Jenn Gore: She Sold Her Law Firm, Ran Intake For 500 People, Then Walked Away

Welcome to episode 59 of The Earley Show, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is joined for the second time by Jenn Gore, founder of Evergreen Business Coaching.

Check out the episode below. You can also enjoy it on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Jenn and Chris go deep on the intake system she installs in firms around the country: the dedicated new client line, why manual lead entry both loses cases and invites outright fraud, the audit process that catches misclassified leads, and the 30-day chase sequence most firms never build. She also explains Greg Crabtree’s “black hole” between $2 million and $5 million, why the most broken department in most firms is production rather than intake, and why she would not sign a long-term CRM contract right now.

About our guest:

Jenn Gore is the founder of Evergreen Business Coaching, where she works with personal injury firm owners around the country on intake, operations and scale. She founded Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group, which was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies for three consecutive years, and later sold equity in the firm to create Sweet James Georgia — serving as a partner and running intake nationally for Sweet James before completing a full sale and exiting. She practiced personal injury law for 14 years, focusing on wrongful death, trucking and motorcycle cases. She hosts an annual business plan workshop in Atlanta where firm owners pitch their plans for live, Shark Tank-style feedback.

Connect with Jenn:

Visit Jenn's website
Follow Jenn on LinkedIn
Follow Jenn on Instagram

Email Jenn at [email protected]

Topics covered

-Selling a firm into a national platform — and what the transition actually feels like

-Why revenue predictability in a contingency practice requires intake, marketing and production to all be predictable

-The dedicated new client line, and why attribution falls apart without one

-API integration between call tracking and intake software vs. manual entry

-Intake fraud: leads sold to competitors, and leads misclassified as unqualified to protect conversion numbers

-Daily call auditing, and using AI call summaries to trigger deeper review

-The 30-day chase sequence and why two days is not enough

-The fundamentals that put a firm in the top 5% of intake operations

-Greg Crabtree’s “black hole”: why profit disappears between $2M and $5M

-Labor as the number one expense — and the lag between paying for work and collecting on it

-Why production, not intake, is the most broken department in most firms

-CRMs vs. AI platforms, and why long-term software contracts are risky right now

-Coaching second-in-commands and building a world-class COO

-Staying open to career change, and writing your future down

People and resources mentioned

-Sweet James Accident Attorneys — sweetjames.com

-Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group

-Greg Crabtree — Simple Numbers, Big Profits

-James Clear — Atomic Habits

-Chad Dudley — on never taking your eyes off intake

-Ryan McKeen — Best Era, LLC; the Best Era Slack community

-Revolutionary Era — Best Era’s Boston event, Suffolk University Law School

-AI Era — Best Era’s AI conference in Charleston, SC (2026 edition: AI Era 2.o, November 5–6)

-Lunch Hour Legal Marketing — Tennessee, August

-PILMMA — where Chris saw Greg Crabtree speak

-TLU (Trial Lawyers University)

-Mike Morse — on how a couple of ideas can change your trajectory

-Mickey Love — previous Earley Show guest, on constantly curious people

-Lead Docket, Law Ruler, CallRail, RingCentral, Eve

Learn more about Chris' practice, the Earley Law Group, here!

Check out Chris' book "Scaling The Wall" here!

The Earley Show is a part of the Answering Legal Podcast Network.

Interested in learning more about Answering Legal? Book an appointment to speak with us here!

You can also give us a call at 631-866-0801.

Episode Transcript:

Chris Earley (00:01)

Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Earley Show, sponsored by our friends over at Answering Legal. I'm your host, Chris Earley, and as you know on The Earley Show, we always bring you the very best and very brightest in the legal industry. Today we have a guest, it's her second time on. She was actually on episode number eight, two and a half years ago. And I'm really excited to catch up with Jenn Gore, who's always getting after it, always out and about and growing and advancing herself. And I love that about her. So she, Ryan McKeen and John Morgan are the three people that are return guests. So that's what I think about Jenn having her on. Super smart, knowledgeable, generous with her knowledge. I'm excited to catch up with you, Jenn. How are you?

Jenn Gore (00:45)

Hi, thanks for having me back on. It feels like forever since I've been on the show.

Chris Earley (00:51)

It's it's been a minute, it's been a while. So I was looking back at our episode, it was November of 23. You and I talked about we talked about scaling, delegation, leadership, right? Those some of the things we kind of talked about, but I know that you've, you know, you've you've really transformed, right? And and taken a certain path. And I'm so excited, so excited to hear that. Would you get us up to speed? I'm sure it's been a

Jenn Gore (01:13)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Earley (01:19)

busy two and a half years, but get us up to speed. What's been going on in your world?

Jenn Gore (01:24)

Yeah, so apparently my entire life changes in two and a half years. I think back then I was not divorced. I was going through the beginning stages of getting divorced, so that was a big change in my life. And then in twenty twenty five I sold half the equity or Portion of the equity in my firm to create Sweet James, Georgia. So my firm transitioned in rebranded and was sold into a national firm. Sweet James is a firm out of California, third largest in the country in terms of size and revenue. And I became a partner in Sweet James, and that was a lot of learning lessons having been, you know, in a firm, my firm was about 40 people and Being in a firm that had over 500 was an experience, you know, with a lot of lessons. I was working, running Sweet James, Georgia and also running intake nationally for Sweet James and you know, just all of the the insights that I picked up from that experience. And then ultimately after the full transition was complete, I exited a full sale of my firm and parted ways with Sweet James. And in the meantime, I had starting my consulting business. I think around the time I was on your podcast 2023, I was coaching a couple law firms around the country. I had this feeling like my true passion was doing a lot of the coaching. And I was finding myself in ways where I was coaching my friends and everyone would always say like you should do this for real. And Finally, when I left Sweet James, I had the space to like say, like, let me do this more intentionally. And I think a lot of my coaching clients like have seen the transition of the business. Now it was very like, let's just get on a call. Now I'm like really their systems and there's a whole they they can book their time and it's just very different. And so for the last four months, the

Jenn Gore (03:40)

Coaching business has really been taking off, although I've also taken a lot of time to myself to recover from being a lawyer for 14 years. I've been on traveling a lot, I've been speaking at a lot of conferences, but I've also been really dialed in on my wellness routine and just trying to, you know, process all the change that I've been through in the last several years.

Chris Earley (04:06)

So, you know, two and a half years ago we spoke. You you are the same person, but you're not, because you've gone through the tra you know, you've gone through develop you've got you've you've gone through evolutions, right? As we all, you know, do. I'd like to hear from you how are you how have you transformed? Like what have you learned in this two and a half years that you didn't know when we first, you know, talked on this podcast? Like How have you w what have some of your biggest use you mentioned insights. What have been some of your biggest insights in this journey past couple years?

Jenn Gore (04:40)

Well, I think that all law firms, no matter the size, have their problems. And I used to have this fantasy, I think that if I got to a certain size, all the problems would go away. And that's not the truth. You have to kind of develop a love for solving problems if you want to run a f law firm. And obviously there's better problems to have than you know, there's two five million dollar problems are better than hundred thousand dollar problems, right? you've experienced that.

Chris Earley (05:06)

Totally.

Jenn Gore (05:09)

And you know, running a contingency business comes with a lot of pressure. And I've seen that pressure in all different arenas. And the financial pressure that contingency businesses can create is immense because you can be a smart business owner, you can be savvy, and you can blow a $200,000 hole in your budget by two checks not coming in. And

Chris Earley (05:09)

Totally.

Chris Earley (05:37)

Yes.

Jenn Gore (05:38)

You know, and I'm sure you've experienced that. And it is the goal when you run a contingency business to try to make revenue as predictable as possible, which requires a lot of systems, a lot of intentionality. And like making sure the revenue is predictable means you have to make sure intake, marketing, and production are predictable. And that all those pieces that lead up to the revenue are in place or you will have a roller coaster of hell called a law firm that will make you think you're insane.

Chris Earley (06:10)

Yes, yes.

Jenn Gore (06:16)

And that's like what people don't talk about.

Chris Earley (06:20)

love that honesty because like this is hard shit. It's not for like the faint of heart. This is like super hard. So just to drill down a little

Jenn Gore (06:26)

It's easier. It's easier to run other types of businesses in some ways. Like if you have a predictable, like reven subscription-based business, that is a totally different animal than a contingency business.

Chris Earley (06:41)

Hundred percent. You know, it's interesting. I never would've thought this, but obviously as you are w you know, you know very well. Private equity is salivating at the idea of acquiring PI firms because they love the model, right? So if a savvy business owner can really, you know, get things tight and predict, it becomes less, less crazy. But I never really thought, Jenn, on the outside, we'd be an attractive industry to to acquire. But I guess I guess we are because because there is an element. Yeah, the margins are very attractive for for outside investors. But

Jenn Gore (07:07)

Margins.

Chris Earley (07:13)

just to drill down into your insights for a second, you said you're running the national intake side of things for the business. What are some intake things you learned? 'Cause I'm an intake just maniac. I'd love to hear what you learned.

Jenn Gore (07:24)

Okay. So I'm very obsessed with intake. I had a very tight intake at Atlanta Personal Injury. To be honest, when I went to Sweet James, they had told me intake was one of their weaker positions. And now we've re overhauled it. I really think it's a thousand percent better. But we were missing a ton of calls per day. and you would think at a large size firm that's not happening. It's happening for sure. I mean

Chris Earley (07:45)

Oof.

Jenn Gore (07:52)

building a world-class intake puts you in a category of about 5% of firms. And what I want to encourage people to do is this is my intake flow that I work with a lot of law firms around the country. Your new client line should be a dedicated new client line. I'm sure you have that. We do not want

Chris Earley (08:10)

Mm. Mm. Honestly, Jenn, we we don't, but that's very appealing. I hear you, yeah.

Jenn Gore (08:15)

Okay. So we we cannot track marketing data and get a lot of attribution if we don't have one line that we are tracking for data purposes. So what I tell a lot of people is that if you should have a separate reception line and a separate new client line. And you train clients that when they become a client of the firm, they now call the reception line. You can also do a phone tree where it's like new clients here, existing clients or whatever there. I don't Yeah, everything is a test to what the what the toleration point is. Some people don't like phone trees, but at the end of the day, we need one phone line that when it rings, predictably, res reliably, we can expect it's going to be a new client. And that volume we want to track on that number as it's growing, as it's decreasing. And we want to feed that phone number into an intake CRM.

Chris Earley (08:49)

Right.

Chris Earley (09:01)

Right. Right.

Jenn Gore (09:13)

So do you have an intake CRM? Is it Lead Docket or Law Ruler?

Chris Earley (09:14)

Yes, definitely. Yep. You got you got that right. Lead Docket, that’s right.

Jenn Gore (09:20)

So when a call comes into your firm for Lead Docket, do you guys manually enter it in?

Chris Earley (09:27)

No, it's integrated through CallRail. Yes.

Jenn Gore (09:30)

API. Yeah. So that is the gold standard that what you want to create a dashboard that is like a call center. That when a call comes in, it hits that dashboard and then it has to be, you know, transitioned from new lead to whatever it is. Most firms have manual entry. So that means that if you're in the car on the golf course and a call comes in and you're taking the call, that call never makes it into the system.

Chris Earley (09:55)

Right.

Jenn Gore (09:57)

And so that is a major hole in the bucket for many people. And manual entry also leads to a lot of fraud. So what I've seen is intake centers, intake in firms where you have moles, you have people, especially in mid sized firms, where they work for somebody else. And let's say a tractor trailer case comes in, that's a manual entry system, they then take that lead and sell it for $10,000. And it never hits your system ever.

Chris Earley (10:24)

Really? Are you serious? That's crazy.

Jenn Gore (10:26)

Yeah, it's fraud. I mean, think about if I got a wrongful death case, you have a forty person firm, I'm one of four intake people in your firm, and I know that there's other players in the market that will pay me ten thousand dollars to push this lead to them.

Chris Earley (10:41)

God, holy smokes.

Jenn Gore (10:44)

I've seen it. I mean, in masterminds I was in, people had this happening and they caught it. So we have to have auditing systems in our intake, and you have to audit every single call that comes in that line. Now, the good thing with AI is now we can do different measures with like Zoom phones where we can set triggers where all the calls are summarized with AI and certain key terms are.

Chris Earley (10:49)

my God, Jesus.

Jenn Gore (11:11)

like triggers for deeper insight and audits. But we need to know why a lead was considered qualified or not qualified. Cause that's another piece of fraud is that people will mark leads unqualified that are actually qualified. And it's also a lot of times because they don't want to diminish their conversion numbers.

Chris Earley (11:26)

Right. Totally.

Chris Earley (11:34)

High percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenn Gore (11:37)

this call. So any call that came into your firm that day should be audited by an intake manager as either qualified or un disquali or unqualified. And the manager should be working with the team to say, hey, you improperly class this. And what's your percentage rate for improperly classing qualified leads?

Chris Earley (11:58)

That's fa fascinating.

Jenn Gore (11:58)

And you know, yeah. So then once it hits the intake software like Lead Docket, there is a chase sequence. There are email campaigns, there's a whole management of that lead. Let's say you don't convert it on the first time. There's now a chase sequence. It's built out, it's very robust. We're chasing that lead for 30 days. Many firms, like when I arrived at Sweet James, we were only if we didn't convert the lead, we didn't really call it back after two days.

Chris Earley (12:29)

really? Okay.

Jenn Gore (12:30)

So the push of a 30-day chase, think about it. People are busy. They're in the hospital. They're dealing with their car. It's like we take it personal that they didn't get back to us. we're just not gonna, we're upset. They didn't call us back. It's like they have a lot going on. And you know, people are intrepid and it's in it's intimidating. They're intrepid.

Chris Earley (12:41)

Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

Jenn Gore (12:59)

They're intrepidated to is that the right word? They're they're nervous to call a law firm and to engage legal services. So it yeah. So if it takes them two weeks to hire you, you should still be chasing. We can't cold call people. So once they cold they call us, the door is open. Why would you shut the door?

Chris Earley (13:08)

Totally. They're freaked out. Totally.

Chris Earley (13:21)

Right. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent.

Jenn Gore (13:28)

So those are some of my intake principles. And from all the work I've done with law firms sitting in masterminds, being in all different size firms, coaching the firms I'm coaching. If you just do the fundamentals, if you answer every call, if you're backed up by an answering service, all of our calls are, you know, 24 7 backed up by an answering service. Because even if you have two intake agents, There could be a peak time where you have three people calling. And then now it's going to a voicemail. You should do a heat map of your intakes, knowing when are your peak call times. All of these things, if you just execute the fundamentals, if you can sign people with digital signature on text on the first call, if you have intake conversion training, if you teach people how to be more empathetic, most of the times you can relate. conversion rate to empathy. And AI now is rating people on empathy and coaching people. So if you do those fundamentals, you are in a five percent category. It's not hard to win.

Chris Earley (14:31)

Yeah.

Chris Earley (14:41)

I I didn't expect us to really go down this rabbit hole, but I freaking love it. Because like I said, I'm an intake I'm an intake maniac and I really learn a lot from these conversations. I learn a lot from Chad Dudley, right? He says great great firms do not ever take their eyes off of intake, right? And I gotta be honest, Jenn, it's the lifeblood, but like you could easily lose that tractor trailer case, which could obvious you could lose a career defining case by sloppy intake, actually. Like frankly, that's that's the stakes that are that are involved here.

Jenn Gore (14:45)

Mm-hmm.

Jenn Gore (14:53)

Yes.

Jenn Gore (14:58)

No it's the lifeblood.

Chris Earley (15:11)

And so I have talked about this. I meet with my intake every every day. It's only department. I interact with my intake more than I do my my COO, CFO. Like it's like numero uno, it's not even close. And I know you're you feel me on that because it's like you get it, right? The more sensitive you are to intake, the more dollars you're gonna make, more people you're gonna serve, the more your your firm will grow. One thing I think I'm getting in my own way because I hear you on the separate phone number. Right. And I've heard others talk about that not a lot, but sometimes I'm sometimes Jenn concerned, well, the signed up client is gonna keep calling no matter how much I tell them. They're gonna keep signed you know, how do you handle that to be really clear?

Jenn Gore (15:53)

It's just a training thing and just the mo the main thing is long term. We are looking for a way to track data and to have even if there is a percent of statistical error, we want to make sure that we have a phone number to pull data from that we can, you know, try to funnel as we teach the f the clients. I think that ends up being more of an exception than a rule. And so you know, the bigger issue is we want that phone number not going. I mean, the good news is you have your phone number going into the intake system. So it's being traced there. But you know, everything in this type of arena is an experiment and you have to see what gives you the closest.

Chris Earley (16:35)

Right. Yeah.

Jenn Gore (16:47)

To the results and the data and the information you're looking for. Now I will say I host a business plan workshop every single year in Atlanta. It's a really fun event where law firms come from all over the country, they pitch their business plan, and we Shark Tank style tear apart their business plan. And it's been really fun because people can develop their the skill of building a business plan. But the reason that I bring this up is.

Chris Earley (17:06)

Cool.

Jenn Gore (17:15)

This past January we had this plan, this business plan. And you just said the thing that I think a lot of people say, like intake and marketing is, you know, such a focus, right? Because it's new business. It's and I used to think that too. Like, okay, like if there's one area I'm not taking my foot off of, it's intake. But what I've been seeing now, and it was amazing, like every single firm that came to this business plan, it was kind of like a running joke by the end. You wanna know the area of the firm that was the most messed up?

Chris Earley (17:52)

Intake.

Chris Earley (17:56)

What?

Jenn Gore (17:57)

Production.

Chris Earley (17:59)

operations.

Jenn Gore (18:02)

Well, production of legal services, meaning many people wanted to do more marketing. They wanted to do, you know, obviously cleaning up their intake. But even if I if I was to give them the magic pill that they wanted of double the leads, they can't even service from a predic projection production standpoint the work that they have. And I was in that position many years where

Chris Earley (18:23)

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenn Gore (18:31)

you don't have the you turn up the marketing, you're good at marketing, and then you don't have the manpower, the people to actually keep the work flowing at the speed that it should be, at the growth rate, the marketing's growing.

Chris Earley (18:46)

Yeah.

Jenn Gore (18:48)

But everybody wants more marketing.

Chris Earley (18:51)

Yeah.

Jenn Gore (18:53)

And so one of my big messages this year is if you're gonna dial up marketing, you need to immediately dial up hiring because having five million dollars in the pipeline that you can't pull out still makes you feel very broke.

Chris Earley (19:03)

Right.

Chris Earley (19:08)

Right.

Chris Earley (19:12)

Yeah, you're gonna suffer. It's hard, yeah.

Jenn Gore (19:15)

Because you have all that gold, but until it gets processed, it doesn't deliver any ca cash or value or for the client or for the firm.

Chris Earley (19:26)

I'm with you, right? So let's look at from the reverse. That's a better way, right? Look, you know, make sure your capacity is there before you turn the spigot and get more leads in, right? And and I did that. I I screwed that up among a million and one other things, Jenn. I screwed that up. I didn't have the operations tight. What happens? Case values, right? It's not where you need it. Down directly, because everything is is compromised. Right. Everything, bad reviews, like all that shit is gonna pile up.

Jenn Gore (19:44)

Down.

Jenn Gore (19:48)

Cases aren't managed.

Chris Earley (19:54)

I I'm thinking of an assembly line, it's just everything is getting jacked up and not smooth, right? Yeah, it's all messed up. No, no yeah, yeah, it's like slow No, it's smart, like that's that's a very valid point. I and I'm a I'm a I've lived that, so I can speak to that, you know.

Jenn Gore (19:57)

It's yeah. But it's like we want more, we want more.

Jenn Gore (20:12)

And it feels counterintuitive when you're having a cash crunch or you're like not getting the revenue in that I need to actually hire more.

Chris Earley (20:23)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's k it's kinda like running the wrong way, like faster and faster, right? It's like

Jenn Gore (20:30)

It's like it's like I get on calls with people and they're like, I'm just not making enough money, I gotta cut people and I'm like, No, no, no, you gotta like double your pr staff right now.

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Chris Earley (20:39)

Right, right, right, right, right. So this is completely fascinating. what tell me about the coaching, right? Evergreen business coaching, right? What a couple questions. First, who's an avatar client for you? Who's who's a client that's a good fit for for the service?

Jenn Gore (20:51)

Yeah.

Jenn Gore (20:58)

So, you know, I really like working with people that are ambitious and action oriented and they're wanting to scale their firm. I have a range of clients. I've had some clients that literally they started their firm with me and maybe they left a career, started their firm, and now they're two years in and their firm has gone from zero to thirty people. I have,

Chris Earley (21:23)

Well.

Jenn Gore (21:25)

Other firms that are larger that need a lot of help on intake. I have had, you know, firms of like 10 to 20 people, a lot of firms in that size. What I will say is that there is a pain point in growing a contingency based firm at around $2 million. And there's a book, yeah.

Chris Earley (21:50)

Raise my hand. I I I agree wholeheartedly.

Jenn Gore (21:53)

There's there there's a book called Simple Numbers, Big Profits, written by Greg Crabtree. I don't know if you've ever read it, but I read it.

Chris Earley (22:01)

He spoke, I saw him speak a couple weeks ago at PILMMA. So really brilliant guy. Brilliant. Brilliant.

Jenn Gore (22:05)

great, I love him. So did he talk about the black hole?

Chris Earley (22:10)

I don't know. Talk about it.

Jenn Gore (22:12)

So the black hole, he's if you read the book, he discusses the concept that between two million, some people it's one and a half million, to about four and a half to five million is called the black hole in business. And he has done the books and accounting for hundreds of professional services businesses. And so he comes from the perspective of viewing people's numbers. And when I describe this concept, I think you'll resonate with it.

Chris Earley (22:33)

Yeah.

Jenn Gore (22:42)

You're at a point at that range between two to five million dollars where you're having to invest a lot of money and time into infrastructure. So suddenly you need an HR manager, suddenly you need an intake manager, suddenly you need an operations director. But the amount of people that you have is actually kind of small. So when you install these non revenue producing people, systems, investments. The scale of economy isn't really there. So it's a massive expense for a little uptick in revenue. And this black hole, if you don't navigate it very strategically and you stay stuck in between two to five million dollars, there's very little profit. Because let's say you hire an operations director. If you doubled the people from 20 to 40 and you got up to 10 million or whatever.

Chris Earley (23:28)

Mm-hmm.

Jenn Gore (23:39)

You're not gonna have to hire another operations director, right? But the cost of that operations director, you could spread over 40 people versus spreading over 15 or 10 or 20. And so you have no scales of economy between 2 million and 5 million. And if you get stuck in that range, you're just

Chris Earley (23:42)

Right, right, right.

Chris Earley (23:51)

Yes.

Jenn Gore (24:00)

Wondering why am I working so hard? And actually, I'm not very profitable. My profit margins are so much lower than they were when I was at a million dollars. And if you don't understand that dynamic going on, you can feel extremely frustrated. And you're chasing your tail because you're wondering, I'm making all these investments, but they're not paying. But it's because you don't have any skills of economy yet.

Chris Earley (24:10)

yeah.

Chris Earley (24:29)

Right. Right. A hundred percent it makes sense. You know, he he spoke, he talked I w I wrote he was I've heard him speak before, super smart guy. He said, You gotta look your balance sheet, right? I'm not a financial wizard. He said, You gotta look your balance sheet. He also said, like, and this isn't this is really obvious, but when I heard it, I was kinda like, shit, you have to the key to this whole puzzle is maximizing your labor ratio, right? Like getting the most you can because that's a direct impact

Jenn Gore (24:31)

Does that make sense?

Jenn Gore (24:56)

Yes.

Chris Earley (24:59)

on on revenue because as we know marketing is a more expensive to require case. The key is, you know, harnessing AI, having the best team members, you know, harnessing AI as well, but really getting a lot because some of your team members are

Jenn Gore (25:12)

Well, your labor is your biggest cost in a law firm. So it's interesting. It's maybe he's now talking in AI terms where I talk heard him talk a few years ago before his analysis on AI. So I'd love to hear what he's saying now. But labor is the number one expense for most law firms. And it's also a lag labor cost in contingency because the labor dollars you're paying today are for work that's going to be produced tomorrow.

Chris Earley (25:15)

Yes. That's the whole puzzle. Yeah.

Chris Earley (25:31)

Hundred percent.

Chris Earley (25:42)

Yes.

Jenn Gore (25:42)

So let's say you double your marketing, suddenly you need to double your labor, but the reality is you're not getting that money yet tomorrow. That money's coming in 12 months, you know?

Chris Earley (25:52)

You're getting more stressed. Profits going down, it's hard, it's hard.

Jenn Gore (25:58)

So my feeling on that was like you gotta get over five million. And when I coach people, it's like, what are we building? Are we building a two million and less firm or are we building a five million plus firm? Because to sit in that black hole, it's not that fun.

Chris Earley (26:12)

No, no, no, no. I mean, I've I'll be real with you. Like I've been there, you know, and I'm out, but I've been there. So I I understand that pain. I'm curious what I ask and I ask this question, because I know people want to know, like, what are your best clients doing better than the the other clients? Like, what are the ones that are really advancing and pushing ahead, executing, okay? Just getting shit done, just doing it.

Jenn Gore (26:33)

Executing. You know, co getting shit done. you know, hey, Jenn, we had this call. I'm gonna get my intake system together. I'm gonna go meet with all these vendors, I'm gonna get this done. Like getting on the call and like they the people that never get anything done, that's not as much fun. and you know, they have a desire to grow and learn and be uncomfortable and stretch. they don't wanna reinvent the wheel. They wanna be like, okay, you did it this way and I'm gonna trust you. We're gonna we're gonna go. They also are working on themselves personally and they're limiting beliefs.

Chris Earley (27:21)

You know, I had Mickey Love on recently and she said I said I asked that same question. She said, basically what you said, constantly curious people, constantly curious. Like just like kind of, you know, on you know, just this drive to like get a little bit better, right? And just a little bit I talk to my team every day. I I sent a message in the Slack channel, RingCentral, whatever. Let's get one percent better today. That's all we're trying to do. Let's deal with what we gotta deal with. We're gonna have some shit thrown us, but it's just one percent better. You do that over time. I was just reading earlier James Clear. Right. Atomic habits like this one percent stuff can get incredible returns. Like if you just keep at it, right? So exe so execution, just getting shit done, anything else that jumps off the page at you when you kind of think about your highest performing clients.

Jenn Gore (27:58)

Yes.

Jenn Gore (28:08)

yeah, they're they're making a lot of decisions. They're making a lot of moves. Not all of them are panning out, but they're not getting discouraged from the setbacks. Like that's how I was as a law firm. It's like there's a lot of stuff happening, and you know, you're making a hundred decisions. 80 of them are good. There's 20 that are like these are shitty, but because you're just actually moving the ball forward all the time, at some point you're pacing other people out because you're making so much change and movement. And the 20 bad decisions get overridden by all the good decisions, but they're willing to take risks and make moves. And you know, the other thing that I'm seeing with a lot of the people I'm coaching now, because now we have kind of a community, it's really cool, and they've

Chris Earley (28:44)

Sure.

Jenn Gore (28:57)

kind of made their own evergreen community in a weird way of like they all help they all help each other and support each other and they all are so craving to be around other law firms that are, you know, high growth. And now I have a lot of them traveling with me to conferences. So this was a hack I had years ago when I was being mentored by some law firms.

Chris Earley (29:00)

It's awesome.

Jenn Gore (29:22)

I would find out where my mentors were going and I would be like, I'm going there too.

Chris Earley (29:27)

That's cool. That's cool.

Jenn Gore (29:30)

And then, you know, you go to an event with somebody who has influence in the space or is connected. And then by you doing that, then tons of other doors get open. You get invited on podcasts, you get invited to opportunities, you get invited to dinners. So I think the people that are showing up, that are putting themselves out there, that are, you know, going to events, you know, with me, I think that has been you know, a lot of of growth for all of those people.

Chris Earley (30:05)

I love that. I'll throw in a mastermind, right? You sprinkle on a mastermind to that too. Cause I mean like I was joking with my wife. If I wasn't married with kids, I'd be living on airplanes. I would be traveling like, you know, t I'd just be all all on the road all the time 'cause there's so much shit out there. You know? For real.

Jenn Gore (30:21)

I know. We were just talking about that. Because I'm divorced and my kids aren't home like, you know, every five days, I was just like, okay, if your kids weren't around for five days, you'd probably be gone too.

Chris Earley (30:28)

Yeah.

Chris Earley (30:34)

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. No, there's there's no question. So she and I are laughing about that. So yeah, definitely mastermind. And I love the idea of where where your mentors going. You know, success leads clues, so so f probably a good a good thing to to to consider. I before we s start recording, you talked about correct me if I'm wrong, I think you said that you're coaching people outside of law as well, right? Other industries?

Jenn Gore (30:58)

Yeah, so I had a lot of legal touching businesses reach out to me to want to attend the business plan workshop. So a life care planning business, legal recruiter, just like businesses that were connected that maybe knew me. And I was a little apprehensive about like, can I help these people or whatever? And they ended up being such good additions to the program because they have some kick-ass businesses and

Chris Earley (31:17)

Right.

Chris Earley (31:20)

cool.

Jenn Gore (31:26)

I think some of the lawyers were like, damn, they're making this much money and they don't even have a law degree. What the hell am I doing? You know? And I think that was like a wake up call of like, hey, you went through all this, you built a law firm. If it's not making you a certain amount of money for all the risks that you're taking, for everything you had to do to get this law degree, like, what are you doing? You know? and those people have become,

Chris Earley (31:33)

Right, right.

Chris Earley (31:49)

Yeah.

Jenn Gore (31:56)

Great referral partners for the law firms and people got to really see, you know, the challenges of a different type of business. Cause sometimes when you've only ever seen a law firm, you don't understand the risks that other businesses carry. So I don't know. It's been really, really cool. And I'm kind of just following, you know, as the business organically grows, I'm now gonna be offering COO services. We are Seeing a lot of our law firm owners are struggling with their operations director, their office manager, and the development of a world-class COO. So I have a bunch of different people that have wanted to come work for Evergreen and who I'm vetting and I think are really amazing people. And we want to offer Coaching services to the second in command in the law firm to help them understand how do they be two steps ahead of the owner of the law firm.

Chris Earley (32:57)

Mm, mm-hmm.

Jenn Gore (32:58)

Because that's the real purpose of an operations or COO. They should be taking pain and suffering off of your plate.

Chris Earley (33:06)

For sure. For sure. For sure. And someone who has a high capacity, right? Like my COO, Hankins, like she's fantastic 'cause like I put a lot on her and she's she can handle it. She's tough, like and and smart and like she you know, you just said earlier, you know, some of our ideas are gonna be shitty, but some of them could change our entire trajectory entirely. Change of force or families, right? So like a couple ideas, right? Mike Morse talks about that a lot, right? A couple ideas could really get you ahead. If you s you you strike out a nine ideas, if one hits, you could be off the races. all right, I I I know you're very dialed in. You go to events, you talk to a lot of people. You're saying where do you think things are going? Obviously AI, but like where do you think the savvy entrepreneur, PI attorney, needs to know about. Like what do you see? We're talking you and I run it back for episode one fifty in a couple of years. Like what do you think things are looking like? How can we get ready for that and be ahead?

Jenn Gore (34:02)

I mean, we need to be on the cutting edge of AI. AI is entering all aspects of the firm. I talked to a firm in Huntington Beach at TLU who's using AI in so many advanced ways. you know, there's auditing with AI, there's case management with AI. A lot of these companies are developing. Mark my words right now, I do think that CRM systems are on their way out. I think they are in major threat.

Chris Earley (34:27)

Totally.

Jenn Gore (34:30)

It's a lot of pain to go between an AI system and a CRM. And I feel like the CRMs are going to be either purchased or sold or somehow integrated into the AI because it's a clunky system right now. And a lot of the AI right now is not reading the notes from the CRM. So if the notes are not being read, then the AI isn't really that good.

Chris Earley (34:54)

Right.

Jenn Gore (34:55)

And a lot of the CRM companies are defensively trying to block out the AI companies. And this battle has to come to some type of head here because it's not working. I think even like yesterday, Eve announced they're going to be doing an operating system. Like, keep your eyes and ears to the ground on that development because you're going to see a lot of CRM companies trying to lock.

Chris Earley (35:03)

Totally.

Chris Earley (35:12)

Mm.

Jenn Gore (35:22)

people into long term contracts because they know what is happening. And I wouldn't be like switching CRM software right now.

Chris Earley (35:24)

Totally. Totally.

Chris Earley (35:33)

No, for sure, for sure. I'm with you. I'm truly, Jenn, truly excited because like intake, everything's gonna be like holistic, integrated, right? It's not gonna be so like chopped up as it is piece. Yeah, right. It's gonna be tighter one, you know, one one thing encompassing so many complex things. I mean, like I I say this probably every day of my existence. It's never been a better time being an attorney entrepreneur. There's so many great things.

Chris Earley (35:58)

You you could do like social media case, you could use a virtual assistant across the world. Like you there's so many things. Like if you just have the nerve to start a business, the nerve to you've started a business to go through this hard stuff, right? That those holes we talked about, black hole, it's like the sky's the limit, right? There's such opportunity.

Jenn Gore (36:18)

Do I do think that, but I also think it's hard right now with so many versions of technology because what I see a lot of is people getting technology and then not really utilizing it to its full capacity. So, like, you know, I'll sit on a call with somebody and I'll say, like, let's go into your AI and let's do a file audit. A lot of these softwares now have file audit capacity, right? So we do a file audit.

Chris Earley (36:32)

For sure.

Chris Earley (36:44)

Mm-hmm.

Jenn Gore (36:47)

this record's missing. This was never requested. And so how we imagine work and how we rework our workflows is not to me like people haven't fully reworked their systems to come up with how work is done in 2026. And so, you know, you have the capability to run these file audits, but how are they being done? What's What reports are being delivered to the CEO that say they're being done? Like there's so much technology, but where is the rubber meeting the road? Where like where is the surety that it's actually being used?

Chris Earley (37:31)

Yeah, right. And you just said a little while ago, I hope the audience was taking notes that you shouldn't be getting into any long term deals right now. There's so much flux. A lot of attorneys, they get suckered into these deals by savvy salespeople. forget it. No, that's like financial recklessness right now, right? I mean short deals, right? We just got propositioned to do a deal. I was like, Hell no, no, one year's all we're gonna do. Because frankly, you know, the Eves of the world are, you know

Jenn Gore (37:44)

Five year, three year.

Chris Earley (37:59)

It's just getting better and better. So so that's that's super exciting. I let me ask you this. How can people get in touch with you if they wanna reach out about coaching and kinda you know find out more about what you're doing?

Jenn Gore (38:11)

Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn, Jenn Gore, Jennifer Gore, Evergreen Business Coaching, on Instagram, Jenn Gore Lawyer, and my website is www.evergreenbizcoaching.com. My email Jennifer at Evergreen Bizcoaching dot com. it's E V E R Green and then B-I-Z coaching dot com. I follow you on LinkedIn a lot and you've become like a very l big thought leader on LinkedIn. That's a big evolution since the last time we talked. I feel like your following has grown so rapidly.

Chris Earley (38:53)

1% Jenn every day, right? Like that shit adds up. I appreciate your kind of words. Yeah, just just doing doing the the stuff. But I was I was gonna share with you that you have this energy that's different than it was two and a half years ago. You're a little more like you're a little more like you seem looser and happier, frankly, to be honest with you. You know what I mean? Like I I'm I I'm serious with you. Yeah, you're like a little lighter, you know what I'm saying? Yo, it's a good thing. It's a I feel like I'm lighter too. It's like we bit then throw a lot of.

Jenn Gore (39:17)

This is this is good, right?

Chris Earley (39:23)

past couple of years are a lot of growth in many different areas, but like you have an energy that's, you know, i it's a little different and I'm and I'm happy to see 'cause I could see you're happy. I could see you're happy. And why the hell should you not be? Like that's what we're in this for, to be happy, to have great lives, have families to have great lives. So I could see that you're in the space where you belong and I'm happy for you.

Jenn Gore (39:30)

I love it.

Jenn Gore (39:43)

I appreciate that and I feel like you have really shared your story more. Maybe there was like parts of it that didn't come in my feed, but I feel like I've heard your story more and more. I know you sh you share your story a lot about how unlikely it was for you to become a lawyer, right?

Chris Earley (39:55)

Ha ha ha.

Chris Earley (40:02)

Totally. Yeah. I said to my wife the other day, Jenn, I never thought like this would be my life. Like I never imagined this, Jenn, to be totally honest with you. I never imagined it. Living a dream, man. I just I'm so grateful.

Jenn Gore (40:12)

And Do you feel like you have total clarity on where you wanna go? Because you know, you've come so far and if your former self knew where you are now, like, do you find it hard to know like what is the next level? I'm already living my dream.

Chris Earley (40:34)

Well, my why I kind of my why is to be the father I didn't have, so everything is dictated by that. So every family, like my wife and I would have a gr a a wonderful life. And so everything I do in my business gen, my life, is designed to propel that why forward every day. So I encourage the audience.

Jenn Gore (40:42)

Family.

Jenn Gore (40:55)

Yeah, and you do incorporate the kids into the business.

Chris Earley (40:57)

Yeah, 'cause that's my life. You know, it's like my kid and I just jammed before we hit record, I went to the police station, dropped off subs and they were like, thank you. They were so grateful, like showing to the community, like showing my kid service is important, you know? Stuff like that. But I'm living a dream, like I'm freaking so happy and and I could see that you're you're you know, you're just you're doing really well. I'm I really encourage the listener to reach out to Jenn, right? She knows what she's talking about. That's how we had her on for a second time. She's getting on an airplane, she's going to these events, shaking hands, she's an insider, she knows what's happening, so reach out if you're serious, but only reach out if you'll do the work, right? If you're not gonna execute, let's not waste it, let's not waste time.

Jenn Gore (41:35)

It was but you know it's funny, like people come around, like people will come and be like, I saw you two years ago, but I wasn't ready. And that happens, right? I'm sure you've you've had relationships that you met years ago and it took a time to come together. But yeah, what events are you going to next, Chris? Where will I see you? Where will you be?

Chris Earley (41:44)

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Earley (41:57)

I'm at I'm gonna be speaking at Lunch Hour Legal Marketing in Tennessee in August. I'm gonna be at a mastermind in October. I am going to Ryan McKeen's AI conference in Charleston in the fall. Next month, actually July. Yeah, next month, July, as we record this, I'll be at Ryan McKeen's event in Boston. I'm gonna be I think I'll be speaking a little bit at that.

Jenn Gore (42:04)

Awesome.

Jenn Gore (42:22)

What event is that?

Chris Earley (42:24)

It's it's I don't are you part of the Best Era community or no?

Jenn Gore (42:27)

Yeah, yeah, a l somewhat, yeah.

Chris Earley (42:30)

You should be on the Slack. It's like a wonderful place. There's great people there. I think you would really find value. So I I think I don't really know. I think it's just he's renting out a room at Suffolk Law School, like a seminar room, just to like just just talk for a day. And when Ryan talks, I listen. He's very up on Claude and all this stuff, right? So I'm excited for that. He's he's deep, you know, and he's another example of someone who, you know, has been through a lot of in the past couple of years, but he seems happier and lighter.

Jenn Gore (42:43)

yes.

Jenn Gore (42:50)

Yeah, he's deep into the AI. I love that.

Chris Earley (42:59)

You know, so we just we're all getting better, right? That's the that's the thing.

Jenn Gore (43:04)

The one yeah, the one thing I would say that I've had like a takeaway after all of this is there's so many ways to make money and to be open to the seasons of change that are calling to you because I wouldn't have all of what I had if I didn't go through all of the changes and being open to things that the universe was presenting to me that were very scary. I mean it's very

Chris Earley (43:10)

Yes.

Jenn Gore (43:29)

mind-bending to go from being a practicing lawyer to like not a practicing lawyer, but the universe has offerings to give to you. And it's wild because in 2019 I had written in my vision board, like I'm going to be coaching people all around the world. And at the time, I don't know how I got that idea, but I thought like, how could this really work with me running a law firm? It's going to be kind of complicated. But the universe will

Chris Earley (43:47)

Mm.

Chris Earley (43:56)

Ha ha ha.

Jenn Gore (43:58)

Deliver to you your dream in ways that may not seem fun or counter like they're counterintuitive. They might require you to give up other things. But if you can remain open to the evolution of your life, maybe you're gonna have another practice area, maybe you're gonna sell your business, maybe there's a career change. So many things can happen. And if you get too locked into what you're doing, you can miss. The opportunities in front of you.

Chris Earley (44:29)

I love that. I love that. That's that's what I'm talking about. Manifesting stuff, writing stuff down like you were visioning. You were you were writing the future and then your brain gets activated, right? It's like I'm gonna be doing this. I just I carry around in my wallet. First of all, I carry I just wanna share two things. A big ass a big ass check that I wrote to myself for I think I stole some Jim I I stole some Jim Carrey.

Jenn Gore (44:52)

too I had that and then I got the amount of money and I was like shit I know

Chris Earley (44:55)

okay. Well then time to do a new check. And also like where d where do I want to be? The end of two thousand twenty six. I was reading it earlier before the during breakfast. And a lot of those things have already happened and it's only it's only June. So some things won't happen, but a lot will. I I'm a big believer in writing stuff down, journaling, being grateful, right? But I love what you said is like be open, have have a wide wide lens to of the world.

Jenn Gore (45:12)

A hundred percent.

Chris Earley (45:18)

And you'll see things. All your challenges are actually blessings, I feel like things happening for you, not to you, right? And then you work through that.

Jenn Gore (45:26)

Yeah. And you don't like you a lot of times I will get stuck on the how, like, how is this gonna work out? How, how, how. But like it doesn't really matter the how. If you put your intention or your desire into the universe, it will find weird ways to come to you. Think about this. In twenty sixteen, I went to a event, the first event I ever went to. And when I was packing up my office, I s I found the materials. And do you know what the event was, Chris?

Chris Earley (45:33)

Yeah.

Chris Earley (45:42)

Hundred percent.

Chris Earley (45:56)

Why?

Jenn Gore (45:57)

How to sell your law firm?

Chris Earley (45:59)

wow. How about that, huh? Life is crazy.

Jenn Gore (46:01)

The first legal event I ever went to, I found the materials and I found them in my own handwriting. It said, one day you will sell your law firm. And like, think about how odd it would have had to be if someone had told me there's gonna be a firm in California that's gonna find you in Atlanta and wanna buy your law firm. Like I would say you're crazy. But don't get stuck on the how.

Chris Earley (46:10)

I love it. I love it. Isn't it

Chris Earley (46:20)

Love it, love it, love it.

Chris Earley (46:26)

Right. This is real. This is real. The universe is yeah. I love that. I want to share abundance. There's abundance of work. There's abundance of cases. Everywhere is abundance.

Jenn Gore (46:31)

Put your intention.

Jenn Gore (46:37)

and another thing that goes with abundance that I want to leave to the audience is in all my coaching, I can look at two firms in the same state. And I used to think when I owned a firm, well, my competitors are the reason, you know, people are going to them. It's not your competitors. If you could run your law firm better and just focus on your own firm, their firms are so f****d up.

Chris Earley (46:53)

yeah.

Chris Earley (47:03)

Yep.

Jenn Gore (47:05)

You think your competitors' firms are in good shape, they're really f****d up.

Chris Earley (47:07)

Totally. Totally. Hundred percent. I love that.

Jenn Gore (47:11)

And they got so many problems and they have different referral partners and they got all their other stuff going on. If you just get focused on yourself, there is so much business. You could double your business with like not a lot more clients. And your competitors are not the reason that you're not hitting your financial goals. Most times.

Chris Earley (47:28)

I'm aggressively nodding my head because I can't agree with you more. Don't look outside. Look at stay in your lane. You worry about your firm or what you're doing and get better and get b and have big ass vision and big ass execution. You're gonna surpass every everybody, every single person, because like you're so locked in. But I love that. I love that. That's really good. Jenn, this has like been r we just freestyled for like 10 minutes. That was gold. Like that that was that was some good stuff.

Jenn Gore (47:53)

Just talking.

Chris Earley (47:56)

So I appreciate you. Love the success. Love the energy. you're only getting started here and I can't wait to see what you're gonna do. I'm always always applauding your success. So let's definitely stay in touch. Okay. And hopefully I'll see you real soon on the road.

Jenn Gore (48:09)

Yes, I'll see you at an event soon. Okay. Bye, Chris.

Chris Earley (48:14)

Definitely. Thanks, Jenn. Just one sec. That's it for this episode of The Earley Show. Be sure to check out more episodes of our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the Answering Legal YouTube channel.