people are actually buying what you are selling. But how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you make sure no matter what happens with your competition or the market, you continue to grow? Well, that's why we brought on Mike Morse to teach his lesson today. It's a fascinating story how he literally has overcome major fires in his life, and he's going to show you how to do the same. So without further ado, I'm going to pass it on to Mike Morse to teach his lesson. I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and share my insights. But for now, take it away, Mike.

It was 3am I was laying in bed asleep and the phone rang. It woke me up. I sat up in bed, put the phone to my ear and knew it was bad. I jumped out of bed, got dressed, hopped in my car, hit the highway going 80 miles an hour. The sun was coming up and I made a turn on the street where my law firm was. I pulled into the parking lot and I saw my beautiful law firm burning to the ground. My secretary, Laurie, also got the call from the fire department and we sat in the parking lot, hugged and cried. I immediately started thinking about the workday ahead and my clients and my staff. How are the lawyers going to get their files? Some were going to be in court in just a few hours. And what about the new clients calling my firm that morning? I will get back to that in a minute. This wasn't the worst fire I have ever experienced, by the way. A couple of years later, I got a call in the afternoon from the person who sent me the most business out of anybody. He sent me 70% of my business. He was the guerrilla TV lawyer in my town and he had never called my cell phone before. He said, we need to meet today. I knew immediately that another fire was brewing. He had never been to my office before. We had been sending him over $4 million a year in referral fees and I was extremely indebted to this person. He came in, sat on my couch, and he said, we are no longer sending you business. What? I began to panic. He walked out. I was given no reason. And in that one short meeting I felt like my entire identity and livelihood was destroyed. We'll get back to that later. As well as you know, fires cleared the way for something new. Yes, they were painful, but they blazed a trail of freedom for me to create a systematic approach to protecting and growing my business. The fires brought us new people. They brought us a renewed sense of energy and focus. And today I look back on these disastrous fires with an immense sense of gratitude. What happened to my business and myself was pivotal for the good. It banded us all together and allowed me to make a real difference in my community. These fires helped us understand that we were stronger than we thought and our success that followed these shared experiences made us feel invincible. Thank you for tuning into this podcast today. My name is Michael Morse. I'm from Detroit. I own and run the largest personal injury firm in Michigan with 150 employees and we do over 105 $50 million in settlements and verdicts a year. I'd like to thank 100 MBA for having me on and being able to share my story. I'm excited to share with you how I overcame these fires and came up with a systematic approach to fireproof. Not only any law firm, but any business and at the same time experiencing explosive growth. I want you to shut your eyes and imagine with me for a moment. What if you personally only took a handful of calls a week? What if you were able to sleep a full night without waking up and thinking about where your next client or customer was coming from? What if you could have 25% growth year after year? And what if you could do all of this while working less or working on exactly what you wanted? These were the exact questions we asked ourselves and we decided to do some something about it. We decided to retool our business to make us fireproof. We developed systems and processes to grow our practice. We developed a systematic approach to running any business. We wanted a written down roadmap to put out the daily fires while holding all of my employees accountable. And by the way, that Friday morning after the fire of my building, we were answering new calls and clients calls within an hour in my parking lot. And we were up and running Monday morning. And by the way, the firing by that guerrilla TV lawyer in town gave us the freedom to control our own destiny. We were up and running with fantastic new commercials within a month. No more relying on others to fill our filing cabinets with new cases. And today I no longer worry about where my next case is coming from. We get over 25,000 co calls per year from people asking about our services. And today our attorneys have smaller dockets with more support staff, allowing them to be more proactive and strategic. Our settlements were $17.5 million the year before the fire, and 11 years later, they were nine times larger, surpassing $160 million. And our profit has gone up 25% or more each year since that fire. All day, every day, I only do the things that I'm great at and I love to do. I'm truly working in my sweet spot today after many years of hard work. My team and I have written a playbook for fireproofing any business. And I'm going to share with you exactly those five principles that will fireproof your business and set it up for fantastic growth. So let's dive in. Chapter one is know thyself. You need to know if you are a visionary or an integrator. And in our book Fireproof, we lay it out in great detail. But in short, a visionary is what I am. A visionary is the person who gets to see and come up with all of the really important ideas about your particular business. It's my sweet spot. That person holds the big relationships, and it's usually the polar opposite of an integrator. They're both really important jobs. But I'm a visionary and I have a really good integrator who runs my business. Now, an integrator is the person who makes sure the ships are running on time, make sure that everybody shows up and everybody's accountable and, and doing all the things it is to run a business. And usually those are the things that the visionary doesn't want to do. And by hiring myself an integrator, I was able to blow through the ceiling and scale immensely because if you don't have somebody doing all those things you shouldn't be doing or don't want to be doing or aren't good at doing, then you are never going to be able to grow your business. So this is a really, really important one. You then go on. And what we do with our coaching clients when we coach businesses is we figure out who the visionary is, who the integrator is, we get that person in place, and then we do an organization chart, which we have in our book, Fireproof. It's very important to have a good organization chart so you can dictate who does what in your business and make sure that when people have questions or problems, they're not all running to the CEO or The visionary. So that is a really, really important thing. By setting up a really good org chart, you will continue to grow. We doubled in size a few times over the years, but to this day, me, Mike Morris, is the visionary. Or you could call me the CEO of my company. I still only have one direct report and I can tell you it is one wonderful when you can figure out the proper way to organize your business. Now, there are five key principles in Fireproof, and we're not going to be able to get to five, all five of those in this short 12 minutes that we have together. But another one I want to talk about is the jumbotron. You've all been to sporting events and you've all seen the Jumbotrons. And you got to wonder, why are they there? Well, they're totally visible for everyone to see at every moment. But why? Because the coaches of the players need to see these numbers to make the right decisions to win the game. Right. In the simplest form, the goal is to win the game. To do so, you need to call the right play with the right players in the right positions on the field. You need real time information on the situation. You need to know the score. You need to know the down and distance. You need to know the time left in the game. You need to know if you're running the clock out or you can or you're trying to kill the clock. You need to know if you need a field goal or touchdown. And on and on and on. You get the idea. But we all take that Jumbotron for granted. Can you imagine playing a sporting game without a Jumbotron? It would be chaos. But my Jumbotron for my business in 2007 was blank. And I'm embarrassed about was. This was me a blank Jumbotron before I knew my numbers. Now, most businesses and most law firms I talk to and consult with are this way, even today. It's a natural tendency. And how do you even know where to start? They don't teach us this in business school or law school, but if you want to scale and grow your business, you need to have a Jumbotron. The Jumbotron answers all the all of my questions. And in our book, Fireproof, we give you examples of Jumbotrons. In fact, we even will give you a free one with a link that's located in the book. But now that I know my numbers for my business, I make better, faster, more informed decisions. I take bold actions with greater confidence and no fear. I have peace of mind. Many people can help you Set up the Jumbotron. Find that person. It could be somebody in your office, it could be a cpa, it doesn't matter. But you need a Jumbotron. Think of a Jumbotron like a smoke detector. It alerts you to problems. It's an early warning system in real time and without it, if you wait too long, you have a three alarm fire. But if you realize there's a problem early on, you can put out the fire with a small cup of water. The last chapter I'm going to be able to cover with you today is called Cherry Garcia Beats Vanilla. When I made the decision to go on TV to compete in one of the most competitive markets in the country, it was June 2011. Over $30 million a year was being spent on lawyer TV commercials alone. How was I going to stand out? I didn't have a name and I didn't have $10 million to compete at a high level at first and I was in a hurry. I had been cut off by that big time attorney and I needed to take a risk if I was going to have any chance of feeding the 40 families of the people who worked for me. Why does someone pick a certain lawyer? Well, I watched my competitors commercials and I thought they were all vanilla and I wanted to be Jerry Garcia. The other ones were the lawyer who fights and the lawyer is the best. And they have these testimonials, right? They're the same same because it's a pack mentality, it's safe and it works to an extent. But I couldn't stomach making those vanilla terrible legal commercials out there and I didn't have the time. So I got real quiet with myself and I figured out why am I different? What makes me different? Well, I win a lot of cases and trials. I got the vanity number 855Mike wins. And then I realized I was really the opposite of my competition. So I made a list of all of their characteristics and I wrote down the opposite characteristics on the other side of the paper and I realized that was me. They came across as greedy. Well, me and my law firm, we give back to our community. We are generous. I thought that they were arrogant and rude. I think what we're funny and self deprecating and on and on. And I have this list in my book and this works for any type of business, any type of law firm. The bottom line is you need to become different. You need to find the opposite of what your competition is doing if you want to stand out. If you want to be the Cherry Garcia of your market, no matter what business, you have to find the opposite. You have to take bold risks and you have to stand out. All right everybody, this is Mike Morse from 8:55, Mike wins or the Mike Morse Law Firm. But we also have the fireproof consulting business that is doing amazing things for businesses across this country. If you want help taking your business from unpredictable to wildly profitable, get in touch with me at mike@8:55 mikewins.com or find me on social media and I'm sure there'll be links available for you. Thank you for listening.

ClickUp just solved AI's biggest problem and it's saving 4 million teams from productivity loss every day. Unlike ChatGPT and other AI tools, ClickUp converges all your work into one platform so your AI super agents have full context to prioritize tasks, execute workflows and draft documents instantly. Teams using ClickUp finish work 30% faster and cut meetings in half. Try ClickUp for free today and get 15% off AI upgrades@ClickUp.com podcast that's C L I C K U P.com podcast what a fascinating lesson and story by Mike Morse. Talk about a crowded marketplace. Lawyers are competing with so many lawyers in their local town, especially ones that are public facing like injury lawyers. And he's been able to be the number one personal injury lawyer in his area in his state, Michigan, by doing the exact opposite of what the others do. You could do the same. There are so many examples of this, of successful businesses, not just in the law industry, in the tech industry. For example, the people of Basecamp, they started an email service called hey hey.com and they went full fledged, the opposite of Gmail. They charge you for email. They are super, super privacy sensitive so they allow you to screen your emails and don't allow anybody to email you if you don't have their consent. So even something that was really well thought out and has been around forever, like email, they reinvented it and you could do the same in your industry. What are some areas that people hate about dealing in your industry? In your marketplace, in your product, Flip it around and do the opposite. I also like the fact that Mike took the opportunity when he was dealing with a crisis to stop and think and say hey, I need to self reflect now. This is a pivotal time. The decisions I make right now will affect my future. So let me give myself the chance to think, evaluate, ask myself some strong questions before I move forward. A lot of us forget to do this not only in our day to day, but especially when Crisis hits us, we just are in damage control. We're trying to put out the fire and we don't really see this as an opportunity to do things differently. If you liked today's lesson, then you're going to love Mike Morse's book Fireproof. Check it out@fireproofperformance.com you'll learn how to execute a lot of the things he mentioned today, like having your numbers in front of you, the jumbotron idea, you know, knowing the score, knowing how much time you have left, all those analogies are so, so true in business. But you'll learn a lot more like team alignment and accountability on the priorities you need to grow. If you head on over to the website fireproofperformance.com there's some really, really moving testimonials of people that have read this book and how much it's impact their life. And you know how I feel about books. It's one of the best investments you can make. The ROI on a book is incredible. So go ahead and pick it up today. That wraps up today's lesson. Don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss our next episode. By hitting subscribe, which is absolutely free on any podcast app, you make sure you never miss a beat. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things that have really changed our business is having a scorecard. We call it the precision scorecard. It has all the metrics that is most important to running our business and it allows us to know, are we getting better? Are we getting worse? Is what we're doing every day contributing to our growth? Otherwise we don't know what we're doing. We're shooting in the dark. Have some sort of scorecard, even if it's just a simple few metrics that you can score. And we literally update the scorecard, which is a spreadsheet, manually every week. It doesn't have to be some sort of complex, you know, sort of high tech software dashboard. As long as the numbers are accessible, you are good. All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons. Do you think this one's still good?

Free milk?

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon. Oh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks. Now, you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big it feels good to geico.