Leadership In Law Podcast

35 Building a Strong Protected Business with Matthew Davis

• Marilyn Jenkins • Season 1 • Episode 35

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Matthew Davis, an attorney and entrepreneurial powerhouse, joins us to lift the curtain on his transformative journey in the legal world. What happens when a midlife crisis becomes the catalyst for unprecedented growth? Matthew reveals how his firm, Davis Business Law, expanded to nine locations and broke into the prestigious Inc 5000 list. With a strategic leap into major markets including Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Austin, he shares his blueprint for navigating both opportunities and setbacks. Find out how a robust business structure, inspired by systems like Scaling Up, helped him steer through the loss of a key team member. As the "family doctor of business law," Matthew also discusses his firm's unique approach that balances foundational business health with specialized expertise.

Prepare to uncover the nuances of creating a business plan fortified against unforeseen challenges. We tackle the crucial role of constructive criticism and the power of honest feedback in entrepreneurship. Matthew addresses the optimistic yet vulnerable mindset many entrepreneurs hold and the importance of identifying potential blind spots. Systematically understanding your weaknesses and filling knowledge gaps can be the key to thriving amidst adversity, he argues. As we conclude, we invite you to connect and grow with us. Subscribe, rate, and review the podcast, and join the broader community of law firm owners committed to leading with vision and achieving success.

Reach Matt here:
https://davisbusinesslaw.com/
https://www.facebook.com/davisbusinesslaw
https://www.linkedin.com/company/davisbusinesslaw

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Leadership in Law podcast with host Marilyn Jenkins. Cut through the noise, get actionable insights and inspiring stories delivered straight to your ears your ultimate podcast for navigating the ever-changing world of law firm ownership. In each episode, we dive deep into the critical topics that matter most to you, from unlocking explosive growth to building a thriving team. We connect you with successful firm leaders and industry experts who share their proven strategies and hard-won wisdom. So, whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey as a law firm owner, the Leadership in Law podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. I'm your host, marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, matthew Davis, to the show today. Matthew is an attorney, heavy metal guitarist and an entrepreneur who led his solely owned firm Davis Business Law through over 1,000% growth over eight years, making it one of the very rare law firms ever to make the Inc 5,000 list. The firm currently has nine offices from Austin to Kansas City and, with over 25 years of experience helping business leaders with their legal and entrepreneurial matters, davis now teaches them how to deal with their vulnerabilities so they can capitalize on their opportunities through his firm's proprietary, strong, protected business system. Matthew lives in Enid Oklahoma, where his family has lived for six generations, and holds degrees from the University of Oklahoma, cornell University and Cornell College. I'm excited to have you here, matthew, welcome.

Speaker 3:

Well, thanks, I'm kind of tickled to be here, and fall is setting in, so I got my little sweater on. Yeah, let's ready up cowgirl.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. So you know, I'm really intrigued. What had you get started and made you decide that you wanted to grow to multiple locations? Because nine locations is a lot of offices to deal with.

Speaker 3:

Well, I had a midlife crisis and started a law firm, which is probably one of the better things you can do. With the midlife crisis I was county seat lawyer, had a good practice. Midlife crisis I was county seat lawyer, had a good practice and we started to grow here in my hometown, which was kind of difficult for me because it's difficult to attract talent to a small city. That's pretty objectively not where people want to live. I like it, which is why I'm here. And then the problem is, if we did get people, then our clients still wanted me. So the bigger we grew here, it was just making my life miserable and we quit that and reinvented the law firm and started growing in Oklahoma City. And then, once we figured out, wow, we can do this, we went to Tulsa and Wichita and Kansas City and Dallas and Fort Worth and Austin. So it just it became a growth strategy that works and we're looking at a couple more markets right now, but probably next year. I was kind of tinkering with that yesterday.

Speaker 2:

That's exciting, and the Inc 5000 list, that's pretty amazing yeah.

Speaker 3:

I suppose you know it's. We've been on there a couple, three times and it's you know you apply and our growth has been good. We generally grow at 30 percent a year. We've really been repositioning. This year. We had a a very we had a difficult year this year. My are really inconsiderately died on january 31st his wife and I how inconsiderate and it really it was inconsiderate and rude of him and we really miss him. And that just kind of rocks you about when you lose a key player.

Speaker 2:

but you know, stuff happens, right, right right and did you have, like I know a lot of people subscribe to the EOS system as far as running your business? Did you have kind of a structure? A lot of people subscribe to the EOS system as far as running your business, did you have kind of a structure in place that helped you move through that Very?

Speaker 3:

similar there's. So Scaling Up is Vern Harnish's platform and EOS is what Gina Wickham I think is his name Right. He's sold that company. I'm familiar with both. A lot of my clients use EOS. A lot of my friends do. We use Scaling Up and there's good about both of them. I think they secretly stole a lot of ideas from each other, but either one of those platforms is really a solid way of thinking about growing your business and confronting the issues that you can have.

Speaker 2:

Before and exactly being prepared. You know it's like that exit strategy before you need one, yeah. So let's talk about your strong, protected business. You help small business owner, any entrepreneur, in structuring their business I'm assuming from formation through M&As as well, so the whole lifetime of the business assuming from formation through M&As as well, so the whole lifetime of the business.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we are, as I describe us, as a law firm. We're the family doctor of business law, okay. And people kind of go oh, okay, they think about that and I said you know what that means is we're going to take care of the basic health of the business and help you deal with your problems and opportunities. When we need the brain surgeons, we're going to go get the brain surgeons and you know, in our world brain surgeons could be property lawyers on complex property deals, business evaluators, accountants. We did a deal last year that was $180 million deal. I guess that was two years ago now and we went out and got the brain surgeons Vinson and Elkins.

Speaker 3:

You may have heard of them, they're from your hometown down there, a little town down in South Texas called Little Betty down there, and we got some tall building lawyer and I'm an armchair quarterback and he's done the main paperwork. But he's like who is this guy bothering me? And I'm know we got some tall building lawyer and I'm an armchair quarterback and he's done the main paperwork. But he's like who is this guy bothering me? And I'm like well, listen, I'm general counsel. So you know, don't give me a bunch of flack.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And so that's yeah, we're soup to nuts, family doctor for business law, and it's a really rewarding position for us to work with our clients like that.

Speaker 2:

That's interesting because I've talked with other attorneys and niching down is one of the things that's really helped them scale, and I love the way you do that. Instead of having all of those tall building attorneys under roof, you just bring them in when you need them, and that makes it more affordable for your clients as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it does.

Speaker 3:

And I have to explain that to some attorneys when they come on with us. I'm like we're the generalists and we have to know how to spot issues and our job in that regard is when do we need to go find the brain surgeons? We just did a $40 million capital raise for one of my clients. I didn't do the securities work because I don't want to. That's not what I do every day. My job is spotting the general issues and being an advisor a lot more counselor in the attorney and counselor sense than digging in on those specific details where it really does pay and it really is worthwhile to go, bring in the specialist. So you know, in contrast, I'm the guy that gets the call. I'm in Kansas City the other day and this particular client calls me at 645 in the morning when I'm out on a morning walk in the dark. Hey, no, this is not a great business idea. Let's not do this. Let's stay in our lane, right. That's the role you play.

Speaker 2:

Right, so you bring the visionaries back into the. I love to stay in your lane, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's a lot of that and that was kind of a fun conversation. It started out mad at me and then was like, okay, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2:

Nice, nice. So when you're talking about building that strong, protected business, the program that you have now are you say, someone's starting a business, you're going to help them structure it so that everything is protected. But what if you come in after a business has been in business for 10 or 15 years? They've got all of these salespeople, all these clients, all these contracts out there. What's your first thing that you do to help them?

Speaker 3:

I've got a couple thoughts there and you really hit on something very cogent. Let's get through this. The size of the business has a large bearing on the legal needs of the business. And I'm broad brushing this idea of legal because I think I don't like the word holistic. But legal should be more counseling than it should be particular. You know just particular details, contracts, this, that and the other, right, okay, I kind of take a broad brush, a brush to our jaw as attorneys, and maybe it's encapsulated in the idea of attorney and counselor. Okay, let's start here.

Speaker 3:

So over on our website, we've got a document in the resources tab called the strong, protected business checklist and we break down what you should be concerned about as a general rule by the size of your business. For instance, you know if your business has been in business for 15 years and you're 65 years old, you know you need to start thinking about succession planning now, right, right. And you know, it's like I told one of my clients once who ran a pretty big business. I was in his office and he's carrying on about something and I just said listen, you're fat, you're 60 years old. Then you think your son, who's at a college back East is going to be president of your business and he thinks he's going to be president of the United States of America.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

We've got a problem here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

You know, when you're thinking about succession planning and, more importantly, we got to start thinking about finding some executive vice presidents, because this was a big operation. Okay, so the size of your business determines a lot what you need. Get your LLC set up. Let's deal with your basic three contracts, which are going to be your customer contract, any vendor contracts, including leases, and then your employee contract. Okay, let's deal with those three things. Let's build those foundations. Once you get them in place, you can start growing, but you know, and then, once you grow a little bit more, you have new issues that you know. And then, once you grow a little bit more, you have new issues that you know, cause you can't build a home in a day.

Speaker 2:

Right, Right, and as you grow you you know the bigger you get, the bigger the problems is. You are going to always going to have some issues. But that made me think about do you as a general family doctor, I was thinking about that. We've got retirement planning. We've got all of these things that come into play, for you know the c-suite of the of a business and the owner, so is that something you bring somebody in to refer the owner to talk about that?

Speaker 3:

yeah, and you know, the other thing is we've got the rolodex right. There's there's a term for people, our generation. Yeah, we've got the LinkedIn contacts right. Maybe we would say now so yeah, we know people to do that. And that's all the time my people are always cracking up because they're like just call Matt, because he knows everybody everywhere. We've got tax problems We'll talk to John Walker down in Houston. Or we've got a business We'll talk to Brownlee, and so on. We've been in the business for a long time and we've got a lot of people who can help. I've got a meeting that I'm working on right now, kind of down that line.

Speaker 2:

That's what you pay for to be able to have someone that has that Rolodex and can make those connections really quickly. It's also incredibly efficient as well. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Well definitely.

Speaker 2:

I want to make sure I put a link to that checklist in our show notes, because I think that'd be very helpful to anyone.

Speaker 3:

It's been really helpful. It's not all just nuts and bolts legal. So you know, I think there's something in there like do you have somebody on your team that will tell you you're being a moron? Okay, I probably don't say it that bluntly, but you know, I got a couple of them across the hall and they sort of relish coming in and telling me I'll be in a need right.

Speaker 2:

You know that's valuable to have. Well it is. You need to know reality and not just what's in your head. That does make sense, truth, truth.

Speaker 3:

And yeah, you know, maybe this is where this kind of dovetails into your question, because entrepreneurs like the one that called me at 645 in the morning the other day, you know they're constantly positive, they're constantly thinking they're 12 foot tall and bulletproof, right, you know, they're like a drug cowboy on a Friday night right, all the girls are in love with them. What we can do is go from there and dovetail into this. Entrepreneurs are optimistic people. They see possibilities and they think they're 12 foot tall and bulletproof.

Speaker 3:

You know, another metaphor they see possibilities and they think they're 12-foot tall and bulletproof. You know another metaphor they you know they think they're. You know, they're like a drunk cowboy on Friday night out at the dance hall, right? They think they're all that and a bag of chips and that their ideas are great. And you know, our job as their attorney is to not be Debbie Downer, but it is to help them understand how to play defense.

Speaker 3:

And one of our taglines we use is and you alluded to it in our intro here is the ones that capitalize or that deal with their vulnerabilities are the ones that capitalize on their opportunities. Okay, okay, okay, because the thought of that is you know, we're all going to get kicked in the teeth some days. It's going to happen. Jim Collins talks about that, about. You know, everybody gets bad luck, but the ones that really succeed are the ones that deal well with the bad luck they get. Okay, and one of the lessons I constantly teach is look, those catastrophes are coming, look, I talked about one earlier, our CLO died and there's some of them that you can't prevent, right, but there's some of them that you can prevent, ok.

Speaker 2:

Or plan for at least.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, or exactly prepare for. And we, one of our strengths and it's also been one of our internal strengths is teaching people to brainstorm in a constructed fashion about how do you get ready for those things. How do you get ready for you know, a key employee leaving or dying, or how do you get ready for a problem in your marketing, or how do you get ready for a competitor and we call those catastrophes, and I could teach about that in the sense of you got to brainstorm for it and you have to brainstorm either in a systematic way regarding your business, which is what the first book, the Art of Preventing Stupid, is about. Then the second book, which we're getting ready, is much more objective, outward facing. But when you start, if you just go, what could go wrong? That's not a good question. But if you go, what could go wrong with our facilities? That's a hell of a lot better question. What could go wrong with our employees? And you know you drill down and you get to specific questions. That's powerful, and so that's one category of things we teach people to think about, because there's really three types of vulnerabilities.

Speaker 3:

The other one, the second one is what are you ignorant about, which is a sort of in-your-face way of saying what don't you know, that you need to know to get where you want to be. And people have this idea of, well, you don't know what you don't know, which I think is I don't know. I've got some ambivalence about that, because I think you can figure out what you need to know by just looking at where you're frustrated and you know that's a good point If you think about it. You know this weekend, our HR systems are frankly, a little underdeveloped for a company our size. Good, cards on the table, okay, cards on the table, and we were kind of scrapping between the leadership team this weekend about some of that.

Speaker 3:

And you know, when you find those sorts of levels of frustration, then you go okay, I've got to go educate myself about this, because the antidote for the figs, either one, for your ignorance, is education. And you know, I mean think about when you and I were kids and we were dealing with the Dewey Decimal System. Right Now we can just go to the Google and start looking up stuff, right? And so now this weekend I was in the middle of all that and really parsing out the difference between companies whose procedures are based on progressive discipline in contrast to productivity coaching, which are different ways of looking at things, and I ultimately got down to the point that's critical for us.

Speaker 3:

And when you're looking on this frustration thing as a way of getting to understanding what your ignorance is and what the skill set you need to learn is, I was out at one of our clients they're right out here and they were too busy and finally, after talking with them and going through this exercise, I said your guy's problem is you don't know how to recruit, you're ignorant about recruiting. And they said, yeah, you're right, and it wasn't any brilliant insight by me that they came to a certain conclusion real quickly. So your ignorance is a huge vulnerability and when you're frustrated, you have to ask yourself again. Going back to the first point, you have to ask yourself in organized thought and an organized brainstorming way what's the real underlying cause, what's the real underlying ignorance that is causing this frustration?

Speaker 2:

Okay, Right, right. I mean and that's the beauty I think of having, like, you're talking about being a coach or a counselor to your clients You've seen things that your clients maybe haven't seen yet, and so, when it comes to planning, yeah, entrepreneurs, we're the visionaries, but we need an integrator type person to reel us in and point us in the direction of things that have to be done. I think the weaknesses, the ignorance, is that you're right, you know brainstorming on one particular thing and is that something you help your clients do as well?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and they can do it. I mean, over on our website too, in the resources, there's a strong protected business system which basically gives you a couple of different forms the strong protected business report or the business I can't remember what it's called because it's Monday and I'm very thoughtless but immune system report. Those are just lists that are just matrices, matrix power, whatever that word is. I speak Oklahoma, so, forgive me, are going to ask good questions.

Speaker 3:

The third thing I always teach people to look for is where are you being inept? An easier way of saying that is where are you being a slacker? Right, you know what are you slacking off about in those categories. And once you know what you're supposed to do, you need to do it Right. It's just discipline, and we all mess up all the time. But when you get serious about asking yourself, what disciplines do you need to maintain, that's dealing with your vulnerabilities, and the guys that do that don't play a lot of defense, and when you're not playing defense, you're playing offense, you're moving your ball, you're moving your company, you're moving your future forward and that's that's. You know, we help our clients with that. And guess what? Something entrepreneurs aren't good at as a general rule and I'm not dropping just some voice in the wilderness. What's his name? Andy, my brain's not working on Monday From Intel. He's like the paranoid people are the ones that prosper in business, but you have to be productively paranoid.

Speaker 2:

Right, you can't be having paralysis of analysis. I think is the way it's said.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah Same idea.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I do. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because you, you know, if you find those things, that's that's unique strengths. And I find a lot of times that what I talk to people about is when it comes to team, you know, you, you know you've got a weakness in one particular place, but it's kind of comfortable and it'd be more uncomfortable to replace that person. Where you need to bite the bullet and replace the person that that that has happened before yes absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, we've been there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, and I just I love the building a strong, protected business. I do want to make sure I include the links to all that in the show notes. I know people that are listening to this. You've given some great information. They'll want to connect with you or reach out to you Do you have.

Speaker 3:

Where's the best place for them to do that? Yeah, my email is mdavis at davisbusinesslawcom, and we operate, as you mentioned, from Kansas City down into Austin. We'll probably go to Houston later this year too, because there's a few people in that little town.

Speaker 2:

There are a few Very nice. I'll make sure the links are in the show notes. Is there anything a specific takeaway you hope people will take from the listeners will take from this show?

Speaker 3:

Play defense. Learn how to play defense. Your company will grow faster. Use our tools. We have a lot of business coaches that we're acquainted with and some that we've worked with that have started using our tools in their strategic planning sessions, because they help identify your priorities for what you need to do for your business.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic. Okay, get your priorities in order. Your business will grow, matthew, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us on the show today.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, Thank you, it was fun. You have a great day.

Speaker 4:

Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to lawmarketingzonecom to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law podcast and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1:

So you don't miss the next episode. Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. Remember you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at lawmarketingzonecom. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.

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Marilyn Jenkins

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