Why Personal Injury Lawyers Stay Broke
Bert Martinez:
I met Ken a few years ago. I find Ken to be just one of these guys that are just, I don’t know, easygoing, fun loving and, and one of these guys that is just in a very subtle way, just going about making the world better, changing things up. Tell you a little bit about Ken. Ken Hardison is the creator and founder and president of pilma, which stands for the Personal Injury Lawyers, Marketing and Management Association. He’s an attorney who built not one, but two multi million dollar law firms before selling them at the age of 52. Ken created Pilma to share his attorney trade secrets to build profitable and successful law firm practices. And it’s become a global thing. I’ve attended his PILMA event and it is spectacular.
Bert Martinez:
And we’re talking not only the US and Canada, but Europe, Australia, all over the world. Ken Hardison, welcome to the show.
Ken Hardison:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here and honor.
Bert Martinez:
Well, I, I’m excited to have you here and, and I want to start off with talking a little bit about your background and tell us a little bit how, I don’t know, maybe how your early childhood there in North Carolina that started shaping this drive for success and maybe got you into thinking about a career as a personal injury att.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, well, I was raised very. My parents, my mother had eighth grade education, my father had a fourth grade education. And so I was the first one to even go to college, much less law school in my family. They were good people. My mother worked in a factory, my daddy worked in a lumber yard. Good, good, honest, hard working people. I don’t know, I just, you know, I started working when I was 10 in the back of fields. Then I started working at a grocery store.
Ken Hardison:
Then I started cutting meat and so I worked my way. They couldn’t afford to put me through college, so I worked my way through college, worked my way through law school and you know, they did give me good work ethic. My dad worked two jobs. He worked at a truck stop at night part time. So I got some pretty good training on work ethic and being honest, you know. So yeah, it was. And I just, I wanted to do, you know, I saw what was happening around me with my schoolmates and I say, you know, they just feel like you kind of stuck, you know, how can you get out of this? Because you kind of, you know how you’re going to school with kids who. Fathers or lawyers and dentists and business owners or whatever, teachers, whatever professors and you’re thinking they don’t even realize how much they got it made.
Ken Hardison:
You know, they really don’t. But you know, you can’t. I did, I won’t jealous of them, but I just was thinking they didn’t realize what they had and I just wanted to pull myself out of it. And I figured real quickly that I had to do something, that I own my own business. I actually thought about starting a grocery store, didn’t have the funds. Then I looked at law. I had a. I was dating this girl in high school and she used to babysit this lawyer.
Ken Hardison:
And after I got off of work at 9 o’, clock, I’d go over and sit with her on the weekends. And I really liked him and I liked his lifestyle. He had a nice car, nice family, a nice house and he was a nice guy. And I would talk to him, you know, and he’d come in, he’d be a little drinky and he talked to me, you know, and I said, you know, I think I want to do this. And so I went to this small school that was just starting a law school. They hadn’t even been accredited, but I went there, majored in pre law. I got really, really good with, in good with the. My advisor, the head of the department and got in law school and just worked and I was, got married and had two kids during law school, believe it or not.
Ken Hardison:
And I was working at one time I was delivering papers three to six in the morning, going to school, then get off, go work, cut meat till about 8 or 9 and go into the law school and work at the library till midnight. Close that up. So I was getting, you know, about three or four hours sleep. That’s why I got all these wrinkles over my. So I don’t say it was easy, but the deal was, you know, I think that’s why I so worry about our democracy. In this country, anybody can do anything if you got the drive. You know, I’m not saying I was the smartest guy. I didn’t make Law Review, but I had to write off.
Ken Hardison:
I didn’t get it just because of grades. But I just, you know, I think the key to me was I just very focused, very driven, driven. You know, I didn’t, I don’t like to take no for an answer. And I’m. I got this entrepreneur blood in me. I like building things and I like thinking outside the box. So yeah, it was. Yeah, I mean, you know, but it was, it was a good, good life.
Ken Hardison:
I’ve had a good Life. I’ve had a very blessed life. But you know, somebody says, you know, I tell people I’m lucky, but I think you get, you get more lucky, you get lucky or the more you work for it. But there is luck involved and there’s no doubt about it. You got to be at the right place at the right time sometimes.
Bert Martinez:
I agree with that. And I think also there, there is a, you know, part of that luck comes in when you’re doing something. You know, what’s the old saying that the harder I work, the luckier I get.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And I think that, you know, there, there is. Some people call it the law of attraction. Coincidence, fate. You know, there is a, a thing that happens when you say, okay, this is what I’m going to do. I am going to become this or I’m going to achieve that or whatever. And the universe moves to help you make that a reality.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, it’s got a lot to do with mindset, man. I mean, it does. I talk to a lot of lawyers, you know, I do a lot of free 30 minute sessions with them and I can tell within 10 minutes whether or not they got what it takes, because it’s all about your mindset. You know, I was listening to something yesterday on, on Facebook or something. This guy, Jim Rohn, he said somebody’s got the right mindset. Like a salesman and it’s raining. He says, oh, well, it’s raining. Nobody going to buy nothing today.
Ken Hardison:
Then the other guy gets up, say, well, it’s raining. So a lot of people won’t be at home today, especially my other salespeople that are competing with me. It’s, it’s being the positive. I, in fact, I don’t like, I fired people in my businesses because they’re negative. I don’t like any negativity around me. Always part of our core values is what if. I mean, the deal is, and I think lawyer, we go to law school and they, it’s sort of like going to basic camp. They break you down and then teach you how to think analytically.
Ken Hardison:
But they also think you teach you to think about what can go wrong because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Help people prevent things from going wrong. Right, right. I think that, I think that curbs the ability to have a mindset that looking on the good side, like if somebody says, well, this is in the way, I can’t, you know, I can’t do it. No, if you can’t go through it, go around it, go under it, go over it, that’s the way I look at it. I don’t take, I, I don’t take defeat easily, you know, and I’ve always said second sucks. So, so it’s the mindset, I mean, you know, and I don’t know, it’s not that I’m the sharpest person in the room, but as far as perseverance and grit and there’s a book on it, Grit. And I read that book and I said, that’s B.S.
Ken Hardison:
Harness it. Because I was not the smartest guy in law school, I was not the smartest guy in high school. I was not the smartest guy, but I had grit, determination. I did not give up. And I set my sights on something and I wouldn’t let adversity, you know, beat me down. And I’ve had some, believe me, I’ve been almost broke two or three times in my life. And entrepreneurs tend to do that because we take, we take risk, you know, where other people won’t.
Ken Hardison:
But I mean, you look at, you.
Bert Martinez:
Look at some famous people like Walt Disney who supposedly filed bankruptcy like seven times and, and then was it Colonel Sanders who, you know, at the age of like 65 decides to start selling his chicken recipe and builds that and stuff like that. So it is a mindset in adversity, I think is the launching pad. And, and I think whether, whether or not.
Bert Martinez:
You do something or don’t do something, you pay a price, right? So if you’re going to say, hey, I’m going to build a law firm or I’m going to do this or I’m going to run a four minute mile, you’re going to pay that price. And if you decide, oh, it’s too hard for me, then you pay that price. And you hear it all the time. People say, you know, success is, is never earned, it’s rented on a daily basis and stuff like that, I’m not sure about that. But certainly there’s a mindset to it. There is, I think, you know, you mentioned work ethic and I think that is something that our society’s lost that a lot. We have it so easy. And now with AI, there are people coming out of college who went to college specifically to learn how to code.
Bert Martinez:
And now AI has taken basically that first year of coding and made it, you know, talk or type to code.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, it’s easy. It’ll do it for you, right? Yeah, it’s, it’s affecting. You know, they said AI was not going to replace jobs. It is going to replace jobs, it’s going to be the entry level. It is. That’s going to make people that in a very more productive. 10 times, 100 times more productive. But it’s actually going to replace certain repetitive menial jobs.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, it’s cut. I mean, it’s already here, but it’s coming to the law. It’s already there at the law area. And, you know, I’m telling lawyers, you’ve got to. I, I was actually speaking this morning at the North Carolina Advocates of Justice, and I, I was talking about. I remember when, you know, the Internet came out and a lot of my friends lawyers said, oh, it’s just a fad. It’s not going to last. I’m not going to worry about it.
Ken Hardison:
And I jumped in on it. I said, well, you might be right, but if it’s not, I want to be one of the. I like to be one of the leaders. And if it’s wrong, then that’s just another. I don’t call them failures. I call them learning experiences. Some of them are just more expensive than others. You know, it’s like, you know.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, I like that. I don’t like to say failure. I like to say learn this now we learn what doesn’t work. But. But yeah, I mean, we’re actually. And I’m telling lawyers now. I watched the younger lawyers I had. I was running.
Ken Hardison:
This has been 15, 20 years ago, and there were some younger lawyers that embraced it. They were getting trucking cases and these cities and these older lawyers couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. And they were getting rich. Of course they called up, you know, but the deal was these guys banked it before they realized what the deal was. And the same things will happen with AI the ones that embrace it are going to bank it. And there’s a lot of other stuff going on now, too, Bert, with this institutional money and these ABS is alternative to business structure like in Puerto Rico and Arizona, and you’ve got these equity firms and you’ve got companies that now will go in and take over your law firm and run it for a percentage. And all you got to do is just have your lawyers over here and they’ll run everything, do your marketing, do all the processes, and you just manage the lawyers. Things are changing. I’m seeing it. I mean.
Bert Martinez:
Right. And you know, and I think that one of the things that I think a lot of professionals have in common and you. And you touched on this is the marketing. You go to law school and as you said, you know, they give you that basic structure of, of the law and how to think like a lawyer. That analytical thinking that you, that, that everybody should really go through. I, I, I had the pleasure of going to law school and, and my first year of law school changed my life forever. You start to realize, oh, this is what a contract is. And everything, just about everything we do is kind of a contract.
Bert Martinez:
I promise to, you know, wash your car. That’s a contract. You know, simple things like that. And I think that just the average citizen should go and learn some of this basic stuff that you cover in year one of law school, because it is so fundamental to everything we do. And I think back to what I started to say is these alternative business structures. One of the things that a lot of professionals suffer from is marketing. And I think that the law profession has kind of shot themselves in the foot a little bit in the, in the sense that when you see a lawyer commercial, they all kind of look the same and sound the same and they basically have the same message. You know, we’re going to be the tough attorneys and we’re not, you know, we don’t win till you win and blah, blah, blah.
Bert Martinez:
And it’s like, come on, let’s, let’s be a little bit creative in something that, that fascinated me about the profession of law when it comes to marketing and is that for many, many years, lawyers were not allowed to market or advertise. It was like the craziest thing. This, this was a Supreme court decision by Mr. Van Osteen. I think that once he took that case to Supreme Court, then the supreme, the Supreme Court says, yeah, you’re a business. You have to be able to market. How are you, how, how’s a consumer going to know this or that? And how, how are you going to build, you know, competitiveness? And, but it’s crazy to me that at one point, lawyers and the bar associations were so entrenched in their thinking, into the tradition, the, the lawyerly way of doing business, that they thought marketing was beneath them. It just blows me away.
Ken Hardison:
I was, I was one of those guys. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was not really. I mean, this is a great story if you got time. Yes. So from 82 to 94, I was with this firm in a small town, and I was growing the business 10, 20% a year. Had a yellow page ad.
Ken Hardison:
That was it. Half, half a page in my business grew each year. In 94, I noticed that it kind of leveled off. 95, it started going down. And I did criminal and I did PI and I Did some workers crop disability. And I had a partner that did estate planning in real estate, and I had another lawyer that did domestic. So I go to court to handle this dwi, and I walk in, and the guy walks in and he’s got crutches and got a cast on his leg. I said, what happened, Joe? He said, I got T boned by this tractor trailer.
Ken Hardison:
I said, well, you know, I do that. He said, yeah, but I saw this guy on tv and I figured he must really be good. So I tried his DWI case. I won it. I went back to my office and I sat down with my partners. I said, we’ve got to adapt. We’ve got to change with the times. And they wouldn’t do it.
Ken Hardison:
They would not do it. I said, listen, I feel the same, but the deal is, look at our numbers. I said, we’re. We’re going the wrong way. And I said. And I said, we got to adapt and change with the times. And they wouldn’t do it. So I left it took an associate and three staff members and went out and borrowed everything I could borrow on my real estate when they were about a half a million dollars.
Ken Hardison:
And then I went and studied with Dan Kennedy. It got him coach me. J. Abraham had nothing to do with law because there was nothing like Pillman. And there was no coaching, there was no fireproof, there was no Chris. There was no great legal marketing. Was none of this stuff out there and you. And I knew right away that my competitors were not going to tell me the secrets.
Ken Hardison:
So I also went around and went about three or four lawyers. My first stop was John Morgan and spent two days with him and picked his brain back in 96. And back then he had 20, 20, 25 lawyers. He was just in Florida. Of course, you know where he’s at now. But I learned a lot from these guys, and they were willing to tell me because I want their competitors. And you know, lawyers have big egos, so they like to brag and tell y’ all their little deal. So I learned a lot from that.
Ken Hardison:
I learned a lot from Dan Kennedy. And then I went back, took this money, and I tried, I experimented. And I, like I said, half the stuff I did did not work. Half of it did, and half did I pour the gasoline on it and got the fire bigger. And we went from, in five years, from two lawyers, three staff, 13 lawyers and 57 staff. And we went from like a half a million to 8 million in like five years. And this is back in the 90s and early 2000s from 97 to 2002. So. And, and the deal was, this is what I tell people. And I still had. I would get no referrals from other lawyers. They were already report me to the bar saying everything I was doing that ethical. None of it never stood. None of it ever stuck. But, you know, but, but I. But we were signed up 200 cases a month and we were, we were doing good and. But like everything else entrepreneur. I woke up one morning and said, you know, I’m tired of this.
I want to do something new. I don’t look forward to getting up and going to work, even though I was making craps full of money. And I went and told my partner, I said, I want out. I said, I want to sell out. I’ll finance the whole deal with a real price. I said, you know, I said, you’ll be able to pay.
Ken Hardison:
Pay me with your profits. And he took. I laid out a deal. He took it. He didn’t negotiate. So I gave him a hell of a deal. And then I was going to move down to Myrtle beach and retire. Six months of that.
Ken Hardison:
I got tired and people were calling behind, you do it. How’d you do it? And my wife said, you need to start charging for this, kid. You just people. I said, yeah, but I like helping people. So anyway, we started filming and it’s a hobby and just, you know, have a. Have some kind of structure. And it just kind of took off, man. I mean, really, I did not start it to turn into something big.
Ken Hardison:
I’d never imagined this. Unlike the law firm I never had to vision of really just kind of happened. 2018, I knew something. We had something, and I. I did push it. Then I did. I started running it like a real business. But before that, the first five or six years, I just. It was a lifestyle business and you know, I was making decent money. Okay, play money. But I mean, it started to a real. I mean, you know, we. We have really big summits. We had this year. We had 80 vendors, 40 speakers, 500 lawyers. You know, but.
Ken Hardison:
But you’re right though. It’s. It’s been doing it 15 years and it’s turned into something bigger than I ever expected. And I’m proud of it because it. People ask me, what, you want to quit? I said, well, it’s no fun anymore because it gives me. It gives me self worth, man. It gives me something to look forward to. Get out of bed. And I’ve seen. I’ve got some friends that are retired. They’re miserable. You know, and they’re lost. And, and if they, if I get it like I did practicing along, and I don’t like it anymore. I dread getting in, you know, doing something. And I just told my wife, I’m doing this. She said, well, you love that, don’t you? I said, I love talking about this stuff. I love, I love it. I mean, to me, it’s not work. It’s fun.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. And I think especially when you can mentor somebody or when you see somebody’s face light up, they. They finally get it. Oh, okay. It’s this.
Bert Martinez:
Oh, okay. It’s a lot of fun. It is. It is very fulfilling and something that a lot of people don’t understand until they get there. I don’t care how much money you’re making, sooner or later, whether you’re making a few hundred thousand dollars a year or a few hundred million dollars a year, it loses its luster and you got to find something else to do. That’s why a lot of very, very successful people, what do they do? They get into charities and, and they start building hospitals and schools and stuff like that because they need something more first. It’s money. And, and I’ve had the pleasure of doing some work for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Bert Martinez:
And, and he talks a lot about. His first part of his career was all about me and my family. And now, you know, the second half of my career is about we. How can we make the world better? And he’s got his, his, what do you call it? He did whatever with the university or he’s, you know, and he has two or three different charities that he works with. One is for. Is for children. Another one is for climate control and stuff like that. And, and, and he also, and he still loves politics.
Bert Martinez:
He’s, as you know, he’s been a governor and stuff like that. So I think that’s just a normal development, right? This organic growth that you go, you know, that, you know, things change. And some people, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s some people who love what they do, and they’ll do it till they. They die. And that’s it. Again, nothing wrong with that because you hit the nail on the head. As long as it’s fun, as long as you’re still getting up, going, man, I can’t wait to do more, you’re in a great place.
Bert Martinez:
And once you start hating, you know, some people call it Sunday night anxiety because you got to get, you know, what’s waiting for you on Monday. Okay, now, now, I think that’s a good signal that it might be time for you to do something different.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, I mean, I always talk, I always really tried to mentor, teach my children to find something you got a passion for. And then I wanted to be lawyers. They said I work too hard. They watched me. But, but I said, find something you got a passion for, a real passion, and I’ll teach you how to make money at it. That’s, that’s one of my gifts God gave me, is I know how to take something and leverage it to make it into something that earns you a living. But what’s better, something be able to earn a living and something you got a passion for. I got a passion for this.
Ken Hardison:
So, you know, that’s what I’m saying. It’s. I think so many kids now are just trying to make the money or trying to get. Oh, I don’t know what they’re trying to do, but it’s. I don’t. Now I know what my parents were thinking. When I was young, you know, I thought I knew everything. I didn’t know, you know, but, but you know, but you know what, though?
Bert Martinez:
Again, that’s part of growing up. You know, when you’re, when you’re in your teens, your late teens, you’re looking at your parents like they’re so out of touch and they’re so dumb and, and you know everything, right. And nothing humbles you and at the same time educates you better than when you go off on your own. And, you know, I, I, One of the best things. So, so we have five kids and, and the last, and the last two kids were twins, twin girls. And I, I always like to joke and say with that. When the boys started coming to visit my twin girls, that’s, that’s when my hair fell out. That was, it couldn’t take any more.
Bert Martinez:
But I. One of the best things that ever happened to them was they wanted an iPhone. Now we had bought them these cheap Walmart phones, which were, you know, was good enough for texting and calling, which is all I needed them to do. Of course they’re like, dad, we’re the only people in our school that don’t have iPhones. Is it great? You can be different? Of course they didn’t like that. And so they’re like, you know, we need to get iPhones. I said, well, you’re going to have to go and work for it. And, and it just so happened that, that we had a friend who was opening up a pet grooming place, and she says, hey, the twins can come work here on the weekends.
Bert Martinez:
And it was perfect because it was nasty. It was hard work there. They, you know, they were. Sometimes they’d have to deal with urine and, you know, animal crap and all that other stuff and, and interact with the people who were over the top, crazy about their animals and stuff like that. But it taught them work ethic. It taught them how to earn money. And so they, they saved enough money. That taught them the value of a dollar. Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. And so, like a year or two later, you know, the, they’re like, it might be time to upgrade my iPhone. They, they didn’t want to do it because they didn’t want to spend the money. They know how hard it is. They, they realize, like you said, the value of money. And it wasn’t, you know, it’s easy to spend it when mom and dad are paying for it, but when you got to pay for it, man, that’s a different thing. And, and, and so anyway, that was a great thing that happened to them. They got lucky.
Bert Martinez:
I, I, to this day, when, you know, when they’re saying, oh, man, this is such a grind, or this is tough, and is it harder than working at the pet grooming place? No, no, it’s not. And it helps them refocus.
Ken Hardison:
I used to have a question when I was interviewing associates, and you believe it or not, one of my main things, I want to know if they worked when they were in high school or college, either during the summer or while they were going to school. And that was a big deal to me, and what kind of job they had that. Were they working with the public, Because I felt like it made them, number one, I have a work ethic. Number two, be able to relate to the common man, which a lot of PI lawyers, that’s what we’re doing. You know, we’re dealing with the common man, the blue collar, for not all. I mean, everybody gets some ranks. But what I’m saying is the ones that hire lawyers are usually, you know, under a hundred thousand a year employees. I just felt like that was more important to me than whether or not they won’t lower you.
Ken Hardison:
But that’s just me. I’m not saying, I’m not saying that is not important, but I’m saying, you know, I wanted somebody that could relate and, and give good client service and really care and understand what it means to work.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I totally agree with you. There is, there is so much concern in, in the medical field as well as in the legal profession about prestige Lawyers are. And you correct me if I’m wrong, a lot of lawyers, a lot of big law firms are impressed that you went to Harvard or, you know, that you came, whatever elite. Elite school you came from. Princeton, whatever. I don’t care. I mean, if you’re representing me, I just have to feel as though, A, you care about my situation, and B, you got the skills and the experience to win my case.
Bert Martinez:
And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a. I’ve never had a client say, hey, Bert, you know, what was your grade point average?
Ken Hardison:
What?
Bert Martinez:
You know, where’d you graduate from? We don’t care. Consumers don’t care.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, I never had a mess. Yeah, I was ready to say, I never had anybody ask me where I went to law school or whether I was on law review or where I finished in the class. You know what they asked me? Can you help me?
Bert Martinez:
Do you think that you can win this case, Ken? That’s what I need to know. And that’s it.
Ken Hardison:
You’re right. You’re right. It don’t really matter.
Bert Martinez:
All right, so. All right, so I love that background. I want to talk about Pilma, you’ve already kind of alluded to. It started as a hobby, and. And it started to grow organically from there. And I want to back up just a little bit because you mentioned Dan Kennedy, and for those who do not know Dan Kennedy, Dan Kennedy is probably best known as a. As a real marketing guru. If you Google Dan Kennedy or go to Amazon and hit Dan Kennedy, you know, he’s got tons of books and everything from not just marketing, but niche marketing, like how to sell to the rich or the ultra rich, how to.
Bert Martinez:
How to write a sales letter that actually works. And. And I got a bunch of his books. So how did. How did you get involved with Dan Kennedy? And. And was that part of the reason also that you started Pilma?
Ken Hardison:
It was. I based it. I actually modeled it after his. His. His program, to be honest with you. Yeah. I spent. I’ve spent over. I’ve spent six figures, not. Not seven, but I spent probably 2 or 300,000 with him over the last 30 years, and it was worth every cent of it.
Bert Martinez:
I want to stop right there and ask you this. What did that investment do for you? Because people are going to say, wow, this guy spent two or three hundred thousand dollars on a coach or a mentor. Why?
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, because I don’t know. What. I don’t know. You know? Yeah. And I. I’m not. I wasn’t Even smart enough to know the right question to ask. Okay, so that. Exactly, you know, so yeah, I just found him online, man, believe it or not. And I started going to his events and then I joined his mastermind. And then I got individual one on one coaching. I won market of the year one year. You know, think about it. You know, Dan hates lawyers. He says they screw up everything for business people. But I got along good with it.
Ken Hardison:
But I think he respected that. You know, I didn’t. I never talked to him about politics or anything like that. I never got into that. I just really. I want to know about the marketing and I use a lot of his stuff and I ain’t gonna say every one of it. Every bit of it worked, but probably 90 of it worked. And that’s good bat and average.
Ken Hardison:
So, yeah, I mean, I still, I’ve read about every book he’s ever done. I can’t, I can’t tell you how much money I’ve spent. But, but it was. And this is where I think lawyers screw up. They think about it as an expense. I think about it was an investment in my future because it made me millions. I’m talking about millions. And I’m not bragging because I’m not rich. I’ve gone through a divorce. So that, you know, you lose half of that. Right. To start with. I had to, you know, start over 10 years ago. And that’s okay. I’m happy. You know what I’m saying? I’m happy. And, and you know, I’m glad to pay. I’m glad I paid her. I’m glad I’m still Peter. I got no problem with it. I have, no. We had three wonderful children and I’m, you know, and everything’s good. Yeah, yeah.
Bert Martinez:
No, and I’m glad to hear you say that because a lot of guys get so bitter about it and whatever and you guys together and stuff like that. So that’s great.
Ken Hardison:
So. Just grew. We just grew apart. I mean, you know, it happens. It happens.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. So, yeah, Dan Kennedy. And one of the things I like about Dan Kennedy and it. He’s got a fairly dry personality. He’s not your typical marketing guy. When you look at somebody, let’s say like a Tony Robbins who’s like very high energy and come on. And blah, blah, blah. Still good stuff.
Bert Martinez:
But Dan Kennedy is, I would say he’s a very, you know, and he does have a humor. It’s. It’s a dry sense of humor. He kind of slides it in there. If you’re not Paying attention, but it’s like going to any other college course. And he pulls out his high tech device, which at this point was a overhead projector.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, that’s what it was.
Bert Martinez:
Just like you would find in a college course and goes to town and, you know.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Anyway, so that’s one of his personalities. One of the things I liked about him. It was no nonsense. Here’s what you do. Shut up and get to work.
Ken Hardison:
That’s right. He didn’t mince words. But I got along with him fine and he helped me a lot. There’s no doubt about it. And Jay Hammer. Jay Abraham’s got a different personality. I think he thinks more outside of the box than anybody ever met. They’re different, but they’re both good in their own way.
Ken Hardison:
You know what I’m saying?
Bert Martinez:
But the foundation, I would say that Jay Abraham has a little bit more of a personality, but as you said, it’s the, the information is good.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah. The foundational stuff from, from Dan, like, you know, you got to differentiate yourself. You know, you gotta, you gotta, you know, you gotta. You gotta have a good hook. You gotta do this, you gotta follow up, you know, the whole big deal. You know, there’s a journey. And he says, you know, they call him a millionaire maker. I mean, he’s, he’s, he’s helped a lot of people become multimillionaires. There’s no doubt about it, you know? No, Yeah. I mean, you know, and like I said, I owe him a lot.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. No, I do, too. I love Dan Kennedy. Any, any. Anything that I’ve learned from Dan that I’ve experimented with has always been a positive experience. Not that it’s always worked the way I wanted it to work, but before Dan Kennedy, I never even thought about compiling, what do you call it, samples of different types of marketing or media. Right. It just never dawned on me.
Bert Martinez:
And again, it’s. This is like what you said before. The stuff that you don’t know, that you don’t know, it makes a big difference. And so now I have a library of different marketing things that I can look at and say, well, I like that, and I like the way this is worded. And, and, and it’s little things like that that I don’t care. I would say it doesn’t matter what your passion is. It doesn’t matter what your degree is in, doesn’t matter what your certifications in. Chances are very, very high.
Bert Martinez:
You know, nothing about marketing. And marketing makes or breaks your business. At least one of the elements that Makes or breaks your business. Obviously you have to have good trained people because if you got leads coming in the door, you don’t know what to do with them. That’s, that’s not good either. But man, I, I don’t. You know, just. I would say the average startup, even a well funded startup, they don’t know anything about marketing.
Bert Martinez:
And you can get lucky, but lucky is not necessarily duplicatable. But if you want to grow a business, you got to get leads in, you got to nurture those leads, and you got to eventually close those leads. All right, so let’s talk about this real quick. I wanted to ask you specifically, what do you see that a lot of personal injury attorneys, what mistakes do you see that’s pretty common to most personal injury attorneys. Let’s talk about this.
Ken Hardison:
Okay, Number one is they don’t differentiate yourself. They all sound alike. You know, we’re tough, we’re strong, we care. We got this many years experience, you know, call us freak. The calls free. I mean, they all say the same thing. You’ve got to have. I say it.
Ken Hardison:
I learned this from Dan. You got to answer two questions when, when somebody’s calling you as a lawyer, do I, do I need a lawyer? And if I do, why should I choose you over all these people I see on billboards, TV and social media, you know, newspaper, wherever. Why you? Why should I choose you? I used to have a thing on my website, says how we’re different. I had a subtopic stuck in my brain. And then the second biggest, the biggest one where I always, I used to do a lot of consulting. I don’t now. I’m kind of slowing down a little bit, but intake, signing up new cases, dealing with these, converting leads. And here’s, here’s the myth. All lawyers, when I talk to them, they say, oh, well, I sign up every case I want. And they might, but they’re not answering the phone every time somebody calls. You know, they’re in the courtroom, they’re doing depositions, they’re talking to other clients.
And I’ve proven it. I had a lawyer up in Virginia, I ain’t gonna say where, was spending $2 million a year on TV and he wanted me to do a consult. So the first thing I did, I went out and hired this company that does mystery calls and acts like somebody’s been hurt and did five of them and three of them were failures. I mean, and then two of them, they did okay. I sat down with the partners and, and played this because they said, oh, no, we got this covered.
Ken Hardison:
I said, do you really played it? And the head partner got up and turned red and went to the bathroom and threw up because he knew what he was, he was wasting. And so, but, but, you know, so having dedicated intake, I was talking this morning at this event, and I said, even solos, I said, think about it this way. You need it worse because you’re. You got to do so many things. But if you got somebody that’s dedicated and they get you one extra case a month, and your average fee is 10,000, you paid him 40, you made 80,000 profit. If you get two extra cases, you’ve made a cool 200,000. Okay? And what we found is, so now, like Pillman, we train. We do intake training every month for the people’s intake people.
Ken Hardison:
And we got a great person that does that. And we really tell them, you got to know, what percentage are you converting that you want, not how many you convert. It just raises their hand because they might not qualify. So we try to shoot to get them to 92 to 95%. And what they find when we go in and do all it is, they’re doing about 65 to 75%. And they thought up every case. I won’t, and they don’t. I’ve had some at 80. But. But, but the deal is what you think and what’s real is two different.
And that’s where I see the most money wasted. That’s probably the number one. But those two things and then not knowing your numbers, when I have. When I talked to a lawyer and I said, how many active cases you got? Oh, I don’t know. Probably around 300. I don’t know.
Ken Hardison:
I mean, you’re in litigation. I don’t know. Probably. It is when they say probably or guesstimate, I say, you don’t know. You just don’t know because you’re not keeping up with it. You know, do you know how many cases you’re adding? Like, how many are you signing up versus how many you closing? Do you know how long it takes you to close a case from the time you sell it to the time that the person gets their money? Are you trying to compress that? I mean, they don’t know the numbers. And so you got to know your numbers. Knowing your numbers is probably number three.
Ken Hardison:
And there’s a lot of other ones. But I say those are the top three. You know, you know, not differentiate. Not not having the intake lead conversion down and then not knowing your numbers because you can’t. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Right? Right.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. In people, depending on their personality type. Some people hate numbers. They weren’t good at it back in school and, and it frightens them or bores them. Whatever word you want to use, it pains them. And I always say you, you know, you could. Nowadays, you might not have been able to do this 30 years ago, but today you can go and get a CFO on a part time basis. They can help you understand those numbers.
Bert Martinez:
You got to understand those basic reports.
Ken Hardison:
I’ll tell you something else you can do. We ain’t talk a lot about AI But I use it as a thought partner. I load it into my. I do a close. You could close up, jet me and I close it up, add it, put in my P. L. I said, where can I. Where, where are the gaps? Where can I save money? Where can I make money? Ask me any questions, you know, one time at a time.
Ken Hardison:
And he went in there and it gave me two or three recommendations. So what I’m saying is if you feed it in the numbers, it can tell you what you need to know. I mean, you know, it’s. It’s crazy, man. It’s crazy. That’s why I said you got to embrace this stuff. It’s. It’s not just.
Ken Hardison:
It’s actually a good thought partner. I mean, I use it to solve a lot of problems. Is it 100%? No, but it can give you, it gets you thinking.
Bert Martinez:
It does, it does. I had, I had, I had a client who grew his business, so I think, I think a little bit over $10 million a year. And he was a pretty nice guy and he would manage. He was the first God that I ever saw, truly, truly managed by the numbers. And the reason I say I saw is because I was there when he. At. At one of my visits, he invited me to, to be in the, in the weekly meeting with the leadership that he had. And they went right through the numbers.
Bert Martinez:
And he, like, he’s a numbers guy, so he can make it a little bit more interesting. But he had a goal to keep his company at 20, I think it was like 25% profit. And so if it dipped below 25% profit, he would let people go. Now, he might hire him back, but he would let people go like immediately. He wanted to keep it 25% because he knew at 25%, here’s all the things I can do. But the number one thing is I have a buffer. I have a buffer in case things slow down, which he was in the Newspaper industry at that time. And things always slowed down at certain parts of the year during the summer and things like that.
Bert Martinez:
And so he was, he was brutal about managing by the numbers. And, and not that you have to be like that, but to me, that really opened my eyes in a way that I had not seen numbers management like that before. It’s, it’s not fun to let people go. It’s not fun necessarily to manage by the numbers in that sense. But it’s also not fun closing your business. It’s also not fun, you know, having a business that’s doing, you know, millions of dollars a year, but yet you can’t pay yourself because you don’t know what the numbers are.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
All right, so you mentioned AI and, and I think this is going to be so important. AI in the law. You know, one of the things that’s been happening quite a bit, there’s been several attorneys, unfortunately, that have gotten in trouble because they didn’t check the, the, the AI homework. Right.
Ken Hardison:
That’s right.
Bert Martinez:
You know, but AI is here. And so how is PMA teaching its members how to use AI?
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, well, you can’t let it re. What I’m saying is you’ve got to use it as a guide, but not as a replacement, I guess is what I’m saying. That’s. That’s the general overall deal. But like I like to use it as a thought partner to help me, but it does hallucinate and you got. It’s getting better. But what I like, what I’m trying to teach my lawyers is to take one process each quarter and figure out how to automate it. Something with AI or what any other kind of automation.
Ken Hardison:
So that. Because here’s the deal, you want to get as more and more. It’s getting more and more saturated with the marketing from the national firms and institutional money. You have to spend more on marketing. You know what Dan states, he who spends the most wins the game. You know, but so, you know, using it to. Some of it’s going to be replacing like we’re playing with the. There’s a company now that’s got a good AI platform that’ll actually do.
Ken Hardison:
Do intakes will do collars and I, I tested it. It’s unbelievable. I tried to screw it up. It’s unbelievable. And when it got to a place, I said, you know, I’m just not going to make a decision unless I talk to a lawyer. It says, Absolutely, Mr. Horse will transfer you right now.
Bert Martinez:
Wow, that’s pretty cool.
Ken Hardison:
It had empathy and Everything. And it knows 30 languages and it can have up to 20 calls at one time. It never sleeps, it never eats, it never goes on vacations, it never gets sick. So there’s going to be another place. What if you can set up your whole file with a AI agent calling the insurance company, finding, getting the, the file set up. Da da da. Going after medical records. Now they’ve got it where it does demands.
Ken Hardison:
Da da da. It’s just, you want to, you know, I was talking to this equity guy and he says that what they’re looking at is when a lot of boomers my age are selling their law firms and they’re looking at how much time they have to touch the file, you know, and how are they using AI, how are they using automation? And of course, they’re also looking at their return on marketing, which they said they won’t touch nobody unless it’s at least four and a half, six. And I’ve been preaching six plus for 20 years, which made me feel good. But some people say five but I’ve always just really preached six. You know, if you spend a dollar market, I want six dollars back.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Ken Hardison:
I know, I know I’m gonna make great money. I can live with five, but gets below five. I got to either tweak it or get rid of it. But so I see that. And we’re actually doing a for PI lawyers in January 15th through 17th in Orlando. And we’ve got, I’ve got a bunch of good speakers. I’m not one of them, but it’s, it’s got lawyers that are using it. I’ll show you how to use it.
Ken Hardison:
I’ve got a bunch of big thought leaders on it and I’ve got some vendors that are going to talk about what their stuff does. And then we’ve got some really to break it off the last day and go owners and managers, marketers and then intake people. And we’re going to sit there and do workshops and give them a plan on what they need to do because most lawyers, even the ones that want to, don’t know where to start. And so I got some really good people. I’ve had to pay for some speakers this time because, you know, their knowledge base is very important. And so I’m looking forward to it. We’re getting good response.
Bert Martinez:
And this is taking place when?
Ken Hardison:
January 15th through 17th in Orlando at the JW Marriott. You can go to pillman.org and look at our website under events. And it’s so, you know, it’s a good time to go do that, then shoot over to Epcot or Universal or whatever.
Bert Martinez:
We just hit the beach.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, yeah. So it’s. But no, I think it’s. I think it’s important. We were, we were always like, to be the leader. We did, we did an AI conference this past August was two years ago, Right. When it was real new and we had over 120 lawyers there at that time in Charlotte. And it’s gone so far since then.
Ken Hardison:
And I told him, I said, this is just the beginning. I said, you know, this stuff is like wildfire. But, yeah, so it’s. Yeah, I think you got to adapt, you know, just like you did with Internet. Yep. He who adapts wins the game, my friend. That’s right. It’s Norwism.
Ken Hardison:
Survive. You got to adapt.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. And I think speaking of adapting, I mean, AI, not only is AI going to be just a wonderful tool, but it’s also going to create a new field of law.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, it is.
Bert Martinez:
Just like every, just like every innovation tends to do that. And to your point, I want to talk about this a little bit, that if you’re a little concerned about how to use AI, definitely. I’m going to urge you to check out the PILMA. You can go to pilma.org and I’m going to put links here in, in the show notes. But January 15th through the 17th. But start off something easy. You know, the, the. I don’t know if this is still true, but back in the day, the number one bar complaint was.
Bert Martinez:
My lawyer never calls me back. I never hear from my lawyer that could be automated.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, it is. It is. There is. There’s two. You can do it yourself or there’s two. There’s two companies out there right now, Hona and case status, and it’s not that expensive. And it. I’ve got members at Puma that are using both of them and they love it.
Ken Hardison:
It caught. It cuts down on the calls and complaints and it. Let’s give them an idea of a client’s not happy so they can hit it off at the pass before it gets too bad. So, yeah, it’s. Yeah, I mean, it’s there and they’re using AI to some extent, but the big deal, they’ve got a whole platform that does this and keeps the client happy and the client have access and communicates and still don’t take away the human touch. But it, it just really helps. So it’s already out there.
Bert Martinez:
All right. And the way I, I explain to my clients is because a lot of people are confused on how to tell their consumers that they use AI or voice AI or AI agent is, you don’t hide it. You know, hey, this is, you know, if, if somebody’s trying to get a hold of me and you know, the AI tells them, hey, you know, I am Bert’s AI assistant. You know, is there, you know, anything I can help you with? And if, and if they say no, I need, I really need to talk to Bert. No problem, let me transfer you right now. It’s, it’s that simple. But in, I want to say 50% of the cases when people call me, they want a real simple update or they need something emailed to them and that can be taken care of without me ever picking up that call. Not that I mind talking to my clients at all.
Bert Martinez:
But we’re all trying to get less busier, I think, especially, especially the older we get, the more our time matters. And so I think now more than ever using AI to me is, is an absolute requirement. And I tell people, look at the evolution because you know, back in the day, when I say back in the day, I want to say maybe 15, 20 years ago, you, you would have these simple, what do you call it? They call them robocalls, right, where it’s a pre recorded message and hi, if you want to go to Mexico for $199, you know, whatever, go to this website or press one and, and then it evolved even more. And, and so to me, this is the same thing when, when you used to get these robocalls, you’re not going, wow, this is a human. No, it’s not. You knew immediately it wasn’t a human. It still worked, it still delivered results. AI is the same thing.
Bert Martinez:
The difference is, as you mentioned, AI has gotten so good that if you’re not savvy, you might think this is a real person because they’ve gotten so fraking good. And yeah, I’ve talked to a couple of guys from Google and they’re like, this isn’t even real AI. This is like the baby steps of AI because it’s still learning and you still gotta. Because like, as you mentioned earlier, it hallucinates and you still sometimes have to repeatedly tell it, don’t do this and don’t do, you know, and do this instead or whatever. There’s, there’s just so many ways of using AI. I know that for instance, Facebook, who owns or Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that, as well as WhatsApp, they’re putting on webinars on how they’re using AI to optimize your marketing. Right. And, and there’s some AI features out there that will let you interact with social media, including WhatsApp.
Bert Martinez:
So if that’s a, if that’s a channel that you’re using, AI can step in and really facilitate a conversation so you can filter out the looky lose from people who are really interested. So there’s just so many ways.
Ken Hardison:
We use that. We use clips and we do like what we’re doing here and we’ll cut 10, it’ll feed it in and it’ll clip it out for you and give you which one’s going to do the best and push it out on social media for you.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely, absolutely. And we do the same thing. I mean, there is, not only will it clip it down for you, but you can program when it should go out on social media and stuff like that. So it’s, it’s an amazing thing. All right, so let me ask you this about Pillma. So back here in, again in January 15th through the 17th, is this specifically for just AI or are you going to be covering other topics as well?
Ken Hardison:
Probably 80% will be a. Okay, you know how to use it. We got a few other things in there. We’re going to be talking a little bit about offshore, how to use offshore with AI because that’s the two ways you can cut you overhead to get to where you can spend more on marketing and compete with the big gorillas.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, yeah, I like that. And, and I, and I love the fact that you’re focusing 80 on AI because again, for a lot of people, this is going to be new to them and they, and you literally have to hold their hand as they’re walking through this stuff. All right, I want to talk about this, if you don’t mind. And you know, beginning of this year, maybe the first, I don’t know, three or four months of this year, you know, we had our, our current administration go after law firms. Did this shock you?
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, it did. It did. It didn’t surprise me with Trump, but shocked me. It shocked me that they folded so quickly.
Bert Martinez:
They folded like immediately. Some of them.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, like, like that’s not a law firm I want to hire if they pull that quick, you know, but you know, it’s. Some of them didn’t, but most of them did. And I was really. And the universities too. You just should not let government. You know, I would, but these are different times. But yeah, I was very shocked, but not really surprised. Well, I, I think it’s Changing, I think, I don’t think as many will agree.
Ken Hardison:
I think it just. The first ones got caught off guard. Yeah. And they were thinking, they were thinking about the money.
Bert Martinez:
Well, and I think you’re right. There was like, okay, you know, it’s only, it’s only 20 million bucks. How could, how, you know, let’s just get it done. Right?
Ken Hardison:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Because you don’t know how the administration is going to behave. They’re weaponizing everything.
Ken Hardison:
It’s sad times at Ridgemont High.
Bert Martinez:
But you know what shocked me the most? When I first heard that he was going after law firms. I was, I was like, oh man, this is going to be a knockout drag out fight. Because one of the things that I love about lawyers is. And people don’t understand this is lawyers have changed the world. Let me rephrase it at least have changed America. Reason we have segregated schools is because. Lawyers. The reason we have so many product unsegregated, the reason that we have so many safety features in our vehicles.
Bert Martinez:
Lawyers. The reason that our water is cleaner. Lawyers. The reason we have so many rights and privileges. Lawyers who have held the Constitution, who have fought who against the government. I mean, to me, that’s one of the things that lawyers that, that I have always idolized about lawyers because, you know, and it’s not always some like huge law firm that goes out that fights the government. A lot of times it’s these little tiny one or two man shops that fight for three, four, ten years before they win. And I thought, man, they’re gonna, he’s going after the big dogs.
Bert Martinez:
They’re gonna chew, you know, chew them up and spit them out. And I was so wrong.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, that was, like I said, it was, it was shocking.
Bert Martinez:
I just. Yeah, it was incredible. All right, so real quick back to PILMMA. I, I apologize for switching back and forth, but I wanted to ask you this. If, if is there a caught up cut off for Pillman? In other words, if I’m a one year, if I’ve only been in business for a year, should I be attending PILMMA or what’s your thought?
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, we got solos, we got different programs, we got stuff that’s not that expensive and we got masterminds which are more expensive. And you know, I talk to people and I can pretty much tell them what else to be like. Yesterday I told a guy, I said, you really need to just do our goal program for a year and use the, you know, and get things, get, get your foundation built and then come, come over to the mastermind but, yeah, we’ve got solos, we’ve got 50 men, law firms, we got the gamut. It goes, you know, but, but yeah, it’s. And we, we’re, you know, me, I like to differentiate. We’re the only one out there that gives a 90 day money back guarantee, no questions asked.
Bert Martinez:
So, yeah, I love that. I love that. And that, again, is, is one of those great things that I’m. I’m assuming you learned from Dan Kennedy, because Dan Kennedy loves a big old fat guarantee.
Ken Hardison:
Remove the risk. Yep. Ironclad guarantee, Risk reversal. Yeah, it’s. It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing.
Bert Martinez:
And I want to say this. One of the great things that I enjoyed about PMA when I attended was there was no ego, at least with the individuals that I met. And as you mentioned earlier, lawyers have a big ego. It’s a very competitive field. And. But at pilma, it’s like everybody’s very relaxed. They’re there to learn and have fun. And I saw lawyers from Texas, from Houston, from where I’m from, you know, talking to lawyers from Los Angeles, and they’re, and they’re sharing notes and, and they were helping each other.
Bert Martinez:
And it was cool because it is such a competitive, you know, business in general, such a competitive environment. And when you can sit alongside somebody who’s doing millions of dollars a year and you’re just getting started, that in itself is worth the time and money.
Ken Hardison:
Yeah, it’s like me going down and visiting John Morgans. If you got 500 lawyers there, you can visit with.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ken Hardison:
Same deal.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. I love it. I love it. Ken, I want to thank you so much for stopping by. I’m excited about PILMMA again, guys. It’s going to be January 15th through the 17th in sunny Orlando, Florida. And Ken, I’m looking forward to speaking with you again soon, my friend.
Ken Hardison:
All right, thank you so much.
