Pitch Please

00:00.43
mike_flywheel
Welcome back everybody to the pitch please podcast. It's Mike here again today I'm joined by grant from good lawyer welcome to the show. Grant.

00:11.41
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah, thanks for having me Mike.

00:12.21
mike_flywheel
Listen, Let's let's learn a little bit about you before we talk about good lawyer. Can you maybe kick us off with what your role is at good lawyer and maybe even a little bit about your journey of how you got here.

00:25.13
Grant Lahring
Sure, yeah, um, so I'm the head of growth and one of the co-founders of good lawyer. There are four co-founders so we got a couple lawyers and a couple product and dev people on the team I came in when the product was kind of ready to be sold and I do sales and marketing so I was there to sell it. Um, so that made a pretty good fit. Ah my background before that generally is pretty 1 note I kind of I worked at different startups and in that space for almost all my career I think about 8 years now um doing kind of a mix between sales and marketing I've done about fifty fifty which I find really interesting because I think my original education. My undergard was all marketing and then I kind of got into sales because it is the right thing at and the right time I was working for uber overseas and they needed salespeople not marketing people. So. Ah, jumped into that and kind of loved it and then finally the combo was quite useful. So I continued on that path. Um back on my Mba in the same topic a couple of years ago and continue to try to build big companies. that's my that's my big goal.

01:33.95
mike_flywheel
That's super cool. So so you're the the sales and marketing background. You are not the lawyer of the team but there are lawyers in the team. How how did you meet the rest of the co-founders or where did you know them from before.

01:46.58
Grant Lahring
Ah, good question most of them knew each other before not me though I um I met them at an event I guess in 1 of the cofounders headworks with my brother on a project at one point so Parker our Cto ah was at this event and recognized me and. Kind of caught up a bit and he was telling about this company. He's building called good lawyer and ah I was telling him kind of how I would be doing that event because they were just running around with cards kind of frantically. Ah very enthusiastically trying to convince random people to try their thing. Um.

02:24.10
Grant Lahring
So I sketched it out the next morning we met up at a cafe and parker like how would you do it and I was like well here's how I would do it and I'd get just napkin out like a simple like Google ad strategy like I think you're going to find more people it easier to sell the people who are already looking for what you're doing. He's like I like the napkin takes a napkin back to hit the team. They liked the napkin. They brought me in and then I had a quick chat with them and ah realized that they were going to try it as a pilot so I could kind of got on as a consultant. Originally um I got like a bunch of kind of their random advisors.

02:54.90
mike_flywheel
So you make really really good. You make really good napkins.

03:00.91
Grant Lahring
Yeah, the napkin I'm sure should be Framed. It's great. Ah, but that was I mean maybe that's part of what I like to do I like to try and break down systems and things into simple things people can understand because I think ah in the early stages of building a business. It is. A lot about execution and having a group of people aligned on a concept is easier if the concept is simple. Um, so I think they liked the way I was able to simplify it.

03:26.81
mike_flywheel
Yeah, a hundred percent a big piece of sales and marketing and leadership is is creating that clarity and simplifying things down so and you've been with good lawyer for how long. Okay and you were like employee like number four five

03:40.11
Grant Lahring
About 3 years now yeah be employee number one I think um, but yeah, yeah, in fact, he was so close that I was eventually extended the title of cofounder. So I am now considered part of the founding team.

03:47.29
mike_flywheel
Ah, so literally outside of the founding team. You'd be the first employee.

03:57.34
Grant Lahring
I Guess the idea was that we didn't have much of a company before we had sales.

04:01.00
mike_flywheel
That's ah, that's super cool. So you said 1 or 2 lawyers a Cto with the technical background and then and you bring the sales and marketing chops is that sort of the the right mix of the team see.

04:09.96
Grant Lahring
Yeah I think it was a right time thing for sure like when I when I joined they had something that was ready to sell and like I've joined startups that aren't ready for that. They no, they don't have enough production to actually need a full-time person selling stuff. Good lawyer was ready for that. So it was I couldn't have been any earlier.

04:28.14
mike_flywheel
And so before good lawyer have you ever been an entrepreneur or you mentioned you know you've you've talked to some other startups that has this sort of always been something. You knew you wanted to work in or work with like early stage startups.

04:28.44
Grant Lahring
With my skill set.

04:46.23
Grant Lahring
Yeah, this has always been kind of the thing I had a really interesting experience because I worked at an agency that served startups so I worked with a bunch of them when I was doing marketing. Um, then I went I worked at a couple different startups I worked at uber which at the time is so kind of a startup I know it's probably. Starting that line now. Um, but that was a very big one and then I added couple smaller ones when I got back to Canada so I worked with an aquaponics farm called Deepwater Farms that was establishing itself and we were building our first commercial farm at the time so that was really interesting and I was their sales and marketing manager basically make sure they sell production. Um, and then I got on with a marketing tech company that was ah more established but um, kind of having identity crisis between the service side of the business which made money and this the product side of the business which could potentially scale and I was also there trying to try to grow their revenue.

05:41.63
mike_flywheel
So What for you? um, has sort of drawn you or inspired you to sort of startups and entrepreneurship. So You said when you were working with that agency. You worked a lot with that but was there something that sparked this curiosity Around. Being in the in the weeds of the building and the innovation early earlier on in either your childhood or in school or was it truly the the tipping point that time at that agency working with startups and being exposed to it.

06:11.16
Grant Lahring
That's a good question I feel like I rarely dive that deep into myself. Um I think there's a couple of pieces to it. 1 is probably just pure luck like I think I ended up in an entrepreneurship program at a time when it was just launching and there was a ton of ah. Startups coming out of my andrograugh that were driven by this program and I was with them and I didn't have the money or the connections to start something at that time by any means. Um, so I didn't start on myself but I became kind of the support guy and I would help my friends and their startups kind of um. From the side as I got into it I kind of realized that like I developed really specific skills that worked really well in these early stage companies. Um I'm very much like a doer I move fast I'm flexible I try to learn very quickly and I have absolutely no fear of like knocking on doors and talking to. People at random companies like Microsoft or something. Um, which apparently a lot of people are concerned about so this skill set I developed and I realized this is actually really useful for this 1 thing. It's not that useful for other things. So I think that's what's kept me from going to like a big corporate job or something I don't think I'm particularly useful in in those other jobs. Um, so now I'm kind of on a path that I plan to continue on but that path ties in to I think personal goals for me which is I really want to build like a better place to live so people can live richer more meaningful lives I don't take it for granted that that happens without ah entrepreneurship and people building big companies.

07:43.84
Grant Lahring
Can provide good jobs. So what I want to do with with my skills is to build those big companies in the city that I love and to employ people that need that work and can use that money to to thrive.

07:56.81
mike_flywheel
That's that's amazing that you found that fit and was that always something that you sort of knew as a goal like to to help kind of communities and employment around you that that's sort of been something. That's been caught. Ah a vision you've wanted to execute on.

08:09.48
Grant Lahring
Absolutely yeah and I think and not just because I think we all like to live good lives ourselves and we but wish other people could live those lives too. But I did have some time in the nonprofit sector as well. Which really made me think a lot about what it means um to. Live in a a worldclass City. So I work for habittown for humanity building cob and Inbuilt houses and doing their marketing communications for a bit and just reminds you that there's many many pieces to a a successful thriving community and one of those pieces is business which supplies a lot of the. Services and goods that people need to consume on a daily basis to live. Well so that's before I focus.

08:52.58
mike_flywheel
That's amazing that you've sort of had these like experiences that that built up to that now I almost want to not drift past that advice that you kind of landed and and maybe. Was unintentional but you were talking a little bit about skills that serve you well in a startup or as an entrepreneur and you were mostly talking about sales and marketing. But obviously if you're ah, a founder or a cofounder team. You need to wear multiple hats. So they're important. There. Can you like. List those again and talk a little bit about maybe what you think are the top 1 or 2 for people thinking and you know maybe reflecting on. Do I have those skills or can I build those skills.

09:30.97
Grant Lahring
Totally I think the biggest one I see and this isn't just from my experience but I work with thousands of entrepreneurs now that are customers I talk to entrepreneurs every day you want to be a generalist if you're early in a startup like you need to build to do a bunch of different things and like. If you can just do 1 specific kind of engineering or 1 specific email campaign sales strategy. Ah, you're going to have a really hard time thriving in this sort of but unless you just happen to get lucky and hit one where that's actually the only thing they need um so generalism is key.

10:07.66
mike_flywheel
And and to that point like in many other industries people are like no, you need to be the specialist a deep knowledge expert. So actually your first point is like the generalist capability of where you start to strengthen the the different pieces but the the ability to be a Swiss Army knife

10:09.67
Grant Lahring
Ah.

10:26.23
mike_flywheel
Because no one else is going to do it otherwise is super critical in the startup space. Whether you're the founder cofounder or even just part of the early stage team being a highly flexible is critical.

10:35.76
Grant Lahring
Yeah, exactly like ah you can think of it as like what needs to be done and if that thing isn't exactly what you specialize in, you have to build to do it anyway, if you have to build able to try it and take it on. Yeah, exactly it like the solution isn't always search like we don't even run Google ads anymore.

10:45.16
mike_flywheel
Go figure it out. Yeah yeah, and got really good at search.

10:55.00
Grant Lahring
Like I was originally brought on because I was especially listening Google ads and I was really good at that. Um, turns out that actually doesn't work that well and industry is what we saturated with that kind of stuff and like there is a period during the pandemic when it was stronger because couldn't do any other stuff but it's now weakening. It's no longer part of our mix. So. If you can't roll with that if that means you exit the company then you're not going to have a good time to start up.

11:13.63
mike_flywheel
Yeah, you need to be able to pivot. Can you talk about the doorknocking bit I think that's super critical and and like did you have doorknocking experiences through through any of your career or childhood that sort of you realize that you're really good at this thing and because I think to your point tons of people. Have a really hard time doing cold outreach and having those first dialogues like it gives people extreme stress and so I want to talk about it. It sounds like you found yourself to be a natural fit at that and so talk talk to us a little bit about where where that developed from you think.

11:51.36
Grant Lahring
Um, totally? yeah, it's it's It's super normal and like ah I think one of the main things is you have to believe that you can help people and therefore that you're knocking on the right doors and that you genuinely can serve these people and I know providing value. Think if you go in with the idea like oh I'm just intruding in your life then you've already accepted that you're not going to be able to help them then like why are you even knocking on that door like go do something else? Um, but that's a little ahead of myself I think so for my own experience. Ah yeah, I've done a lot of kind of random.

12:26.81
Grant Lahring
Ah, we're not in type things I don't think actually like was page knockg doors at any point but I used to um, a little bit of an anecdote but I was in university I used to for all these huge parties. We'd have like big toga parties or whatever and we'd go around the residence and we knock on every single door and invite every single person like here we're having a to party like tomorrow. Like do want to come and like give them like the invite thing or we'd be like raising awareness for some charity event or we have some like res going on so did a lot of door knockcking there I started like really do my my sales career really started with uber when we were selling uber eats. So um, in that case I was selling to restaurants and. That was ah interesting one because not only did I become comfortable like walking in the front door of a restaurant and looking through the owner I found that you can get in really fast for the back door. So if you just knock on the back door when they're closed. They'll open it thinking. You're like a supply person you can go in and ah. Made your chat and like you really have to believe that you're doing a good thing for the restaurant. Otherwise it feels very sneaky but um, like 9 times out of 10 you have an amazing conversation with the chef who owns the bit restaurant and's kind of prepping for the day and it goes a lot better than going in the front and they're really busy and. All that stuff. So I learned that and then I did a lot of cold calling as well during that job and that continued ontake other jobs.

13:40.77
mike_flywheel
That That's super that. Yeah, that's super Clever. So Did you think of the hey I'm just going to go knock on the back door is this like some great advice that you got passed Along. It's super clever but to your point you get to meet the people that maybe. Wouldn't be approached as often and and it kind of tips things on its Tet A little bit I Love it.

14:02.58
Grant Lahring
Totally know that was all me, um, in fact I think I was a big part of the reason why we did a lot of in-person stuff in Australia and New Zealand because like we were originally just selling by the phone like calling into places but it's like you've got this tiny window between lunch service and dinner service to try and connect and like.

14:19.66
Grant Lahring
Youre paid 8 hours a day but only like call pay like 2 hours a 3 hours a day successfully the rest of it just pisses them off and then you're running out a restaurant lead. So like we invented systems or would be like when we're launching in a new suburb. We'd go to the suburb and we'd knock on all the restaurants because they're all clustered into like 1 street anyway, it takes like a day you can get every restaurant suburb. Um, and you can. Basically make that first connection and then you use that to book a meeting and then you're no longer intruding on their actual service time. So there's little things like that that you learn pretty quick.

14:46.49
mike_flywheel
Yeah, and even just putting yourself in their shoes and pulling out those insights of knowing where you're a distraction versus you know when are some good times. Being confident that you're bringing value and that you can bring value because then everything after that's truly Authentic. You're truly trying to help them in the same way you're trying to you know, do business and build a startup to help the community around you which I think is is super cool. Um, maybe let's talk a little bit now about about good lawyer. So I think before we dive in I Always like to to bring the the show's name to life and we will start with your best elevator pitch and then dive into some details from there. So Grant your best pitch please.

15:33.80
Grant Lahring
On so good lawyer is a platform for fast-growing companies that need reliable legal services at a price they can trust um, what we do is we connect you to lawyers if you're a founder or an entrepreneur. Who can deliver the services for you. What that does it cuts out the big firm overhead and basically reduces your cost by 50 at 30 and also lets you access really interesting niches things like startup financing or Ip And Health Tech devices really easily which are otherwise really really hard to find and getting the wrong lawyer in either of those cases can really ruin your business and waste you a lot of money and so that's basically what we do.

16:16.76
mike_flywheel
That's super gold Now how did it get started. So you said you were probably employee number one but I'm sure you know a little bit of like the light bulb moment. How did it get started and what was sort of the core problem that inspired good lawyer.

16:29.68
Grant Lahring
Totally so we were we approached it from the problem side. So a couple of lawyers going through law school realized how bad the law firms actually are at operating they then went on to work in those law firms kind of was reinforced into them. And the main guy is Brett Colvin so he's our Ceo now and he was really him who identified the problem and he was working at Canada's biggest law firm using I don't know 4 years into his call. He was billing out around $500 an hour to clients and taking home about 80 so. Like where is the four hundred and twenty bucks going like you're paying for a service from 1 dude, he's only getting like less than a third of it. Um, where's it going and the answer is it's going into overhead for like ridiculous offices. Tons of support staff and like which are used up on processes like. Trying to schedule a meeting with you which could be a callant lead but no, it's a secretary um end on to partner ah cash oats. So at the end of every quarter or year I can't remember which basically all the profit in a law firm is just divvied up among the partners and it's done. They don't there's no incentive to reinvest structure doesn't really allow that. Um, so and that also creates a structural issue with the partners because they're the oldest most senior people in the firm. Um, and they're the ones who have made the call to invest for long-term things but also like why would they like they're going to be gaunts and they won't own any percentage of this law firm. They're not going to get anything from it when they're gone like.

18:02.10
Grant Lahring
They might also just squeeze all the juice until they leave because they're not getting it afterwards. Um, and they're all anyway, they're 60 65 to seventy years old like they don't need that much left to retire. So um, basically there's a lot of structural issues.

18:12.86
mike_flywheel
So It really started with yeah so it started with like hey I'm a lawyer I work in a system where I see massive amounts of overhead that feel like waste. And there's probably some way to deliver these services more efficiently where the lawyer makes more the customer pays less and is that a general statement or like who uses who uses good lawyer who's good lawyer focused on you've mentioned like startups and founders a few times is that like. Sweet spot or is it small businesses. What sort of the the spectrum of who would use good lawyer.

18:49.42
Grant Lahring
That's ah one of the fun things when you start with a problem for these kind of companies is like we weren't really sure who would get the most benefit out of it. So like we tested a bunch of different markets. Um, the first one that really caught was small businesses and startups so like really small companies and mostly because they felt the pain the sharpest because if you're. Ah, brand new startup you get 0 priority from these firms at all like you cannot get in touch with your lawyer. They will not email you back when you need them unless you're lucky um and your cost is still the same like you're going to be getting really really high cost and really bad service. In fact, most of your work is going to be done by a student if you're a. Ah, startup. So these people were pissed and we found them and like we presented our option which is like you can go directly to a lawyer who is at a solo firm therefore has none of that overhead and we'll put our service fee on there. You'll still say like 50% and you can get the same kind of service. You'd expect from a large firm if you were a large client and they loved it. So. We ran with that for the last two years ah but we're kind of gradually pulled up market by our customers themselves kind of growing and larger companies starting to use the platform and they realize that um if we added a few more features. We could be quite appealing to these fast growing businesses which it kind of. Tend to have a headcount kind of between 50 and 200 and for them. We invented a new product which is called the fractional general counsel which is where we'll put a lawyer on your team and that lawyers they're like one day a week maybe two days a week and they're your general counsel and they take care of everything so like similarly the cost savings are around 50% on a.

20:25.90
Grant Lahring
Most of the clients we've placed so far but it allows them to ah literally have a lawyer with like an internal email who can lie using within their company and take a bunch of work off the Ceo's plate and manage outside council as well to keep the cost down. So.

20:40.83
mike_flywheel
It no and no so you sort of got 2 customers and or sorry two two models if you will the customers seem to be similar which is like startups or early stage right up to.

20:42.63
Grant Lahring
That is now our customer base that was a very long answer to a very short question.

20:59.73
mike_flywheel
Scaling up companies and it started with a billable hours model almost like I don't know correct me if this is the inappropriate use of this but like like a fiverr a little bit but within the the legal space. But then it also scales to like a more.

21:14.80
Grant Lahring
Um, we.

21:16.95
mike_flywheel
A more regular legal support in the fractional type council where it's like the generalist I I Guess teach me a little bit about that like you so you mentioned some terms like solo. Ah you know Solo firm or independent firm of some kind and and there's. Obviously the motto or general counsel versus specialties like how does this law space work.

21:43.70
Grant Lahring
Totally so in law there are maybe like 10 what would we call big firms which have kind of between five hundred and a thousand lawyers on the team. Ah together they own quite a bit of the market. Um, but I think only like. Ah, less than 10 percent of lawyers work there. So and if you're a strategic manager or an Nba or someone you'd want to look at that be like this is a very fragmented industry. It's one of the most fragmented industries in the world and the vast majority of the work is being done by solos one 1 person like legal shops where they do all the work themselves. These companies have. Advantage of being much cheaper because they have no overhead so they they can cut all that out. However, they're really hard to find especially if you're looking for like a specialized thing. Um and they ah can have a hard time with the larger mandates so you can't give a solo lawyer like. Ah, big litigation file or something because it's going to take a team of 5 to read all those emails to build your case in time for court. So there's certain things that solos just can't do and the big firms really love those. They love those big litigation big disputes between large companies and they love like huge corporate financing rounds m and a. Ah, public market announcement that kind of thing but the smaller firms serve basically everything else all the contract work and that kind of stuff really? Well so we work with the solo lawyers primarily so we find 1 ne-mad shops usually they used to work at these big firms and for being totally honest, they tried to have a family and have a life.

23:17.33
Grant Lahring
Ah, and that doesn't usually work in the firms. The requirement is to build tons of hours to hit targets to maintain your path to being a partner. Um, if you want to have a kid probably not going to happen so a lot of these people burn out around 30 to 40 and start their firms. We work at those people.

23:36.75
mike_flywheel
Wow. I had no idea. So um, that makes sense Why why someone would want to make that switch especially since it sounds like there's maybe even better efficiencies on dollars per time at certain points in your career stage. Now those complex Examples does does good lawyer bring teams of lawyers together for those or do you focus on hey that's maybe not our bullseye of where we specialize we specialize in the fact that. There's some people who will handle the Complex. We'll handle everything else. Ah, do do you do both or how does that work.

24:13.54
Grant Lahring
We ah can handle the more complex stuff with small teams. We'll kind of assemble but it's just harder it does it happens less. We're okay to kind of quarterback it and make it work because we technically we can. We've got the legal expertise to do it, but it becomes.

24:19.28
mike_flywheel
Yeah.

24:30.84
Grant Lahring
Little harder.

24:32.56
mike_flywheel
Totally makes sense and so you've got like firms. Um, who are obviously competitors to your service. You've got independent lawyers who. I guess would be competitive if they're not running it through the good lawyer platform but their challenge is being found and scale so you offer them the value where did um, other technology based approaches fit in to good lawyer. Whether those be like. Legal Ai tools I'm not as familiar with the space. But I imagine there's especially with ai becoming more prevalent now I imagine there's some either templated. Solutions or ai solutions. Maybe some of that's baked into good lawyer or roadmaps like where where does that fit in as a competitor to to what you guys offer.

25:24.46
Grant Lahring
It's a great question. Yeah, so yeah, like you said you've got the law firms as the main competitor there are these emerging the eagle tech companies and which as a rule they try to take the lawyer out and they do 1 thing really really well. So for example, owner does a really really good job incorporating really small businesses like it's. Very smooth andef efficientcient but they they lose flexibility as a result so like ah you can't use owner to incorporate outside of Bc Alberta or Ontario for example and that's just I'm using this as an example, this is broadly applicable to basically all legal tech whether it's contract generation contract review. Ah.

25:53.21
mike_flywheel
Um, yes.

26:01.51
Grant Lahring
Cab table management you gain? Yeah, basically a really cheap 1 feature thing that a lawyer does and you can't do anything else with it which is kind of cool because it gives us an opportunity and the opportunity for us is to arm our users with these tools. And on the lawyers side like we give our lawyers access to tools they otherwise wouldn't get because they're on their own. They can't afford these big firm tools. We use our buying power to get big discounts and give give all the solos in the network as if they were a firm so we can give them stuff like. Ah, Thompson Routers like they're really good precedent libraries which is what they call templates and law. Um, one of the ones we're working on right now is spellbook like the like chat Gpt powered contractor v tool for word, it is very much in demo and it sounds like it's. Can produce some weird issues. Um, but that kind of tool would be what we want to give earlier so they have superpowers so they can do their job better and so that we can all make more money.

27:02.80
mike_flywheel
That that makes sense so in the technology Realm they're less competitors because you focus on the left to right? They're focused more specifically on an aspect of law and you see those as tools that your lawyers you can help bring to your. Lawyers but at scale otherwise they wouldn't be able to use such things and then and then all those efficiencies and benefits get passed along to the end customer now art. Um.

27:32.40
mike_flywheel
So I guess you are you a 2 sided marketplace or did the lawyers all work for a good lawyer. How does that component work.

27:39.48
Grant Lahring
Yeah, we be a twoside of marketplace ah lawyers access the platform for free. Um, they have a yeah, pretty easy. Go of it sort of clients. Really the only time people get charged is when services are completed through the platform and then. We take a service fee. So it's really similar to an Airbnb or an uber or anything like that.

27:57.27
mike_flywheel
Totally makes sense and the the rates for lawyers. They set it themselves so is is it I'm like an airbnb or like a fiverr like I'm going out and looking across a variety of people that are offering their services and. Matchmaking a little bit defined who's right for me.

28:17.33
Grant Lahring
Yeah, so on rates we do 3 different things. So for really standard projects. We do what we call fixed fee services. So like if you're incorporating. That's a standard batch of work and you should spend a standard amount on it no matter which lawyer you go to? So we have a price for that. It's. 99 so you can see on our website you can book that all the lawyers will buy by that for that exact service. However, that doesn't fit everybody like I just set up with the little tech stuff like there's a lot of outside cases. So for example, if you wanted to do that same incorporation but you wanted to put a company in. You know, extra provincially incorporate in 3 other provinces. It's now more complicated It's not 3 times more complicated so it needs a kind of a custom ah quote. So that's what we'll do is we'll give you a quote you can get a couple of quotes from a couple different lawyers if you want at the end of the day. Ah, the client presses like accept on a quote and that's kind of what starts the work so they still have control of what the final price is and the lawyer is kind of obliged to stick to that final price. The third kind of way we do billing is with our fractional model. So if you've got one of these lawyers on your team. What we'll do is just basically charging monthly so you.

29:29.43
Grant Lahring
We'll work with you to build kind of your engagement if it's going to be like ah $3000 a month or $10000 a month from kind of the amount of ah hours involved in that and then you and your lawyer are responsible for managing the workload so that it stays within those hours if it goes above or below those hours. There's. Things we can do for example, rolling hours over or using hours up early or even like putting engagement on pause. There's lots of flexibility there. But at the end of the day. The general expectation is that every month you get billed for the amount of time you're going to use.

29:57.50
mike_flywheel
Guys. There's like a fixed fee menu custom quotes for things. Don't that don't necessarily fit into the fix fee menu or that build upon it and then you've got the fractional council component. You guys obviously make your money by taking a small. Service fee on those services exchanged and so where where are you guys in your in your journey today. How many people are using that obviously in the numbers you can't share don't but like where are you in the journey. And and you know how many people are lawyers are sort of on this type of a platform and are you just in Canada us love to love to learn more.

30:40.59
Grant Lahring
Great questions. So for general traction. We've been at it for yeah about 3 years we've got about 5000 paying customers on the client side now and about ah a hundred lawyers delivering services actively in a given month. Um in terms of. Revenue I think we've done around 5000000? No yeah in terms of other traction. We recently closed our seed so we haven't announced it I'm sure if we're going to announce. It. But this is this is maybe the unofficial announcement so that was.

30:57.60
mike_flywheel
Oh great work.

31:10.54
mike_flywheel
Um, yeah.

31:15.23
Grant Lahring
Around I think anyway it was a c I think we raised around one hundred one point five million on about a $20000000 valuation

31:17.44
mike_flywheel
A amazing congrats congrats. It's a huge milestone so that you've basically proven yourselves. Well beyond sort of the Mvp. You've got a bunch of paying customers. You've sort of. Really honed in the operating in business revenue models and you've got from the sounds of it I don't know if 5000 sounds like a great base of customers using these services because they're not a 1 ne-time customer right? they're they're multi-use and hopefully hopefully frequent frequent users of the platform. What's sort of the split today and is that the desired future split when you think about fractional versus you know fee for service.

32:05.40
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah I mean fractional right now is probably like 20% of our top line. Um, it's growing really really fast though like I suspect by the end of the year fractional will be ah, 50% or more. Our top line revenue. So That's what we'll see I cannot predict beyond a year I Just don't know what's going to happen. But right now it's growing very very fast.

32:33.42
mike_flywheel
Yeah, it makes sense I have a friend who's doing fractional work as ah as a cmo and I think the concept of fractional makes a lot of sense because sometimes it's not the fixed fee. You need especially to your point around startups. Earlier on even scaleups and probably all the way up to like Series B The the idea like the roles aren't always perfectly defined and the outcome isn't perfectly defined but you need like smart people with generalist skills in categories that can help drive strategy Drive execution. Work across a variety of things. The fractional piece doesn't surprise me that that's a really strong component and it just seems to make sense like there probably is a threshold I would imagine that you guys are either finding or will find that's like the tipping point of when you bring general counsel in-house. But until then. You kind of ride on the fractional right? until you absolutely need to make the switch.

33:35.43
Grant Lahring
I agree completely I think you see it especially in what I would say is the other most popular fractional thing which is cfos um an experienced financial person on your team in a startup especially where you've got really complicated financials is. More than 5 times as value like one day a week from a senior person is more valuable than five days a week from a junior person. It's just it's a fact when you're digging in those finances and you're taking on huge task tax risk and all those things like fractional cfos are flying off the shelf legal falls in the same category. It's like. One day a week from an expert is better than five days a week from a lawsuit. It just is so.

34:11.14
mike_flywheel
Yeah, and are there platforms for those too like is there platforms for frack. Maybe you don't monitor those pieces but other platforms for fractional marketers and cfos that are I guess complementary services to what good good lawyer offers.

34:26.50
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah, there's some good ones I know ah our friends over amplify do cfos. Ah I think a lot of the big accounting firms will actually do cfos as well now Ken Salta is outta toronto that does a general consulting for like strategy and things and they're really really good. They have some experienced people.

34:36.15
mike_flywheel
Um, hello.

34:45.67
Grant Lahring
Um, on the Cmo side I've got a few friends that do it but none in the large no large organizations I know of as well.

34:49.18
mike_flywheel
There's no like organization that brings them together in that way. Maybe maybe future diversification strategies for good lawyer. The name kind of pins you the law for a little while though. Um.

34:57.13
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah, yeah.

35:04.16
mike_flywheel
Cool if I ask like some tricky questions like there's just some things that are like burning in my mind that I know through startups I've talked to or even things where I've I've helped out but I imagine um you get the question all the time when pitching or raising. But what are like the hooks that keep people in the platform from both sides. It's always like that. It's always the 2 sided marketplace debate when you create a good relationship. Why won't they leave and go outside of the platform. So just curious if if you got a thing you can talk about around that.

35:40.30
Grant Lahring
Yeah, it's a great question I think um, the main 1 is actually the lawyers like people will ask our lawyers leave the platform all the time but they lose all the benefits they get from the platform when they do that so on that file they lose all their admin and their billing and all that stuff. Which is nice to have. It's not a critical thing. But more importantly, we'll kick them off the platform if we catch them so there's the care and there's the stick and the the stick is actually more significant because lawyers can't live off that one client. Whatever that client is is trying to take them off the platform probably has 1 project worth like maybe $10000 that's not enough to feed a lawyer that makes you know a quarter million a year like they're not going to risk the other 240000 they would make through the platform if they just take the like client off the platform. So. The main thing is that our supply base is different lawyers themselves are they have these different incentives. They're also. Honestly, very very good at following rules and that makes sense because they study a law. Ah, and finally we have a much smaller stable like there's only a hundred people on the platform them on the platform pretty easy to know them all by by name quite well so we trust them and they trust us and.

36:49.60
mike_flywheel
Yeah, no that that makes sense it sounds like and I think even the piece that you were talking about earlier around buying power for certain tools technology and services that they otherwise wouldn't have like I I could imagine. The only thing that would take someone off the platform is if they got some massive single client.

36:50.17
Grant Lahring
Quite open about that.

37:09.40
mike_flywheel
General Counsel role where they were planning to leave anyway like but but to your point this is a demand Gen engine for Them. You've simplified a bunch of administrative burdens that they otherwise would deal with and you've added value from from a tooling perspective as well. So It makes makes so much Sense. What would you say is like the competitive Moat or do you have like something you guys think about as like a competitive moat like a good lawyer that keeps others out of your space.

37:35.81
Grant Lahring
Totally, what's really interesting is like we're a marketplace like you can study these models. They all have similar moats. The biggest 1 is actually customer base so like having a good team of lawyers on one side and a good team of users on the other is actually our main moat because. That's where the value comes from if a competitor starts up tomorrow and they don't have any lawyers. They have no value. Um, so that one piece is pretty standard. Unfortunately, that's a pretty shitty moat. It's shittier than like a patent or something like you ask anybody who's worked in these companies like uber is pretty easy to replace with lyft like it's the same thing. They've got the same drivers.

38:06.42
mike_flywheel
Yeah.

38:15.20
Grant Lahring
Um, so we have to buy up a bunch of market share part of that is building a big brand so we've invested heavily in our brand in making it authentic and fun and approachable and everything that a law firm is not and it's paying off hugely because the law firms can't do that. So that 1 huge chunk of our potential competitive competition is just personality less and gray like I would challenge anyone even yourself to like name 3 law firms like or even what's the biggest law firm in Canada like you don't even know right? It's like that's they're so random. Um, so the brand is the only big part of the moat. Ah. I think that's the main too. The third one I think is actually regulatory. Ah, which makes it really hard to build this exact thing in the states. They've got certain rules that make it really difficult and a couple of legal tech companies that have tried similar ish models have been sued to death right.

39:03.64
mike_flywheel
Ah.

39:09.60
mike_flywheel
So are you you largely Canadian based today and and primary focus on you got it.

39:14.59
Grant Lahring
Yeah, should yeah, we're all all in Canada right now. Ah there are openings for us opening up in places like Arizona and the states and a few other places. But for now we're all Canada.

39:27.78
mike_flywheel
Got it? Yeah I guess like the legal system's quite different between the two I even I think the american system far more sue first ask questions later and so it's gonna be ah inherently a lot of challenges maybe more business opportunity I don't know um but sounds.

39:38.36
Grant Lahring
Um.

39:45.58
mike_flywheel
Sounds super cool and it's good to see how you guys are thinking about you know Customer acquisition Brand value. Are you working with like a ton of incubators and accelerators. They must like love what you're offering is that like a piece of of your strategy and your kind of wearing your C C R Ro hat.

40:03.51
Grant Lahring
I feel like you're yeah you're studying my notes or something. Yeah, we we work with tons of accelerators and incubators like that's a big part of what we do and it's lucky because we're also startups like we can actually use these programs and then we can kind of partner with them and. We've been through like we've been on like a 2 year accelerator journey I don't think we've stopped being in any accelerator over the last pretty much last two and a half years now. Um, but yeah, we also form relationships we'll send lawyers into provide ah like startup law information we provide discounts. We provide a.

40:37.67
Grant Lahring
Other things like that. But the main thing we do is we just actually contribute like we're in all these slack channels or in these communities and the law firms aren't like they're just there're not there because these aren't the best clients to them like when we do run into our competitors at these events 9 times out of 10 what they'll say is like we should set up a system where we send you. Leads. We don't want and we're like sure like you do I mean because the truth is like they just felt good hours for them like these these are not clients. They're spending $1000000 on a big litigation file these are clients who are like they don't know what they need to do about this insurance compliance thing that they are trying to disrupt and.

40:58.67
mike_flywheel
Yeah, of course. Yeah, why not.

41:17.60
Grant Lahring
They have no money to get a ah full research opinion on it. They're small 1 client.

41:19.66
mike_flywheel
Um, yeah, what's like I don't know if maybe it. It's all on the website already. But like what's like the range of what a lawyer costs like is it an hourly is it. In your fixed fee menu is those generally like you picked like the top 10 or 15 services that most people need and set like a fee on them.

41:41.60
Grant Lahring
Yeah, so fixed fees fixed fee. There's no hourly component to that. But I think to understand how pricing works like our lawyers range from 100 to $500 an hour ah a pretty.

41:42.53
mike_flywheel
Okay.

41:56.32
Grant Lahring
Like a regular partner at a big firm would be around 700 and they can kind of go up to like 1500 and how they how they go.

42:01.52
mike_flywheel
Got it So right? off the bat savings and obviously if people can snap into things that are already in your fixed fee menu. It sounds like that's gonna be like the most accessible you know exactly what you're gonna pay which I think that's part of the challenge too for people when probably dealing with large law firms like oh. That I need blah blah Blah How much is going to cost me it depends and it sounds like your X fee menu Once you get started is pretty open and transparent you know exactly what the starting cost or maybe the entire cost will be as long as you're not customizing.

42:24.79
Grant Lahring
Yeah, but.

42:36.85
mike_flywheel
Which as a startup can be massively valuable to manage Cash flow and unexpected costs are not what you want to start getting into and you're burning through cash and especially if you know challenging Econom is like right now.

42:40.77
Grant Lahring
Only.

42:48.32
Grant Lahring
Totally we research these costs to make them make sure that they're lower than the national average but the weird thing to remember is like how bizarre the outliers can be like I've talked to a lot of founders and heard a lot of horror stories but like a couple that stand out to me is like 1 woman who literally gave 50% of her company to the law firm.

43:07.96
mike_flywheel
Wow.

43:08.17
Grant Lahring
For the incorporation work. Um like her company essentially dead in the water from there like no one would invest in it. No one would touch it. It was garbage I had another person who spent 15 grand on their incorporation and like like we do that for like six hundred bucks and that's like. You can also just go to the registry incorporate yourself like at the end of the day like this is a thing that people can do but some people run into these opportunistic situations or just bad luck or bad communication or whatever it is and it ruins their company before they even get off the ground and that makes me really sad and that's one of the reasons. Why. Really like what I'm doing because not only am I building a company for my own mission. But I'm helping other people build companies for their missions. That's a it's a good thing.

43:50.56
mike_flywheel
Yeah I love that now where are you guys based and and how big's the team today. Okay.

43:56.74
Grant Lahring
Um, we're based in Calgary, we're up around like 21 people 22 people yeah

44:02.75
mike_flywheel
And but available. Obviously it's a digital platform so available Canada wide. Okay, wow wow and and but majority of the team are out in out in Calgary cool.

44:07.34
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah, and most of our lawyers are in Toronto. So the majority of our network is there majority of the gallery. Yeah yeah.

44:20.75
mike_flywheel
Of you ever coming down in toroo toronto to visit the lawyers. Let let me know I will hope. Okay, Okay, yeah, yeah, you know what's hilarious I almost need to book a day and a half of just filling and recording podcasts during collision. The number of founders I've talked to who are either coming back.

44:24.53
Grant Lahring
I'll definitely will. We'll be done there for a few things but collision. But least.

44:40.65
mike_flywheel
During collision or we're goingnna be in town during collision I might just like book an entire day at my house of like hey we're just hosting a party upstairs and like back to back podcast recording downstairs. It just feels like I should do something like that'd be a lot of fun are.

44:53.24
Grant Lahring
Yeah, count us in. We're ah one of thing we do every year is we did last year now we're going to make it every year is we hold this big Yacht party at collision. So it's this like wild kind of invite only experience on the boat and and we're looking forward to that.

45:06.11
mike_flywheel
All right? Well well you know what? you know my email now. So we we got we' sync up on timing I'll host my my backyard party a different day so we'll coordinate that whole week that sounds super cool. So what's what's been like that that in itself is cool. So maybe that is like the highlight. But.

45:16.31
Grant Lahring
Sounds great.

45:23.30
mike_flywheel
What's been sort of like the coolest or most interesting piece of you know what? you've been working on a good lawyer as part of the journey.

45:32.68
Grant Lahring
I think that is actually being part of it like because we are based in Calgary which is very much isolated from the rest of Canada um, but when I fly to Toronto and I fly to Montreal when I fly to Vancouver to a tech conference or something I run into our customers there. And that is the coolest thing because like you mean someone, you've never met before who's like hey it's good lawyer and they like they tell you about their experience and how like you know we got this thing done for them whether it's patent or whatever. Um, it just it never gets old I love it.

45:58.81
mike_flywheel
Yeah, just like the the meeting people who you've impacted because you don't know every one of their names. They have 5000 people and growing. But but when you have those experiences. It's super cool and if you're anything like me. You get to support them through legal I just love doing this I could if I if someone I mean I guess if one day you heard it here first on the pitch please podcast if Mike Tibito is ever rich enough to be a Vc literally. That's what I'm doing with my life like if I can just talk to startups.

46:27.50
Grant Lahring
3 pick a.

46:31.34
mike_flywheel
Businesses Small businesses people trying to change the world to learn about what they're up to ask questions just to be curious like I could just I could do this for hours a day and never get bored it would it would literally be the best. What What would you say? um.

46:43.32
Grant Lahring
That's amazing.

46:47.47
mike_flywheel
What's like been the biggest like low or most challenging thing that you've sort of encountered or or gone through as ah as an individual or team with a good lawyer.

46:59.81
Grant Lahring
Um, lowest low. Um I think it was certainly hardring covid just because it was like depressing I to see everybody like ah we're goingnna startup kind of sucks when we're just like sitting at home on Zoom but that wasn't.

47:16.51
Grant Lahring
Lowest I think I mean part of it I'll just like open this up because I think a lot of founders feelless. We haven've never talk about it. Um, it can get quick conflicted with within the founding team like we've got some pretty ferocious arguments I know sometimes we'll use very strong words and go home mighty pissed.

47:25.67
mike_flywheel
And.

47:35.68
Grant Lahring
Or spal 8 to try and work it out. Um, so I'd say there's lots of conflict in there. We resolve it and we get through it and we keep working together and I wouldn't try to anyone on the team for anyone else I think we got a fantastic team. But I think I'd be lying to say that we don't fight sometimes.

47:50.19
mike_flywheel
No, and I'm glad you addressed that like I think some people just think like oh yeah, you just everything goes the way you you expected. Everyone's is happy and things just there's definitely in every startup's journey hard difficult discussions and. There's going to be emotions and things that are said but I think the idea is can you work through them as a team does it make you better. You know, allowing yourselves to make wrong decisions along the way that you iterate upon and learn from versus like holding them against people. You really? you know it's kind of Cliche but it's that growth mindset like if you're not willing to like work through those things fail a couple times not hold it against people. You're not really going to build something that continues to get better. So I'm glad you you address It is there something that you guys do that you find works. Well. When you're having those challenging dialogues or debates and I'll give you an example I was talking to the team at Dyingne the other day whenever they have a really difficult decision or discussion. Um, and they're ah a food ah food app that helps with meetups at and different restaurants. So. It's huge for foodies.

48:55.21
Grant Lahring
Bit.

49:05.68
mike_flywheel
But their number 1 restaurant they go to when they're having a dialogue is one of the founders hosts and cook's dinner and over the food they dialogue until it's done. Is there something that hopefully you guys don't get into like illegal like you have a pop-up courtroom or I don't know. Yeah.

49:19.74
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah, we take it to court Mike we see.

49:23.33
mike_flywheel
Like what? what? What do you? do you guys just have like a best practice or something that you find works works well for for working and hashing through those tough tough dialogues.

49:30.78
Grant Lahring
We really? don't if everyone's going to need tips. Let me know. The only thing I think we've done that's pretty good was we did an offsite retreat at one point where we like just did all strategic planning and a multiple day weekend kind of thing which I think sometimes it just takes time to reach alignment and. Those discussions were happening basically at like basically we have a meeting from like 4 to 8 during the work week which was just stupid like everyone was tired and pissed and like and hungry and their girlfriends are waiting for me at home. So like. Having the offsite really helped us like allocate the time for those alignment conversations which are definitely the most painful and kind of approach it at least fresh so that's my my fun tip but we're learning as we go and.

50:18.39
mike_flywheel
Yeah I mean I think that's like in itself. Partially great advice as well because sometimes allocating time to patiently have the entire dialogue The pressure cooker component is great some moments but otherwise like. Someone may not be fully present because they're stressed that they have to make a home for something and so emotions or dialogues can fly in different ways in unintended ways and so I think setting aside space and time when people can be fresh to have those and and. Um, where when possible bringing the team together for those really hard dialogues I know like during Covid things were challenging but virtual is great for a lot of things but sometimes some of those harder dialogues watching people's body language facial expression the tone like it's harder to.. It's harder to hate somebody when they're like you know, just within arm's reach of you. You sort of get into a different state of empathy a little bit So I Think that's great advice. Um the the yeah yeah.

51:23.61
Grant Lahring
Awesome! Well thanks for having me Mike and thanks for all the questions appreciate it.

51:28.40
mike_flywheel
Yeah, like next next like six months what is the next like six months have in store for good lawyer. You just raised a seed round hurt you here first maybe only like what's sort of like the next six month horizon and some big rocks of things you guys are trying to unlock.

51:43.21
Grant Lahring
Totally I mean we're grinding like our strategy for this year is to like really just tighten up our financials in our bottom line because the environment's really top to to you right? Now we're not sure when it'll return or if it'll return so we just want to make sure we're in a good position. We got lots of runway right now but we don't want to be sure on runway at the end of the year we never want to beg and want to go to business so we're basically driving to make as much money as possible in the next six months um and so far it's looking pretty good years off to a great start.

52:15.27
mike_flywheel
Amazing! And if people are looking to find out more or if there's things they could do to help you move faster. Obviously there'll be a wide variety of people listening. Are sort of like the top 2 or top 3 asks that you would kind of put out there and we can make sure they're included in the show notes as well.

52:33.87
Grant Lahring
Totally well if you know anyone who needs a fractional general counsel that's number one if they're kind of growing business that is finding themselves spending way too much on outside council. This is the perfect time to give a shot. So not going try to push anything on you but we'll help you identify if that's a good fit for your business at this time similarly if you know anyone we should talk to in the community who works with these kind of scalups. Always happy to take an intro you can just hit me up on Linkedin or see me an email It's just grant up good lawyer. Yeah.

53:06.83
mike_flywheel
That that's awesome and are you guys looking to bring on more lawyers at this time as well or incubators things of that nature.

53:16.48
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah, if you've got a good lawyer. Let us know if you got to get the incubator or startup support program. That's good to you just ah, feel free to make the intro I Love that.

53:25.72
mike_flywheel
That's awesome and I feel like there's probably some path I don't know that I have anyone specifically in my network but I know you mentioned owner earlier and they're part of Rbc but I almost feel like there's like an amazing banks energy here across all of their small business teams that I'm sure if they're listening in. And they want to be the the bank of the future they probably would want to reach out to good lawyer if they're not already in talks and and jump all over that with their advisors cool before we wrap up. There's 1 thing I make every guest do grant.

53:51.87
Grant Lahring
Um, totally.

53:58.38
mike_flywheel
And that is I learned the hard way that saying pitch please podcast over and over is really hard. So I let you take as many sips of water as you need and see how many times you can say pitch please podcast fast in a row without screwing up I keep count.

54:03.23
Grant Lahring
Um, yeah.

54:15.44
mike_flywheel
I'll never tell you where you rank you'll have to listen to the other podcast to see here if you're the top or the bottom but I'm gonna have to do something for the person that ends up at the top feels like it's gonna have to be around collision time I Guess there's gonna have to be like a free bottle at tequila waiting for the winner of that at my house or something along the line. So when you're ready.

54:20.80
Grant Lahring
Okay.

54:29.70
Grant Lahring
Okay.

54:33.72
mike_flywheel
Pitch Please Podcast is many times fast I'll keep count. Let's hear it.

54:37.20
Grant Lahring
I Love it pitch Please podcast pitch please podcast pitch please podcast pitch please public I'm fucked up quiet. Ah.

54:43.13
mike_flywheel
Ah, air 4 or I don't know that I don't even know if that's that might not be the worst. There might be less than four out there. Um, but again, you're gonna have to listen and here either way maybe maybe 4 gets to the bottle at tequila. Um I love it. Grant.

54:56.72
Grant Lahring
I'll date.

54:59.23
mike_flywheel
Thanks for thanks for hopping in today. Love the dialogue love to hear what good lawyers up to and you know your own aspirations to help the community around you and help other startups and small businesses thrive any closing words on your end.

55:11.96
Grant Lahring
Um, know just thanks for having me and I hope you ah talk again see.

55:14.73
mike_flywheel
Thanks again. Grant have a great night.