Billable Hours: Life Balance Tips & Passive Income with "Time Freedom For Lawyers" Brian Glass

Productivity Gladiator

Brian Glass, Attorney and Host of the Time Freedom For Lawyers podcast, joins Productivity Gladiator to talk about Life Balance Mistakes & Best Practices for people that work in a billable hours career, and passive income strategies.

See the full details and links on the episode's page: https://www.productivitygladiator.com/episodes/billable-hours-life-balance-tips-passive-income-with-time-freedom-for-lawyers-brian-glass

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Episode Content

For Employees

Best Practice: Bring in business and look to get “Origination Credit”, meaning you bring in the customers. In most situations origination credit means you’ll get a small piece of all the billing toward that client.

Best Practice: Be their guy. Make sure YOU’RE their lawyer. You’re providing so much value that they will think of you, not just your firm. This means for all future things, the customer isn’t just referring people to your business or firm, they’re referring people to you personally.

Perspective: There's three ways to make more money in billable hours.
1) Work longer hours,
2) work for more dollars per hour, or
3) figure out a way to originate the clients, getting a piece, even if it’s a small piece, of everybody else's hours, billed on that client down the line.

Tip: Look for business to business opportunities to connect with people that have your potential clients
(example: If you’re looking for people who have been in auto accidents, advertising to the general public, 99.9% of people have NOT been in auto accidents. Find businesses that serve people who have been in auto accidents (Dr Offices, Physical Therapists, etc) and help those businesses, they’ll connect you with that audience by referring you.

Best Practice: Be the hub, the person they’re referring to when they say “I know someone”
Be known among your circles for what you do, and actively seek to help people with what you do. By helping people, they’ll remember that you’re the person that helped them on a certain topic. That’s your way to become “the hub” or “the guy”, and seek to expand your hub.

For Front Line Supervisors and Middle Managers

Best Practice: Get into management and out of the “doing”. Stay out of doing the small dollar tasks, even if they make mistakes. Every time you do your employees job, that just will perpetuate more of the same.

Reminder: Good managers take the blame for screw-ups and highlight the employees for the wins. It’s HARD to do that, to let someone fail knowing you’re likely going to have to take some of the blame for some of that failure, but you have to manage, not do the work, so let them do the work.

Passive Income

The lie of passive income - I see posts on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube where like, oh, I bought 18 Airbnbs and now I'm retired. No, you're not retired. You manage 18 Airbnbs. You just do something different, right?

Real Estate Syndications - Investing in somebody else's deal, where I fund the deal with money. Typically, the minimum investment is $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 into these deals. And then somebody, the general partner goes and operates the deal. And then every month or every quarter, depending on the project, there's a check that just shows up back in my bank account.

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Books & References in This Episode

BOOK on being a good manager:
Liz Wiseman - Multipliers

BOOK on syndicated real estate:
Hands Off Investor - Brian Burke

WEBSITE for syndicated real estate deals
Crowdstreet.com

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Today’s Guest

Brian Glass - Attorney
Host of the “Time Freedom for Lawyers” podcast

Brian Glass is a personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. After a decade of practicing law across town from his dad, he joined Ben Glass Law in 2019 to run the auto accident section of the practice.

Brian’s greatest hits as a lawyer include a $3.4M medical malpractice verdict (2019), the record-setting settlement of a minor’s wrongful death case in Virginia ($5.5M in 2020), and the largest auto accident verdict in the state in 2022. ($3.4M in compensatory damages and $1M in punitive damages). He is highly skilled at distilling complex problems into simple, understandable solutions.

Brian is the rare trial lawyer who is as comfortable building a business as he is in the courtroom. Over the past four years, he has quadrupled the revenue of the auto accident section at Ben Glass Law and has big plans for the future. Brian credits this growth to hiring the right people into the correct position, running the firm on EOS/Traction, and alignment of vision between he and Ben. His business acumen has led him to be interviewed on the Tribe of Millionaires, Law Firm Movers and Shakers, and Millionaire Mindcast podcasts.

Brian runs Time Freedom for Lawyers, a podcast dedicated to teaching other lawyers and high income professionals how to win back some of the their time by running more efficient businesses, investing in real estate, and crafting the vision of their own perfect life.

Brian’s perfect life includes coaching his three boys in soccer, baseball, and whatever other athletic endeavor they want to pursue; travelling the world with his wife of 13 years; and competing in endurance events. Brian is a finisher of the Umstead 100 Mile Endurance Race, the Laurel Highlands 71 Miler, and about two dozen other ultramarathons. Lately, parenting has cut short his training timeline and he focuses on Crossfit and Spartan races, with a 2023 goal of traveling to Sparta, Greece to compete in the Spartan Race World Championships.

Brian is available to speak about:

Vision Building – How to Design and Achieve the Life You Want

How to Hire, Support, and Manage Great Staff

Rethinking Retirement – Why High Earners Should Create Passive Income Streams to Make Work Optional

Managing Your Law Firm by the Numbers

Find Brian on:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fairfaxpersonalinjury/

Ben Glass Law: https://www.benglasslaw.com/bio/brian-glass-fairfax-auto-accident-lawyer.cfm

Great Legal Marketing: https://greatlegalmarketing.com/

Time Freedom For Lawyers: https://www.timefreedompod.com/

Productivity Gladiator highlighted on Time Freedom For Lawyers

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. I teach overworked project managers how to level-up their life balance and pump up their practical productivity through my Productivity Gladiator training system. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.