IAM428- Small Business Lawyer Helps Business Owners “Shatterproof” Their Businesses

As the official Zig Ziglar Small Business Lawyer and a Ziglar Legacy Certified Trainer, it’s no wonder that Scott Reib is known as “America’s Legal Coach.” For the last two decades, Scott has been helping business owners, entrepreneurs, and coaches “shatterproof” their businesses by implementing specific strategies for structure, growth, and protection. Over the last three years, Scott has been sharing these strategies with business owners and coaches, and watching them grow and succeed!

• CEO Hack: App – Slack for effective team collaboration
• CEO Nugget: Start sooner, even if it's a side hustle
• CEO Defined: Responsibility of creating ideas for other people

Website: http://www.reiblaw.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thescottreib/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScottReibAccess/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thescottreib
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescottreib/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresham from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today as Scott Reib of Reib Law. Scott, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Scott Reib 0:38

It's great to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

No problem, super excited to have you on, and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Scott so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And as the official Zig Ziglar Small Business Lawyer in a Zig Ziglar Certified Trainer, it's no wonder that Scott Reib is known as “America's Legal Coach”.

For the last few decades, Scott has been helping business owners, entrepreneurs, and coaches “shatterproof” their businesses by implementing specific strategies for structure, growth, and protection.

Over the last three years, Scott has been sharing these strategies with business owners and coaches and watching them grow and of course, succeed. Scott, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Scott Reib 1:16

Let's rock and roll.

Gresham Harkless 1:17

Let's do it, let's make it happen. So they kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to get started with your business.

Scott Reib 1:24

You know, I've been a business owner for about 20 years in different law firms. And in 2005, an opportunity presented itself for me to launch out and start doing things my own way. It's kind of like a lot of, I think a lot of people's journeys, you you're doing business with someone else and sort of a partnership.

And there's some part that's not working right, it almost always is the money part. And so that really wasn't working right for me, and my family, and I decided I could do it better myself. So in 2005, we launched what was then the Reib firm, and it's now Reblog.

Gresham Harkless 2:01

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. Because I think a lot of times people, you know, see a better vision or a better way, whether it be you know more money, or maybe a different way to do things.

But a lot of times people will get stuck kind of on the I guess on the edge of a pool and not actually jump in and actually get their hands dirty and start building things. So I appreciate you for doing that.

Scott Reib 2:23

It wasn't an easy decision. I was I kind of had I was planning on doing it and had a longer ramp. And some things happened that really kind of forced my hand. And so I ended up having about two weeks to plan my exit. And did it launch the launched it and haven't looked back? We had tons of work when we started, which was really, which was great.

You have different challenges then than you do if you're a startup with no clients, right? So we had a lot of work and didn't have the infrastructure. So we're having to build it as we go. I've got clients now who have the privilege of being able to build the foundation as they get clients. And it works both ways. But that's what I had I had to kind of build it while I was running.

Gresham Harkless 3:05

Yeah, well, they say like building the airplane on the way down or building. Yeah, yeah, definitely do that. You could speak to that. So that makes perfect sense. So I know I touched on it a little bit. And you did as well. Could you tell us a little bit more about exactly what you're doing and how you support the clients you work with?

Scott Reib 3:22

Yeah, we work with entrepreneurs and small business owners, a lot of them are speakers, trainers, and coaches, podcast people. And what we try to do is provide legal services to them in an on-demand way. Right?

Traditionally, legal services are you making an appointment, set up, and coming in a week later because I did want to work with you pay a retainer, they believe by the hour. That's not how we work our clients.

We have an ongoing relationship with them to where we like I said, we're legal coaches, and we coach them through life and business so that we're here for them as they make their decisions. I like to say that the right information at the right time is often the difference between success and failure.

If Gresh if you live by my house today and saw smoking out my roof, you would call me and say hey, there's smoke coming out of your house. Are you okay? I would say I'm not home, please call the fire department. You do that you saved my house. The same thing happens. You see this month you go home, call me the next day, and say Hey, Scott, I saw smoke yesterday, Thursday.

Okay? No, thanks a lot, my house burned down. Same information. It's accurate. It's just a day late. And so with our model, it's not a day late, you're able to get a hold of your legal team when you need it, you'll step out of a meeting, ask that question, go back into the meeting and make the best business decision you can make. And we do that in a really affordable way.

Gresham Harkless 4:42

Nice and you're exactly. Exactly right. When you say that you know time is kind of everything, the timing of everything.

And like you being able to provide those services especially like you said on demand, you know, kind of helps out a lot as far as like being able to know whenever those things might come up or even thinking about things in the future. Do you least have somebody you can kind of reach out to and connect with?

Scott Reib 5:03

Right.

Gresham Harkless 5:04

Nice. And, and so now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And it can be for you personally or your organization. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Scott Reib 5:13

Well, so kind of connected to that last question. Our secret sauce is that we offer legal services on a subscription basis. I'm not the only lawyer doing that. But there's they're very few and most of them aren't doing it the way we do it, we have three different levels for our clients that start as low as 325 a month, so we can really help even startup companies have the legal support they need.

A lot of other lawyers are doing it where they're charging a couple of 1000 a month to clients that can afford that which is great. But I will leave out a huge segment of the market if I do that.

My mission is to help entrepreneurs grow businesses with profits that will last the only way they can do that, it's that they have the right structure set up to begin with, and then have access to the legal information as they make those key decisions.

And so we've tried to make it very affordable, we talk to every client every month for 20 minutes, or 3020 or 30 minutes around their package. They have unlimited access to us via SMS messaging and email. And then they have SMS phone calls. And then more if they're in one of the higher levels.

And it just, it just makes it where we're on their team like we're talking to their CPA, we're talking to their insurance guy to their banker if they have questions, they don't have to do that we do it in the background so that they can keep doing what they're doing. Because it's just we're here to support them in their dream.

And by doing it on a subscription basis, they're no longer worried about their money flying out of my pocket, every time I call my lawyer. Instead, they know that we are on their side. And it just it just made a huge difference. And we started doing that in 2012.

Gresham Harkless 6:47

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And I feel like a lot of times, and maybe it's related to the actual model itself, the subscription model, but I feel like it's a lot more that you're kind of providing that maintenance, kind of like you have a car and you're checking it, make sure everything's going rather than checking into the shop, every time there's something breaks down, you have that opportunity to kind of build that foundation over time.

Scott Reib 7:06

Yeah, that's kind of the analogy I use that lawyers and law firms should not be emergency rooms, that should be primary care. So if you're trying to stay healthy, then you go see your doctor regularly, maybe you have a personal trainer, and you have regular check-ins. And so we do that with the law side so that you're proactive.

And if you're proactive, instead of reactive, you're going to have a lot better chance of not making the big mistakes, you're going to make some mistakes, and there's going to be things that happen in your business that are going to be bad. It's just how life is in our world now, where 20 million lawsuits are filed every year in the US.

It's just when is your time. It's not if it's when and the better setup you are, the better your structure, the better. All your legal documents are, the less catastrophic that will be. And that's our goal, we call that “shatterproofing” businesses.

Gresham Harkless 7:58

Nice, that makes perfect sense. And I appreciate you for sharing that analogy as well, too. Because I think sometimes you're always trying to be kind of ahead as much as possible rather than being you know, in response to things.

So I think any way you can do to increase the likelihood of success and increase and decrease the likelihood of failure, whatever you can do to kind of make that happen is always a great action to take. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this could be an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Scott Reib 8:28

You know, the app that made the biggest difference in my life is Slack. I tried it once years ago and didn't give it a fair shot. And we implemented it about six months ago here. And it's made a huge difference. I still have a lot of emails, but I don't have any emails from my team. All of our team communication is in Slack.

We have enough channels that it's subdivided. So I can only look at the content I want to look at. And it's really made a difference. It's not perfect, because it's still dependent on people responding. But it's just made a huge difference in our ability to be able to communicate quickly and accurately regarding specific things in our business.

And gets it out of the regular channel of all the other messages because I get, I don't know, 200 300 emails a day, trying to find my staff emails in the middle of that, it just doesn't happen. And so that's been that made a huge, huge difference. We use all kinds of software. But that's made the biggest difference in our productivity here.

Gresham Harkless 9:31

Nice. That makes sense. And I'm a big proponent of Snap Slack as well just because you have that ability to create those channels where you can kind of segment things but at the same time it's kind of like that conversation or chat room kind of feel as well to where you're able to kind of go back and forth tag people add files and things like that whatever you might need to do.

And you're able to do a kind of a more rapid firebase and then it kind of seems like an email sometimes takes so I definitely a proponent of Slack as well. So.

Scott Reib 10:00

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 10:01

And so now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you could happen to hop in a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Scott Reib 10:12

That's a pretty interesting question. If I could hop into a time machine, I would tell him, I would have told myself to start sooner. And you mentioned this earlier about kind of standing on that edge and being afraid to take that step.

I wish I would have started my own business about five years sooner. Not just because I'd be younger now, which would be great, but I'd probably have a little more energy. I was more ready than I thought I was. And I should have taken the risk, then. I would be so much further ahead. Because I had some great ideas five years earlier, I just was afraid to step out on them. So if I had done it, then yeah, it would have been risky. Yeah, it might have hurt a little.

But it would have put me in a position to have taken, and done some things in the market that are hard now, where I would have been the first to do it. And it would have just been so much easier. But I was scared. I had a family to support and was scared to take that step. If I'd just done it five years sooner, it would have made a huge difference.

So yeah, for sort of nation out there, I would just say that you if you're if you have a great idea, you've kind of bent it a little bit with some, maybe some friends or mentors, and they think you're not crazy, then put a plan together, you know, not 100-page business plan, but a short plan together, get a little bit of capital together, where you have a little bit of a runway.

You know, maybe three months, and then take a shot, the worst thing that's going to happen is that you aren't successful, and you learn from that. I wouldn't call it a failure, it's just not a success, and you learn, and maybe you have to go get a job again, you could lose your job tomorrow anyway.

There's no guarantee, there's this false sense of security in the paycheck, it could go away tomorrow, and you have no more security than the guy that owns his own business, I would even say business owners have more security, I have a way almost every day is fine, finding more money if I need it.

Because I can generate ideas, generate new products or services, or make new sales. If you're an employee, that's really hard to do. So I would just encourage them to take the step and get out there and do it. Even if it's just a side hustle, get started.

Gresham Harkless 12:33

Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. And I appreciate you for throwing in that last part as well, too. Because I think sometimes we get in our head that getting started means you know, going for broke, so to speak, where you have to literally throw everything you know at the wall to see if it works and get rid of everything that is sustaining.

But a lot of times it could be a side hustle, it could be just working, you know that extra night or doing whatever, you have to do to make that happen. But I think that it's also, you know, great to hear that is your nugget. Because I think a lot of times, you know, people might want to change things.

But it's not that you want to change it, you just say that you wish you would have done it sooner. So I think that's a great thing. And then two, you know, you did it five years early, you wish you would have done it five years, early, not 10 years, early, or 15 years early because it could have never happened.

Or maybe you could have waited longer. So I appreciate you for definitely doing that and sharing that with us.

Scott Reib 13:24

Sure.

Gresham Harkless 13:25

And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Scott, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Scott Reib 13:36

Being the CEO means to me that I'm responsible for creating opportunities for other people. Right. So I have, I had an idea of how to start this firm. And then we made a major shift in 2012. And I'm able now to create jobs for other people. So I've got a team around me, we tried to run pretty leanly, but I have like four full-time people, two part-time people.

And then we have six service providers that are part of our team, but aren't employees, but all of them now have economic opportunity, because I took that risk in 2005 and stepped up and did it. And so now I view my role as CEO as being responsible for making sure that I keep providing them that opportunity and then giving them the opportunity to grow.

Gresham Harkless 14:23

Absolutely, I definitely appreciate that. And you know, there's definitely a tremendous amount of opportunity out there if you can see it, and you just have to have that perspective and that vision.

So I appreciate you you know talking about that and speaking to that, not just for yourself, but obviously for your team too, because there's a tremendous opportunity, a tremendous amount of opportunity to go around. So, Scott, I appreciate your time I appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing.

What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course our best they can get a whole view and find out about all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Scott Reib 14:56

I think I just want to be encouraging that if you have if you have a burning desire to be your own boss to be in business to step out and do something. Take that next step. I've got a 17-year-old if you're ready to start, he wants to start reselling shoes. So he's setting up his accounts and doing that.

Create something so that you've got another stream of revenue other than your W two job and just see what can happen. It may grow into something great. It might not, but to see what can happen, take that step, take that risk. And then the best way to get ahold of me is to go to Reib Law. reiblaw.com/ceostory.

So if you go to reiblaw.com/ceo story, you'll find our website there, you'll find information about me, you'll be able to download my ebook, Five Proven Strategies to Shatterproof Your Business.

You can book a free, absolutely free call with me a 15-minute call, I call it a laser legal coaching session, where we can do a quick dive into your business and see if there's anything that I can do to help you with that call.

Gresham Harkless 16:03

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And I again, appreciate all the awesome things you're doing and of course your time we will make sure to have those links as well in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you and take advantage of all those downloads and that information that you have offered to us as listeners. But thank you so much again, Scott, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and leave us a five-star rating. Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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