TRP 310: The Flywheel with Andy Clark

[00:00:10] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high-stakes headhunter, author, and professional speaker, Scott Love. You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, and my name is Scott Love. Thank you for joining me on the show. I'm excited about this episode because I got a lot of great ideas that help me out, and I think it's going to help you out also.

[00:00:36] Our guest is Andy Clark. Andy is an author and a consultant, and he helps organizations build companies that are more profitable, impactful, and enjoyable. The whole pie. In fact, he developed the whole pie system, which is a practical step-by-step framework for getting out of the weeds and leading with clarity. He's worked with business owners across North America to simplify operations, align their teams, and drive sustainable growth.

[00:01:03] Andy's book is called Getting the Whole Pie. I read that book. I'd highly recommend it. And we're going to spend time talking about one concept that he discusses in his book called The Flywheel Concept. We've put all of Andy's contact information on the show notes, including how you can order his book on Amazon. And like I said, this is a book that you definitely want to read. There's a lot of ideas in it, a lot of content in it, and we took that one idea of The Flywheel out of that book, and that's what our conversation is about today.

[00:01:33] So make sure you connect with Andy. Also, this podcast is sponsored by SurePoint Legal Insights, formerly known as Leopard Solutions, turning legal intelligence into opportunity, and also by The Rainmaking Magazine. Don't lose business to the competition. Read this publication and keep business development top of mind. And let me tell you one thing also. I put this magazine, it's an online magazine together, starting last fall. I don't charge a lot for it. I charge $1.99 for a whole year's worth of subscription.

[00:02:02] And many of our previous guests that you've heard have written content that we publish for you. It's all on client development. It's the only online magazine for those in the business of getting business who are in professional services. So visit therainmakingmagazine.com today to chart your course to greater rainmaking success. Thanks for listening, and I hope you get some great ideas from my conversation with Andy Clark today. Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast.

[00:02:31] Our special guest today is Andy Clark, author and consultant, and we're talking about the flywheel. Andy, thanks for joining me on the show. Thank you, Scott. It's great to be here. Absolutely. And I've read your book, Getting the Whole Pie, and I want to dig into this. I want to go right to the point that I think will help our listeners the most, and it's the flywheel. And I'm familiar with that concept, and I want you to talk about that a little bit more of it. And this is something in my own practice I've seen.

[00:02:59] By focusing on the flywheel, I'm able to achieve results. But I want you to tell us what would that mean in terms of a definition? What exactly is a flywheel that people in business should be mindful of? Yeah, great. So I have to give credit to the great Jim Collins, who's the author of Good to Great and tons of other wonderful business books, who I've learned a lot from. So I think he's the one who really started the flywheel metaphor as a business concept.

[00:03:28] The version of the flywheel that I use with my clients is a little bit different. But the big idea behind the flywheel as a metaphor is that success in business rarely comes from one great idea, from one great decision, from one initiative.

[00:03:46] It happens sometimes, but more often, success comes from a slow, methodical, consistent march forward, which is kind of what a flywheel is, right? Once you get it turning, it kind of has a self-sustaining momentum that day after day, week after week, month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year leads to the results that you want in your business.

[00:04:13] It's not super sexy, but it's really the secret sauce that helps businesses achieve what they're trying to achieve. Absolutely right. And I know you work with all different types of businesses, and I think these ideas can be translated clearly into professional services because a professional services practitioner is somebody that is actually doing the work, practicing law, doing recruiting, investment banking, whatever that work is. But they've also got to have this flywheel of rainmaking.

[00:04:42] It's a whole separate core competency that in law school, they don't teach it. You have to kind of figure it out. But I think when somebody looks at the role of a rainmaker and they have to have this flywheel of momentum on that very subject, that will help them make their lives. It'll make their lives a lot easier because then they build the brand. They start getting inbound inquiries for their services. They go to a conference, and before they even walk into a room, everybody knows their name.

[00:05:10] And that, I think, is when somebody has a flywheel turning. So let me ask you this. I know you've broken it down. I want you to tell us. And if you've got the book in front of you for everybody listening, it's on Chapter 4. And by the way, I put all of Andy's links, and we'll talk about that later, but in the show notes and especially the ordering link for the book. But kind of break this down. I know you talk about four different components on the flywheel. Can you break those down for us, Andy? I sure can.

[00:05:35] Yeah, and so just before I say that, one of my core values in my life and in my business and what I try to instill into the business that I work with is simplicity. Business doesn't have to be complicated. And so the flywheel is simple. There's only four components to it. The first component is clear ownership. The second component is right metrics. The third component is smart decisions. And the fourth component is great meetings.

[00:06:02] So a little bit more on each of these four things. So clear ownership, what does that mean? That just means that the priorities that you have in your business, and let's apply it directly to Rainmaking. So the priorities that you have as it relates to Rainmaking and your professional services business, they need to be owned by one person and one person only. And so depending on the size of your firm, that could be you or it could be your associates, it could be your marketing person. It could be whoever.

[00:06:30] But it's imperative that once you've identified what that initiative is, that it's owned by one person and one person only. So that's clear ownership. And the reason for that is all about accountability. You know, I call it the hungry horse principle. If more than one person is responsible for feeding a horse, what happens? The horse goes hungry. Because both people think the other person is going to do it. So you don't want to have that happen. The second one is write metrics. And this is just all about KPIs. But having the right KPIs.

[00:06:58] It's sometimes better to have no KPIs than to have the wrong KPIs. If you're focusing on the wrong thing, that can lead you down the wrong track. So you need to be very intentional about the right KPIs. What are you trying to accomplish in your firm, in your professional service practice, either from a management perspective or specifically to Rainmaking? What are you trying to accomplish? Then you need to look at what metrics will tell you if you're on track or off track to that.

[00:07:26] And importantly, you want to make sure that you have a good balance of kind of the leading indicator and the trailing indicator. So don't just measure, you know, how many clients did you get? That's the end result. You also want to measure the things that lead to getting those clients. Third thing is smart decisions. And that's just kind of a two-word way to say you need to have a decision-making funnel and filter in your business that you use systematically and repeatedly.

[00:07:56] What this does is it allows you to actually say no to a lot of things right at the get-go. That otherwise, if you let them through the filter, can take a lot of time and energy and are not going to take you towards what you're trying to accomplish at all. And there's a bunch of ways in the book that I talk about that helps you with that filter. And then the fourth thing is great meetings. And meetings get a really bad reputation, right? Particularly in professional services firms. And I'm not talking about meetings with clients because those are great. You get to bill for those.

[00:08:26] I'm talking about the meetings that aren't sort of billable meetings. The management meetings, even the marketing committee meetings, the rainmaking meetings. I practiced law for a dozen years. Actually, I ran an accounting firm for five years. So I really know what a bad meeting looks like. And I understand why they get a bad rap. But there are really simple things you can do to make your meetings great. And three of them would be have a purpose and an agenda for the meeting.

[00:08:56] If anybody in the meeting is wondering why they're there or what you're trying to accomplish, already it's a bad meeting before you've even started. Actually, I'll just stop there. I said I was going to say three things. I'll stop. Yeah. And let's go back over these. I wanted to recap all four of these. I want to dig into each one a little bit deeper. And I really appreciate the thoughtfulness you put into your book. And you mentioned simplicity. The concepts that you share, you lay them out in a very simple way. And I mean, I read your whole book.

[00:09:23] And I really like the graphical parts to it where you lay it out in a graph. I can understand key critical business concepts in about 30 seconds by looking at how you've laid out these flow charts. I can see just within my own practice, oh, I've got this problem. What does Andy say I should do to solve that? I also like the fact that this is a working book where you've got certain checklists here.

[00:09:47] If people get your book and if they work it properly, it's going to be filled with notes and even the quizzes. I didn't get a chance to finish one of those, but it really helped me to ascertain where am I in terms of the life cycle of building my own practice. And I know it's going to help other people as well in professional services outside of just what we're talking about here with the flywheel. And you're absolutely right. I mean, I remember when I read Jim Collins talking about that concept. It's a tangible kinesthetic. I can identify with that.

[00:10:16] I've been inside one of these old stone mills where you see the flywheel there. And so, you know, when it starts getting momentum, you kind of can't take your eye off that and you need to keep focusing on it and double down. Now you've got leverage. I think once you've got that flywheel going at such a good speed, now that's a leverageable resource. So let me ask you this. Before we go into these, I'm going to go back over all four of these a little bit more.

[00:10:40] Tell me about a time where you've worked with an organization where they didn't really have much momentum in terms of the flywheel. And how did they make changes to these areas? And what was the result of that flywheel? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess we'll just go back in order. Like working with professional services firms that have, and particularly that have multiple partners. If you don't have alignment on priorities, you're going to struggle. Right.

[00:11:08] And so the first thing that needs to happen is alignment on those priorities. Before you can even assign ownership to that priority, which is the first part of the flywheel and clear ownership, there's a whole other part of the book we're not going to talk about today. But you have to be able to get aligned on what those priorities are. So let's assume, and that's where clients I work with have struggles right out of the gate. And that's kind of where we start. We have to get that alignment on those priorities. But let's assume you have alignment on those priorities.

[00:11:36] Then it's, like I said before, being very clear about, okay, partner A, you've got this one. Partner B, you've got this one. Partner C, you've got this one. Marketing person has this one. And, I don't know, associate C has this one. Okay, great. Those are your priorities for the next 90 days. And if I can skip ahead to the fourth part of the flywheel, which is great meetings, one of the things you do at a great meeting is you, which occur weekly, the weekly leadership team meeting,

[00:12:03] is you are checking in on those priorities every single week. So you've got 90 days to complete this priority. But every week, you're all holding each other accountable around the leadership table about how is it going with priority number one, partner A? How are you making that up? Are you on track? Are you having any problems? Do you need some support? So rather than at the end of the quarter saying, hey, how do we make it on our priorities?

[00:12:29] Every single week, you're taking only about 10 minutes to check in to make sure that these things are happening. And that owner has to report on that. Right there, that alone is more accountability than you will see in 90% of professional services firms. That's great. Would you agree? Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would. And I think nobody wants to be intrusive. Nobody wants to be the bad guy. But I do think that when we're clear and we're rowing in the same direction, people do have that clear purpose and priorities.

[00:12:58] And I think when people know how their role does help that organization, whether it's a five-person practice, achieve certain priorities, and they see that their significance as a team player is because they were the one that helped get that practice to that area, and they fulfill that objective and the priority. I think when people see how their role fits in with the vision, which I know you talk about. I mean, your book is masterful in laying out the fundamentals of building an effective organization.

[00:13:26] Years ago, I did an internal organizational development consulting when I was on active duty as an ABLE officer at the age of 24, which is when you really do know everything. I was just in the right place at the right time. And so I grew up on this and coming into the legal world saying, gosh, there's these organizations. What are your core values? They kind of shrug. And so I think that you nail it. And so if somebody is working in an organization where maybe that big 2,000 attorney firm just isn't functioning at a high level in terms of organizational development,

[00:13:55] they can still take their five-person practice team because it is a business within a business and take these concepts to that and thrive. What do you think about that idea, Andy? Great point. Great point. If you are in one of those gigantic firms or organizations, you might feel like, what can I do? I'm limited in my ability to influence the way the whole thing is run. Well, great. If that's the case, what can you influence? What can you exert your control over?

[00:14:22] If you do have a little team, these concepts can be applied at a five-person level, at a 50-person level, at a 500-person level with some changes here and there. But don't be afraid to take the concepts. And importantly, my book is not super prescriptive in terms of – it's not inflexible, I guess what I should say. It's built for the reality that all organizations are a little bit different. Their culture is a little bit different.

[00:14:49] So all of the tools and templates that I have, I encourage people to take it, take what serves them, change it a little bit if they need to do that to help them achieve the results. So I think that's an important distinction here is that it's structure, but it's not inflexible, right? And so it gives you a starting point, and then you can tailor it from there. I think you're right. And I think the word I would use to describe your book is it's malleable because these concepts, they're fungible. They affect everything, every organization out there.

[00:15:18] So let me come back to the flywheel because I really think if people, in reading your book, there's different things they need to think about, of course. But if they can get their arms around, I want to build a flywheel of rainmaking within my intellectual property practice or my recruiting company or whatever it is. I think when they're looking at this – and I like how you break it down into four components. We mentioned clear ownership, right metrics, smart decisions, great meetings. And that's all based on the other things you mentioned earlier in the book about getting aligned on the priorities.

[00:15:46] But let me kind of dig into the metrics here. And you mentioned you're asking yourself what are you trying to accomplish in your practice? What metrics will tell you if you're on track? And a good balance is the leading indicator and trading indicators. What advice would you give for someone that says, how can I find the metrics that lead to success in my practice? What advice would you give to that person, Andy? Yeah. So start with what are your goals? What are your priorities?

[00:16:11] Like however you define those, there should be a metric, if not more than one metric, for each one of those priorities. Because really, how else are you going to know you're on track to achieving that? So I want to grow my practice by X. Okay, well, there are metrics there. Does that mean new clients? Does that mean raising your rates? Does that mean income in the door? Does that mean width? What does that mean?

[00:16:36] What are those metrics that are going to tell you if you're on track to achieving that goal? You know, if I have a goal, let's say a priority is that we want to, you know, our firm, we want to speak at, you know, 10 conferences this quarter. Okay, well, that's a pretty easy metric to track. So every week, and actually we build a little dashboard when we talk about right metrics, not only is it identifying what those metrics are, but then it's building the dashboard.

[00:17:05] And again, jumping ahead to great meetings at that weekly leadership team meeting, 10 minutes every week is spent on looking at that KPI dashboard, identifying where are the check engine lights that we might need to course correct on a little bit. So if we want to, if we want to do, if we want to speak at 10 conferences this quarter and we're halfway through the quarter and we've only spoken at two, well, then there's a discussion. Do we have another eight lined up before the end of the quarter or are we going to have to try to do some heavy lifting here to hit that goal?

[00:17:35] So does that kind of give you a bit of an idea? Yeah. And tell me more about the dashboard. How would you define that and how can you help someone really build a dashboard? And what does that look like exactly? Yeah. Well, again, simplicity is the key. It should be one page. When I say dashboard, it doesn't have to be a fancy, you know, software. Most of my clients use an Excel doc maybe, or, you know, like a Google sheet.

[00:18:00] And it's just a one page and you've got say eight to 14 metrics that you're looking at every week. And importantly, you don't just set the metric, but you have to set a goal for the metric, right? We just talked about, you know, 10 speaking engagements in the quarter. So that's the goal. Because data or metrics in and of themselves don't tell you anything. They have to be measured against a goal to know whether you're, you know, on track or not. So you just build a little dashboard. You've got in the left hand, and it's in the book.

[00:18:29] There's an example. And again, take it and change it to what works best for you. But you want to have those metrics all in one place on one page. What happens oftentimes, thought is that, you know, you have some of your metrics over here in this software and some of your metrics over here in that software. And some of your metrics are in somebody's notepad. They're not all pulled together in one coordinated place where you can see a dashboard, what's working and what's not working.

[00:19:00] That's great. I love that, that this is a simple idea that anybody can do. How long do you think you've seen people come up with a dashboard when they really start this? How long does it take for them to really figure out the right type of metrics to think about and put on their dashboard? I'd say it's about two quarters because the way that the system operates is quarterly.

[00:19:25] So every quarter you come up with your new game plan for the quarter, both in terms of priorities and then the metrics that support those priorities. And the first time you do it, it's going to be clunky. You know, if you've never done it before, it's going to be a little bit clunky. You're going to give it your best shot. And then you're going to realize at the end of the quarter, you know what? We really should have been tracking this instead of that. Or, you know, it really took too much time to track this, not really worth it. I think it would be better if we track this.

[00:19:53] It wouldn't take us as much time and it would be more beneficial to us. And then along the same lines, it's like a skill that you build, a muscle that you develop to understand how much can I accomplish in this quarter? So did I get my goals right? And that takes two, three quarters to understand that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a short period of time. And they underestimate, actually, they underestimate what they can accomplish in a long period of time.

[00:20:22] So when I work with clients on their three-year plan, what I often find is that they're underestimating how much they can accomplish in three years. When I work with clients on their 90-day plan, I find that a lot of times they overestimate how much they can accomplish in 90 days. And that takes a little while to get right. It'll take two, three quarters to understand, oh, we overextended here. We need to pull back. Or we actually undercommitted. No, I think we can do a bit more. That's interesting.

[00:20:52] Why do you think that is, Andy? I think it's human nature. It's human nature. It's like, I mean, look at your, the average person's to-do list. Does it, does, like how many people's to-do list for a day gets accomplished? Like not very, not very many people. But we start out the day now. And I do it. I do it too. I start out the day and I've got these 10 things. Like no problem. I'll get all those 10 things done today. And I get three done. And the next day I'll do it all again. Say, well, today will be different. Today will be different. I'll get all 10 things done today.

[00:21:21] But it's just human nature. And maybe it's, we're optimistic that it's going to be the perfect day. We're going to knock everything out of the park. But business doesn't work that way. That's true. I like it. Clear ownership, right metrics, smart decisions, and great meetings. Tell me a little bit about smart decisions. How do we get better at making effective decisions, Andy? Great. So a couple of, a couple of things here. One, as I mentioned before, you need to have a good filter for what a decision even needs to be made about. And I call it values-based decision-making.

[00:21:51] And the values come from not only your core values, but the mission of your organization and your firm and the vision, which altogether I call purpose. The purpose of your firm encompasses vision, mission, and core values, sometimes some other things. But those are the main three. And if you get that right, well, wouldn't it stand to reason that you would never do anything that would contradict your vision, your mission, your core values? Like, it just wouldn't make any sense, right?

[00:22:17] But so many firms, organizations are not crystal clear on vision, mission, and core values. And so these opportunities, these decisions they think need to get made, they get through your filter. And they get to the, you know, to the management team meeting, or they, you know, they get to the partnership team meeting. And you spend a lot of time going around the table talking about this, should we, shouldn't we, whatever. What do we do about this?

[00:22:44] It should never have got there because it's, because looking back on it, it wasn't going to take you closer to your vision. It wasn't consistent with your mission. It wasn't congruent with your core values. It should never have got there. You should have said no right away. But without that, without those things in place, you can't have that filter. So that's one of the first things we do together is we create that filter when I work with clients. And it's such a time saver. It's such an energy saver. And so I guess the second thing on smart decisions is, okay, so you get through that filter.

[00:23:14] Great. Smart decisions means identifying what is the highest leverage point that you can make a decision upon in that given week in your business that will move your business forward. So that's a bit of an art in itself to understand what's the most important thing you can spend your time on. But once you've identified that, it's so critical that you actually make a decision about that thing. And that decision can be, we're going to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

[00:23:42] So it's just like, this is the next bite of eating this elephant. This is the first step up the mountain. But next week, we're going to come back and we're going to see how we did with the first step. And then we're going to figure out what to do with that next step. What derails meetings and why meetings get a really bad rap or one of the reasons is because you find yourself sitting in a meeting and you're talking about the same issues or the same opportunity or the same problem over and over and over again.

[00:24:08] You kick it around, you kick it around, but nobody makes the decision on what is a concrete action step to handle this. And that's what frustrates people like crazy. So as long as you can commit to making smart decisions by identifying what is that one thing that you can do to move this thing forward, your meetings will get better. Your morale will improve. You know, bitching will reduce. A really important, really important part of the process. This is great, Andy.

[00:24:38] I think your book is definitely going to make a difference for those organizations that implement it. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show and sharing your expertise with us. Let me ask you this. If you could summarize three action steps people can take to really go forward and implement some of these ideas, what would those three action steps be? Yeah, so we didn't really talk about this too much, but the reason why the system is called the PI system is because PIE stands for profit, impact and enjoyment.

[00:25:08] And in my view, those are the kind of the three most important measures of success for a business, including professional services. The enjoyment part is often left behind. You know, profit is always there. Impact to a lesser extent is in most organizations, but the enjoyment stuff gets left behind. And it doesn't need to be, Scott. So one thing that I would suggest people do is to say, what is one thing that's frustrating me in my business right now? What's one thing that's a frustration?

[00:25:37] Because what's frustrating you, it's taking away from your enjoyment and doing what you're doing. What's one frustration? And then getting back to the discussion with what we just had, what's one action step that might not completely remove that frustration, but what's one thing that will take you closer to removing that frustration when you do your enjoyment level immediately? It goes up. That's just the way it works. So that's one thing. Number two, if you really want to get a sense of, you know, where is your practice?

[00:26:04] Where is your firm in terms of kind of these best practices of running a business at which you can apply to management or particularly rainmaking? There's what I call the Whole Pie Health Check. It's like an assessment. You can see where you're strong and where you're not so strong. You can find it at my website, which is thewholepiesystem.com. And it'll take you, you know, 20 minutes to fill out. And you'll get a really good sense of where are some areas that you might need to work on?

[00:26:34] Where are some areas that are leading to frustrations or, you know, reduced profitability or whatever in your business? And then you can immediately start to take action. And I guess number three, I'll just put a plug in for if this resonates, pick up the book. Pick up the book. And you can get it on Amazon, on Kindle for $0.99, I think it is right now, depending on when this comes out. You might get it for $0.99. If it's full price, it's $9.99. So it's probably not going to break the bank account.

[00:27:02] And, you know, have a look at it like you did, Scott, and see if it resonates. And if it does resonate, then you can implement that into your practice. But how do you recommend this book, like I mentioned? And Andy, tell us about your offerings. What do you have? What do you do that you'd like our listeners to know about besides your authorship? Well, thank you for the question, Scott. You know, the book was my gift, let's say, to business owners, professional service firms, partners who may be searching for something.

[00:27:30] And before the book, you know, they had to find me, or I suppose another, you know, consultant qualified like I am that's worked in professional services before. But now they can get these concepts in the book. And that's great. But often what happens, as you might appreciate, right, is it's like going to the gym. You buy the membership. Does that necessarily mean you're going to go to the gym? You know, you buy the book. Does that necessarily mean you're going to implement that?

[00:27:59] What's really valuable a lot of times is if you hire a trainer, you pay that trainer and you got to meet them at six in the morning and you pay them whether you show up or not, right? It's that level of accountability that actually leads to, you know, the fitness level that you're that you want. And that's what I do. In addition, you know, to the book, I can step in and work with a business owner, with a firm to provide that accountability and to help them guide them in the implementation of the

[00:28:29] whole Pi system into their business. This is so great, Andy. I really appreciate you being on the show. We're going to put all of your contact information on the show notes. And if anybody's interested in reaching out to Andy, just go to the show notes and you'll be able to connect with them directly. Thanks again for being here today, Andy, and for sharing your wisdom with us. Oh, it's been a blast. Thanks, Scott. It's been so much fun and I appreciate you having me on. Thank you for listening to the Rainmaking Podcast.

[00:28:58] For more information about our recruiting services for international law firms, visit our website at attorneysearchgroup.com. To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting, or executive retreat, visit theraanmakingpodcast.com.