Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] So a couple questions like logistically, so running, you are basically running or operating two businesses at the same time. And two very different businesses.

Kimberly Bennett: three actually

Jonathan Hawkins: compliment each other, but they’re very different. You know, software company’s very different than a law

Kimberly Bennett:Yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: How

Kimberly Bennett:it was

Jonathan Hawkins: you?

Kimberly Bennett:It’s actually three.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh three.

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: What was third? That still going or?

Kimberly Bennett: That one is not a scaled business. It’s a passion project. It’s just its own business. So I have a community for legal professionals that like, do things differently. So it’s a small community for legal professionals. But that was like my small,

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, running one business is enough. How do you do two or three? How do you manage? I mean, how did you do that? And I’m, seriously curious.

Kimberly Bennett: No, almost burning out. I mean, if we’re being honest, like it was too much. I am a high achiever if my strengths, like one of my top fives is like high achiever, learner belief input strategic, I might have forgotten one whatever, but I can push through. That is not a healthy way of operating.

But I [00:01:00] can, and I think in the beginning I don’t identify as myself as a lawyer. Like I need to hold that title. What I really loved and I came to this conclusion too, like as I was working through kind of wrapping up the firm, that I love the business side, I love the ops, I love the like watching my like operational idea come to fruition. It was like fun, right? And then like, I made it work, but doing it was a lot, right?

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. This is a podcast where we get to interview founding [00:02:00] attorneys and other cool people that are no longer necessarily practicing law, very much like today’s guest, Kimberly Bennett, who if you’ve been in this world for a while, you know who she is.

But she is one of the pioneers of subscription based billing for legal services. So, which is a topic that I personally am very, very interested in. So I am excited to talk to Kimberly today about that and some other things, which she’s up to today, which is like I sort of mentioned, is maybe not all law.

So, Kimberly, welcome to the show. Why don’t you briefly introduce yourself and we’ll dive in.

Kimberly Bennett: Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. So yeah, Kimberly Bennett, CEO and co-founder now of fidu. It is the complete client experience platform to help legal teams sell, deliver and scale subscription and flat fee legal services. So, for many years I was a practicing attorney We’re about 18 still licensed to practice but and along the way I learned a lot.

I started in-house, then went on out on my [00:03:00] own. I came out before the market crashed and learned a lot and really hated hourly billing. And so fast forward to a couple years ago, I was still running my subscription based practice and then fidu became a possibility and an opportunity. And now today that’s kind of what I do, but practice for a long time have ran a subscription and flat fee practice between the two up to 15 years and virtual the entire time.

So my entire career has basically been this model and so it’s exciting to be shifting to help other legal professionals do the exact same thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, there’s a lot that I want to talk about today, so fidu for sure, but I think, you know, we have to sort of talk, take through the journey to get where you are today, because that’s pretty much where it led you to fidu I think. But, so you were virtual before everybody had to be, so you were ready back in

Kimberly Bennett: I was ready. That’s right.

Jonathan Hawkins: So that’s good. So let just, let’s briefly go through, so after law school take us sort of through some of the things you did before you started your law firm.[00:04:00]

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. So I was a fun fact the JD PhD student, I went to Villanova Law At the time we had a dual degree and clinical psychology and law school. So I was in law school for a very long time, and I actually got out a year early because it was getting on to be too long. But I came out in oh seven Market crashed oh eight.

But when I came out, because I was in that dual degree, getting a law firm job was really hard and if not impossible. And so I ended up going to a company. And so I worked for a company for many years, well, several years, not many. I shouldn’t say that. For the first couple of years of my practicing and, which I think was a blessing because it allowed me to see just a different way of practicing.

I didn’t go into firm life. I went into company life and we just operate much differently than firm life. And so when the market crashed and I needed to grow, and I went out on my own, then I tried to emulate what I heard was the right way. And I just realized that I just hated it. So kind of that’s, I did start in, in co in corporate America, then after Market Crash went out on my own and have since been on my own [00:05:00] with, you know, things in between.

So I’ve worked in other companies in between, but I’ve always had that practice to build and scale and just learned a lot along the way. What I didn’t like. And that led me to getting to a subscription law firm. So,

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I talked to a lot of people and in my own experience, a lot of times where you end up is eliminating the things you don’t like and then you end up in a place that you’re just like, okay, this isn’t that bad.

But, you know, working in corporate America, you got to bypass the billable hours.

Kimberly Bennett: a hundred percent. So I think that, you know, if so. My main claim to fame is how much I hate the billable hour, probably outside of subscription legal services. And so I’ve talked about that for many years and I, yeah, I didn’t come out of law school and go into my legal career billing by the hour at all.

Did we care about where we were billing the units to? Sure. But it wasn’t the same way you bill out in a firm and so having to go back and do that, I just found it inefficient, ineffective. I was still working with businesses, actually, I also people, but when I worked with individuals it [00:06:00] didn’t work because they never understood what the hell the bill was gonna be.

And then for me, I was not either good at tracking time, I wasn’t good at communicating how much it was gonna cost because I don’t think I really thought that far through. I was still a young attorney, so you’re right. It definitely built a practice that was eliminating the things I hated to focus on the things that I liked and how I best showed up.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so when, when you did eventually, I guess start your firm and you know, how long did it take you with this experimentation to say, all right, we’re gonna do subscription and then, you know, ’cause I’m interested in it, I’ve tested it. We’ll get into some of the questions I have on that, but others maybe have tested it. But they’re scared to jump in. So how did you make the switch? Did you just burn the boats and go all in or was it sort of a gradual thing?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. I burned the boats and went all in on flat fees first because for me, it looked like a the reason I burned the boat was because I wasn’t getting paid and, and I thought, oh, this doesn’t work. Right. I had a couple of family [00:07:00] law clients that stopped paying, and it was at the time, at least for our, my experience, we weren’t let out of cases and which meant you’re. Billing, nothing. You’re billing to the abyss and you still have to support and you still have a license that you want to manage and maintain and you have bills. And I thought, this can’t be how this is meant to work. And so I always say it’s about probably six figures because it went on for years didn’t get out.

I stopped tracking ’cause I didn’t think that was good for my mental health or for the maintenance of my license. But that was the kind of straw. And it wasn’t that long. So I went out probably within a year of stewing hourly, like, oh, this isn’t it. ’cause I, I did what people said, get a retainer.

It wasn’t enough. I know that now, but get a retainer bill against a retainer, build a client, okay. Did all those good things and then the client stopped paying and that didn’t work. So I literally ripped the bandaid off of hourly completely. I was like, didn’t matter. Nope. I’m just gonna give you a price.

Might be a wrong price, but I’m gonna get paid that price [00:08:00] or I’m not starting. And that felt like a much better way. And then I transitioned to subscriptions because essentially what I didn’t like about flat fee was the ebbs and flows. I didn’t like the, like you found it and then you were done. Or like clients came back for you for questions or, I just wanted to do a little bit more.

I wanted to workshop with them and it, I was trying to wrap my brain around what that looked like. And I think what I thought back to was, okay, when I worked in a company, I just got paid. So I literally pitched a client and I was, the story is I pitched a client $500 a month. Like, hey, it was everything.

It was a stupid price. I know that now, of course, for many reasons. But it was a great price because it led me to where I am today. And I just said, Hey, what if it looked like for $500? I just did these things. They kind of wanted me to show up as a lawyer in this particular capacity. And I was like, sure, okay, lemme do it.

And that led me to saying, oh, well, if. if they could just pay me and I can do things, I can build around that. And I just looked at what other tech tools were doing. What other industries were doing. And I thought, well, why can’t I do the same thing? And that’s kind of where it started.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, a couple things you mentioned [00:09:00] there. So it’s the unintentional pro bono work, which is just the worst kind of pro bono work out there.

Kimberly Bennett: Yes. The unintentional.

Jonathan Hawkins: The other thing is you know, you just gotta start somewhere. You just gotta try it. And then, you know, you’re probably gonna you know, your experiment’s probably gonna fail, but you learn from it and then you can slowly sort of iterate from there.

So you mentioned you were doing some family law work, so I guess also you probably pivoted away from that. So, you know, part of my thoughts or my the analysis or whatever on subscription is, you know, you can’t do everything.

So you gotta sort of figure out what your lanes are first, ’cause you know, if I’m gonna do a subscription for family law and a subscription for, you know, real estate and a subscription for this, you know, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to figure it all out. So how did you decide, all right, this is what my lane’s gonna be. How did you figure that out first?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah I worked in traditional labor starting my career, so I went back to business, I thought, and that particular client that I pitched was a business client, [00:10:00] so I thought, okay, what did that look like working in business? It was just. What did I have training in? What did I feel comfortable in?

What was I willing to commit and invest time into? It wasn’t like it was, I took a million, you know, I, I didn’t take a million years to make make the decision. I just decided what made the most sense at that time and just moved forward with it. And that’s kind of how I started because I had a little bit, I had training in it anyway.

I was taking CLEs and workshops and I was already an entrepreneur anyway, so it was, my life was around business enough. So that’s how it started. And I do agree when you are thinking about a subscription while they work in many practice areas, there’s probably very few that it doesn’t work in.

When you’re starting out, if you do all the things, it’s just overwhelming. It’s just too much. It’s just a lot of decision fatigue at the front end when you really just wanna get it out and test it. And so I think the best thing for me was that I just pitched the client with, there wasn’t any thought to it other than, you pay me $500 a month and let’s see what happens.

It was just, I wanted consistency. So if you [00:11:00] start simple, you can always scale from there. Right. And that’s, you know, that’s how I approached it. Just finding what made sense for me at that moment. Thinking about what I was willing to show up for, and then honestly, just my commitment to not wanting to go by the hour ever again. So I had to figure out a way.

Jonathan Hawkins: So that, so I’ve heard of some folks out there that are doing quote subscriptions but it’s sort of like you’ll get up to five hours of legal work a month and this, that And the other. And in my view, I mean, I guess it, it can work, but in my view, it’s sort of, you’re still tracking your hours and how do you, is there a rollover?

How do you figure it out? And then do they get mad if they didn’t use all of it? So what’s your view on sort of how to design the subscription?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. So first I wanna like, ’cause I I mean, I’ve been told sometimes, Kim, you’re a little too strong on it, so I’ll say this, I think it’s great that you’re on the journey. If you’re doing that, you’re on the journey, you’re on the path. That is not a subscription though. It’s repackaged hourly, but you’re on the journey.

So you’re thinking about how do I show up differently? How do I package this in a way that is communicating a bit more to the client. [00:12:00] But the idea of a subscription is getting out of trading time for money. So at it, at its core, you shouldn’t be saying, Hey, I’m doing X amount of hours for X amount of X amount a month.

Because you’re really trying to say, I’m trying to help you get, go along a journey. And it’s might, you know, and it could take 10 to 20 months, I don’t know, right? Like, things could happen, but we understand what you’re looking to achieve. And these are the things we do month after month with some add-ons as needed to help you achieve that thing.

That’s really what a subscription is about. So it’s a set of services or products for a particular customer or a client for a defined interval, for a recurring flat fee. So if you do a flat fee today, you could do a subscription, but it’s meant to be more like a flat fee month after month, quarter after quarter, right?

More scoped, clearer, not tied to the hours, tied to Big goals, no guarantees, but you know, outcomes, right? Thinking through what the client wants. So that’s what I would say. Like repackaged hourly is repackaged hourly, even if you put it under what we think is a [00:13:00] subscription. And moving to a subscription looks like really thinking about scoped timeline, you know, defined set of services that can repeat, but that are about helping the client get advice and then take action.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So another question about design of the subscription. So I imagine there’s a number of ways you can go at it. So, you know, one would be, this is my service, you take it or leave it. And you just offer that to everybody. Another might be, well, I’ve got these three levels. You can pick one of them. Another approach might be. It depends on what this individual client wants and we can design it for that individual client. I guess first question is sort of what approach did you sort of settle in your firm and as you consult with and teach other lawyers how to do it, what advice do you have on those different types of methods?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, I mean, I probably, in the beginning I was thinking about one particular client, so if I’m thinking truly at that moment, it was probably designed for that particular client. [00:14:00] Would I do that again in the future? And that’s how, as if that’s how I built it. No, but I think if you want bespoke subscription services, then that’s what you’re saying, right?

You’re like, every client that comes in, I’m gonna make it very bespoke. But if you’re gonna make up bespoke at the core, you should still have standards and systems and processes, because if you don’t, bespoke becomes unwieldy. And how do you keep it within a defined you know, a delivery parameters.

And I think what we need to do in legal is I was just talking about this earlier. You know, a lot of us feel that what we do is so special that no one can replicate it. I push back a lot on that. Like, you should be able to replicate what you do. doesn’t mean the outcome’s going to be the same, but we all understood. There are like, what are the, what’s the prima facie elements of a particular you know, what’s murder or whatever. When we learn that, you know, there are things, and it’s kind of the same idea either. So I would say like, ideally you want to have standard. Way of delivery. There could be some flexibility in the [00:15:00] design, but let that be things that are added on.

But way you design to meet the best type of subscription is you understand who your client is and then you understand what the client’s goals are, and then you’re designed to help the client achieve that goal. The goal could be adopting a child, getting the goal could be having a happy life post, post divorce. The goal is not divorce, the goal is Happy Life post divorce. Right. The goal could be getting my brand on shelves. It’s not getting the trademark. Like who cares? They want their brand on shelves, right? It could be if you’re an immigration, right. Being able to, you know, achieve whatever, you know, I know the, we’re in this world right now, but achieve the, you know, achieve a certain, certain, economic freedom for your family by bringing them to United States.

Okay. That’s what it is. And there are things that we do as legal professionals to help them along that journey. So you’re designing the subscription for what the client’s journey is and what they’re looking to do. And then you create services to support that. And that to me doesn’t have to be bespoke all the time because you’re serving a certain type of client [00:16:00] over and over again.

And that’s what I think would be the best. So I would, I always recommend when you’re first starting out one subscription that you launch at least, that you’re pitching and designing specifically for a client. ’cause if you feel like you’re, it’s hard to sell, it’s probably ’cause you haven’t designed it for the particular client, you’re just designing it for anyone to try to pick up a subscription.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, yeah, I wanna talk about selling it here in a second, but interested in that. ’cause I I’ve well, I’ll talk about myself in a minute, but so let’s talk about like scope.

So, you know, a big issue with any flat fee or subscript, whatever is scope creep. scope creep issue. So, what strategies did you have or do you recommend for folks when you say, all right, these are the services in the subscription, this is the price because let’s say it’s a business client. I mean, there’s all sorts of things you could do for them that, that could fall outside the scope. So how do you maintain or or try to be very careful on the scope creep so you’re not all of a sudden, you know, you wake up two weeks later and you’re giving them way more than [00:17:00] you expected.

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. So I’ll do a shameless plug in that we’re doing a free flat fee series this entire summer that we’d go through a lot of these topics. So, definitely check it out. Maybe we’ll drop it. uh, It’s at if you do fidulegal.com/demo, you’ll get directed to it. But you need to have defined what’s included and what’s not.

I think the way you avoid scope creep is to communicate what is included and what’s not at that outset and ongoing. You really have to be very clear with the client and have a an out lever, right? So you need to, one of the things like I use in language is I tell clients I like to use the language of projects.

That’s what we talk about at DU with our customers. You know, are you gonna activate a new project? When I’m coaching someone, we talk about using this language, but like, what’s the language you use in your practice that helps a client know they need to pay more? That’s essentially what you’re saying. And you say, these are the things that are included.

If we feel, if something else happens, you might have to do x, have a name for the x, start a new project, start a new matter, don’t use matter. It’s like the worst word we can use. Like, no client understands that, but like, you know, [00:18:00] I think project makes the most sense. Start a new, we might not have the new task that we have to do, whatever’s the word, right?

That feels right. And have that and talk about that. Identify what examples look like, and then consistently say it right? Not in a way to hound the client, but because people will forget if they’re coming to you. In high anxiety, even if it’s good anxiety or really negative anxiety, like they’re coming to you a, at a place where like things are going racing.

And so when you start settling into the work, they’re gonna forget everything you said. So it’s on you to continue to repeat it. But that means in your agreements it should say what’s included and what’s not. That means you wouldn’t have a timeline of like, how long do you expect it to take? And when it goes outside of that, what happens.

So we all know the like standard way of something should deliver or should progress. And when it’s outside of that standard, have have a what if scenario and workshop. Some of them, you’re not gonna have every single scenario, but you say to the client, listen, if we are getting to a place that is outside of what we discussed, then we’re gonna have to have another conversation so you can decide [00:19:00] on what makes the most sense for you, right?

Like I think I just am ultra transparent and that’s my goal and that’s what I recommend to be ultra transparent with your cl with your clients. And when you don’t bill by the hour you can you should. You should be able to say that because you know, you have designed what you need to do to get to the end goal.

And I think that’s when it comes back to just like, how do you avoid scope creep? You have processes, you have systems, you have standards, you have templates. And then you understand what it takes to get something to, to the end point. And if you’re going off of track, you have to ask yourself, is it you or is it the client?

If it’s you, you eat that because that’s your fault. If it’s the client, then you should have the communication strategies ready to employ as needed and not at the last minute. But you can start seeing about midway that you’re going off, off track, then you start having those conversations as soon as you start seeing it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I think the key is, for the lawyers know yourself, because it’s very easy to say, I’ll just do this one extra thing. I’ll just do it. I’ll just do the, and then all of a sudden you’ve done 20 extra things. You’re like, oh my God, I should have [00:20:00] just

Kimberly Bennett: yep. And what I say too is if you’re, that I’m a giver person, so I. I, I do that, but I designed for that, right? So I designed to be a giver. So if, you know, that’s how you show up with your clients and they’re gonna need one or two to three extra things, and you’re just gonna do that, well, your pricing should reflect that.

And then you do it without worrying, right? But then you have your out, so like you’re willing to do those extra things. If the client didn’t need it, it could be a win for you. Or you can do, you can bonus the client with something. So I think a lot of this is being intentional about how you designed, design any of your flat fees and or subscriptions to recognize how you and your team, if you’re solo, how you show up, you and your team, how you and your team show up.

Right? Or what the client philosophy is of the business designed for it. ’cause if it, if you have no buffer to be a giver in your pricing, you’re always gonna have, you’re always gonna be underpriced because you’re always gonna give anyway.

Jonathan Hawkins: I like that. That, I like that. Alright, so let’s switch to selling the subscription or marketing and selling the thing. So. you know, [00:21:00] I, so I represent lawyers in a variety of context and I’ve offered subscription and I have found there are some that are open to it. There are some that are just, they’re like, I hate subscriptions. I’ll never do it. And then there’s a huge chunk in the middle. It’s just a normal curve. And so, you know, personally, I’m like, you know, I’m like, this feature, this feature, this feature, this feature, which doesn’t sell it. You know, you gotta think about value. What’s the value proposition? What are the benefits? So how do, how did you, and how do you recommend, you know, the people you consult with, sell it to clients?

Kimberly Bennett: Well, you said the, you said the biggest thing, which is like the benefit versus feature. A lot of people sell like the document review. No one cares the trademark application. No one cares the filing a court document. Again, no one cares. That’s like not what they’re there. They understand their, that is a means to the goal, but they wanna hear about the goal and how you’re helping them emotionally.

You’re helping them move through, like help them achieve their goals, make it fit [00:22:00] into a larger picture of kind of where they are today and where they wanna go to. But I think before you can do any of that, you have to commit to the model. Because I, the biggest thing I find that why people can’t sell it is they actually haven’t committed to the model.

And it shows up in their business model. It shows up how they talk about it. It shows up their confidence and commitment to it. So if a client says, well, I would rather buy bill by the hour. Okay, fine. Well then why would they select the thing that you’ve designed better if you have that out path for them?

Right? So I think if you want to do this, and probably what helped me in the beginning to sell FLA visas and subscriptions, there was no other alternative there. There, there was nothing else. So then I am not the right. Right fit for you. And that is something we have to be comfortable with, right? When we’re selling, being comfortable with, not every client is the right client for you, but if you wanna design a business in a certain way, you wanna lead with certain types of certain levels of profitability, you wanna have access to certain things and you design for it in a particular way to allow for you to show up for your clients.

So first thing I’m gonna say is you gotta commit to the model. So I really do [00:23:00] think if you wanna move to subscriptions, which are an hourly today, move to flat fees, rip off the bandaid, move to flat fees, commit to that. You can have very high flat fees, they work, but commit to it that’s the only way you can work with me, right?

And then once clients start playing flat fee, you will get comfortable then. Okay, let me think about all those extra questions you just asked me that were outta scope time to put you in a script subscription. So you could just ask me as you need to in my designed package way. So if you’re on the path and you wanna do it.

Rip off the bandaid, go to flat fee, and then move to subscription. And then how do you sell it? It’s really thinking about the benefits. It’s talking about making sure you’re selling the thing that makes sense for where they are today and then selling the path of where they need to go. So a lot of people only focus on the immediate now, a subscription is not only about the immediate, now it’s also about the future.

So you wanna sell the future, but focus on them executing on the now and then how it’s out of transaction and interrelationships. So the other part of a [00:24:00] subscription business is we are there to support you and ideate. So we’re there to provide ongoing strategic advice. It doesn’t mean it always has to be things you’re gonna take action on.

And so if you design your subscription in a way that is priced at a hundred dollars or 10, $20,000, they all work. You can provide this ongoing supportive advice at whichever, how you deliver that advice. You know, a webinar, one-to-one call via message, whatever. That’s kind of where the pricing changes, but that’s what you wanna talk to.

I’m there to support you. I’m there to help you ideate. We’re we? Before you make the decision, give us a call. So you wanna talk about helping the client move through their big process and then make sure you’re committed and make sure like, your funnel makes sense. A lot of, A lot of law, law firms funnels don’t make sense, right?

You’re like, you sell everything outside of the subscription. Of course, they’re never gonna select the subscription. So I, that’s a lot of like little tidbits in there. Hopefully

Jonathan Hawkins: No that’s, that’s really helpful. And I like, I like the switch [00:25:00] to flat fees first. Get used to that. I mean. Sure you can go from hourly straight to subscription, but you gotta commit baby. You gotta go

Kimberly Bennett: got? Yes. I think if you go, if you want hourly to subscription, you have to commit to flat fees. ’cause a subscription is a flat fee on steroids. Right. So that’s why I’m saying you don’t have to call it subscription yet, but you have to rip off the bat I do what I find at any of my consulting clients, so in fiu clearly we have, I have a platform that helps lawyers do this.

We, we also actually help you, you can answer questions and we build an entire subscription for you and platform or flat fee. But out, when I’m working with my private clients and I’m coaching consulting with them, they, what I find is those that still do hourly, some of their clients backdoor to hourly and they don’t wanna do hourly, but they find themselves still doing it because that’s how that client will pay them.

Well, the client’s gonna pay you anyway. You’re just giving them. an out they liked you. Right? It’s just, well, this is how we show up. So what makes sense? What? What would make you feel comfortable client? [00:26:00] What’s the flat fee number? What’s the scope? What’s the timeline? What’s the timeframe that it includes?

meet their needs without you having to tie it to time, too. So rip that bandaid off of hourly y’all. Stop billing money the

Jonathan Hawkins: just do it. Okay. So, I do wanna move to fidu but before we do that another, you know, this is more of a, a thing in the software SaaS world, and that’s the concept of churn. And so, which I’m sure you know well. And so for those out there that don’t know it, churn is basically the folks that you lose every month.

And so, you know, people say in the subscription, if they’re not using it, then they don’t think there’s value, and then they’re gonna say, I’m gonna quit. So part of keeping people from churning off your subscription is you gotta constantly get them to use it and see the value. So from a lawyer’s perspective, how do you continually deliver that value to the client so they see it and then you don’t have the churn or you lower your churn.

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. Okay. Shameless plug. That’s what fidu is there to do. But what do you, practically, what are you trying to do? You’re [00:27:00] trying to provide them access to think of, you know, none of us like to pick your brain. Maybe word, but that’s kind of the idea. Access to getting ongoing support without you always having to be live and available for them.

That doesn’t look like you have to be on calls all the time. That doesn’t look like you can provide monthly webinars that are prerecorded that help the client answer particular questions top of mind things. You can provide, you know, briefs of every month. I wouldn’t call it a brief, but like an, I’m gonna call it a brief for our purposes, but like an overview of what’s happening.

You can provide, You can send ongoing messages. The idea of this is you want ongoing check-ins. This is, if you’re moving to subscriptions, you’re moving to a relationship driven model, which means you you wanna have a relationship with your clients.

So my clients, when I was, particularly when I was practicing the same ones that’s still there, but I say to them, Hey, if you are not active for so many months and we’ll, and I can’t get you, that might mean we’re gonna cancel on our end.

So it’s like a, it’s a two-way street, right? This is a relationship that, that you’re building. The more you share with me, the more I can [00:28:00] support you. Whether that’s in the, you know, in the individual family space and like when you’re done with anything around. Someone’s family and life, personal life or in the professional space.

And so really build in ways you can stay top of mind. You can check in. That’s messages, that’s content. That’s one of, you know, one to many kind of envi, delivery methodologies that you could use. Webinars, workshops, live events in person. But if you are designing it to the journey of the client, there are gonna be things that they need to learn or, or do and build that into the subscription.

So what do you want them to do over the first year? Over the first year? You want them to do these five things? No client is okay. A client that’s in super crisis is gonna do the five things in that moment because feel like they have to, but the clients that are feel that wanna be proactive are gonna spend times on other things.

So you wanna build in some cadence of check in or do, or give me something. So, example I have every quarter the clients will get a message that says, great, gimme an update on what’s happening in your business. I’m not sending it, it’s being sent. They fill out a form they give an update. Then I [00:29:00] can then put that into a great, here’s what’s happened.

Here’s what we need to do based off of what you said, and just think through what will be supportive and helpful for your clients. So that’s how you wanna think about providing ongoing value, but it’s tied to what the client’s goal is, right? Think about what they’re looking to achieve, break it down into smaller nuggets and figure out different ways to deliver that to them that will, that support different learning and delivery methods.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so I think this is a good time to sort of switch. So I don’t think we met we talked about it before we, we hit record, but you, you have sort of moved away from your law practice mostly. You’re not really taking new clients. And you’ve moved to focus more on fidu which is a software platform. So I want to hear about that. But before we get there, when you started, this is something that, that I’ve always thought about. You know, fidu is a platform that you can, a lawyer can do subscription services for their clients. But before fidu what was there, what did you use, how did you figure out [00:30:00] the software delivery platform? Was it, did you just cobble together a bunch of stuff or how’d you do it?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, I cobbled together a bunch of stuff. I used. legal specific, non-legal specific. So I always had a practice management tool. So for my day winter practice, I had a practice management tool because I, when I worked in corporate, I traveled for work, I did traditional labor, so I worked in unionized workforces.

So I traveled a lot around the country and that meant I wasn’t always in one place, so I needed to be able to access files. So I was able to do my old job that I wanna do the same thing in my own firm. And the thing that helped me do it was practice management. So I always had practice management, and then it was like, what else do I need?

Project management, CRM. And I used the portal of my practice management tool. So I used Clio I used Clio’s, portal. And then that allowed me to send a message to a client, but it didn’t allow me to do anything else. So everything else was more like, you know, me sending a message, me, Hey, schedule a call, like Calendly came into play.

Then I started using Calendly to let them schedule a link. And then I created [00:31:00] a website uh, a hidden page on my website for clients to be able to access to do, take certain actions. So like I literally did my best to try to put it together, use different checkout tools. I used, you know, I think their LawPay, LawPay has done subscriptions for many years.

You have Confido now. Clio Payments does it. So we have a lot more options today. But back then I cobbled together and I just figured it out and I just was like, you basically, it was basically only for the client. You just had a, you just connected me with a portal and that was it. And then I managed everything else on my own.

And so the goal, what I did now was trying to make some of that management be easier. And actually, the part that you said ongoing value without working ongoing hours, how do you realize that, right? At scale? So

Jonathan Hawkins: And so

Kimberly Bennett: the hard part early was to scale, I should say. You know, like it’s harder to scale when you have to cobble everything.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. And so did that lead to Fidu. So maybe you can explain what Fidu is and how that came about and how you got involved.

Kimberly Bennett: Sure. [00:32:00] So I was practicing for many years running my practice. I am very highly involved in legal tech. So before Fidu I was, I’ve done a lot of legal tech things and ran conferences for lawyers, right, that were trying to in implement legal tech. And so, I was speaking at a Clio Virtual Event, and basically the story is my co-founder, we were on the same virtual table, and then he sent me an email after like, Hey, like we met before, because I tested what he had and gave him my feedback as I always did.

Sorry to all the tech people. I gave all my feedback too, but now that I’m on this side, give me all your feedback. But so, you know, we met before and then I was doing this virtual event and he was on, we were all kind of on this round table discussing things and he sent me an email and he was like, this is not a sales pitch.

I have a proposition, like what if we worked together and built out this tool? And I was like, huh. And I was working I, I supported other tools behind the scenes, given my feedback, help them like, think through features. But he was the first person, honestly, who was like, do you wanna be a [00:33:00] co-founder? And I thought, I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?

That’s my motto is, well, so where’s it gonna happen. It’s like, eh, I’m already in the no position, so I don’t have a tool today. So, you know, so we, that was like the end of, towards the end of October, November of like, the end of 2020. And then eventually we worked together. We built out a quietly, we built out a feature we have yet never released, but it was basically to see if we can work together and to see if we can like, communicate when we disagreed and whatnot.

And, And it was good. And it was like, okay, it’s not per, we aren’t, you know, tip and toe tippy toeing around each other. We’re being honest we’re communicating. And so from there we, we announced and we launched what is today’s version of fidu? And that’s how it kind of came to be.

But then. How it came to be on the building of fidu side is that I, I ran it for all these years and then I coached and trained it for another two, two and a half years before I, I launched fidu. I was coaching and consulting on it because people kept on tagging me and I was doing it all for free.

And then I was like, oh, [00:34:00] maybe I should like, start coaching and training. And, but I really wanted, anyway, I had all my like hangups around that. And then then I moved to this. So I had a model, I had a framework. We just we moved that into a platform style. So that all the things that I did from a designing a subscription to now delivering a subscription sits truly today actually it sits inside of fidu.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so your firm was basically like R and D department. You’re like,

Kimberly Bennett: Yes. And so the reason as of so what, when we were talking earlier July 1st, I put my firm on hiatus and I stopped taking new clients and before that it was the R and D. It kept on being the R and D space for fidu. So it’s not that I guess it, it’s fully not. ’cause I still have clients, subscription clients tag.

See that? That’s how that works. It’s amazing. They didn’t wanna go even though I told them, but they gave, I gave them the option and I raised prices. So there you go. But yeah, so I where was I going with that? Yes I it, it provided the R and D for the last couple of years and then it still will do that.

But we have customers [00:35:00] now and we can support them and it goes outside of me and we can, you know, I can dream and vision things that I could have never thought were possible. Particularly with tech today.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you’re getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So a couple questions like logistically, so running, you are basically running or operating two businesses at the same time. And two very different businesses.

Kimberly Bennett:Threeactually.

Jonathan Hawkins: compliment each other, but they’re very different. You know, software company’s very different than a law

Kimberly Bennett:Yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: How,

How

Kimberly Bennett:it was

Jonathan Hawkins: you?

Kimberly Bennett: It’s actually three.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh three.

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, What’s the,

Jonathan Hawkins: What was third? That still going or?

Kimberly Bennett: That one is not a scaled business. It’s a passion project. It’s just its own business. So I have a community for legal professionals that like, do things differently. So it’s a small community for legal professionals. But that was like my small,

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, running one business is enough. How [00:36:00] do you do two or three? How do you manage I mean, how did you do that? And I’m seriously, I’m curious.

Kimberly Bennett: No, almost burning out. I mean, if we’re being honest, like it was too much. I, am a high achiever if my strengths, like one of my top fives is like high achiever, learner belief input strategic, I might have forgotten one, whatever, but I can push through. That is not a healthy way of operating. But I can, and I think in the beginning I don’t identify as myself as a lawyer. Like I need to hold that title. What I really loved, and I came to this conclusion too, like as I was working through kind of wrapping up the firm, that I love the business side, I love the ops, I love the, like watching my like operational idea come to fruition.

It was like fun, right? And then like, I made it work, but doing it was a lot, right? It was, It was a lot. It was stretching myself to too thin, quite honestly. And in 2021 when we announced fidu, I also launched a podcast, did eight episodes. My [00:37:00] last episode not intentionally being my last episode, but the last one was permission to Pause.

And I think that was me talking to myself because it was just too much, right? And then for the last four years, you know, running two, running three businesses has been a lot, but I learned a lot along the way. I would not recommend somebody do that um, at all. But it, but at least it for me, the firm and fidu fed each other and that helped, right?

I could test things. It was like, one of the things that was helpful because when we were building, when we are building fidu and especially the earlier stages of us, us building fidu, I’m like, I wanted to do this thing. This is what actually you need on the other side. And so my clients knew I was building it and they, my clients gave me feedback as a client.

So it was really nice because like, it was like a full ecosystem where we, I had a team at the time. My team members would give feedback, then my clients would give feedback. And so, you know, I would probably do fidu and firm again. I wouldn’t do all three though.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So [00:38:00] your firm is was, is already sort of innovative and different than most law firms, but it is a law firm still and a software company is in a business. It’s just much different. And, and the things, and I’ve been in business I’ve sort of done some software stuff and been in some startups and some businesses that are not law. And I’ve learned a ton. I mean, it’s so much that I never saw in these traditional law firms. I’m curious what sort of learnings that maybe you’ve had in this, in these non-law businesses that maybe could translate or maybe that lawyer owners maybe need to hear, Hey, you can do things a little differently. Do you have any of those you can

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, and I’ll say this from the beginning. I never operated my business like a firm. I always operated it as best as I could, like a business. And so there were things that translated, but just. Like, like I think what I think I would love to see more law firms do is really work on having a proper business funnel, right?

I [00:39:00] don’t think a lot of law firms spend enough time on what we think is nurture, what is truly what they think is nurture is actually in the sales part of the process, and not in the marketing and truly nurturing side. So I see a lot more of that happening. I think there’s a lot more conversations about business models and different business model design outside of firms.

So inside of the SaaS space. I mean, of course SaaS we service, I mean, software’s a service. So we’re all doing this kind of subscription model but being creative about what’s happening behind the scenes more, more sharing is happening there. But what are some other things that I think. you know, I, my firm operated a lot like it, so, okay.

I’ll just say what my firm ha has always had, like I said, some of those text a more interesting tech stack than I think I love, just as a pet peeve of mine, lawyers to stop using intake. It’s just like it’s sales. I don’t know, like, and then use onboarding. Like, let’s use the proper terminologies that allow for us to learn from other industries and see what the equivalent is and then see, okay, what are they doing there?

What should we be doing? I think lawyers do a terrible [00:40:00] job of onboarding. I think what I would learn from SaaS in particular, so is this idea of like the onboarding process. So when you sell somebody, the first thing you do is you know, you get some into your funnel, you’ve closed the sale, but that’s not where it ends.

Then you, in, in tech, you have to activate them, right? And get them kind of like beyond the sale. You’ve, You’ve sold the promise. They’ve bought the promise, now they’re in the platform. Now you want them to actually use it. And see the value ongoing month after month. This is something we’re always conti working on in fidu you know, you work, you win some, you lose some, and then, but you wanna work on this activation piece.

So like in law firm world, that’s like your onboarding and then delivery to keep in retention. Because we’re so transactional in law we’ve never thought about retention as much. And so I think thinking about that full life cycle, particularly sales activation, retention referral, we think sales referral, ah, the rest of it happens.

But it’s not strategic, it’s not thoughtful, it’s not designed, it’s not intentional. [00:41:00] There’s a lot of that that I’ve learned a lot. And then I would say maybe some more, more numbers, right? Yes. Like we talked earlier about churn. So running a SaaS business, I had to think about, you know, these other numbers, churn and monthly recurring revenue.

I knew how much my clients generally spent, but using the actual terms of art, like lifetime value, like customer acquisition or client acquisition costs in our world, to help you think, am I running a solid business? So if, I know we don’t love to hear numbers, but we’re business owners so we have to hear the numbers.

And I don’t think you need to be A CPA or accounting expert, but there are some core metrics that you can find to be your north star of your business that will help you. And being in a SaaS business now just elevates that conversation more so like what is the journey of a client and then what are the, what we’ll call unit economics, that’s what you will hear.

So go Google unit economics and then you’ll be like, oh, I need to know these sounds a lot, but it’s not that much. What are [00:42:00] the unit EC economics? And then you will build a much better sustainable business and you’ll say, why am I billing by the hour? ’cause that’s not good for my unit economics. Like, I need to find a better way.

So maybe those things.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh that’s, that’s great advice. And the thing I’ll say too, you know, look, so I was sort, I was an engineering major undergrad, so math’s okay with me. But you know, if you look at their, unless you grew up in a business as a kid, no one graduated college or whatever, knowing how to do business and lawyers almost use it as a crutch. Oh, we, they didn’t teach us business, so I’m just gonna be ignorant about business. No. Even all the successful business people we represent. They had to learn it too. So it’s you can learn it. So, so yeah, I think the sort of the onboarding the cycle you went through, I think that’s huge. I’m hearing more people talk about, you know, client journey, client experience, that’s some of that. But and lawyers are notoriously bad at that. I mean, we’re just, like you said, it’s very transactional.

Kimberly Bennett: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Hawkins: But let’s, let’s shift back to [00:43:00] like fidu itself. So tell me about the platform. So before you cobbled together all these things is fidu if I’m gonna run a subscription service as a lawyer, is it meant to replace all those things you cobbled together and be sort of the unifying platform? Or is it just a piece.

Kimberly Bennett: It’s meant to be a part of the, a part of the platform. Some of our customers use fidu as a standalone and do everything. But what fidu focuses on today is on the client experience, right? So that client journey conversation that we’re having, because in a subscription model, you know, retaining clients is the name of the game, right?

You don’t want clients, you don’t wanna spend all this money on bringing a client in and then that same client leaves in two months, like you’re, or a month, right? You’ve, it’s, that’s not what you’re looking for. You’re looking to have some longevity to that relationship that you can predict and then spend against, right?

Because you’re spending less than they’re, you’re spending less to acquire them than they are spending to work, work with you. So we focus on the client [00:44:00] experience. So think of fidu as the place that we’re, that really re replaces today, somewhat of a client portal, but not only that, and some of your backend operation.

So portal the way a knowledge hub some initial document generation. What fidu does that no other platform does is it is the place where clients come into and have access to resources and materials designed and curated by the firm. So the firm decides what the client can see and what they can’t see, but it’s all based off the firm’s standards and their templates and their knowledge, and it’s accessible to the client wherever they’re at from their phone or from the internet.

It’s a mobile device, but that’s mobile friendly. I mean, it’s a web device, web platform that’s mobile friendly. And so what you do is you sign up and you integrate it back with a practice management tool or a project management tool, and it’s meant to help the client stay up to date on what’s happening, and then actually deliver the ongoing value through a lot of different ways, however you’ve designed it at scale.

So we do subscription management, flat fee management, [00:45:00] client client communication, client status, communication. Content and and knowledge sharing. And then we do other AI tools to help with delivery of your final work product and whatnot so that it becomes the full experience. ’cause we do a lot of things that aren’t focused on the experience side.

It’s just simply here’s your document, great go forth and conquer. We really wanna make it valuable for the client so that they come back month after month without you having to do all the things to make them come back. So the platform is built on trying to make your, make the platform as sticky for your client and as easy for you to systematize and deliver your your backend operations.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so, I can create, let’s say a resource library, and I’m just

Kimberly Bennett: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Hawkins: make up some stuff. So I could say, here are some form documents you may want to use. I could also put a library of videos in there that they can access at any time.

Kimberly Bennett: Yep.

Jonathan Hawkins: So if I had, let’s say I had three different levels or two different levels of subscription and they, and could I go into fidu and say, all right, level one, you only get access to this thing. Level [00:46:00] two, you get access to these two things. And level three, you get access to everything. You can set all that up.

Kimberly Bennett: Exactly. So, and yeah, it would, the idea is like each level might have some of the same baseline resources that you can reuse across all levels. So it’s not that you have to recreate them all the time. So yeah, you can then, you can sell it if a client, if they only have access to two things, but they can buy something else, they can buy it inside a platform.

So you can do upsells inside a platform. So the client that’s paying you a hundred dollars might now wanna pay that a thousand dollars agreement. They can do that from inside of the platform, and then it’ll follow your process to collect information or to tell the client to do this thing because there’s automations behind it to help you deliver it.

But we start from the design of your subscription or flat fee all the way to through, through the delivery of it. So if we, with the click of a link, you can onboard a client, they can sign your, they can sign up for the, your an account, pay you onboard, get onboarded into the platform, all from a design process that you set up once and you [00:47:00] template and then the client goes through.

And then the, the times where you need to check in because you’ve built it to check in that way, like where the human touch needs to be. The human touch comes in and where you don’t need it to be, fidu can do it for you or you tell the clients to do things in a timed fashion. So however you would run a process now you would run some of that inside of fidu and some of it you would maintain in the tools that you use today.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so it’s, you said it’s sort of like a portal too, so you can communicate you can do probably automated communications, but then go in and say, all right, I’m gonna actually do this one communication. And so I, I assume you want to force or encourage the clients to use that to communicate versus, Hey, I’m gonna text you over here or email you over here. Is that.

Kimberly Bennett: Correct our idea today and this is one interface that’s not, it won’t be the only interface. I think we all know, we all have different interfaces, but we focus on one for now, same for you, so that you’re not bringing the client everywhere. So you bring the client into the, for the client’s perspective, it’s a portal.

They come in, this is where they communicate with you. [00:48:00] This is where they access legal services. This is where they buy more legal services. This is where they see how much, how many more document reviews they have left in their plan if they need to, if they finish it out for the month, they can’t do any unless they pay more.

They get access to that clear clearly without having you answer the question. They can see it in their, their dashboard. For the legal team, it’s all the templates and way that they operate so that you don’t have to handhold a client through every step of the way, but you can still provide high value curated.

Legal services that respond to your standards and your, your processes in a streamlined, unscalable way. So yes,

Jonathan Hawkins: That sounds really cool. And when we get off, I’m gonna talk to you some more about this.

Kimberly Bennett: yes. Do it. We just released some really dope features that, like, like I said, from designing it. So you can go in platform talk, tell us about your client, tell us about your business, and then and tell us about the services you want. And we will build a visual representation of your flat fee or your subscription.

And then if you like it, we will [00:49:00] build your initial framework. So like, you don’t even have to spend the time building out in fidu unless you really want to. And then you can tweak it and then go to sell it, right. With With a click of a button.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so let’s talk about, so, you know, you’ve already gotten a bunch of features. You’ve built it out, you know, looking down the road, what’s sort of the roadmap? Where’s this thing going? What are you guys looking to

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, I mean, you know what? Our big vision is to end the billable hour for good surprise, surprise, right? I would love to provide a pathway for every legal team to stop doing that so they can serve this huge gap in the market. Today’s legal market looks like we serve either DIY services, which is not what all, you know, not what folks do that are founding partners, right?

You do, done for you services, which are usually very curated, very custom meant for the high net worth or revenue generating company. There’s everyone in the middle that still needs it, and some of those middle look like lawyers too, right? That need access to services. That needs to be somewhere in between [00:50:00] that curates your, it’s curated, but not maybe as custom, right?

That isn’t just templatized, but it has nuance of le of professional services. So that’s where we come in. So continue to expand how we leverage ai continuing to make it easier for you to show up thinking through. What is it like to be, to work with different types of clients, whether some are neuro neurodivergent, some are, you know, are high anxiety like thinking, taking those psycho demographics into place, thinking about what it looks like to really reimagine how you do work and what the delivery is.

Our thought is you should still have human touch and how can you create the right hu human touch without burning yourself out? And so we’re working on solving that while helping you not build by the hour. And so, you know, we, a lot more AI of course, of as you would expect, but we don’t tag ourselves as a AI platform because I fundamentally believe it’s just a tool.

It’s just the thing that everything has. Instead, we still focus on helping you [00:51:00] deliver an amazing client experience. That’s what gets people to come back. That’s what gets them to refer out and that’s our goal and everything that we do. And sure we leverage. Gen AI tools and whatever next tool that’s out and about to grow your business.

But we, that’s kind of what we do. So today we provide 360 support. We do training, we do weekly office hours, we do training, we do subscription weeks, we do all the things to help people get outta their own way and just start imperfectly.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, they’ve been calling for the death of Bill Billable hour for decades now and, and I feel like we’re finally on the cusp of maybe it really happening. And so you mentioned this earlier and you, I think you sort of touched on it there too, but as part of your work with fidu, so again, I’m a lawyer out there that’s really interested in exploring or designing a subscription service.

Do you guys also consult on that fidu or is that, would that be you individually or is it someone else?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. Depends. [00:52:00] So if it’s truly private, then I’m in there, but. I would say before you came to me, fidu is, provides a lot of opportunities. So, it, we have our platform, which includes all features. You can get access to that for our platform, price. Price. And then from there we have an additional tier that is for those who want additional deeper dive training.

And then we have a build tier where we’ll be your builder behind the scenes that helps you build it out. And that includes some of that training. So if you’re looking to design, our hope is that you can design without needing me to intervene. That is, if you want that we wanna have the platform and be able to support people at scale, at our platform level, at our first base price.

You go on our website, you see our price. That’s what we want to allow for everyone to get. And with our we have an AI builder inside of the platform. Now you can design it in platform without having to interact with me, right. But we’re there. Right. I think to make this be something that transforms the industry it shouldn’t be a [00:53:00] person centered, right?

It needs to be something like, if I believe what I said earlier to everyone, that what I do is not so, that that it can be standardized, it can be processed out, it can be replica, you know, you know, repeated and replicated at scale. That’s what we did for how I coach and train. We did that in the service builder.

And so sure, you can get it, but my first stop is try our service builder, see what it gets you, if you need more. Sure, of course, we’ll continue to improve it, but we want people to do it with or without my, my, my support or the fidu’s team fidu support.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I think maybe earlier, maybe I misheard you, but did you say there’s some training coming up? And then just for timestamp purposes, this is sort of early July, 2025. If you wanna plug anything with fidu or that’s coming up. Anybody that might be interested, this will probably drop in a couple weeks.

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, so you we’re still rocking and rolling with our flat fee series. So, we have a flat fee summer series for 2025 that we’re doing. We’ll probably bring that back at some point. [00:54:00] But outside of that we do subscription week. So starting in the fall, we will pick back up our subscription week flow, and it’s a five day live event where we take you from design to launch.

And as we continue to add more features, that just gets faster and faster. So we help you think about how to design it, then we help you create the link to sell it. Then we help you create the projects to deliver it, and then we help you think through, okay, what does it take to actually get this out and launch it.

So we do that. Typically it’s included with a fidu subscription. So if you don’t wanna be a fidu customer, there’s like a one-time pay usually that’s associated with it. But yeah, that’s coming up. But just reach out. We are here to change this industry and it’s not today, fidu is the platform that does it.

I don’t know any other platform that does what we do. And to explain it sometimes is harder than to see it, and I need to probably do better explaining it sometimes. But if you see it in action, you’ll see the opportunity that exists to move from billing by the hour to actually delivering something at scale.

And that’s what we’re helping you do at any of our trainings. [00:55:00] Our subscription weeks, our office hours we are there to support every single person, even if they’re not a fidu customer to start out. So

Jonathan Hawkins: And I am not sure we said it, but fidu is f-i-d-u uh, if, if

Kimberly Bennett: fidulegal.com is how you can

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, cool. So, you know, you, as is clear from this conversation and others that I’ve heard, I mean, you’ve been an innovator for quite a long time. I mean, your mindset is different than most lawyers. But you know, any advice out there that you would give to law firm owners, you know, as they’re starting firms trying to grow their firms you know, from a mindset perspective as they look forward in the future with AI and other things any advice you might give?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, I think first read your ethics, right? Because for me, ethics, I read them early, you know, can keep up with them. They are not an impediment, they are design constraint, right? Understand what that is. So you don’t get caught in this, I can’t do it. But understand what your parameters are, right? So first, ’cause I think, [00:56:00] I find sometimes that becomes a roadblock. Well, I cannot, we’re not allowed to do that. Do you know that for sure? Did you read it or did someone tell you that? Right?

So then my second would be, commit to just doing it differently. And there’s gonna be naysayers. So what? Right. I’ll do a book recommendation “Being is the New Doing” by Radiah Rhodes.

So, again, “Being is the New Doing” by Radiah Rhodes. It’s a short read. It’s about elevating your intention, your commitment, how you show up to get the thing done. I think that is just like a mind to move through the mindset blocks and the, the fears that might stop you from doing something that doesn’t look like what other people are doing.

And then, you know, you know, just launch one. Right? Just get out there, launch one. You don’t have to have it fully built out. You just need to talk to the clients to see what they want and then go from there. I know I, I’m not telling you to go launch a thousand, right, but what I’m saying is launch one, talk to 1, 2, 5 clients.

Be clear and tell them, I wanna try something different. This is what I’m interested in. I’d love to get your real [00:57:00] life feedback. Right. They’re gonna be. I’m not exactly, this is what I’m thinking, but what I wanna do is help you, help me co-design it. Yes, this is paid, it’s not free. Right?

But you’re gonna get a ton of value in exchange for helping me design this in the best way. So if you’re stuck, don’t design it on your own. Get it out there, pitch the thing, and then get support when you feel like it’s not working. We’re here. There’s other people that, that talk about, about subscriptions.

Go to them, but find if you’re staying stuck. It’s something that’s not impossible. In fact, I think it’s a lot easier. I think people overcomplicate pricing. Don’t do that to yourself. Just get out there

Jonathan Hawkins: I think that is, that is it. You know, lawyers are so scared of making a mistake, but you just gotta push something out there and see what, what happens. It’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna be perfect. It’s like the first time you did a trial or the first time you did a contract, compared to what you did, you know, 10 years later you’re way better at it right now. But you just gotta throw something out there. And you’re right. I think one thing, not everything all at [00:58:00] once.

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. Not everything all at once. Don’t do, Don’t do it yourself and don’t be like me and try to run a million businesses. Don’t Don’t do it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So this has been great. I wanna be respectful of your time, so thanks for coming on. You know, we’ve talked a little bit about vision, but I always like to ask this question too. You know, what is your vision for the next 10, 15 years for you, for any of your businesses, whatever it can be, you know, life, it can be business, whatever you, whatever it is.

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah. I hope if, you know, if fidu reaches the heights that I want, either we are leading this industry in ways that completely transformed how we show up for our clients and that allow for my goal is to solve the access to justice gap with not non-profit services, but actually for-profit. That’s a win-win on both sides.

So fidu to really support closing that, that justice gap. And then personally it just looks like continuing to spend [00:59:00] more time with my family. Like I I have a 99-year-old grandfather that I know probably in 10 years won, won’t be here. So for the next couple years, make the memories that I can reflect back on in 10 and 15 years with him and then other family members because I didn’t do this.

I didn’t start a business. I didn’t start my firm to necessarily be a multimillionaire or something. Tech is a different world, so I know it has the opportunity to change my life significantly. But if it does, I hope it allows for me also to spend time with the people that I love and the family and friends that I’ve made along the way.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a great way to end it right there. So, Kimberly, thank you for coming on. For people out there that wanna learn about fidu or just talk to you about help with design a subscription or just talk to you about whatever, what’s the best way to find you?

Kimberly Bennett: Yeah, just reach out. We’re on social. We’re fiduapp across social media platforms. So at F-I-D-U-A-P-P we used to be fidulegal, so you’ll see it, but use fiduapp. And then personally at kbennettlaw, that’s my personal handle, but reach out to us [01:00:00] fidulegal.com and whatever it is, a question, a roadblock.

We, we do so many free online virtual events that we’re here to support you with a question, a next step or whatnot. So reach out.

Jonathan Hawkins: And you still do a lot of speaking, right? Are you on the circuit still?

Kimberly Bennett: Oh I, yes I’m still in the circuit. I have a speaking engagement next week. I have, I think three this month or something, or four this month. I had already, I don’t know I don’t even know what day I’ve had, I’ve done one already, two, I think a four this month, and then maybe one or two next month and three in September.

So yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: the chances are good. You. may be coming through their town, so,

Kimberly Bennett: That’s right. I might see you in a town, and if I am, I might be doing a little popup event, so stay tuned.

Jonathan Hawkins: all right, well, thank you, Kimberly.

Kimberly Bennett: Thank you.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, 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 [01:01:00] 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.