Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] And when you’re looking for an operations person this is matter to you.. You know, it may be better to find somebody who was outside or grew up and got experience outside of the law. Maybe not depends, but maybe that’s the way to go.

Thomas Tona: I used a recruiter. I was very specific. I don’t want law firm experience. I did not want law firm experience. And so within the COO realm, there were years of experience that are required depending on what you want to achieve. Scaling and scaling by acquisition and scaling with different market penetration verticals.

We went through everything and you need to differentiate between operators that are used to startup environment versus operators that are used to like working at Nabisco and they’re used to having a billion dollar budget, right?

So the funny thing is. It feels like a startup here now. Like the excitement, the energy, my firm is a buzz every day with [00:01:00] activity and growth. And like 2026 is not even a question. I can’t imagine We’re not doubling our revenue in 2026, right? We have different things in play, different people in play, but it’s super exciting.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We’ll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you’re in the right place.

Let’s dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. I’m excited. We’ve got a repeat guest today. We got my good friend Tom Tona, back on the show he was on. Over a year ago. It’s been a while. It’s been a, he was one of the early guests and for those who know Tom, he’s [00:02:00] everywhere.

He’s got his own podcast, lead council podcast. If you’re not subscribed, you need to do that. He’s prolific on, on LinkedIn and we’ve gotten to know each other the last two, three years. And Tom’s doing some really cool stuff. But one of the reasons why I wanted to get him on here is there’s a lot of talk out there about growing your firm to seven figures.

You know, and that there’s a whole host of challenges and problems that you encounter there. But once you get above second hit seven figures and you, you’re headed towards eight figures and beyond. The issues change. So what worked early in the early days don’t work anymore. And Tom is pretty far along on the path.

So I wanted to talk about some of the things that he’s encountered from doing this for a long time and as the firm has gotten much, much bigger. So Tom, that was a big intro, but welcome to the show, man. Thanks for coming back on.

Thomas Tona: Thanks for having me, man. Thanks for having me. And you forgot to tell people I’m also a client of yours.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, you know, [00:03:00] you could say it. I can’t.

Thomas Tona: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, no, I, I’ve been listen. Meeting you was great. You, you’re awesome at what you do. So yeah, it’s been a pleasure man, and thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So let, let’s, let’s dive in, man. So, one of the things that, I know you’ve sort of gone through some changes over the last. Call it 12, 18 months. So some, and you already had a successful firm. You do, you know, doing great work, but you sort of decided you made a strategic change to sort of change the vision and direction of your firm a little bit.

So, maybe we can start with, you know, what led you to say, Hey I want to, I want to grow this thing. ’cause we won’t have to say how old you are, but you’re not brand new. Right.

Thomas Tona: I am 57. I’m 57, correct.

Jonathan Hawkins: You’ve got more energy than most 35 year olds. So I, I see it and I feel it, but you want to grow this baby. So number one, what, where did that come from and, and how did you sort of decide, Hey, I’m gonna shift and maybe change strategy a little bit.

Thomas Tona: So we originally mapped out a plan. It was gonna be an eight figure law firm, [00:04:00] right? My goal was to get this thing to 10, to 20 to 30. But that even morphed into the real motivating factor behind it was what’s best for the clients, right? And I shifted to a trial model and that led to turnover and I shifted to more aggressive, you know, litigation and that led to turnover.

So the shift was driven initially by setting a benchmark, right? I always tell people like, I view money, it’s just green paper. I use it to keep score. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I’m up more than I’m down, but I have no emotional attachments, right? I don’t get emotional with that stuff. So. The impetus behind it was really what’s the right thing for my clients, right?

I had a hellacious case, a woman lost her husband. He was a high wage earner, and I knew that I wanted a firm that my wife could choose if that was me that had passed away, and I did not have what I needed. So my [00:05:00] conscience brought me to this point.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So you as the leader, you say, okay, here’s the vision. We’re changing strategies. You, you sort of alluded to it. You’ve lost some people along the way so that that is something that, i’m really interested in is, is, I’ll call it change management. When you start changing the direction or growing in a way, the people that were there in the beginning are like, Hey, this is different.

So how do you bring them along? How do you get ’em set up? And if, if they’re not coming along, how do you deal with it?

Thomas Tona: So interestingly enough, we had almost complete turnover in every seat except for my leadership team in the last two years. And I say that proudly because I used to think. Change management was a thing, and it is right in, in a traditional law firm or TRA traditional business, change management’s a thing.

So you bring people in that are adept in change management and they start to roll it out, but they don’t do it in a chaotic way. I have since [00:06:00] embraced chaos, even higher than I ever did. There’s a book that if people are listening to this and they want to grow. I’m talking grow fast like I know your ambitions.

John, pick up the book Blitz Scaling and read it because there’s a concept that was born in Silicon Valley with the tech companies of you build it while you’re flying it. Stuff is breaking everywhere, but you just keep building, you build, build, build. You embrace the chaos. And that’s where I am right now.

’cause we brought on some really significant change agents, a C-suite executive, COO, Edward a really high level operator who’s running my personal injury department and the amount of stuff that. I didn’t even have a say in. They just came in and started breaking and building, building and breaking. I was like, this is awesome.

The cool thing about it was that the people that are here now that would, they would just like, Hey, I’m about to [00:07:00] change. That’s why I’m coming here after being at a law firm for 10 years. So now I’ve got lawyers, paralegals that are like, this is unbelievable, and they’re embracing it. So it’s just an iteration that I’m at.

I don’t recommend chaos for most people. I love that stuff, so I try not to be the Tasmanian Devil of Chaos, which I’ve been known to do. So change, change management depends on the people that are there at the time and your goals. I’m not a big fan of scaling slow. I think that the market’s moving too fast.

I’m gonna say the following statement. You might think I’m nuts, but I think every company today is a technology company. I think that I’m a technology company that. Sells law services. So I’m using technology throughout. Unfortunately, there are people that are gonna be casualties of technology, not the ones that are here now.

But if, if you are not using it or you’re not adopting it, or you say no to AI or any of these things, you’re gonna be a [00:08:00] casualty of it. And you probably should be. ’cause that’s free market man. I’m a big capitalist when it comes to free market forces, you know that. So, you know, I think that I still strive to not upset people who don’t like change.

But that being said, I also choose people. Now that we talk about change at the interview process, we talk about how quickly things are moving in the market. Like you see it, right? How fast is the market moving? It’s like daily things are changing.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I definitely wanna dive into technology and ai, but before we get there, another thing that you’ve, you’ve talked a lot about on your podcast. I know you’ve had at least a couple episodes, you’ve talked about it on LinkedIn is the different levels of operations. And I know you brought in, you mentioned the C-Suite operations people.

I guess maybe put that in context with, you know, now that you’ve been through multiple levels of your firm growing you’ve brought in this new C-Suite level with experience sort of in your mind, how do you categorize it? How, what’s the difference?

Thomas Tona: There are three levels [00:09:00] of operations, right? There’s the operational firefighter, that’s what I would call an operations manager, and that’s the first level, and that’s where EOS says you pick your integrator and they integrate, right? They integrate your vision with execution. The operational manager is more of a firefighter and they’re a doer, and they execute on what you are saying.

Here’s the strategy and here’s what needs to happen. Then you’ve got the, the operational, let’s say, director, and you could have different levels of this depending on how long somebody’s been with you. They’re institutional knowledge or whatever. Then you have the operational director. That’s more strategy and less involvement by me.

Right, and then you got the C-suite operator, and then when you unleash all three levels, all of a sudden, like I have new technology, I’m not even involved. I don’t even know. They’re like, Hey, we ordered you a new stuff and we’re getting rid of the old stuff, new software, new hardware. [00:10:00] Everything changed in a matter of 90 days.

All for the better. And then they weave AI into all the processes, all the seed. Now you marry that up with like a very senior operational manager and that person’s got institutional knowledge. And as long as you do that the right way, right, because a ’cause a C-Suite executive is way different than those other levels, as long as you do it the right way.

Everybody still has tremendous opportunity, tremendous growth. ’cause they’re different jobs. Like my C-Suite, I’m gonna be, I’ll be very specific ’cause everybody knows who my second in command was and who is now. He didn’t replace my integrator at the time, gene. On this chart, he’s the COO. He replaced me in operations.

I fired myself from operations. Jannie is still one of the most important people. Jannie has still got a very important [00:11:00] job with broad institutional knowledge, and you need, as you grow and scale broad institutional knowledge and depth of expertise in that as well as highly specialized knowledge in operations.

And I will say the following. A truism. I believe that every problem in a law firm can be fixed with operations systems and systemization. So you, God forbid, you blow a statute that should be systematized out. It should never happen with the right technology and the right people. Any problem you have if you say, what about operations failed here? You can fix it now. I don’t like to listen. I know we need systems. I can’t get to 10 million without it. I’m not the guy that’s ever gonna do it. I don’t have the discipline. My brain doesn’t work that way. The operators I have, that’s how their brains work. Right? And that goes from my existing team. My middle managers too.

They were all operators. Like my no fault head. [00:12:00] She’s been that for years. She knows how to systematize everything with the no fault. It’s just not my forte.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you brought up a couple really good points that I wanna explore. So, you did mention EOS and you know, that’s all the rage for law firms, but it sounds like that works up to a level. And then you gotta sort of change sort of that dynamic which you’ve done which is interesting.

But the thing, so let’s talk about your C-Suite operator. And so another thing that we’ve all seen in law firms most firm administrators or operations, COO types, whatever their title is, they started out maybe as a paralegal and they’ve just sort of worked their way up in the law firm. They don’t have the experience and training of being really an operations person.

And when you’re looking for an operations person this is matter to you You know, it may be better to find somebody who was outside or grew up and got experience outside of the law. Maybe not depends, but maybe that’s the way to go. What was your approach and how did you [00:13:00] find the person and were they experienced in law firms before?

Thomas Tona: I used a recruiter. I was very specific. I don’t want law firm experience. I did not want law firm experience. And so within the COO realm, there were years of experience that are required depending on what you want to achieve. Scaling and scaling by acquisition and scaling with different market penetration verticals.

Those all require. A lot more experience. So I said I want a top tier COO 25 years of experience, right? And I had the price brackets lined out with me with the recruiter. We went through everything and you need to differentiate between operators that are used to startup environment versus operators that are used to like working at Nabisco and they’re used to having a billion dollar budget, right?

So the funny thing is. It feels like a startup here now. Like the excitement, [00:14:00] the energy, my firm is a buzz every day with activity and growth. And like 2026 is not even a question. I can’t imagine We’re not doubling our revenue in 2026, right? We have different things in play, different people in play, but it’s super exciting.

It’s really, you know, but that’s kind of my personality. Like the more change, the better.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know the other thing that my attitude, and I think this is what you’ve done, is, you’re hiring for the person who’s already done it, the person that can get you there. So you’re, you’re sort of hiring ahead of where the firm is. It’s like you want them to bring you there versus somebody who’s sort of where you are now.

Right.

Thomas Tona: yeah, yeah. Patrick said, Patrick Wilson. I talk about him all the time. I was mulling this decision over and he said, look, your next hire could be. That mid-level director, right? He said, but I see the brilliance of what you’re doing to the extent, like you just wanna skip a step. You’re willing to pay for it.

You’re not scared of the price tag, and it’s just gonna get you there faster. [00:15:00] Like I didn’t want to go iteration by iteration, and I got super lucky because. In the whole process. As my head of personal injury, I hired somebody who was a director, a legit director of operations at Big Law international firm, and she wanted to go back to her roots of B2C personal injury.

And she came on and I’m like, oh, I, I mean, I knew five minutes into the interview, five minutes into the interview, I was like, I gotta have this woman on my team. Get her, get her whatever it takes, you know? So I just, it, I just, it’s the equivalent right now of bringing a, a cannon to a water pistol fight because I got so much, so much operational strength. But the great thing is, is I don’t have to do anything in operations anymore, which that’s been in my gauge point where I get sick of something, I’m done. I gotta hire that replacement from me. So.

Jonathan Hawkins: And the other thing that I guess two points for people out there that, I mean, [00:16:00] you, you’re far along, I mean, you’ve been doing this, you have the resources to be able to invest this way, but you’re gonna have to invest. And spend probably more than most people are spending. And you gotta be able to do that.

So for people out there that are thinking about it maybe there’s a, a time to do it and you gotta sort of wait till that time is right.

Thomas Tona: Yeah. I, I, listen, one, I couldn’t have afforded it. 10 years ago, I would’ve been terrified of the price tags and you gotta be able to wrap your head around that level of investment. I mean, I just listened to something. John Morgan was on a podcast. He was talking about how he’s investing in his New York City and LA offices.

Those offices will run in the red. They’re still in the red since he opened them. But it becomes a, a bounce point after the investment where all of a sudden you reach critical mass, all the cases are starting to settle. The lawyers that are there are taking verdicts and then your investment crisscrosses with your, you know, with your cash flow.

And you’re not only in the [00:17:00] black, your hockey sticking up. I think next year is that for me, because I’ve been investing, investing, investing time, money people, and so. We have all the pieces in place and now we are just sewing up the marketing piece and we’re, we’re, you know, we’re set for next year.

Real quick, if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, please check out my book, the Law Firm Lifecycle. It’s written for law firm owners and those who plan to be owners. In the book, I discuss various issues that come up as a law firm progresses through the stages of its growth from just before starting a firm to when it comes to an end.

The law firm lifecycle is available on Amazon. Now, back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk about some of the investments shift to that and, and. Most, many times investment in a law firm is people. And you don’t always get it right. I know I’ve had my issues. I mean, everybody does. It’s just, it’s just natural. And so whenever you add somebody new to the mix, you, you never quite know if they’re gonna work out or not.

But the new, the new personality can affect [00:18:00] the culture that you’ve got going on. And I know you’ve talked about this a little bit on your podcast and, maybe shed some light on that. You know, number one, we will get to this in a minute too. You are not afraid to make a decision and do it. So that’s and you make decisions.

We’ll talk about that in a second. But you made some decisions, brought people in, and then things happened and you had to make more decisions. So maybe give us some perspective there.

Thomas Tona: Yeah. So my decision making style is I’m a quick decider, you know, I think very fast, and I need 30 to 50% of the data. I have a high accuracy rate and trust in my decisions. The decision making that you go through is never gonna be perfect and you will make mistakes when it comes to people.

’cause that’s the wild card, right? People are not data. People have emotions, people have families, people have issues. So you can’t get that right all the time, but you have to be [00:19:00] willing to make mistakes. Dust yourself off. And I listen, I, I went into a funk on a decision that I made on, let’s call it, you know, x, y, Z seat. And Patrick Wilson again to the rescue was like, Hey man, just call this version one and now you’re on version two. No one gets it right at version one. And there’s a rule of three that, like Seth Price always says you typically have to go through two people in every new position you create. Before you actually figure out what you want it to look like.

Now, I’ve gotten lucky to the extent that certain ones, I waited so long for like the operational role for personal injury that by the time Luisa walked into the interview, I knew exactly what I wanted and she started talking and it was like the angels were singing to me and I was like. She’s, she’s, she’s gotta be on the team.

She’s gotta be on the team. And, [00:20:00] and it was kind of the same thing with Edward. Like, one of the things I have done pretty well, even with like real estate, my wife would be like, I wanna look at a house. Right? I look at a hundred houses to figure out, not the periphery house, to figure out the market the true value and what I don’t want.

Right? And it’s kind of the same thing with talent. I started doing interviews ’cause I had a lot of operational fires going on around the people component at the time. So I was like, I wanna be in every interview. And as I did it, I realized issues in my process, issues in the communications, and I knew like I knew what I was looking for for these roles, right?

So you don’t get it right. You gotta cut yourself some slack and some grace. What I will tell you is. I have no hesitation to make decisions on this front, and if it’s not an aligned fit, it ends very quickly and it doesn’t have to end badly. You follow a process, but it has to end and you make it end and you [00:21:00] move on.

It’s, it’s right for both sides.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so for people out there that, you know, made decisions maybe made bad results, the ups and downs of just running a business, you’ve been doing it for 20 plus years now. Any advice for people out there? As they go through these ups and downs, you know, how do you get through the down period?

Thomas Tona: One, you gotta be comfortable with it, right? Like Marco Brown and I joke around all the time. Gotta love the pain. Gotta love the pain, man. And I was interviewing Jason Hennessy yesterday and Jason’s like, one of my most popular posts on LinkedIn was when I talked about how I almost went bankrupt and I was like you are not really an entrepreneur if you don’t know what that abyss looks like. If you are not at the red line as an entrepreneur, you are either playing it too safe or like, there’s a guy I think about on LinkedIn. He is like, I’ll never do them, he’s got a comfy job. I’m building something different with leverage points, right?

I don’t wanna work on files anymore. I’m very [00:22:00] clear about that with clients, with my team, like. I don’t wanna do it anymore. It doesn’t challenge me. It’s not where my passion is. So cut yourself some grace, but you gotta know yourself. If you love trying cases and you just want to try cases, you better figure out that operational piece because you won’t last.

You’re gonna be the guy picking out the copiers, negotiating the leases. Your trial stuff is gonna suffer. If you don’t love the business side, you better figure that piece out. I’m bringing something to market to hopefully plug that gap for a lot of people. But I think that knowing yourself is where it fundamentally starts.

If you love the business side, then get yourself out of the lawyering as soon as you can, right? Like you have so much opportunity in your space. John, if you love the business side and that’s the way you want to be, your biggest priority has gotta be how do I get myself out of the lawyer?

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah,

Thomas Tona: Because you being in mediation for two days straight, you, you can’t grow the business.

Right,[00:23:00]

Jonathan Hawkins: We got it done. We did

Thomas Tona: right, right,

Jonathan Hawkins: I, I, I, I’m with you. I am with you. Trust me. Okay, let me ask this. We talked about you make a lot of decisions, speed decisions, you take risk. You’re not scared to to do these things. But the other thing that I know about you is you, you’re also financially responsible.

I’ll say at least that’s my sense from the conversations we’ve had. So how do you balance the, we’re going full force to this big vision, taking the risk with, alright, let’s not get out over our skis here with the cash flow or whatever, the investment. How do you balance that?

Thomas Tona: I mean, look, normally, normally for me, I just like data. So if somebody’s like, I wanna do this, I’ll be like, okay, show me the savings. Right. If you can show me the savings and it makes sense, or you can show me the ROI and it makes sense I’m in, I’ll figure it out. The money’s typically never the problem, right?

Because the money will come if you’ve got cases coming in and you’ve got [00:24:00] excellent lawyers. I think that’s one of the keys that has been a game changer for me. Is not compromising on lawyers regardless of their, what it costs to acquire them, right, to get them in-house. What does it cost to get an excellent lawyer? And that’s where a lot of people are not gonna be ready to hear what I’m about to say, which is if there’s not a two in front of it, you are not replacing yourself for a base salary in a major market. Like you run a big law firm, John, and you’re growing leaps and bounds daily. You are gonna say to yourself, I need a lawyer to replace me in a major market.

You’re not getting that for a hundred to $150,000, nor should you, because you know what excellent work looks like the day you bring them on. It’s their job to then justify the ROI put the million dollars plus a year on the sheet each. Right. You know, that’s kind of how I look at it. And hiring excellent lawyers made all the difference in the world.

All the difference in the world.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yes, [00:25:00] it’s expensive. And you know the other thing for me, it’s, I see where I want to go and I wanna get there today, not a year from now. I wanna get there today, but sometimes you just have to take it step by step to get there. And then. Then it could be an exponential, it could be that hockey stick. So let’s talk, let’s talk about plateaus.

I, I know everybody goes through the plateaus and the chaos. You mentioned a minute ago. I, I think the chaos is when you’re moving from one plateau maybe to get to the next one. So, maybe take us through maybe the history. You don’t have to go through every part, but you’ve experienced the plateaus and what’s it like jumping up to the next one?

Thomas Tona: Yeah, look, it’s chaos. All of it’s chaos, right? Like if you open a law firm and you want to be more than just running files and making 507 50 a year. Then you have to leverage, right? Like there’s only one John. There’s only one Tom. So if I still wanted to do all the personal injury cases myself, I could probably run [00:26:00] the inventory I have with a bunch of paralegals and a bunch of legal assistants.

But my days are gonna be consumed with running those files, right? So the plateaus are where you have to kind of stabilize the growth. And sometimes you’ll go down like COVID. That was a terrible year for me. 20 20, 20 21 and 2022 because the courts weren’t open to gimme trial dates. Right. They just, they were open after a certain point, but they just weren’t letting us get to trial.

So the plateaus allow you to get a solid foundation so you don’t then. Backslide beyond that, right? So you want plateaus. You wanna have a breather to say, okay, we’ve come this far. Now what’s next? Right? What’s the next level? And that’s really all it is, is new levels, new devils. That’s what I always say.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Well, let’s, let’s shift. We’ve been talking about your firm, and I’ll let you talk as much about this as you want or not, but, you know, your, your firm wasn’t enough, [00:27:00] so you decided to create a, a technology company. So now you’re running two companies. So let’s just add to the chaos. So number one, you know, tell us about that as much as you want, and how that’s going, and how do you balance your time and your energy and focus between the two.

Thomas Tona: So the interesting thing about that is the feedback I got from one of my masterminds was excellent. I’m standing up at the front of the room and they all know me, right? They know my, my frenetic energy and they’re like, look, if you hire this C-suite for your law firm. You better figure out a way to stay outta his way, or you’re gonna make this guy bananas or this lady bananas, and they’re not gonna wanna work there, right?

They’re not gonna wanna work with you because you can’t just keep hammering, hammering, hammering. Leave them alone, let them do their job. At the same time you had convinced me you planted the seed for med law RCM, my software company, God, what? A couple of years ago now you were like, you need to think about this company in a monetizable way. [00:28:00] And I came across another operator who was a high level CTO, CIO for a very big hospital system for like 20 years. The stars were in alignment because I needed to get outta my way of my law firm, CEO, and just let him do his thing. And the people here, right, they don’t want my involvement 24 7. That’s not what people want people, even from the time they’re kids.

What do kids say? You have kids. What do they say? Mine, one of the first words they learn is mind. People wanna own stuff, right? Decisions and consequences. People really wanna own it. Adults, right? Real, real professionals wanna own things. So I had to figure a way to insulate people from the way I thrive and work and all of that stuff.

That doesn’t mean I’m hands off, I’m hands on. I’m here every day, but I’m, you know, I’m having a blast. But I found Linda in the tech space through a friend of mine. It was like a [00:29:00] godsend. ’cause she’s a COO, like, so she runs everything execution wise. She was running something by me last night. I’m like, ah, you don’t need me for this.

And she goes, no, no, no, no. I want you to weigh in. I’m like, okay, now you got me. So I talk to her twice a day. I talk to Edward a couple of times a day. But I don’t have to. Right. Like they all, it’s another C-Suite position. Linda’s an owner in the company with me and. So for me, I’ve got the capacity to do it, and it allows me to do what I love to do, which is the visionary, you know, kind of reading the tea leaves, assembling the team, the best teams possible.

And so I’m finally playing the game. I wanna play at the level I wanna play at.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so you just touched on another thing that, that I have a problem with. I wanna hear how you deal with it, and that is, ideas are not a problem for me. Ideas are not a problem for you. The problem is how do you know what to focus on and how do you not frustrate the hell out of all your team throwing all these [00:30:00] new ideas at ’em?

So what strategies do you use to keep the focus.

Thomas Tona: I use a tool called ninety.io, which is like a sandbox software. So like instead of hammering Edward with 50 texts by five o’clock in the morning, I put everything on there. We do a same page meeting on Mondays at 10 o’clock and a and a wrap up. Same page meeting on Fridays at like two, three o’clock. My team comes to me ’cause a lot of them now are.

Doing this Blitzscaling project we’re working on, but we do it in an organized way. You know, they’ll send me a message or whatever it is. I don’t go below my leadership team at all because then the people that are producing the work are gonna be impacted. How I choose to focus is number one. My law firm is my bread and butter, so it gets all my attention. The software is something that Linda is a high level operator in software. Quite honestly, I’m not the guy that should be operating in software, so I let her handle it. [00:31:00] Her and I talk, it could be from four 30 in the morning ’cause we’re both early risers. Sometimes I’m working out and she’s having a cup of coffee.

By eight o’clock I’m at my desk on the law firm. But almost every night we talk from five to five 30 or six when I’m driving. And believe it or not, it’s the perfect cadence ’cause she doesn’t, again, high level operators wanna run things. They don’t want Tom with his maniacal A.D.D, peppering them all day long.

They won’t get anything done. Right. So it’s a mutual trust, great working relationship on both sides. And I was just, the stars were in alignment. I got Edward at the law firm. I got Linda at Mela, and it’s been working out great. I mean, she assembled a team of assassins on the technology side. If you check out the website, people who go to the website are like, wow, this is a powerhouse crew.

Jonathan Hawkins: Nice. Okay. One, one more topic and then we can wrap it up. First off, the stuff you put on LinkedIn, great. It’s been that way for years. If [00:32:00] anybody out there doesn’t know you, is not following you, they need to follow you. And the thing that I really like it is you’re, you’re brutally honest and you just throw the stuff out there.

I can tell the stuff you’re working on and the stuff you’re thinking about because you just put it out there and it’s really good stuff. So everybody out there go, go Follow the go, follow Tom if you’re not already the question I wanted to. Wrap up with is as you look back again, there’s a lot out there about getting to seven figures, seven figure, whatever.

You’re past that. I want to talk to the people who are already past that, looking for eight figures, maybe double, triple eight figures. What’s some advice you have out there, maybe to the people out there that are about to embark and go down that path?

Thomas Tona: To me it’s pick your lane. I know very few people. Very few people that can scale a law firm and be the doer on the files. I do know one or two, I don’t know how they do it. I can’t [00:33:00] do it. Like I just couldn’t do it. But that’s just me. Maybe they’re, you know, maybe they, I’m missing something genetically, I don’t know.

But for me, what I find is pick your lane if you’re a trial lawyer and you can take an eight figure verdict. You can figure out the operational piece. There are different business models you can embrace. There are different people you can embrace. You probably won’t even know what they are if I talk to you about them, but if you want to turn into a massive powerhouse trial firm, I mean, it’s always a two-prong approach.

I observed it when I studied John Morgan’s business model. He teamed up with Keith Mitnick. John didn’t want to try cases. He was the first guy to say, I’m never trying cases. I could care less. But he knew business, so he teamed up with the trial assassin, you know, and so to me there are definitive lanes and very few people can navigate both.

You’re probably not the outlier. Right, If you sit down and you really map it out, you’re not the outlier, right? If you are a great businessman, you may have tried cases. I did, but I was a [00:34:00] journeyman man. I never rang the bell for eight figures, but then I talked to a guy like a John Yuto. I’m like, oh, we could do a lot of business together.

Or Andrew Finkelstein in the city because. I’m a business guy, right? We can joint venture. I got trial people on my team, you guys can work together. It’ll be a blast. I really like doing business with people that I enjoy. I would say to people, sit down and be self-aware and pick your lane, right? So in the context of the transactional stuff, if you love doing the transactional stuff, John, I would never take you off of it. If you are the hungry business leader, I know you are, and I was coaching you, I think you coach with Patrick, right? Don’t you coach with Patrick

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, yeah,

Thomas Tona: Yeah. First thing I’m

Jonathan Hawkins: you introduced me.

Thomas Tona: you are in a good place. How do we get you out of files, right? How do we get you traveling around the country making joint ventures with other, you know, law firm GCs that can do what you can do so when somebody comes, calls you from California, you got it locked down.

You know what I [00:35:00] mean? That type of stuff. It’s really hard to do both. You want to be doing that on a plane when you’re flying across country or would you rather pay an attorney really, really well, so well that, you know, you don’t have to worry about the work product, right? So pic your lane. That would be my advice to anybody who’s looking to go from seven to, you know, if you, if you just broke a million dollars, you are looking to go to $5 million that I can talk about.

You gotta pick that, pick that lane. Unless you’re like the wonder kid, you know?

Jonathan Hawkins: Great advice, Tom. Thanks for coming on, buddy. there’s so much more we can talk about. I’m gonna get you on again because as I, as I, you know, as I read your, your LinkedIn post, I’m like, all right, I gotta ask him about this. I gotta ask him about that. It’s, So, yeah, so anybody out there follow Tom on LinkedIn, go get his I guess, follow his podcast lead council.

He’s got great guests, great standalone episodes. Really, really, really good information. I was talking to somebody [00:36:00] office this morning about, and these are some of your old episodes about your onboarding process for employees. Really. Quality stuff. So anybody out there who wants to know about a quality onboarding process, go listen to those.

I think there was like three or four or five episodes. So

Thomas Tona: Oh, that’s awesome.

Jonathan Hawkins: anyway. So, other than LinkedIn and Lead Council, what’s the best way to find you, Tom?

Thomas Tona: that’s it, man. LinkedIn, you, you know, you can go to my website, tonalaw.com. We’re in the process of a bunch of revisions, marketing wise right now. But you know, I’m always, I’m around everywhere. You know, you can just hit me up. I answer everybody, every text, every dm. I do it. You know, I’m always on the fly, so

Jonathan Hawkins: And if they got a PI case in New York, they need to call you. Right.

Thomas Tona: I’m your man For any personal injury cases in New York, absolutely.

Jonathan Hawkins: Sweet Tom. Thanks again man.

Thomas Tona: Thanks, Jon.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, [00:37:00] Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.