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Jeff Redmon, a business lawyer with a private practice, has gained some of his most important business insights in a most unlikely setting: afloat in the crystal clear waters off the Cayman Islands in the company of parrotfish and yellowtail snapper. Redmon is an avid scuba diver, and the sport has inspired him to change the way he runs his business.

“What all divers want is maximum bottom time,” Redmon explains. “You want to use the limited amount of air you have as efficiently as possible to increase your dive bottom time. So you try to use less air by exerting less effort and staying relaxed.”

It’s all about getting maximum return for minimal investment. And it was the same thing Redmon was seeking in his own practice — more ways to bring in additional revenue, without running his tank dry.

For Redmon, that meant moving away from his total reliance on the billable hour. “There were just too many days I’d put in 10 hours at the office and only have five or six billable hours to show for it,” he says.

Some of the fault falls on his own shoulders; he admits that he dislikes selling his time by the hour and consistently fails to record all his time. Even so, he knew that getting more religious about timekeeping to record a couple of extra billable hours each week would have only a nominal impact. He was still selling a limited commodity: his time, an hour at a time.

In analyzing his current business, Redmon took note of an emerging trend. As a respected businessman in his town, he was often fielding calls from local business owners, sometimes clients and sometimes not, who were simply looking for a sounding board, wanting to run a business issue past another seasoned professional before taking action. The issues were diverse, but common to most business owners: hiring decisions, vendor selection, referrals to a trusted resource, pricing strategies, or conflicts with business partners.

Redmon loved being called on as a business advisor, but the time he spent wasn’t adding anything to his bottom line. “I wasn’t giving them legal advice that warranted an invoice,” Redmon states. “I was giving a lot of stuff away for free. I did it because I enjoy helping, and they were asking for my help. But I started to realize that I was cheating myself. While I would never steal from a client, it seems I didn’t think twice about stealing from myself.”

Breath of Fresh Air

Redmon found the solution to his problem in another unlikely setting — at the breakfast table.
A few years back, Redmon joined Inner Circle International, an organization that facilitates peer groups for business owners. As he describes it, “Once a month I join eleven other entrepreneurs for breakfast and a chance to share the issues I’m facing in running and growing my firm. Like others in the group, I find that drawing others into my problem solving not only helps me lose my sense of isolation, but helps me develop higher quality solutions.”

The peers in this group aren’t other lawyers, but printers and accountants and manufacturers and architects and all varieties of business owners who are eager to both learn from Redmon’s experience and to offer up their own seasoned perspectives. The entire process is guided by a veteran facilitator who keeps the group on task.

Redmon began to see that it was exactly what other business owners in his community were craving. And it wasn’t difficult for him to picture himself in the role of facilitator. Deciding that the model fit perfectly with his current business, he took the plunge and purchased his own Inner Circle franchise and currently facilitates two peer groups in his town.

“I still practice law,” he quickly adds. “It’s what I wanted to do since the seventh grade, but the peer group facilitation is a perfect adjunct business for me.”

Fits Like a Second Skin

The fit with his practice is good, like the second skin of his wetsuit. The close fit stems, in part, from the fact that at the folks he targets to join a circle are the very same ones he would hope to attract to the law practice — primarily business owners of small- to mid-sized companies who don’t want to tackle the tough issues alone. So his target market and marketing efforts overlap.

According to Redmon, about half of his current peer group members are existing law firm clients. “At first I was fearful that it might be difficult to determine when I was functioning as their peer group facilitator — members have 24/7 access to me as a sounding board — and when I was truly acting as an attorney and needed to start the clock ticking,” he confesses.

“It just hasn’t been an issue. When the time comes for me to review a letter or draft a contract, it’s pretty clear that they’ve called on me to act as an attorney. I still charge my regular hourly rate for services like that.

But now they can also bring to the group, or call me to discuss, a much wider variety of issues. They no longer have to worry that they’re taking advantage of my time if I don’t charge or have to fret that the problem they want to discuss doesn’t warrant my hourly rate.”

In exchange for the monthly meetings and 24/7 access to the facilitator, peer group members pay an annual fee, which can range from $4,000 to $12,000 a year. “By investing about 20 hours a month running my two circles, I have created a six-figure recurring revenue stream,” says Redmon. “It’s a far greater return than I ever could have achieved by investing 20 additional hours into my traditional hourly law practice.”

Free Diving

For Redmon, the payoff is more than monetary. “It’s been invigorating for my career, and the experience as a facilitator, especially the concentrated focus on listening is making me a much better lawyer. It lets me highlight some dimensions of myself that don’t usually take center stage.”

In some ways you can imagine how the experience must almost feel like a free dive to him; a chance to leave behind the cumbersome tanks, gauges, and weight belts to submerge into the same familiar waters with an uncommon freedom.

As he explains, “I’m able to keep everything I love about practicing law — the intellectual challenge, the variety, the focus on problem solving, the chance to influence major decisions in several different businesses, and the meaningful relationships — while I step away from some of the pressures of the billable hour.”

And then there’s leverage. Leverage is about getting the most accomplished with the least output. It’s one smooth, powerful kick wearing a pair of fins versus several frenzied kicks with bare feet. It’s gathering ten business owners around a table rather than seeing them one-by-one across a desk. It’s all about getting maximum bottom time.

Jeffrey A. Redmon, Redmon Law Chartered, 2217 Vine Street, Suite 204, Hudson, WI 54016 and
Brenda Griffith, 13860 Falcon Ave., Apple Valley, MN 55124