Ken Hardison

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kenneth hardison (00:00)
If you go to it in the first day, you don’t feel like you got 10 times worth of what you paid.

We’ll give you a full refund and up to $1,000 worth of reimbursable hotel rooms, airfare, whatever it is.

Kevin Daisey (00:14)
Hey, Hey, what’s up everyone. We are live or recording and I got an awesome special guest today. Of course, all my guests are awesome and special. I like to say, but I Ken Harrison here today. Uh, if you don’t know who Ken is, you know, I don’t know why he listened to my show. Um, but, uh, Ken runs his own firm. Of course also founded PILMMA.

you got the, the super summit coming up and I saw Ken at, NTL national, trial lawyer summit down in Miami and said, Hey, let’s get you on the show. Let’s talk about PILMMA. Let’s see what’s coming up. And, a lot of my law firm owners listening, you find a lot of help in his organization and, and the event coming up. And so we’re just here to chat and hear from Ken and, and he left NTL and went down to Key West.

kenneth hardison (00:48)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (01:01)
He’s been in Florida for what about two or three weeks now, I guess And I he didn’t invite me. He didn’t invite me. So now I’m I’m in Virginia in a bunch of snow

kenneth hardison (01:05)
Yeah.

Well, you could have stayed in Miami too, you know.

Kevin Daisey (01:12)
That’s true. I could my wife and probably been upset at some point, but good seeing you and your wife and your dog You got one dog? two dogs Two pugs cool. I saw one of them at least But yeah great time seeing you and yeah can say hi and we’ll we’ll get into some conversation about some upcoming events and Yeah

kenneth hardison (01:20)
Got two. Got two. Two pokes. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, it’s a thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. And yeah, I founded The Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing & Management Association about 15 years ago after I sold my first law firm that I built and then I built another one sold it. But yeah, it’s been fun. I like to think we’ve helped a lot of lawyers grow over the last 10 to 15 years.

We put on a big summit every year. We have four or five hundred lawyers there. Probably between, well I think we have about 70 vendors there this year. You know, we try to stay on the cutting edge. I like the big deal this year, of course is, know, AI’s been going around for about two years, but as I said two years ago, the dust has got the seller. You’re kind of seeing who the ones that are kind of rise above the dust. Cause everybody and his brother was trying to get in it and uh.

You know, so we got a lot of people talking about how to use AI the correct way. Cause I don’t know, you know, I just saw where the law firm, big one, the biggest one in the nation got tagged up in the Western part of the country for using AI and having false citations to cases. You just can’t do that. mean, know, it’s a chat GPT is a tool. It’s not.

replacement and but you know we’re gonna have some people talking a lot about that the dos and don’ts and how they’re using it in their firm and we got a bunch of my mastermind members I probably got a half a dozen of those we’re gonna talk about how they like Matt Dubin how he went from $300,000 a year to $16 million a year how one guy doubled his income went from $10 million to $20 million and rose his net from

15 % to 30%, you know, just different things like that. I some people talking about offshore social media. I’m gonna talk about how to implement because what I see a lot of artists go to these events and they get all these notes and they get all this stuff and they make them a list of 20 things they’re gonna do. And they go back with the full intention of doing it, but life gets in the way, they get busy and nothing gets done.

I’ve always said I don’t have one great idea that I implement, or one good idea that I implement versus the 20 great ideas that I never implemented because that’s what it all comes down to. You got to implement. The guys that are successful, the ladies that are successful in any business is the ones that I call it get shit done. You’ve got to, or you’ve got to be a leader to get other people to get it done and hold them accountable. So yeah, we’re looking forward to it.

Kevin Daisey (03:45)
Yeah.

kenneth hardison (04:09)
year I think. yeah, so you know there’s a lot of bits to go to now though, I will say that. lot and some really good some not so good but I would hope that ours is dollars in the least the top two or three of them wants to go. You know, try to give practical not just a much of theory and not we don’t have a lot of I don’t I don’t

Kevin Daisey (04:11)
Wow, that’s awesome.

kenneth hardison (04:35)
I specifically, I do it for two reasons. I don’t hire a lot of these big name stars or celebrities. one, they cost two minutes for an hour, just to be honest with you. Then number two is we really all about nuts and bolts and not about the lights and the, I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, all the smoke and stuff. I really like just the, well I’m old, Kevin, and I think I’m.

Kevin Daisey (04:55)
The glam.

kenneth hardison (05:01)
I’m old fashioned, so I just want to give great content, you know, and give people a list of those things to do, take back home and, you know, grow their practice. mean, you know, I, listen, when I was growing my first practice, there was nothing, there was nothing, there was no masterminds, there was no events. I mean, you just, and your competition won’t tell you anything. And lawyers need it now more than ever because, let’s just face it, competition’s getting crazy.

I mean, you got John Morgan, who I’ve known since 96, just building an empire. You got other big firms that are out there doing it. got Sweet James, they’re coming. They’re going to be nationwide. They’re already doing it. And power to them, Listen, it takes a lot to do that. have no… Some lawyers I know are upset about it, but listen, you can do the same thing. You know, the deal is there’s always room.

even when Walmart came to towns, the smart business people survived, the ones that weren’t so smart and didn’t know how to differentiate themselves, and they didn’t survive. And that’s the way I call it, the Walmart effect. I think it’s the same thing happening now. Plus the hedge money coming in, the Arizona, you’re gonna see a lot more of that. So I see a lot of things like that. And I see…

Kevin Daisey (06:16)
Mm-hmm. Private equity.

kenneth hardison (06:21)
And this is something I’m too old to wait a hat. So this is not a done deal, but I’m thinking that we did it two or three years ago as just an add on. But I think this farm might put on an event just for buying and selling a lot for us because that’s the quickest way to grow any business is to do a lot of acquisitions. And before we go on this podcast, I was just looking at something that Bernard Varnish or somebody, he shared it, but I think it was up in the Inc or Fortune magazine.

Kevin Daisey (06:42)
You

kenneth hardison (06:49)
about these roll-ups and using the private equity and stuff like that, how to buy a bunch. But that’s the quickest way, somebody asked me one day, what’s the quickest way I can grow? just go borrow a of money and buy a lot of firms. I said, you know, that are good. I said, but you’re gonna have a lot of debt. That’s not the way I would do it, but that is a way to do it. And you know, you got all the big, big major, major corporations like Microsoft and.

Kevin Daisey (07:03)
Yeah.

kenneth hardison (07:14)
in Google, that’s what they do. They go out and buy other companies, mean, all the time. I mean, that’s just the way they grow so fast.

Kevin Daisey (07:21)
We have a goal this year to acquire actually. So we have a goal this year to acquire an agency. So, yeah, same thing.

kenneth hardison (07:24)
Excuse me.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. mean, and I’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen a lot, honest with you, Kevin, I’ve seen a couple, two or three SEM companies getting involved this last year. And there’s one that I can’t say, but big money. I’m talking about big, big money. I’m talking about loads of money. You know, so, you know, but that’s, and if you got the infrastructure, if you know what you’re doing, I mean, you can,

Kevin Daisey (07:45)
Yeah, no, it’s there’s money out there.

kenneth hardison (07:53)
You can run it more efficient than the person that you bought it from. It not duplicates services. mean, the overhead part of it, the management part, you don’t need the one.

Kevin Daisey (08:01)
Well, I like,

you know, lot of what you said there for everyone listening. You know what I think what I like, what Ken said, with PILMMA and I’ve been to a lot of these other events too, big name celebrities and people like that. They don’t have the advice to give you on how to build a law firm or even probably a company at all. it’s, it’s exciting smoke and mirrors, like you said. So if you want practical.

you want to hear from real lawyers that have implemented these things or using AI and how they’ve done it. PILMMA is true to that and, Kevin’s kept it true to that. and I know, Cassidy, he runs like your CMO round table. I spoke to that group recently. yeah, just practical things that you can do come back and implement to your point. You know, if you’re in PILMMA, you know, you’re to have that accountability as well. Like, what are you implementing?

What did you learn? And then what are we taking back and actually applying? Because you can just go have fun of these things and come back and not do anything.

kenneth hardison (08:58)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that’s one reason I quit doing them in Vegas about six, seven years ago. I used to do two a year and I used to do them in Vegas. The second day, half the people there, I mean, they’re hungover or whatever. I don’t know what they were doing. I don’t know. I didn’t go to investigate, but I just know it never happened. Even in New Orleans, we don’t lose that many people and we’re doing it in Denver this year. So, you know.

I don’t think there’s any gambling in I’m not sure. I know there’s gonna be a lot of pot, that’s any type of going to Denver, but it’s like, not that I’d do it. I would have, but I didn’t want to lose my bar license. And that’s what I was scared of. I was a, what do call it, Because I worked so hard to get my license, I would never do anything to jeopardize them. And some of my lawyer friends would do it. They said, well, can’t I understand? said,

man I had to work my way through law school. said, you know, I just, I can’t risk it. I said, you know, probably wasn’t, but I just didn’t want to take the chance. You know, and I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with it, but, and now it’s legal a lot, I guess, but back when I was doing it, back in the 80s and 90s, it was not legal, I can tell you, nowhere, anywhere. So yeah.

Kevin Daisey (10:04)
Yeah. Well,

no, I think, know, what you’re doing, I love, you’re focused on, again, practical tactical things that, you know, lawyers can apply. And some of the other events, know, it’s just, you know, it’s more about the sponsorships and the speakers that are, you know, having some celebrities and,

kenneth hardison (10:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

I thought in KL, and then they have celebrities, but I thought this year they did a really good job on the business side of law. They had a lot of good people. We did one half a day, but they were doing it like, when I first started with them, they only did like a half a day. That’s like two full days or three full days that they got a track running on that. And it stays pretty full. mean, at least it was when I was in there. I wasn’t there the whole time, but.

So they’re doing a good job. Yeah, they’re doing a good job. Yeah, they’re doing a good job on it. And then they got the business of law. But there’s just so many events you can’t go to all of them. You still gotta stay home, practice law, make a living. And I felt good the other day, was on LinkedIn or something and said, I wanna go to a thing or what, but I can’t go to all of them. What’s the best one to go to? Somebody said, so I was like.

Kevin Daisey (10:49)
Now, NTO, NTO was very good.

kenneth hardison (11:13)
Thank God, you know, because you never know, So it made me feel, yeah, I mean, there is, there’s some other, there’s some other, we’re not the only good one in town. I I like to think we’re the best, but I mean, there’s some just as good, I mean, I know there are, but there’s a lot for everyone good when there’s like three or four bad ones. Just to be honest with you.

Kevin Daisey (11:16)
There are a lot of, there’s a lot of events.

Yeah, there’s a lot out there. think, you know, you know, even me looking at, you know, where I’m a marketer. So like, where can I go? Where should I hang out? And, what’s the best place for me to spend my time? And, you know,

Some has come down to schedule and some come down to, you know, ones I know that are good or I’ve been to before and just another good. So, yeah, there’s a lot of options out there. I will say that, you know, back to your point earlier on, no lawyer that’s trying to start a firm or grow a firm should have anything to complain about as far as access to information.

kenneth hardison (12:02)
Yeah, I mean it’s out there. mean, there’s so many coaches out there. I used to coach at home anymore. I’m slowing down, I know at least five great coaches right now for law firm owners if they want them. mean, they’re just great.

They’ve got the proof. mean, they’ve big firms. I mean, it’s not just junk. I mean, they know what they’re doing. Yeah. I mean, they might not be lawyers. might not be CEOs of law firms that grew like from 2 billion to 50 billion, but they helped do it. You got to have a good CEO or a good somebody in there, number two person. You can’t do it. You can’t do it by yourself. I’ll tell you that. No way.

Kevin Daisey (12:29)
Yeah, there’s so much information.

Yeah, well, you know.

No, you got, I you need to make that choice, you know, mindset choice of, do I want to be just a good lawyer or do I want to be a, owner? and, make that decision on, know, do you want to still practice law a little bit and, and work on the business or are you just going to be a good lawyer? And then you need to hire people to, take it to the next level. if you get stuck in the middle of that decision, you’re going to cost yourself a lot of time and heartache.

kenneth hardison (13:04)
Yeah, yeah, I like to tell lorries when I’m talking.

Yeah, I tell people I got this thing I do for my mastermind sometimes, it’s a whole process and I learned it from Dan Sullivan, who is a great business coach. He’s written a bunch of great books. figure out what… Yeah, he wrote that, but the one I like is… I stayed with him for three years from like 2009, 2012.

Kevin Daisey (13:25)
Buy Back Your Time, he wrote that book, right?

kenneth hardison (13:35)
And one thing, the most important thing I learned from him was, you know, leverage, everybody’s got strengths, everybody’s got weaknesses and leverage your strengths and delegate and surround yourself with other people whose weak, their strengths are your weaknesses to compliment your strengths and do what you want to do. Cause your strengths is going to be something you love to do. It’s going be something you’re damn really good at. And you’re going to get joy. You’re going to get up every morning and look forward to doing it. If you get up every morning, you’re not looking forward to what you’re doing and you need to change.

positions or change what you do. If you just like to try cases and go higher, and I’ve seen some law firms with two partners and when I’m, he’s a trial lawyer, the other one does the business and they get along fine. mean, and they’re both doing what they want to do and what they love, their strengths. And I think that’s the most important thing. You know, I always tell all my children, said, find something you got a passion for, that you love and I’ll help you figure out how to make money at it. But the deal is if you’re not

I don’t care how much money you make. If you don’t have a passion when you get up in the morning, you’re going to be miserable. I don’t care how much money you make. And we can always figure out how to make money. There’s so many ways in the United States to make money, it’s unbelievable.

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Kevin Daisey (16:06)
that’s, good advice there. And I tell my kids the same thing. And yeah, I know quite a bit. I have a lot of clients that had that, that dual partnership kind of one’s the lawyer, one’s the business person. I mean, it works, it works well in every situation that I’ve pretty much come across. So, you know,

kenneth hardison (16:18)
Yeah.

Yeah,

a few times I’ve seen it not work is where one guy felt like he you know, he was doing more or, you know, contributing more than the other one and therefore he should get more money.

It’s usually about money or egos. Yeah, that’s true. But yeah, most of it works. I’ve seen it really work very well with lot of firms. But being an animal law firm is like getting married too, so you gotta work on it. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Daisey (16:41)
Water’s not having the egos. Come on.

Yeah. Yeah. I have a business partner and we, it’s my work wife, basically. So I got my

wife and my work wife and, you know, they both want the world. So it’s got to try.

kenneth hardison (17:06)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, that’s what my wife says. says, you got me and then you got your work wife. Who’s my CEO?

Kevin Daisey (17:17)
And they’re both yelling at you.

kenneth hardison (17:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (17:22)
That’s awesome. Well, I I, yeah, I’ve just heard something that’s nothing but good things about PILMMA and what you’ve done. And obviously you’ve been successful selling multiple firms. Um, so person to put in, and I think anyone listening, you know, if you don’t know what PILMMA is about, you know, leave a comment, reach out to me. I’ll connect you with, with Ken or his folks. Uh, super summit is coming up. think it’s April 29th to May 2nd in Denver. Give me a good time. So, uh, yeah.

kenneth hardison (17:42)
Yep, endeavor, yep.

Kevin Daisey (17:47)
Ken, anything else you want to add to those folks out there listening?

kenneth hardison (17:49)
No, no, that,

no, we got to, we’re gonna launch a new book in, so we did this little deal where I got all bunch of lawyers and experts that are really good at hiring and onboarding and because that seems to be another big issue right now, finding people and keeping them. And so we put together like a two day event and what we did, we used AI and transcribed it all out, put it into a book, then got our authors

Kevin Daisey (18:07)
Yeah.

kenneth hardison (18:16)
you know, our speakers to review them and edit them. And we’re putting it together as a book and we’re going to launch it then. And all the proceeds are going to go to my charity foundation I created about five years ago, Lawyers Against Drug Addiction. lost a son to drugs about five, six years now. So I started that and we, at the summit, always do something to try to raise money. And we give it to nonprofits that are helping people get off of drugs, you know.

Kevin Daisey (18:22)
wow.

kenneth hardison (18:45)
which is very hard. It has no boundaries. Drug addiction affects poor people on the street, billionaires. It’s not discriminatory. It goes after anybody, any phase of life, any age, it don’t matter.

Kevin Daisey (19:00)
That’s awesome that you’re doing that and that sounds very, very helpful to a lot of members out there. Yeah, that’s a big issue, finding, hiring, onboarding college.

kenneth hardison (19:11)
Yeah, think

that and AI is like the two big hot topics. And think third coming in is you’ve got a lot of boomers like me that are getting ready to try and figure out how to exit. And they don’t know where to go, how to do it. And then you’ve got a bunch of mega firms that are trying to go in and buy other firms. you’ve got kind of like, know what I’m saying? The timing seems to be right. So I think it’s gonna be good for.

Kevin Daisey (19:35)
Yeah.

kenneth hardison (19:38)
law firm managers making about return. But to get the best money, and I’ve seen this happen to a couple of Mastermind members, they were getting like in their 60s and I said, well, if you’re gonna sell it, you gotta get it sellable, which means you gotta have all your processes, all your procedures and have it in place to where it kind of runs. And then like the last one we did it with the lawyer I talked to.

I said, well, you ready to sell it? He said, no, man. said, hell, I got it all set up. He said, hell, I could be gone for two months and I don’t have to worry about it. said, hell, if I’d known this, said, hell, I’m not gonna sell it. And I said, so, you know, I thought that was interesting. It took him wanting to sell it to get it to where it should have been to start with 10 years ago, right? But we don’t know what we don’t know, right? We don’t know what we don’t know.

Kevin Daisey (20:23)
That’s funny. I, you know, I think, uh, my motto here with my firm is, uh, you know, build it as if you want to sell it. It doesn’t matter if you want to sell it. Um, but if you’re, if you’re doing it as if you could sell it the top dollar and you can run it that way. Well, then you can sell it anytime you want, but, uh, you’re going to be a lot happier and things will run a lot smoother and clients will be a lot happier. So, uh, it might be, might be good just to keep on holding onto it. So.

kenneth hardison (20:32)
Yep, that’s true.

Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (20:51)
Yeah. But if you’re wanting

to sell, it’s going to take three to five years to get to where you want to go. If you haven’t put those things in place. So, yeah. So good, good way to think. Don’t want to sell it when you like it.

kenneth hardison (20:58)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s gonna resonate then.

Kevin Daisey (21:03)
Well, Ken, I appreciate you coming on, but I would let us know about the book when that’s going to be out. Hopefully folks listening on my law firm owners and lawyers can contribute purchase that book. So the proceeds go to your charities there. When is that going to be released?

kenneth hardison (21:20)
Probably the weekend of the summit, right there at the summit, because I’m going try to get everybody to buy a bunch for their different lawyers and different people in the firm. Get me good Amazon rating so I can get it on bestseller.

Kevin Daisey (21:31)
Nice. That’s a time.

Ken’s going be on stage going, all right, everyone get out your cards and buy the book.

kenneth hardison (21:40)
Yeah, yeah. Everybody buy

it and review it.

Kevin Daisey (21:44)
Excellent. Well, I’ll definitely buy a copy and review it myself. So, um, I’m looking forward to it. So, all right, everyone. Well, if you’re interested in PILMMA again, the super sum is coming up. Um, we’ll have this episode out if you’re listening right now before it. And, uh, it’s April 29th to the, to may 2nd, I think it’s at, uh, PILMMA.com. think, uh, P I L M M A.org.

kenneth hardison (22:08)
PILMMA.org, PILMMA, P-I-L-M-M-A

dot O-R-G, just go to events. You can register right there. And we’ve been doing the same guarantees since I started PILMMA. Number one, if you go ahead and register and you get a trial or something, 30 days, you can get your full refund. If you go to it in the first day, you don’t feel like you got 10 times worth of what you paid.

We’ll give you a full refund and up to $1,000 worth of reimbursable hotel rooms, airfare, whatever it is.

So the deal is I’ve never had anybody ask for it, but I always bring my checkbook just in case. You know, I do that with everything at PILMMA. I got a 90 day guarantee on the gold membership. The masterminds, they go to the first mastermind if they don’t feel like it’s a good fit. I get a full refund. Nobody ever asks for 15 years for a refund.

Kevin Daisey (22:37)
Wow.

kenneth hardison (22:56)
I have had some gold people ask for refunds. Usually we get about 2%, which is not bad. But we do. Well, yeah, I think that’s the way to do it. I there’s no long-term contracts. Everything I do is, I tell people, I don’t want your money if I’m not helping you. And I want to have a great reputation. I do have a good reputation and a lot of money.

I think I’ll have a lot of money if I got a good reputation. Anyway, you know, it usually works that way.

Kevin Daisey (23:25)
Right.

Yeah, same way I am. mean, I’m not, not interested the sign up a client that we can’t help or, keep them locked into something. It’s just, doesn’t, doesn’t make it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it for them or me or reputation, reputation can go bad real quick.

kenneth hardison (23:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

No. Yeah, it takes years

to build it and seconds to lose it.

Kevin Daisey (23:44)
That’s right. That’s right. Well, Ken, I appreciate you coming on to share great stuff that you’ve been doing. I tell everyone that’s listening, check out the summit, check out PILMMA. It’d be a great introduction to the Tukens group and what they do and yeah.

kenneth hardison (23:57)
You

keep doing the great work you’re doing, my friend.

Kevin Daisey (24:01)
I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for coming back on. Ken’s been on before and he’s welcome anytime. So, uh, Ken, I appreciate you coming on. Uh, stick on with me for a second while this uploads and everyone else have a great day. Be serious about your firms and, uh, sky’s the limit. We’ll see you soon.