Michael Mogill

Operational excellence is everything.

Chris Dreyer

Cash flow and velocity are the deciding factors on firm’s ability to grow. But to get there, you have to have a strong foundation.

Michael Mogill

Rather than trying to make like your marketing, your competitive advantage, which I think is very important. I would argue that the law firm of the future has a level of operational excellence that, becomes a differentiator.

Chris Dreyer

You’re listening to Personal Injury Mastermind, where we give you the tools you need to take your personal injury practice to the next level. Michael Mogill doesn’t do things halfway. The owner of Crisp is on a mission to help one Thousand law firms grow their revenue by one million dollars – each. And he is just the man for the job. Crisp has gone From $500 to $40 million in under nine years. The company has evolved adding marketing and coaching to its initial offering of branded video production. Today we dig into creating transformative experiences through event marketing, why operations are the foundation of any successful business, and how to hack human behavior. ‘m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Being at the forefront of marketing is all about understanding people. So let’s get to know our guest. Michael is one of the most motivated people in the game – I wanted to know where he gets his fire. Here’s Michael Mogill, founder and CEO at Crisp.

Michael Mogill

I certainly don’t get it from any like motivational videos. I’ll put it that way. It’s not like some external motivator or anything like that. I will tell you for me, it probably comes from a reflection and really just a sense of gratitude to my upbringing. As First generation immigrant, my family and I came over, they didn’t have much money. They basically were making the, I don’t even like to say sacrifice anymore. I treat it more as like an investment, like immigrants invest in their children. So the ROI doesn’t come from, like the work that the parents do, it’s really from the work that their children do. Just having the opportunity to even start a business and to do the things that you’re able to do in America. That for me is one. I feel a debt there. Outside of that. It’s also, it’s once you start having some, small wins that starts to build momentum. And I find that like either success or achievement or whatever it is contagious. It’s like you, when you have a win, you enjoy it. And you’re like, man, I want some more of this. So then you set a bigger target and then that comes with its challenges. And, you have to grow obviously and expand capabilities to achieve it, but then once you do that, you’re like, okay this is feeling pretty good. I like this, going down that route. So it’s success is contagious. Mediocrity is contagious as well. Cause it could go just as easily the other way. Chris, I read something the other day that the greatest I’ll probably butcher this a little bit, but like the greatest motivator that human beings have, like by far is to avoid discomfort. We are naturally inclined that I don’t care if you’re the most driven person on this earth. When the alarm goes off early in the morning, the natural inclination is to hit snooze or when you’re sitting on the couch and you’re watching Netflix, it’s like the natural inclination is not, I’m gonna go run a marathon or I’m gonna go exercise. It’s literally. What do I have to do to not move to not do anything right. let’s say you’ve got something that you need to take care of that day, a difficult conversation or a challenging task or whatever it is. It think about like just human intrinsic drivers. It’s like, how do I avoid doing that? Is there a way that I can avoid it? And it actually takes a tremendous amount of energy to overcome our natural tendency. every time let’s say I go exercise in the morning, I don’t jump out of bed. Man, I cannot wait to exercise. It’s Okay, let’s do this, you’re always fighting like your inner self and that, gravitating towards homeostasis is what I find. Even like the highest achieving people that I meet now, they’ve just got better at not listening to that, that inner self of saying, Hey, relax, take it easy. You should do less. Like you just start to ignore it. But I don’t know that it ever disappears..

Chris Dreyer

Crisp began as a video company and has transitioned over the years to be much more – here’s how that transition happened:

Michael Mogill

Yeah. So it’s been a, an interesting evolution. We started as a video company, so Crisp video, and we’re creating videos from law firms that are mainly for the web and social media that are like these movie trailer story driven videos. And then that helped firms differentiate and stand out. So they’re telling their story, they’re communicating their, why they’re able to humanize themselves. And then we realize that if you do a really good video, most of our clients didn’t know what to do with those videos or where to place them or how to really get traffic to them. And. To get the phone to ring. So that’s when we got into the marketing piece, primarily on social media. And then, and I actually think now in hindsight, we did this in reverse. So we, if I could go back, I would’ve flipped it, but we realized that let’s say you’ve got great content and you’ve got great marketing when the phone rings. If the phone’s not answered properly, or let’s say you don’t have the right people in place, or you don’t have the right leaders, or you don’t have the right systems or you don’t have the right, let’s say technology stack or whatever it is that more calls coming in. Sometimes don’t really solve any problem. In fact, they can actually make things worse. So I know a lot of times people will say, Hey, I need new leads. I need new case. I need new business, but for someone who’s already spread to capacity and overwhelmed, I don’t know that actually solves anything for them. If things are a mess in the foundation of the firm, then pouring gasoline on that is just going to really, like it’s going to create hell on earth for the firm. So that’s where the coaching started. And then we’ve expanded that to not just the firm owners, but also to their team members. And now we’ve grown to almost like 500 coaching clients. it’s really one evolved into the next, based on what that next challenge was. But to your point, I going back to the original question it’s I don’t know that, especially with the coaching, because the other two, like video and marketing are really done for you, right? The coaching is a done with you service in the sense that we can provide you with the information we can hold you accountable. We can provide you with the support, all of these different things and we can help develop you and we can help develop your team. But we can’t go back to your office. And fire the cancer in your office, or we can’t go back to your office and then, put all the systems in place you need. And then just leave because that’s not going to be, a solution that really sticks. Cause you can train and develop someone, but unless you have that continuous reinforcement and you have somebody overseeing things, let’s say a practice manager or an operator or someone like that that it does require a certain level of commitment. So we state that up front. We basically say number one, if you’re not fully committed To doing the work that’s necessary to get you the results that you want. We’re probably not a fit, but I would also argue that anybody who doesn’t say that, I don’t know that you can transform your practice from a struggling practice to a thriving practice by just writing a check and then going away. Like I just, I’ve never seen it. I don’t wanna sell that dream.

Chris Dreyer

I say, Hey, I’ve got robot Chris, and I’ve got emotional Chris. Like sometimes, you need to fire this individual, but it’s like the emotional side. And a lot of times from a business perspective, you need to take the emotion out of it and make the correct decision. You and your wife and you guys are really the yin and yang, right? So you are the marketing master, the visionary, sales, Jessica comes in and she really helps you on the op side. So you got the big vision, but you have someone that you can, that has your back to implement. And I love what you said. It’s Hey, we can do all this marketing, but if we overwhelm. Your sales team and you’re just not closing sales. You’re not doing intake properly. There’s some problems,

Michael Mogill

Man. I’ll tell you what I am like a reformed individual. So in my early days, if you like reverse rewind the clock like five years, six years, I would tell you, look, marketing and sales drives everything right. Just get really good at that and really build the brand and don’t get me wrong. Those things are still important. But knowing what I know today, I’ve realized that it’s actually the opposite. So I used to believe that if you had, let’s say great marketing and great sales, that would grow the business. And then the, the. The operational side of the business, just figure out how to scale it, right? Like how to service, whichever clients you bring on and how to make it all work. And that the marketing and sales should lead that. And then the operations, should come secondary to fill the gap and expand that capacity. What I’ve realized today, like knowing what I know, and this is coming from working with hundreds of firms and in our own business, and we’ve scaled this almost, 50 million plus in revenue. So I look at this and. I actually realized it’s the other way around, meaning that I believe that the quality of your operational infrastructure was, is what drives the revenue and not the marketing in sales. So it, when you think about it like that, I would never believe that I would think you gotta sell, you gotta bring the clients in and then that, and then after that lay the groundwork. But what I’ve now learned is that the more operationally evolved your organization is, and that the more that infrastructure is there, the more the capacity is there, the more the capabilities you need are there that in itself will drive the revenue because it is what expands lifetime value. It is what drives the client experience. It is what drives referrals. It is literally what, like operational excellence is everything. And I would say to any law firm that is listening rather than trying to make like your marketing, your competitive advantage, which I think is very important. Don’t get me wrong. I would argue that the law firm of the future has a level of operational excellence that, becomes a differentiator. And then the marketing goes on top of that.

Chris Dreyer

On the operational side, if you get those efficiencies, you can actually, get less clients and still be profitable and you can get more profit margins outta the clients that you do get, again, you talked about that revolving door of referrals and how important those are.

Michael Mogill

And I think about it this way. It’s Now, revenue is a nice number, but it’s a nice vanity number, right? The same way case inventory sounds good, but it’s like what really drives the lifeblood of a firm and it’s really cash flow and what impacts cash flow. And it is the ability to move a case from, intake to signing the case. To closing the case to collecting the money, to dispersing the money, right? And the pace at which that has done the velocity there is going to dictate the cash flow of the firm. So it doesn’t matter let’s say the size of the case that you bring in. If it’s going to take three years, say to draw that and move that to a conclusion, which, again, it is still great, but. What happens in the interim, right? If cashflow is up and down, that, limits the firm and their ability to hire, influence, limits the firm and the ability to invest in other areas of the business and so on. So when you look at it, a lot of times, if a firm comes to me and says we have cashflow problems, or we have cashflow challenges I look at that and say, is this solution to bring in more cases or is the solution to figure out okay, how do we move these cases along faster? And what’s going on internally at the firm, whether it’s from the paralegals, the attorneys and so on. What is the time that it takes from the case to come in to the time that case is settled? And this is, obviously different cases and different types, especially ones that go to trial, it’s going to vary, but we find that in most firms, they don’t even know the average time it takes. And then even if they do know there’s huge variability amongst the different lawyers and the paralegals, and so on, some are doing it in half the time or a third of the time as another firm. And we find that sometimes, check this out. Like recently we found a firm that their solution to their cashflow problems was actually hiring additional paralegals to be able to move files forward faster, to be able to collect the money on those cases. So their solution was actually hiring.

Chris Dreyer

Wow. That’s incredible. And that’s so counterintuitive to what you would normally hear. And it, this reminds me, we had a great episode with James Faren and he was one of the first attorneys that really spoke to this on our podcast. And he talked about how they really meant measure velocity and how fast they can get a case to close. And just because of what you said, cash flow , one of the things that Crisp does so well is event based marketing. And it slapped me in the face recently because you guys always you’ve got the million dollar day, you had the zoom experience where you had so many lawyers, you had the Atlanta Falcons cheerleaders on it. You do such a good job with events. What about events is so important to the Crisp brand? How do they contribute to the overall marketing impact?

Michael Mogill

Yeah. four years ago I didn’t get it right. I’s I wouldn’t have realized the impact that this would make. And I’ll tell you, I think the big thing it comes down to with events and whether it’s a virtual event or, I strongly prefer in person. I We did a huge virtual summit last year, when we were all in lockdown, but, it really comes down to what are you trying to achieve? So if we look at it and say, let’s work backwards from the goal, we want our clients and the people who attend to be able to have a transformative experience and have a great outcome. And what does that mean? It means that they learn something. It means that they like will come out of this and take action. So how do you influence that? And it doesn’t matter. I Whether they invest with us or whether they, just, know, take it back to their firm and do everything themselves or hire, another partner, whatever it is. It’s like, how do you get people to do things. And you look at one avenue and you say, all right you could just present them with the information and you could say, all right, whether it’s on a zoom or at, in a, in a small ballroom or something. But then we realized that the way that was being done led to the same people, hearing the same information coming back, and then nothing changed, right? Like months and years and so on would go by. But that firm never really evolved and changed. So we’re like, all right, so what actually drives human behavior? And we found that one, you have to get people emotionally invested. they have to feel something. as we head into the next summit in November at Mercedes-Benz, it’s like a big theme of that. When we are sitting in our meetings, we’re talking about, okay, let’s say the topic of inspiration, which on, on firsthand, you look at that and say, Hey, that’s cute. But look, man, I’m trying to grow my firm. I don’t need to be inspired. I don’t need to be motivated. I don’t need those things. But then you think, all right, Was there a time in your life that inspired you to become a lawyer? Probably. There was some event that you said, oh, that’s it. I wanna go to law school. I wanna practice law and have that event not happen. Or have those experiences not happen. You may not even have a practice today. So it’s you have to get someone in an environment where they’re feeling something, and then you can. Influence some sort of decision making or behavioral change. The other thing is, community and the power of being in a room of people who are also growth minded and entrepreneurial, that’s very difficult to create virtually, right? So you can still have people in a zoom room, but I don’t know that you can create those same type of experience that you have when you’re at breakfast with someone or at lunch with someone or at dinner with someone, or having drinks with someone or, or whatever it is. And you’re sharing that type of experience. And then finally, like an accountability piece of like, how do you make sure. It actually follows through on that commitment. In the coaching program, we have like monthly accountability calls, one on one, and then we’re checking up and if you take those things outta the equation, there’s like a great book by Alan Doman, it’s called Change Or Die. And he really studied like how people change and they found that even in their most dire circumstances, like they had a study of people that were facing like, heart disease. And these are people that unless they made significant dietary and health changes in the next few years, they would not live to be there for their kids and grandkids. Think about a more powerful motivator than that. Like you will not be around for your children and your grandchildren, and then you think, okay, what percentage of those people facing that type of, let’s say downside how many of them changed. And it was like less than 5%. It’s not the negative reinforcement that’s driving behavior. So then they looked and said, okay where do people change? And they found like organizations like alcoholics anonymous and they were finding, okay, what was leading to that behavioral change? They found number one, they had sponsors, which are like accountability partners. They had consistent rhythms. So they would have like meetings. They would all come together. So there was accountability, there was rhythms. They were starting to influence habits and behaviors and things like that. So when we looked at that and we said, okay, when it comes to an event we don’t want people to just go feel motivated, come back and then resume, emails and calls in their life, the way it was. We actually want them to get back and do something, make some decision, hire somebody, fire somebody, just it for, so a year from that day, they’re further ahead. And they, some people have called the day after our summits, like D-Day or something in the legal industry, or it’s what is, it’s not like red Monday or whatever, where like someone’s getting fired at all offices all across the country because they’re sitting at the event and they’re like, that’s it. The person that I’ve known has been causing me all these stress and headaches, that’s it, today’s the day. Enough, or whatever it is. And we get emails all the time of someone saying this I finally was compelled to make this decision and thank you for creating that environment. So I realized that is something that, we’ve only seen that you can do when you create that whole experience, all, all across the board. And if nothing else, you just want people to do something to take some sort of action. And we find that sometimes what it takes is a super bowl stadium with big sound and a DJ and an open bar. And. 5,000 lawyers and just this like environment for two days straight, where you can take someone physically outta their law firm, like away from the firm, get on a plane, get on a ho get a hotel, get off site. And then over those two days, at least influence one positive decision for them.

Chris Dreyer

And those experiences are everything. when I’m hearing you speak, Michael, it’s only natural for me to think of like myself as a business owner, I’m thinking, I have a remote company one of the biggest challenges is like bringing together and being intentional about community and being involved. We had to implement a culture buddy, right on top of like their mentor that comes in just a culture buddy. and now we’ve even shifted for our hiring. When we hire remote, we’ll try to hire from pockets. So we’ll try to hire a bunch of people from Louisville than a bunch of people from here, even though they’re working from home, that way they can still get together and have that that time together, that community together.

Michael Mogill

Yeah. Whether people will admit it or not. And we’re, so we’re like hybrid, right? So we have some days we’re working in the office and other days when we work remote and I look, I will agree. I think there’s certain type of work where remote all the time, you’re never gonna have a problem. I see this with a lot of like repetitive work, really process driven, work like data, analytics, that sort of stuff. But when it comes down to any strategic or creative collaboration, I’ve seen advantages to having people together. And that’s why if we ever did an offsite we get everybody there. Like we fly people in like that sort of work because it’s challenging when one person is in one location and another person somewhere on zoom, and then they’re in the kitchen or someone’s driving and it’s Guys like, can we all be in one place together? I find that getting people together in a room, if nothing else, it gets them out of whatever environment they were in previously. It moves them into a very consistent environment where, they can do great work together and then they can go back to, to, to the environment they were in previously. But that’s why, I we could do the event, in any of our events, virtual. That’s, you could deliver the same content, right? Like the same, the same presentations, the same insights and so on. It’s much more cost effective right. Than you don’t have to rent a stadium in order to do that. So it’s like, like, so why are we doing that? Like, why are we going down? This, this route that involves so much more energy and effort. And I, I think it’s from the example that I don’t know that people want to go to Disney world virtually. I just, I don’t think they wanna take their families. The Disney virtually there’s a, there’s something to be said about the experience that is created, the memories that are made, the partnerships that are developed. And so on that you can only do in a certain type of environment.

Chris Dreyer

The first Game-changing summits were meant simply to bring existing clients together. but as it has grown, Michael explains why events are one of the most difficult – and rewarding things you can do in marketing.

Michael Mogill

The level of commitment that you have to get from somebody. So it’s one thing to get them to a webinar, fairly low level of commitment. They can do that remotely. And then also if they, they can register and if they don’t attend, maybe you’ll send it to ’em later on demand. But for an event you have to take the owner of a business. Like in our case, a law firm physically outta their office for several days, they’ve gotta buy a flight, they’ve gotta buy a hotel room. They’ve gotta basically transplant themselves to Atlanta for multiple days. And this person’s running the law firm. So like they have to actually leave their firm. And there has to be enough of a compelling reason in order for them to do that and spend their time in that way. And then you multiply that and say how do we get 5000 thousand plus law firm owners to do that. And it is extremely challenging. I just will tell you, it is not for the faint of heart. But you learn so much in, in doing so of what it takes because at that size and at that volume, a lot of the people were reaching out to at first, they’d never been to the event. They don’t even know who we are. So you gotta take someone who doesn’t know you to then know you to then be interested to then be so interested that they’re going to make. It’s not just the investment on a ticket. It’s an investment on a fight, in a hotel and all this other stuff that’s involved and then say, I will physically relocate myself for multiple days to come to Atlanta because I think the value proposition is that strong. That is not easy to do.

Chris Dreyer

You’re right. And attorneys are so busy and their hourly rate is much higher than most other individuals. So they have to see there has to be that value exchange. There has to be more value to the thing that they’re doing, And so let’s talk about the upcoming game changer summit, there’s so much going on in this event, Where it’s located, that itself is like a talk trigger, Give me the basics, the TLDR type of overview of this event.

Michael Mogill

Yeah. So I will say first and foremost, this event will never happen again in the way that we’re doing it this time. This is a one time thing. I’m not saying this in a marketing way. I’m like I’m telling you just truthfully and transparently. It does not make economic sense to do events of this scale in a stadium. Like we, what we’re finding is. It’s exciting to the team because we’re challenging ourselves, but there’s a sweet spot. I find for events that’s probably around 2000 people, 2,500, where that starts to make more economic sense. I think there’s three things that people look for when they’re attending, a legal conference number one is, okay, what am I gonna learn? Am I gonna come back with new, actionable insight? And is it gonna make me more dangerous, as a business leader, as an operator, as an attorney or whatever it is, I wanna be able to learn something that perhaps I wouldn’t learn somewhere else. So there’s like the content and the speakers then there’s, the second component is really the networking aspect. Am I going to be able to meet people and build relationships and partnerships with people that perhaps I otherwise would not have met that could become great referral partners from all over the country. And that can help me grow my, my business dramatically. And then the third one, which you know, much to my, I wouldn’t say disappointment, this is just the truth, right? Because we’ve put so much energy into like great content and great speakers and like putting the right people in the room. But I think the third one actually is the one that attracts them the most. And that is, am I gonna have a great time? And that is okay, is there gonna be a party? Is there gonna be an open bar? What am I gonna do in those days? I, am I going to just have a great time? We have all three components, but when we wait them, I’m finding that I think it’s have a great time then the networking and then the content and all three are important, but it’s just interesting to see how people respond. So that’s why, we’ve got a private concert with Boys II Men and then we will have a VIP party at, at our headquarters on the first night. And, there’s things like that are going on. and this is our fifth event. we hope that we’re learning things, each one, and this is of course, like the biggest one. And the speakers are like, as top tiers you can get, and I know depending on where this comes out, we got a few more that we’re announcing that we’re very excited about, but I’ll tell you like, My thought going in is how do we just make this the best event possible and what that’s leading to, and this is gonna sound super counterintuitive. We take a loss on every single ticket, like in order to do the event, how we wanna do the event at the caliber, with the certain speakers at the level of production to include food and meals and everything for everyone, and like really make it a great experience. We, We take loss up front. It, and it’s crazy when you think about it, you’re like, why would anybody do that? And the idea is and this is just how I’ve, rationalized this because we also haven’t done sponsors. We don’t cover costs on things like by having a wifi sponsor drink sponsor, or this speaker is brought to you by, Whatever Salesforce or something. So we don’t do that. So it’s so why would it make sense to lose money on every single person coming in? And what we have seen is that number one, they’re originally intended as like client engagement events, but two, there are the trailing indicators where maybe we don’t win. At the event in terms of recouping all the revenue there, but what happens in the trailing aspect of that in six months, a year and so on, that’s really how we built our brand. I The reason we even started doing these conferences, we realized like, how do we like scale our impact and the way to do that was like, how do we get more people to know about us and how do we really amplify that? In a conference or event was a way to do that. But then it’s like, how do we make this the best event possible? And there was not a shortage of events in the legal industry. There was not a person that was going, what I could really use as another legal conference. Like I don’t think there was a single human being who had ever said that, but at the time, and this was back in 2018, we saw a gap in a focus on the business of law and focusing on leadership and culture and marketing and people and all these different things, because most legal conferences were really trial conferences focusing on trial skills. And then as more business of law conferences started popping up, we found that it was either the same speakers on the same circuit. You could hear them anywhere else. Or we were looking at it and saying, yeah, these events are all good. But why aren’t the people coming out of this? Just crushing it, what’s going on here. Because they’re getting information, they’re good information consumers, but they’re not being transformed. So that’s where all the production came to be. That’s where all the crazy stuff came to be. It’s you gotta make it worth people’s while that’s my view.

Chris Dreyer

One of the things that I’ve always wondered and you alluded to it is. You hear these people saying, how you generate wealth and revenue and you always hear OPM, other people’s money, and you really owned it because, It’s the brand. You wanna build the brand and you’re doing this, you’re taking this a loss, but in the future to build this iconic brand in the legal space, which you have, you’ve done with the Tesla giveaways you’ve done with each event and you’ve always went bigger. So is that, that why you’ve voided kind of the sponsorships and things like.

Michael Mogill

So I didn’t know anything about this space and I would say that our director of events is partially to blame because she came in with tremendous amount of experience. And then early on, I was like, cuz every other event I saw that they were doing exhibit halls and they were doing sponsorships and so on. And I’m like, yeah, absolutely. We should do that because I realized that the reason they were doing that was because they were trying to make the money on the tickets and then the sponsorships, right? Like that’s how the money from the event was being generated. And what our events director share with me is that if you go down that path, there’s going to be compromise. There’s going to be trade offs. In terms of the quality of the event, it becomes less about your audience. And then more about, let’s say sponsors and exhibitors, and it starts to look like NASCAR and so on. And the question was, can you really deliver the best experience? When you have to make those trade offs. And we realized no. So it’s tough, man. I’d love to take sponsorship dollars. Like I would love it. I would love if somebody sponsored the wifi or something like that, man, it wouldn’t love, it would help to offset the cost. But then I think for an attendee. Is that going to deliver the best experience if they, and I say this with the utmost respect, cuz I think there’s a lot of great conferences out there in the legal industry. But as an attendee, is it the best experience to walk through an exhibit hall of a thousand vendors on your way to an event? Is it the best experience where every time something is being said, there is like a logo or a sponsor attached to it. And and if our focus, if we say look, experience is going to be number one and we’re putting our attendees first. What are the decisions we have to make to ensure that’s true. So look, man, it’s tough. I will tell you, it is a tough model. I get a lot of criticism for it. I get a lot of people that just think that, we’re shutting them out in some way or something and look, man, I would love to take their money. I would love to take their sponsor dollars, like 100%, but. I wouldn’t do it at the expense of compromising the experience of the event. And maybe, some of us have just gotten so used to that’s just how an event is. There’s gonna be sponsors everywhere. There’s gonna be exhibitors everywhere. It’s like that. That’s just the notion of it. I would say, then come to one of our events and see how different it is when all that stuff isn’t there. And by the way, for the record, vendors and industry are all welcome at ourevent. We just aren’t, focusing on how do we, do exhibit halls and those sort of things.

Chris Dreyer

You touched on this earlier and I just wanna unpack your brain a little bit and see also what, the summit has to offer in these areas. So you said content, you said community, and you said fun. So on the content side of the speakers that have been announced and the material you’re gonna cover, like who are some of the speaker. And then I want you to hit the community side and then the fun side yeah. What’s going on with the event on each of those pillars.

Michael Mogill

So number one, in terms of content, and this time around, I will say. This has been it of all the events previously. This has been the most difficult when it came to booking speakers. Because traditionally, if you look at past events or let’s say you want book a speaker that you know is through a speaker bureau, right? Like a speaker that is, that makes their money speaking. That’s pretty easy. You go to the bureau, you pay their rate and then you get. And I say this with per respect, like John Maxwell or whoever, who’s a phenomenal leadership speaker, going into this event, we’re like we wanna have a type of speakers that you really would not get to experience anywhere else. Or at any other event within the legal industry, we wanted it to have a very unique value proposition. So we approached people that, all the speakers that we have and especially the ones we’re about to announce, they all said, No, Before they said yes so these aren’t people that are on speaking tours they, there, aren’t the type of people who need the money from speaking. It’s they, they don’t care. Like they’re already doing really well. The only way to get them is to make a really compelling case as to why they should come and speak at the event. So when they all told me, no, I was writing handwritten letters and, and shooting videos and really trying to, to really ask them like, Hey, I think this would really be worth your time. This would help inspire, and really help a lot of people. We finally, we were able to get them. So for example, like Cy Wakeman, she was probably our highest rated speaker from the last event. So we obviously brought her back. She’s a phenomenal leadership culture, drama, like expert, of like how to eliminate workplace drama. Also then David Goggins Steve’s not doing a whole lot of speaking, just incredible, like the author of Can’t Hurt Me retired Navy seal and his brand has grown tremendously over the years. He’s he’ll have another book coming out at the end of this year. Also, Kevin O’Leary from shark tank, so we’re going to talk about like creating an investible law firm. And as someone who’s investing in businesses, that’s going to be a great person to learn from. And then, I don’t wanna give away cause in my mind I’m like, okay, these two, but I don’t think we’ve announced them yet. There are quite a few more that will have coming up. Laura, Wasser’s another one. She’s like an elite divorce attorney she’s representing she’s represented to Johnny Depp and, Christina Aguilera and Ben Afleck and so on and really talking about everybody wants the most discerning, clients and the highest caliber clients. And she’s literally doing that. So it’s being able to learn from somebody like that. I’m coming back. I’ll be a speaker. My wife will be a speaker. We have the next few speakers. I think the people will see. They’re gonna be like, okay now I understand like what this is about. This dude is nuts. Like you said, I was crazy. But when you hear who it is and Chris I’ll like text you, separately. So you’ll, you’ll be able to tell me for sure. This is a good or bad idea. So the lineup itself, and then of course, all of our law firm speakers, right? There are lawyers at this event after. All right. So there’s a lot of legal speakers, but what we’re trying to be very mindful is that we’re trying to provide speakers that will offer unique perspective and unique insights that they’re not going to hear everywhere else. Because if you can hear it somewhere else, then. Why would you wanna go to, to this event, we want it to be unique and stand out and in the legal industry, as I’m sure you’ll agree. You look at the lineups and a lot of these events and it’s like the same people every single time look, and I say this again. I say this with respect, but I’m trying to physically move someone from their office in another state to Atlanta. Spend a couple days with us that I want there to be something of unique value for them. So that’s, that’s just a taste of what some of the speakers are like. Then when we talk about the actual networking and relationships, like I, there is something for everyone. So when you have a room full of. 5,000 law firm owners. And I don’t mean 5,000 attendees. 5,000 individual law firms. Cause when we look at it, as, you can look at a lot of conferences and they’ll say we have, I don’t know, a thousand people, but then, when you break out a third of that, it’s like vendors and sponsors. And then another third of that is staff from, from a certain firm. And then, you really find that of the thousand, it’s really only 300 individual law firms. So that kind of limits the amount of networking you’re able to do. So whether you’re a firm that’s. Under 500,000 in revenue or over a hundred million in revenue. We’re gonna have firms now from every state in the us, every practice area, every market area at all different revenue levels. And I’ll tell you, let’s say you get nothing from the speakers and the content. Let’s say you don’t care about the parties. And let’s say you don’t care about the fun, right? Cause I’m one of these people I’m not about the fun. If nothing. You will meet somebody at that event. That’s going to send you business. That’s going to form a new relationship, a new referral partnership, and you put them all in one room together and connect them. That’s going to create, something pretty dynamic. And then, to the final point, number three is the fun. And is the experience, when you walk in the event’s gonna be on the field of Mercedes-Benz stadium. So this is a super bowl stadium. They played the super bowl here. The rolling stones played here. That is a unique experience. So everyone is going to be on the field. Like we, we figured that would be really unique of this football stadium for two days straight. All foods included, all drinks included night, one, we’re doing a VIP party at our headquarters. And this year we’re gonna do it a little bit different in the sense that we’re gonna have a few surprise guests rolling. So some labs, a listers, that sort of thing, right? Just like I’m calling on any favor that I have for this event to make that unique. And then we’re closing out the. With a private concert from Boys II Men. So at Mercedes-Benz stadium. So look, if nothing else, I can promise you, you will have a great time, right? You will have a great time. You will meet great people. And I actually believe strongly that you’re going to learn a lot of things too, but we want something for everyone, depending on whatever their goals are.

Chris Dreyer

Michael, this event is just gonna crush. Just one final question here. When is the event? What do they need to do to go book and make the decision to travel to, to the event?

Michael Mogill

Yes. So the event is November 2nd and third it’s in Atlanta, Georgia. To register for the event, just go to Crisp summit.com like C R I S P summit.com. Get your tickets there. I will tell you for those that are there’s different ticket types. And I want, if Chris, if it’s possible to just take a moment to to really outline like, which is for which person, So first of all, there’s not a bad seat in the house, right? We’re on the field of Mercedes-Benz. So anywhere you sit, you’re gonna have a great view of all the speakers of all the content and the Boys II Men like private concerts. So I would say that there’s not a bad seat. You’re not gonna have any problems seeing anything. Now, if your goal is depending on if you wanna build relationships and partnerships and you wanna be able to connect with people like perhaps that you would not be able to outside of this event, you wanna sit with some killers. I think that is a reason to sit closer. So whether it’s a VIP ticket or a diamond ticket if those are stil available, I would just say, consider who you want to be sitting next to for two days straight, meaning that if you don’t care and you’re there for the content sit anywhere you like, if you’re there to build relationships. I recommend sitting closer because we find that, the closer you get, in, in the event and where you’re sitting is a different type of firm, right? So the ones sitting up front, these are your eight and nine figure firms, right? The ones in VIP are generally your seven figure firms. And the ones in general admission is a mix of all of them. So just be mindful of that, of what your goals are out of the event. If it’s content sit anywhere, if it’s relationships and partnerships, my personal recommendation is sit closer. If you wanna sit with some killers and then I can’t believe forgot to share this, but the content of this. Is all about building this law firm of the future and building this investible law firm. So it is focusing on leadership and people and culture, and how to attract the best people and how to differentiate your firm and how to create the type of practice that is not, solely dependent on you for its growth and really how to dominate with the upcoming changes in the legal landscape. It is not an event to learn trial skills, to learn trial strategy. There’s a lot of great events that already exist for that. So I would encourage you to attend those if that’s your goal. This is an event on how to make money and take care of your people and take care of your family and make an impact in your community.

Chris Dreyer

When leveraging event marketing to solidify your brand focus on the attendee experience above all else. Invest in world-class content, community building, and a whole lot of fun to make a life-changing event. For a discounted ticket go to Crispsummit.com and enter RANKINGS for 25% off of your ticket and free drinks at the open bar. I’d like to thank Michael Mogill from Crisp for sharing his story with us, and I hope you gained some valuable insights from the conversation. You’ve been listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m Chris Dreyer. If you liked this episode, leave us a review. We love to hear from our listeners. I’ll catch you on next week’s PIMM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to master personal injury marketing.