John Jakovenko: From Cash-Poor to Profitable with Law Firm KPIs and Systems

Discover how small and midsize law firms can stop being “revenue rich but cash poor” by building real systems, leveraging AI, and tracking the right numbers. In this episode, you’ll hear how to plug profit leaks, tame AR, and design a law firm that runs like a business—not a burnout machine.

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and John Jakovenko discuss:

• Career path from HR to fractional law firm COO
• Why systems are critical for efficient, profitable law firms
• Practical AI use cases for billing, timekeeping, and intake
• Revenue vs. cash flow, debt, and financial blind spots
• Lead capture, AR strategies, and creative pricing/payment models

Key Takeaways:

• A law firm can have impressive revenue and still be “cash poor” if systems, expense control, and debt management are ignored.
• AI should be treated as a teammate, not a threat—offloading first drafts, admin tasks, time entry, and pre-bill review so attorneys can focus on higher-value work.
• Profitability depends heavily on cash velocity: how quickly work is billed and money actually hits the account, not just what’s on paper.
• Most firms waste a significant portion of their marketing spend because they lack proper lead capture, follow-up, and accountability metrics.
• Creative product mixes (e.g., adding flat-fee or subscription-style services) and structured payment plans can smooth out revenue and reduce financial stress.

“You might be revenue rich but cash poor, and that comes from not having your systems in place, but it’s also not knowing your numbers.” —  John Jakovenko

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About John Jakovenko: John is a leading expert on all things business of law. Since 2006, John has devoted his career to law firm management, working with firms of all sizes and in various states. He also teaches the Association of Legal Administrators Business of Law HR courses as well as the HR section of the Legal Management Fundamentals course, helping new administrators navigate their first five years in law firms.

Connect with John Jakovenko:

Website: https://jakovenko.io/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakovenko/

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LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

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Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

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Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin  [00:00]

Hey everybody! Before we get to the show, just want to remind you that the Be That Lawyer community is up and running and rock and rolling. We have a lot of amazing business developer and rainmaking attorneys in there. We’ve got incredible content, courses, live events, and all kinds of ways to help you to be that lawyer. Check it out today at be that lawyer.com/community. And other than that, please enjoy the show.

 

Narrator  [00:29]

You’re listening to Be That Lawyer: Life-Changing Strategies and Resources for Growing a Successful Law Practice. Each episode, your host, author, and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.

 

Steve Fretzin  [00:51]

Hey, everybody! Steve Fretzin, welcome to the Be That Lawyer podcast. As you may know, this is the show, the number one show, helping you be that lawyer. Someone that’s learning business development, marketing, branding, time management, how to run a firm, how to go solo-like anything and everything that’s going to help you grow as a lawyer. This show is dedicated to helping you accomplish that. As you know, Be That Lawyer has been around for many, many years. I’ve been working with lawyers for over 18. We have five books. We have an incredible podcast. We have a Be That Lawyer community. If you’re interested in getting started and and working with other rainmakers and myself and getting all the content we have, we have YouTube channels and just everything to help you to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. As you guys also know, I continually bring on amazing guests. Today’s no different. I’ve got John waiting in the wings. How’s it going, my man?

 

John Jakovenko  [01:39]

I’m doing well. Thanks, Steve.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:41]

All right, and we-I just found out for the first time, and this is the first time ever. People are going to hear about this on the show. You have a dog named Steve. That’s

 

John Jakovenko  [01:48]

do.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:49]

How’d you come up

 

John Jakovenko  [01:50]

with that? Well, my kids-they went to Puppy Yoga, which is a scam, in case you don’t know.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:55]

All right,

 

John Jakovenko  [01:55]

but they went to Puppy Yoga, and I got a call from my wife that says, “Can we have a dog? So I thought it was just maybe a lab or something cool, big, fun, and

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:03]

yeah,

 

John Jakovenko  [02:03]

it came back with a tiny Dobson. And I said the only way we’re keeping this thing is if we name it Steve, because I’ve always wanted a dog named Steve. And all right, they said yes, and he ended up becoming my dog. So he’s like my one and only son, Steve. He’s right next to me too. So

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:18]

well, as we said, it was like a dying name. Like there aren’t too many parents naming their kids Steve, and so I appreciate you carrying on the tradition, even if it is, I’m sure, a very cute little dachshund. Yeah, he’s

 

John Jakovenko  [02:29]

somebody.

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:29]

It’s good, you know. I like having a an office mate. I’ve got Rocky’s, you know, been sleeping and snoring next to me for, oh my god, 1516, years, and it’s you know, it’s just nice. You know, occasionally he comes up to me and says hello. Mostly, he just sleeps. But

 

John Jakovenko  [02:43]

yeah, see, he tries to jump on my lap a lot.

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:45]

Oh yeah, dachshunds are good. Are they good jumpers?

 

John Jakovenko  [02:47]

He is surprisingly. He’s a mini dachshund. So he yeah, these fans about six inches tall. He can jump about 12.

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:54]

Okay, your lap’s about he got a yeah.

 

John Jakovenko  [02:56]

He’s got a six six inch vert.

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:58]

There we go. There we go. All right, everybody. Well, we’re going to jump in our quote of the show now. Listen, this is one that’s been up on the show many times, and what I love about is a, it’s true, and b, you know, it’s one of those things that we need to keep beating into our heads. So this is a James Clear: you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, and there’s so many different ways we can use that, but welcome to the show and tell us why you love that quote and why that’s that’s so near and dear to your heart.

 

John Jakovenko  [03:26]

Yeah, well, what I do is I try to make everything more efficient, which is for me creating systems. Whether that’s you know I’m leveraging AI or I’m going into a law firm for the first time, who you know they let’s say they have an intake, but they’re not capturing everybody. They’re not calling folks back. It’s like having a full bucket, but with holes in the bucket, and good systems plug those holes. So you can spend all the money you want on marketing to do what you want, but unless you’ve got the systems in place to really realize everything you’re doing, you know. But it’s the plugs in the holes of that bucket. So that’s pretty much what I go to my whole career to is making attorneys more efficient, and that is through their systems.

 

Steve Fretzin  [04:04]

Yeah, and you can set whatever goal you want to set. If you don’t have a way or a method of getting there, right? A plan, a system, something that’s predictable, something that you kind of you know can follow to get you to the end of the finish line. It’s just kind of a dream.

 

John Jakovenko  [04:19]

Yeah, yeah, and part of the goal setting is is following through on those goals and measuring the goals, right? So you got you know companies or even people who enroll, which is great into EOS and things like that because it’s it’s goal setting one and one, and part of that is reviewing those goals often, and you know it’s kind of a north star, so it’s it’s important to have. Yeah, everybody, you need the systems.

 

Steve Fretzin  [04:42]

Systems. That’s yeah. I think a good theme generally for lawyers. I mean, whether you’re at a law firm, whether you’re running a law firm, or whether you’re a lawyer, look, you have a system for how you towel off. You know, after you get out of a shower, you have a system for brushing your teeth. You have a system for how you you know run a. Matter right, and yet you don’t have a system for running a law practice, or you don’t have a system for how you build a book of business, right? You just wing it up, not really applicable and healthy to do that. So everybody, John Jakovenko is the owner of the Jakovenko Group. How did you come to be in Mister Systems, and then also like leaning into legal, yeah. So really, I went and got a. I went did underground at Florida State, and I went to grad school in Buffalo for an MBA, and then moved out to California.

 

John Jakovenko  [05:30]

And when I was out there in California, one of my first jobs was doing kind of HR type work for a nonprofit, and it wasn’t going too well. And because it was a nonprofit, so they’re running out of money. It got to where I was one of the last staff members, and I saw an ad for a HR person at a law firm. I said, “Oh, this should be fun! And little did I know, it would suck me in, and I’d never leave. I thought you were going to say, “Nittle did I know it was not fun. No, no, it was exciting. Let me tell you, and I haven’t been able to escape it since, so I just embraced it. But essentially, I started off in HR, and I was one of those people who was young and arrogant and felt I could do everything, so said yes to everything and everyone, no matter what they gave me. And that ended up, you know, growing to the director of HR of an AmLaw 200 firm by age 25, and I just continued to say yes. I took the facilities, then became a COO, and then it just kind of exploded from there, and I then moved to Atlanta. My wife got a job at Coca-Cola; it was one of her dream jobs. So we decided to move out to Atlanta. And again, I was still young enough and arrogant, think I can get a job here. And my God, I did. So I’ve been working primarily up until about 2019 for AmLaw 200 firms. And then I saw a need. I decided finally I was getting burned out of the big stuff, and I took a risk and took a really small job with a really small firm as a firm, you know, kind of practice manager administrator, and they were a business law firm, so they were helping other law firms with their startups, their employee handbooks, you know, that business type stuff. And I noticed these firms all getting stressed out. They were just solos or mid, you know, two to 10 attorneys who are doing everything on their own, and they wanted a me, but they couldn’t afford a me. You know what I mean? These administrators are pretty expensive to run these firms, and I had a good background. And I said, “Well, wait a second. I wonder if I could just, you know, operate like an AmLaw 200 firm. You know, we’ve got 75 partners. I could do 75 firms. I could do 75 bosses, right? And then they have you know seven, eight practice areas. What seven, eight firms they can run? So I kind of took that big law model, made it into something small, which is now my fractional law firm COO type company, and that’s what I do. I help almost like an AmLaw 200 firm. I bring that type of expertise to these smaller firms, so they can compete with the bigger firms. Yeah, and it operates like a really well-functioning law firm. Yeah, so that’s how I got into it, and I’ve been stuck since. And I just love it. I just keep digging further and further into it.

 

Steve Fretzin  [07:54]

You know what’s interesting about I’ll say guys like us and gals like us, I guess, is we get to see a lot of things. We get to really kind of look behind the curtain and see what’s really going on in law firms and going on with lawyers. And if you had to put your finger on what sort of the number one challenges right now for law firms, what would you say that

 

John Jakovenko  [08:15]

is? I know this has probably been beat over the head too, but I think it’s the AI and AI adoption, but for me, it’s not the the hard part. Is if I see it everywhere, it’s humans versus AI. But I don’t think that’s the direction we’re going. It needs to be humans that work with AI, right? So AI needs to be that tool that takes away the crap you hate doing, right? It’s your first drafts. It’s your administrative work. It’s things of that nature. I mean, it’s even something simple as bar compliance, right? So you can make sure that you’re calling people back, touch points, things like that, because that’s the biggest complaint. Yeah. But I think it’s this us versus them mentality with AI and the fear the courts put them into. I almost look and I kind of researched this too, just because it was fun. So when I was growing up, I was a ’90s kid, right? So that’s when the internet started coming out, and they were telling us, you know, because I used to go to the library and do Encyclopedia Britannica. That was my research. Well, then the internet came out, and everyone’s like, “Oh, you got to double check, check your citations. You can’t believe everything you read. Now we’re seeing the same thing 3040, years later with AI, you know, and it’s true though. But now the results are instant. So I think really it’s going to become the firms who know how to work with it properly because it’s going to become the ocean we’re swimming. It’s just a matter of time, and it’s exploding so fast. So

 

Steve Fretzin  [09:32]

yeah,

 

John Jakovenko  [09:32]

again, probably beat that over the head, but you know that that’s where we are, and I think that’s the biggest challenge right now for most firms.

 

Steve Fretzin  [09:38]

Yeah, I’m seeing that for sure, and the other one is really a lot of, especially small firms are really struggling to find good help. I think there’s like a 0% unemployment right now for lawyers who want to work. Yes, and I’ve

 

John Jakovenko  [09:54]

finding attorneys. Yeah, so I’ve had, I can say right now, I have four or five attorney openings. Anyone wants one?

 

Steve Fretzin  [09:59]

Yeah.

 

John Jakovenko  [10:00]

Yeah, no. That’s what we’re looking for. We need a litigation person in West in Virginia. We need commercial real estate in Los Angeles. Like we can’t find anybody. I’ve got in deep posts. I even have the LinkedIn recruiter tool where I’ll, you know, do that soft. Hey, do you know anybody in your network? Hoping that hey, I reeled them in, and they’ll say I’m interested.

 

Steve Fretzin  [10:19]

Yeah,

 

John Jakovenko  [10:20]

it’s been extremely tough. I mean, this has just been a crazy market right now.

 

Steve Fretzin  [10:24]

Yeah, like business has never been better. Every lawyer I work with, especially I run these rainmaker roundtables for managing partners. Like everyone’s having their best year every year. So what does that mean? It means that they’re stressed out because if they can’t assign the talent to handle that growth, it becomes a real becomes a real issue. So it’s not that they have a business development or marketing problem. I think there may be something going on on the back end that’s not you know that’s not allowing them to grow and scale the way they’d like to and maybe maintain the profits. How are you seeing that in

 

John Jakovenko  [10:57]

a spaceship? So that’s that’s part of the AI pieces that I’m helping with firms with, I’ve noticed slowly over the last year or so. I’ve been building out small systems. So with AI, folks probably know this. You can get subscriptions at Cloud and APIs, which are where you can talk to all different types of things, from your Clio integration all the way to retail, which is a R E T E L L, which is a software that allows you to make phone calls back, have an AI assistant type phone call triage system, but essentially it’s building products that make it a little bit easier for them. So I don’t build and sell. I work with these firms. So I have one firm who super stressed out, can’t get work done, and part of the biggest issue they have is they can’t get bills out because they got to read through every single pre bill before they send it out. Now it’s kind of old school. So what I did, and they bought into it, and it’s worked, is I helped them build, and we built a pre bill review system. So essentially, I took every single pre bill I could find with his this law, this magic partner’s written notes, his voice, his language, how it was, and how it turned out. Ran it through as much AI as I could, and then basically created a Python script, which is a script that runs in the background of your computer that runs those pre bills and rewords them into the way he likes it, such that when he goes to review his pre bills, it’s just approve, approve, approve, or a quick edit. Yep, and that’s been huge for them. And the other thing too is there’s there’s these different type of competitors that do automatic timekeyping, right? So that’s a big one. Every firm I go to, no one can enter their time. Everyone gets stressed out about it. They’re all underperforming. I don’t think that’s the issue. I think these firms, these attorneys go to school, they want to be great attorneys, and they’re not thinking about entering their time all the time. So much like these systems, I made one that goes on the system too that basically watches what you do all day, and then at the end of the day, you just say draft with AI, and it comes up with everything you’ve done, and you approve it, unapprove it, and mark the time up and mark time down. It’s a simple little script you can put under your computer that folks don’t know, and that takes so much stuff off of their plate, they can start focusing on these other things.

 

Steve Fretzin  [13:02]

Yeah, and I I find in my space, you know, time management is the beast, right? So it’s all the redundant emails. It’s all the redundant, you know, you know, tracking time, maybe chasing AR, all this stuff that lawyers have to do that is over and over and over again every day. That takes an hour, two hours, sometimes more each day. That’s all billable time, or that’s all BD time, or that’s all time. Like if you add it up over a week, a month, a year, it could be like an entire month a year that you’re spending on stuff that are redundant. Oh, 100% I’m seeing that AI step up as a real game changer, and I know that’s just going to keep getting better and better. One thing I wanted to ask you about is there are a lot of people that seem successful, small business owners, law firm owners that seem incredibly successful. Yet when we look under the hood, they’re not making millions of dollars. They’re not. They’re stressed out. They’re barely making payroll. And what are you seeing is the reason behind a lot of the a lot of these these seemingly successful law firm owners when in reality they’re they’re actually you know cutting check to check and living month to month.

 

John Jakovenko  [14:12]

I see that all the time. A lot of it is that I call it almost like a revenue lie kind of right. They’re running through their revenue. Oh, I got $2 million coming in a year, but then you look at it, and from a cash perspective, they can barely, like you said, they barely make the payroll, and that’s because they’re cash poor. So you might be revenue rich but cash poor, and that comes from, again, it goes back to not having your systems in place, but it’s also not knowing your numbers. It’s not watching where things go. I have firms that are spending all this money, but they’re in a ton of debt, you know, and it’s like, and they’re they might have some revenue coming in, but they’re out of cash because their debt’s so high. A lot of times, if you have three or four credit cards, and you’re only paying minimum payments, you’re paying 10,000 bucks, however many it is, depending on the size of your firm, you’re still hiding that expenses. So I wrote a book, but in it, and we talk about the market. Wall, and we talk about how you know it’s basically revenues minus expenses from a cash perspective. And when you hit that, everything above is your profitability zone. That’s where you want to be. I have a firm who keeps saying, “How do we get? What’s our wall? Our wall is wrong. I said, “No, it’s not wrong, right? We need everything to click, but your exp you keep expending on these credit cards, our wallet’s perfectly fine. This is how much we need to spend a year, or per month, or per week, or per day, and you’re just continuing to go past that with all these hidden expenses. So, yeah, you know that’s what you’re seeing. And the other thing too is the fake it to you, make it culture. You have to, you know, there’s these groups out there that tell you you can be, you know, start a law firm and go ahead and retire and get a yacht. Well, that’s not realistic. It really does take a lot of work and effort. And don’t always look at the LinkedIn posts and the Facebook posts and believe it. Just like you wouldn’t for your own family, you know? Yeah. Um, it’s the same type of thing. Because I’ll have attorneys say, “Oh, so and so is doing great. I said, “Oh yeah, let me see the numbers. Move it. I will tell you if they’re doing great or not because I could take a look at your balance sheet and your P and L. I can tell your story pretty instantly.

 

Steve Fretzin  [16:03]

Yeah,

 

John Jakovenko  [16:04]

and that’s what these firms need. They need someone that can come in and do that and help them. And even if it’s you know they still want to say they’re great, I’ll help you still be great. Don’t worry about it. You know what I mean?

 

Steve Fretzin  [16:12]

Yeah, yeah. And individual lawyers are you know they don’t have the same P and L that a law firm would have, but they’re living in you know a very expensive house. They’re buying expensive cars. They’re paying you know they’re taking these incredible vacations because they make a half a million a year. But what they’re not recognizing is that they’re spending a half a million a year, right? So where’s the 529 for the kids? Where’s the profit? Where’s the savings? Where’s the the piece that’s going to protect your future, and you know when. And I look. I don’t charge. I I feel like charge a very fair amount for my services. And there are lawyers that really want to work with me, and they just can’t because when they look at what they’re putting out and what they’ve set themselves up for, and then my little fee on top, and they can’t pull the trigger. And I feel terrible because it’s then it’s a chicken or the egg. But I think law firms are feeling that too. They want to invest in, you know, marketing, sales, operations, you, and then it’s like, how do they invest in you when they’re already, you know, in the red and and hurting every day?

 

John Jakovenko  [17:11]

Yeah, and I follow up behind folks where they’ve gotten burned too. They’ve gone to these, you know, each of these, you know, the marketing teams have the round, you know, different things like roundtables, or they have these groups you join, or or whatever? I’m going to go ahead and make a 10 figure firm. I don’t know. It’s always a number, seven figure, eight figure, all this stuff. And I think those are okay. But I come in behind them when they have not been as successful as they wanted because I kind of ingrained myself within the firm and I learned the culture, learned what works, and I help you build and grow and scale from that. And part of that is the tax structure, the tax planning, right? It’s you know get that heavy vehicle and write it off. I mean, it can’t as much anymore because of the Trump stuff, but you know there were some good tax credits available. Put your kids on payroll if you can. You know it’s all that easy stuff, the 520 9s, all of that, where you can shield your assets, take advantage of your 401k. You know, have a profit sharing account for the firm, all that little stuff they need to do, but they just don’t know what they don’t know.

 

Steve Fretzin  [18:04]

Yeah, yeah, and not that’s the answer. Planner is going to tell them either. They need someone like you that’s and and someone that that is acting as a a CPA, a COO, you know, a CFO to like help them realize. Look, this is what you need. This is what you need to bring in. This is what you need to spend. This is how you need to save, and it’s not just about the top. You could have an amazing top line revenue and be under incredible stress.

 

John Jakovenko  [18:29]

Yeah, 100% You can also have a bad year and think it’s terrible when it’s wonderful because you’re not going to get taxed that bad that year. I don’t tell people it’s okay not to make money. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [18:37]

look at the positives,

 

John Jakovenko  [18:38]

right? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

 

Steve Fretzin  [18:42]

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John Jakovenko  [20:23]

Yeah, I think one I like to call this cash velocity, right? That’s how much cash you get in, how quickly you can get it in. The faster you get your bills out, and the faster you get that money in, the better for your firm, right? So that’s why you see firms that operate without trust accounts that are just kind of transactional, fee only type, you know, flat fee firms do pretty well because they know what’s coming. You know what’s coming in and what’s going out. They can predict it. But when it comes to the billing, folks, it’s a little bit more difficult. So that’s why you got to again put those systems in place to make sure that you’re you’re getting your bills out timely as fast as possible. Whether you do that monthly, weekly, I had a firm that used to do it weekly. I have a firm now that does it every two weeks. And most firms that I work with though do do it monthly, and it goes back to building that system. So the time goes in, and you’re collecting that cash flow. So you need to get that money in as fast as possible. And for the smaller firms, I think an important one is the lead capturing, right? So these smaller firms are, like I said, they’re going to spend money on their what do they call it like the SEO company paying a few 1000 agents

 

Steve Fretzin  [21:23]

that do the SEO and the paper click and all that. Yep,

 

John Jakovenko  [21:26]

yep. Plus the paper click amount. Some of these smaller firms now have attorney salespeople or non-attorney salespeople, where that that once they’ve gone through intake, they get passed on to that individual. But if you don’t have the right KPIs, even for those folks, the lead type of stuff is going to fall through the cracks too. So you could spend 10, 20,000 in marketing, but if you’re not calling people back, if you are not closing, if you’re not qualifying these leads correctly, it’s all wasted money. So that’s what I would say for the you know the the two. If I meet a two top one, and I want to come back to the

 

Steve Fretzin  [21:59]

second one in a minute. The one that I, but the first one that you mentioned, you know, one of the nice things about having a lawyer community like be that lawyer community is questions are asked and people can share their their experiences. But we don’t have any non lawyers in the in that we we have them as trusted resources. We don’t have them in to answer these questions. Maybe that’s a mistake, but the question that was asked over the weekend was, you know, how do we improve getting bills out? How do we improve AR? How do we, you know, setting expectations? Like I have everyone that works with me on ACH and credit card, so I have no AR, right? Unless somebody’s credit card number changes and they don’t tell me, and then I, you know, they may owe me for 30 or 60. But are we ready for that in the legal space? I know bills change all the time, but aren’t we kind of ready for that auto billing or like how are you helping your law firms reduce AR and set better expectations on on getting paid?

 

John Jakovenko  [22:57]

Yeah, we are doing some creative stuff. So when we have some billing firms that I call them billing. These will be firms who bill for their work and then and then send out the bill. We’ll make sure we get a good retainer, right? And that’s going to be a big time door or blockade for a lot of folks. So it could serve as a client screening, but we’ll put a retainer in, and then we make sure we put controls in place to make sure we’re reupping that retainer with an evergreen, right? We have a card on file. If a card fails, we go into tests and we we rerun it. Also, we’ve been you know experimenting with payment plans, you know. So let’s say we’ll do a smaller retainer with x7 50 a month, you know, or whatever. Yeah. Until the until it’s done, until the case is done, that that helps the litigation folks and smooths it out, makes revenue more predictable. You’ll see that in the immigration models too. So you know you’ll have a $5,000 fee, but they’ll go ahead and do 500 a month or 10 months or what have you. That’s one of them. The other thing too is again with AI that’s coming out. There’s these companies out there that start doing your AR for you. They’re integrating with Clio, which is one of the biggest providers. MyCase, where any of your over 90 AR, they go ahead with AI, do the follow up, and then they have a human do the the second follow up. So those type of systems are available, and they’re not expensive. You know, I think one of those is six 700 bucks a month, and you just tack that on to what you do. They integrate with your systems already, and you’re good to go. It’s kind of a set and forget it, and that’s the key. You know, I think what it’s going to come down to are these the firms that do the creative kind of payment plans or what have you. But you got to make sure those payment plans fit to your overall goal. So you got three practice areas. So like I got a firm that has the litigation side. They got the PI, right, which is all contingency. Because you never know when that’s going to hit. You estimate about six six to 12 months when you get a case in, you got the family law team, and then you’ve got like a government affairs, which is that easy. You know, you pay me every month retainer model. So you’ve got to just make sure that no matter what you do, it fits into that grand plan of where you’ve got to be. So with these firms, I’ll make a yearly projection. This is where we got to be. This is where the money comes from each month. X from here. X from here, X from here, and then we monitor it weekly, daily, monthly. We have a daily nut. I tell the attorney, “You got $9,000 to make today. Where’d you go make it? You know, because we break it down to the day so they understand. Yeah. But going back to your question, yeah, I think it’s going to have the firm step out of their comfort zone, which is the billable hour and monthly billing and crossing their fingers and money comes in to, you know, create things like payment plans, especially for for the consumer driven law, and then you know I have other firms that do deep discounts for their big clients, right? So they’ll just do deep discounts to get paid faster, or that you know you have insurance that now does the early pay stuff. So if you, for the honor of them paying you three days early, you get to discount their bill 15% Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:41]

nice, right? Are you moving some folks from billable to flat fee and and other types of models to take you know kind of look ahead to AI and look ahead to efficiencies and start to change their models?

 

John Jakovenko  [25:55]

Well, a little bit, but what I’m trying to do, and we’re still new in this playground, right, is trying to have them figure out their value. So where is your value? Is it in the drafting? Because people now say, “Oh, well, they’re they know we use AI for the first draft, so they’re not going to want to pay as much. Well, yeah, you’re using AI for the first draft, but your judgment still goes into it. Your education, your experience, and that’s what you pay for, right? So one of my bosses way back when it said, you know, there was a guy on a sub. You probably heard this one, but the guy in the submarine, and he goes, and he can’t get a submarine to work. So then he calls a submarine tech expert. He comes in and he hits it with a hammer real quick on one of the engine parts, and the submarine starts. And he goes, “I could have done that. He goes, “Yeah, but I’m the submarine guy, right? And that’s the thing is they know what can they handle. You didn’t know where to hit. Yeah, exactly. So they have to understand that too. And when it comes to money, I have no idea why attorneys pay all their bills, but they are terrified to ask people for their money. Yeah, which you know, that’s just a mindset issue, and that’s a whole other conversation. But

 

Steve Fretzin  [26:58]

but that but that’s also why I like the idea of big retainers, I like the idea of setting expectations about how bills are going to be handled and managed. Like if you handle things on the front end properly, that takes away a lot of the stress in the collections on the back end. And not everybody’s doing that; they’re just kind of signing them up, getting them in, and then then they’re on to the next thing instead of taking a little extra time on the front end to sort of manage that. So

 

John Jakovenko  [27:23]

yeah, and then you also have to be creative in your product mix too, right? So let’s say you’re you’re doing PI and solute contingency. Well, you know maybe you can think about going into something that’s not contingency, like estate planning. Maybe you can hire a good estate planner to come, or estate planning attorney to come in, or partner with a book and and look, then you’ve got a cash engine plus your your every now and then hits. You know, it’s just different ways to think about it, and you can do it. You can be creative. You know, even if it’s bringing in a new product mix.

 

Steve Fretzin  [27:53]

Well, the last thing I want to, I’ve got two questions for you. We got to move through them fairly quickly, but you brought up the second point of lead capture and the fact that if firms don’t have a way of bringing in leads, measuring them, following up, you know, like this is like money you’ve already paid for, effort you’ve already put towards getting these in,

 

John Jakovenko  [28:14]

and

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:14]

then you don’t treat them like gold. You’re treating them like, you know, like not as important as anything else that’s going on, like getting the work done, which is of course important. That’s where I think there’s a lot of a lot of missteps with SEO and pay per click and organizations that do a really good job of marketing, and then they don’t put in the same effort and time and money and energy in. Like right now, you got the lead in. How is who’s handling it? How’s it being handled? What’s the system? What’s the process? Big problem. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go fishing, right? You enjoy getting the bites, or do you like getting the fish? No, you cracking that you just caught. You don’t, yeah. You don’t talk about oh, I got a ton of bites today. That

 

John Jakovenko  [28:52]

doesn’t help, right? If you came home with nothing, you’re not eating anything. It’s the same thing. And how you do that is you have the right equipment, right? The right fishing pole. You got the right size hook. You got the right size bait for exactly what you’re fishing for. That’s exactly. I don’t know. I’m a fisher. I go beach, you know, shore fishing all the time. So hopefully this reaches somebody. But it’s the same thing. Yeah. You have to have the exact right tools for exactly what you’re looking for. You know, if you’re looking for high end divorce clients, you don’t just do advertising on LSAs locally. You know, you go into that area, you you you spend the money, you reach out to those type of folks. Yeah, you network with those type of places. You get out there and do that stuff. But you’re right. It’s it’s we’re not taking our existing stuff we’ve already paid for money out the door and making the most out of it because we’re just simply not tracking things. We’re not measuring it. We’re not holding people accountable. Wow! So great, so great. Well, awesome, man. Final question: What’s John’s big mistake? John’s big mistake, it actually is fairly recent, was when I almost had a panic attack and quit altogether. I became the bottleneck with my company, and really, almost all my farms is where everything was running. Me, I could not not have things run through me to the point where I couldn’t handle it anymore. And I see this with my firms, and I coach them through, but I couldn’t figure it out, and I almost fell apart. I had an opport you know a moment where I was I had to do my kids, my wife help, I had to do all this stuff. Plus, I had this

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:17]

huge

 

John Jakovenko  [30:17]

client fire that happened, and and I had to do it all, so eventually I had to change, and that’s kind of what I I preaching out everybody is that if you know everyone comes to you with their problems through the problem, and I became that problem, I became a product essentially, and I couldn’t I couldn’t sustain anymore, so I changed that model. I’ve leveraged AI into what I do to take care of the crap I hate to do. Yes, and I have some folks that help me now. That I’m just like, okay, we’re putting my. I’m now putting systems in place where if this comes in, you’re taking it. If this comes in, you’re taking. Yeah, yeah. I can breathe. You know. Yeah, the cobbler’s son has no shoes, right? Exactly. And it’s like, yeah, it’s like with the employment attorneys. I love working with employment attorneys because they never have handbooks in place. I’m like, wait, this is it what you do? How do you employ hip

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:03]

hop? That’s kind of funny. Or estate, yeah, or just you know, I find it funny that you know eight out of 10 estate or attorneys don’t have

 

John Jakovenko  [31:10]

estate plans. I’m like,

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:11]

this is like a legal document that everyone should have and that nobody has them. It’s like, are you kidding? Exactly.

 

John Jakovenko  [31:16]

You how do you have that? Oh my gosh,

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:18]

crazy. All right, well, listen, man, I so appreciate you coming on. Let’s take a moment. Thank our incredible sponsors, lawyer.com. Lex Reception. So other ways of getting right things done, and of course, PimCon. Are you familiar with PimCon, the the top personal injury mastermind conference of the year?

 

John Jakovenko  [31:36]

No, but I am intrigued because I would like to get a couple of my firms thinking about

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:41]

yeah you could you there all the firms go it’s a first class experience out at the Venetian in Scottsdale in October so check that out talk to my Harvey sends you to Chris Dreyer you might enjoy meeting him he’s incredible

 

John Jakovenko  [31:52]

yeah that’ll be great John people want to get in touch with you and they want to learn more about your group and how you’re how you’re acting as the outsourced COO what are the evidence? Well, my number 770-624-9667. You can call me directly, and then the website jakovenko.ioJ A K O V E N K O .io. I know I should have never named the company after my last name. I should have called it something like law firms are cool, but yeah, if you can get to one of those two, you will find me and all my resources. Yeah, yeah, awesome, man. Yeah, we got a bunch of free AI tools on there too that I built out. You’ll enjoy

 

Steve Fretzin  [32:30]

1. Plug your book too, the Millionaire Law Firm.

 

John Jakovenko  [32:32]

Oh yeah, we got The Millionaire Law Firm. If basically I am, I put all 20 years of my brain into this book where we talk about those systems, and I call it the the Rhythm OS, so you can get it on Amazon. But it basically says, “Hey, your revenue is not doing it, and you want to free yourself so you can be profitable. This is the book to read. It’s actionable. It’s short. It’s sweet, and you could pick it up, read it, and implement it today. That’s the good thing about it, and that’s what I want to do with all my firms because that’s how I am successful. That’s how legacy.

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:02]

The best books are. Here’s how to do it. Here’s what you do, and and and just tell me what to do. I don’t want to read a book where I have to, you know, hear about you know 50 pages of research in

 

John Jakovenko  [33:11]

yeah or people’s personal stories for 10 minutes. It’s like tell

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:14]

me what to do, man.

 

John Jakovenko  [33:16]

Yes, you’ve done this 20 years. I trust you. Just tell me.

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:18]

Yeah, just tell me what to do. Right. Yeah, that’s why I love the 100. Was it 100 100 m offers? Was that Alex Hermosy? Just oh, he

 

Narrator  [33:29]

said, just do

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:30]

this. Is what you

 

John Jakovenko  [33:30]

do.

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:31]

Just do it, and I did it. I run mostly subscription based stuff now because he is so freaking brilliant.

 

John Jakovenko  [33:38]

100%

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:38]

Thanks for coming on the show, man. Sharing your wisdom really incredible. I know that there’s half a dozen at least takeaways that lawyers and law firms should be pulling away from today. And I hope that you and I can stay in the loop together and figure out ways to work and help our law firms.

 

John Jakovenko  [33:53]

100% I enjoy it.

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:54]

All right. Thank you, everybody, for hanging out for with us for the last 30 and change. You know this show is all about helping you build that book and own your future. Be that lawyer. Take care, everybody. Be safe and well. And we will talk again very soon.

 

Narrator  [34:11]

Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer: Life-Changing Strategies and Resources for Growing a Successful Law Practice. Visit Steve’s website fretzin.com, for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.