All lawyers fall somewhere along a spectrum of energy. At the low end is convention and complacency; at the other end is Tyson Mutrux.
Tyson is a personal injury lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to owning and managing his own firm, he’s also one of the founders of Maximum Lawyer.
Maximum Lawyer is a community for lawyers who are driven to learn new techniques and share ideas about improving their practice. It includes a podcast, a very active Facebook group, and it hosts its own annual conference.
Even with all of this going on, Tyson still found the time to talk with us today on the Filevine Fireside. And really, that’s just another reflection of his deeply-rooted beliefs about industry collaboration. Tyson maintains an “abundance mindset” that encourages the sharing of ideas, tactics, and even internal forms and procedures.
This philosophy is reflected in every area of Tyson’s work, from his growing personal injury law firm to his nationally supported Maximum Lawyer Conference. Learn more about it on this episode of the Filevine Fireside.
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Full Transcript
Katie Wolf:
All lawyers fall somewhere along a spectrum of energy. At the low end is convention and complacency. At the other end is Tyson Mutrux. Tyson is a personal injury lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to owning and managing his own firm, he's also one of the founders of Maximum Lawyer. Maximum Lawyer is a community for lawyers who are driven to learn new techniques and share ideas about improving their practice. It includes a podcast, a very active Facebook group, and it hosts its own annual conference. And somehow, Tyson's still found the time to talk with us today on the Filevine Fireside.
Katie Wolf:
Tyson Mutrux, thank you so much for being here and talking with us today.
Tyson Mutrux:
Thanks for having me on. I'm pretty excited. I'm next to the fire right now, got the fireside chat going on, so I'm excited.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah, we're drinking our tea and have warm scarves around our necks around this fireside, yes.
Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Katie Wolf:
So first I want to kind of set the table or get some background about you. Now, you don't come from a family of lawyers. You didn't just sort of step into this as the family business, right?
Tyson Mutrux:
Right. I came from a dad that's a mechanic and then a mom that ran a daycare whenever I was a kid. Neither one of them graduated from high school, so it's definitely a different upbringing than a lot of other lawyers.
Katie Wolf:
How do you think that's sort of shaped your perception on the work that you do, or has it?
Tyson Mutrux:
It absolutely has. I think that that shapes everything I do on a daily basis. My dad, I mean to this day he's still a mechanic and he works late, gets up early, and does it every single day and works on the weekends. So I've got a very similar mentality. I've had to structure my life so I could spend more time with family, but other than that it's very, very similar, and I think it gives me honestly, it gives me a huge advantage. That hustle gives me a huge advantage because I know I've got to work hard.
Katie Wolf:
It also makes me think about how especially with personal injury law, having a basic sense of equality with your clients is a really crucial virtue, because clients can clock on super quickly to arrogance or a sense that ... You know when people are speaking legalize or bringing a sense of entitlement into that relationship. Do you think your scrappier upbringing helps you with that as well?
Tyson Mutrux:
So I think that allows me to relate really, really well with my clients when it comes to them telling me, "Hey, I don't have money because I don't have a car, I can't get to work. I really need to work." I can really relate to that with my clients and say, "listen, I know what that's like. I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, so I completely understand what you're going through." And whenever I show up to a meeting in jeans and a t-shirt, they don't judge me for that. They appreciate. They really like it. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I expected you to be in a suit, I'm so much more relaxed because you're in jeans." So yeah, I think that background, it really allows me to relate to them, it allows me to understand where they're coming from. So I think that's also a huge advantage to me.
Katie Wolf:
So would you advise to other lawyers that they ditch the suits and wear jeans and t-shirts if they're personal injury lawyers? What would you advise others to do?
Tyson Mutrux:
No, I mean, I wouldn't say that. Just because to each their own. For example, my trials, how I present in trial is way different than how other peoples present in trial. I'm not going to say that one way is right or the other. I mean, just be yourself is really what the message is. Be who you are, don't be fake, because clients can see right through it in a heartbeat. They'll know when you're being fake to them, so just be yourself.
Katie Wolf:
Before you ever went into law you were an army medic. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and how you became a lawyer?
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, that's a good question. Not many people ask me about that. But yeah, so I was in my freshman year of college whenever 9/11 happened, and before I'd gone to college I'd wanted to go into the military and my parents talked me out of it. So I'd actually ... At that time there was a very patriotic feel in the country, so it kind of got my parents past that initial like, "Hey, don't go to the Army," kind of thing. And so after my freshman year I joined the Army and then right after I did all my training, so I went to basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia, which was a blast. I loved basic training, it was a blast. And then I did my medic training down in San Antonio, Texas. Whenever I got done with that, I was immediately ... Because I was actually going to be a Reservist, and I was immediately activated. Everyone kind of knew it because they were telling us when we were in training, "Hey this is coming. War is coming." They were telling us, "Hey, you're going to war."
Tyson Mutrux:
I actually wasn't. I was actually pretty fortunate. I got sent to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin which [inaudible 00:05:27], put me in a really interesting position because I got to see people leave and then come back. So that's actually kind of ... All of that is part of the reason why I became an attorney. I had always wanted to be an attorney, I never thought it was really in the cards for me, but I was playing basketball with this guy who had just come back, he'd come back earlier than his unit. It was a buddy of mine that we used to play basketball for hours on end because there's nothing else to do in Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. So we'd play for hours before he left.
Tyson Mutrux:
When he came back, we were playing like normal and I just happened to ask him, "Hey, why are you back early?" And he pulled off his shoe and he was missing part of his foot. There was just a really mind blowing thing for me. And it really opened my eyes like, "You can't make excuses for yourself. What are you doing?" So my presentation at Legal X is stop the bullshit, and that's kind of one of those things where I tell everybody. That's sort of whenever I stopped the bullshit because you can't make excuses. There's people like that that aren't making excuses, so I shouldn't be making excuses.
Katie Wolf:
Can you tell me more about your presentation that you gave at Legal X? It was a lot of people really appreciated it. But I wasn't able to hear it, so just, do you have a few little bits or notes about what it is that you presented there?
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, so I mean, in a nutshell, hopefully this doesn't do it any disservice, because it's such a condensed version of it, but in a nutshell we're all freaking awesome people, you know? And especially people that are listening to this and people that were at that conference, they're awesome people. I know that they're awesome because they're bettering themselves. People are listening to this because they want to improve themselves, so and I talked about the Dunning-Kruger effect and how most people think that that's a study about people that over-estimate their abilities, and that's one part of it. But there's another part of it where high achievers, they actually underestimate their ability. So the gist of it is get us to stop the bullshit, quit making excuses and do the things that they want to do with their lives.
Katie Wolf:
So, a lot of lawyers when I look at their websites they say, "I am hardworking. I will fight hard for your case. I care about you." But what I noticed when I looked at your website is that you communicate through stories. You share stories about your father and stories about your time as an Army medic. I wanted to ask you, what is the role of stories in legal communication?
Tyson Mutrux:
So I think storytelling is crucial from the moment someone calls your office to telling their story to a jury. Stories are really powerful, people attach onto those. So for example, our staff does a really good job whenever someone calls the office, and it's a client that's sort of on the fence, they know to start telling stories about me. "Tyson's had this type of case in the past, here's how he's dealt with it." Those are all stories, you know? And it's [inaudible 00:08:36] your people to know your story is really, really important.
Tyson Mutrux:
So going to the website, I can't tell you how many times people have gone to my website and said, "I love your story. I love the story about the book. I love the story about this, I love the story about that." I think it really is incredible. So people can attach onto those things and latch onto them and it makes you memorable.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah, and on the other side it also makes me think about how so much of representing the client is telling their story in the most powerful way possible.
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, so the way I put it to clients is I say ... I tell them how much they've got to get me all this information, and I tell them how basically I'm an artist. You've got to picture a blank canvas and you give me the information, so that's the ink, you got to give me the ink to pain so I can paint the perfect portrait for you. So it really helps them visualize that, and that that's my role in all of this and shaping that and putting this case in the best light possible.
Katie Wolf:
So you run your own personal injury law firm, but in addition to all of that you are also a co-founder of Maximum Lawyer. Can you tell us about Maximum Lawyer and how it came into being?
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, so Maximum Lawyer is now just an amazing community of lawyers that are willing to share and live those go-giver principles. It's made up of, what I'll call a few different divisions. You've got the podcast, Maximum Lawyer podcast. That's how it started, and I'll get to that in a second. You've got Maximum Lawyer Guild which is sort of a virtual mastermind of lawyers all over the country. We meet every two weeks and talk about the issues affecting us. And there's a hot seat every two weeks, and that's how that goes.
Tyson Mutrux:
We've got the Maximum Lawyer Facebook group, which is a really big component because there's people just willing to share all their great information. There's the Maximum Lawyer conference which is every year. Next year it's going to be June 11th and 12th in St. Louis. This is going to be the third year and we expect to have about 300 people at that.
Tyson Mutrux:
And then one of the most recent things we added was the Max Law Media, which is we shoot videos for lawyers, and we do these nice, great stories. You talk about stories, we shape these nice, wonderful stories for these lawyers and put in a great video. We're able to do that fairly inexpensively by batching the videos. So we'll batch a group of attorneys together, shoot them in one week as opposed to flying to Atlanta one day and then Los Angeles the next day. We batch them together, and it helps save money for the lawyers, because there's a lot of services out there that are really, really expensive, and that's why we do it that way.
Tyson Mutrux:
How it started, so Jim Hacking and I are the hosts of it. Jim is an immigration attorney in St. Louis, and Jim was one of my law school adjunct professors. He taught law practice management, and he and I ended up staying in touch after law school and talking about business stuff on a weekly basis, if not daily basis. And then we're like, "You know what? Let's start recording this stuff and then maybe people will listen to it, maybe not. But people will get something out of it." And next thing you know, it was growing like wildfire. So it's really incredible just the group of people. It's not me and Jim, it's a whole community that makes it amazing.
Katie Wolf:
Well, it's mind-blowingly cool, but I also imagine it's a ton of work. Why do you put in the time to do the work to create Maximum Lawyer? Why is it important to you?
Tyson Mutrux:
I mean, for starters it helps other people. It helps me, too. It helps me get better, and so I can't be this guy out here talking about how amazing I am or whatever. I mean, I've got to actually live that if I'm going to do that. So, if I'm going to be talking to all these amazing lawyers, I've got to better myself. It forces me to better myself. The other thing is, is that just by virtue of us having all these amazing lawyers on and asking them questions about things and having other experts on the podcast, it allows us to just learn from talking to these people. So it's really incredible, and so I guess that's why it started. It's grown into something that's much bigger than what we had anticipated, but that's why it started.
Katie Wolf:
Have you ever read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin?
Tyson Mutrux:
I have not, but I guess I should.
Katie Wolf:
I just, when I talk with some rare few lawyers like yourself, it just feels like you have this fundamental Benjamin Franklin drive for perpetual self-improvement. I think it's really quite rare, even though obviously lawyers are driven and ambitious. You don't get there without some hard work, but I feel like there's some who just have this special extra drive to constantly improve.
Tyson Mutrux:
That may be the best compliment I have ever received in my life, so thank you. But no, I love it, that's great. I do, I mean I think it really is important to learn and get better. I think it was 2017 I had to stop reading books, not completely, but I had to slow down my reading because by April I'd read like 22 books or something like that. It was just like, "Okay, this is kind of ridiculous at this point." So I [inaudible 00:14:03] myself a little bit.
Katie Wolf:
Oh, now you're making everyone feel bad that you run a firm and run Maximum Lawyer and you read 22 books by April.
Tyson Mutrux:
It's all time management. That's what it is, it's as simple as time management. And people are like, "Oh, yeah right." No, it really is. I think if you schedule things and you schedule time for things that are important to you, you'll do them. It's as simple as that.
Katie Wolf:
I have a specific question about your time management, because when I first emailed you about this podcast, I received this automatic response which I thought was the coolest thing. It told me that you only check your email twice a day and you prioritize responding to clients and judges and other lawyers, and I have seen someone have such firm and clear boundaries around their email. Why do you have that automatic response?
Tyson Mutrux:
Well, I get the initial idea from Tim Ferriss, which a lot of people know who Tim Ferriss is. It's my adaptation of it changed over time, sometimes I put less, sometimes I put more. To me, this is probably the best iteration of it that I've had. What it does is it lets people know, "Listen, I don't like email." It doesn't say that, but you get a pretty strong whiff of, "Hey, I don't like email." I mean, I understand that email is a necessary email, but it also gives them a set of boundaries to know, "here are my rules when it comes to this email." And if you don't like those rules, essentially there's other people in my firm that you can contact.
Tyson Mutrux:
So it gives them those basic rules. If they need something that's urgent, they know the ways of dealing with that, so that's ... And the reason why I initially started doing it was because of the four hour work week and Tim Ferriss and all that, but he really has helped me over time. And the way I've changed it and edited it, this I think really is the best because it gives them other routes, other avenues of getting in touch with us if they do need something urgent. It really does help control my time.
Tyson Mutrux:
The other thing is, is that some people just don't like emailing me as much. So that's fine with me. If you wanted to send me a text or if you want to give me a call, that's great. I'm fine with that. But I don't want to encourage more email, I just don't.
Katie Wolf:
Can you talk a little bit more about why you don't like email? What it does to your workflow.
Tyson Mutrux:
One, I think it's a time suck. I also think it's an energy suck. I'm sure everyone listening to this, they can think about at least one time, and probably 1,000 times where they go into their email to find one thing and they find that one thing and they deal with 30 other things. Next thing you know, a [inaudible 00:16:43] that was going to take them two minutes, they're now in there for two hours. So it's a time suck.
Tyson Mutrux:
The other thing is as well, I've got some people that are listening to this are afraid of their email, they're afraid of seeing what's inside of it. So that is another reason. It's just an energy suck.
Tyson Mutrux:
We all have these other attorneys that we deal with that just want to be prick. They just want to be a jerk to you, they want to send you that 5:00 PM motion or discovery request just to get in your crawl. And it works, and so I think it's better off just setting aside certain time for that and dealing with it at that time and then move on.
Katie Wolf:
I was reading some psychologist talking about how she noticed that people would stop breathing for a second when they opened their email, you know? They felt so much stress just about that act that their breathing would stop.
Tyson Mutrux:
Oh my gosh, I'm not surprised. That backs up my point though, that's incredible. That's insane.
Katie Wolf:
Just holding your breath every time.
Katie Wolf:
I want to get back to Maximum Lawyer. I want to ask you more about Max Law Con.
Tyson Mutrux:
Sure.
Katie Wolf:
What is sort of the fundamental driving principle behind that conference?
Tyson Mutrux:
Whoa, fundamental driving principle is if I had to give it one-
Katie Wolf:
Too deep?
Tyson Mutrux:
No. If I had to give it one, it's just growth. The desire to grow and get better is what it is. Because what it is, we don't pay our speakers to come out, you know? So these are people that are willing, and these are big names that come out and they speak. People like Mitch Jackson or John Fisher that will come out and speak at this conference and not expect a dime, and they'll fly out on their own dime, they'll pay for their own hotel rooms, and they'll come out and give their biggest and best tips on stage to this group of lawyers that just want to get better. So it really is quite incredible, the amount of information people are willing to share.
Tyson Mutrux:
And then I guess another, this isn't really a point of the conference, but another great benefit is just the community. All these people that you communicate with on a daily basis in the Facebook group or via text and phone call, you get to see them in person, and it's like you know them. It's like you've known them for years. I've never experienced anything like it in my life.
Katie Wolf:
When you first floated the idea of sort of hosting an annual conference, I mean, was there a part of you that was like, "Oh let's just go to the conferences that already exist." Or did you know from the get-go that you just had to have this space, there was nothing else like it out there?
Tyson Mutrux:
Well, I didn't ... I guess I was terrified that no one would show up, but that's the first thing. Because I figured okay, 20 people are going to show up, right? And people are like, "If you get 30 that's a good number for your first conference." And I'm like, "That sounds awful." And the first one, it was 70 people and I was blown away by 70 people flying to St. Louis for this. St. Louis University School of Law let us use a couple rooms and it really did help. So Jim and I didn't take a huge financial hit.
Tyson Mutrux:
No, I didn't really have any desire in going out to a bunch of other conferences and to do it that way. No, to me it just didn't make any sense. It just, we wanted to get our group of people together and get better together. To answer your question, no. But I was terrified though.
Katie Wolf:
Explain what it's like now.
Tyson Mutrux:
Right, os this year was 150. We had it at Delmar Hall in St. Louis, which is a much bigger venue and it costs us money. The next worry was, okay, we knew people were going to come but are we going to go in the hole big time for it? So, luckily we managed the finances of it quite a bit. We didn't go in the hole, which is nice.
Tyson Mutrux:
Very similar concept, you know, growing together, people flying in, we don't pay speakers. The biggest difference between the first year and the second year is we got sponsors, which was a lot of sponsors. Filevine has sponsored both conferences, which has been great. And that has helped quite a bit, and this year we had a lot more sponsors which allowed us to offer a lot more to the attendees. It was much more interactive. And then next year, so next year we're going to have breakout rooms which is going to be quite different than what it was the last two years. That was speaking to a room of people. This time we're going to try to ... We're not going to create tracks, but we're going to try to batch topics together. So it's not like you're going to have a marketing and a management track, that's [inaudible 00:21:32] conferences. We're not doing that, but we're going to try to batch topics so that you don't feel like you're missing something else that's really important.
Katie Wolf:
Cool.
Tyson Mutrux:
That's going to be our biggest struggle is doing that, but it's going to be pretty neat.
Katie Wolf:
That's exciting. So I know that the podcast originally came out of these conversations you were having with your former professor. You decided why not just record those and put those out, but what are your thoughts about podcasts? Do you think they're in important sort of genre for lawyers to take on?
Tyson Mutrux:
Without question. It's another way of communicating. You're in peoples ears. I'm sure there's someone right now that's mowing their lawn or they're trimming their hedges or they're playing with their kids and we're in their ears right now, and they've got the same ability of doing the same thing with their clients. So I think it's a great way of connecting, whether it's with other lawyers, whether it's with their clients specifically. I mean, here's an idea which I'm happy to give away to people because it's not like ... I've got an abundance mindset, but I don't have the scarcity mindset, so you know, how about you record 20 or 30 episodes with people ... We do personal injury, so I'm actually assuming that majority of people listening to this do personal injury, but maybe they do other things, but what if you explain the entire case process through a series of 20 or 30 episodes, you tell your clients, you send that to your clients and say, "hey, here's our podcast that we do, it'll give you a great overview of your case, it'll tell you what to expect, what to do, what not to do."
Tyson Mutrux:
So if you do something like that, that's also going to allow the client to feel like they know you better. So it's another way, and that's something you can put on there, you can set it and forget it and never have to deal with it again. You've recorded it once, it's there forever.
Katie Wolf:
Getting right into peoples ears. You're giving us these tips, you often at different conferences and on different podcasts as well you're often giving people tips, you mentioned earlier that you have an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset. What does that mean for you?
Tyson Mutrux:
In general, there's plenty of money and clients to go around for everybody, okay? We can all be happy, we don't have to get all the clients, you don't have to feel like everyone's a competitor. I give all of my forms, all of my [inaudible 00:24:01], my advice to my biggest competitors, I don't care. I really just don't care, because there are plenty of cases out there to work on, plenty of clients.
Katie Wolf:
And if you had a scarcity mindset, you would be more closed down, you wouldn't give out your ideas, you would be keeping things more just to yourself?
Tyson Mutrux:
Oh, there's plenty of lawyers out there, some that may even listen to this that they won't share their forms with another lawyer because they're afraid that because they're a competitor they might use it against them or something. And I don't even quite understand the mindset. Like if I give you a form, how is that going to hurt me? You've already got the client, big deal. So, they're afraid of something, I don't know what it is, but they're afraid of something, sharing that little bit of information is going to make all the difference in the world in their life, and it's not.
Katie Wolf:
Well Tyson, I just really appreciate the balance that you bring with this abundance mindset that's sort of balanced with your firm boundaries around time management and the way that those both work together to create a really full life, it seems. What do you do when you're not working? I mean, besides reading all your books.
Tyson Mutrux:
I really like bourbon.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah.
Tyson Mutrux:
I've got a vast bourbon collection, so that's good. I do like to read quite a bit. My wife and I, we've got a lot of shows that we like to watch, and so that's a big part of it. And here's another thing, Ryan [McKeen 00:25:38], I think you all know Ryan McKeen. He and I both believe the same thing when it comes to this. It's okay that your firm is your hobby, we like building and working on our firm. So that's okay. It doesn't have to stress you out, it's okay if you enjoy it and you like doing it, right? We all have this ... There's this idea out there that because you work all the time and that for some reason that's a really bad thing. Maybe it's fun to people, maybe people enjoy doing it, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as you and your family are okay with that, there's nothing wrong with it.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah, I've seen that. The work-life balance isn't about a certain number of hours, it's about the internal workings of your body and whether you're doing good or not. You could maybe work 16 hours a week but feel horrible because you hate what you're doing.
Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely.
Katie Wolf:
Well, it's so wonderful to talk with you, Tyson. Best of luck with everything going ahead, and hopefully we'll hear from you again.
Tyson Mutrux:
Thanks Kate. I really appreciate it.
Katie Wolf:
This has been the Filevine Fireside and I'm Katie Wolf.Katie Wolf:
All lawyers fall somewhere along a spectrum of energy. At the low end is convention and complacency. At the other end is Tyson Mutrux. Tyson is a personal injury lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to owning and managing his own firm, he's also one of the founders of Maximum Lawyer. Maximum Lawyer is a community for lawyers who are driven to learn new techniques and share ideas about improving their practice. It includes a podcast, a very active Facebook group, and it hosts its own annual conference. And somehow, Tyson's still found the time to talk with us today on the Filevine Fireside.
Katie Wolf:
Tyson Mutrux, thank you so much for being here and talking with us today.
Tyson Mutrux:
Thanks for having me on. I'm pretty excited. I'm next to the fire right now, got the fireside chat going on, so I'm excited.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah, we're drinking our tea and have warm scarves around our necks around this fireside, yes.
Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Katie Wolf:
So first I want to kind of set the table or get some background about you. Now, you don't come from a family of lawyers. You didn't just sort of step into this as the family business, right?
Tyson Mutrux:
Right. I came from a dad that's a mechanic and then a mom that ran a daycare whenever I was a kid. Neither one of them graduated from high school, so it's definitely a different upbringing than a lot of other lawyers.
Katie Wolf:
How do you think that's sort of shaped your perception on the work that you do, or has it?
Tyson Mutrux:
It absolutely has. I think that that shapes everything I do on a daily basis. My dad, I mean to this day he's still a mechanic and he works late, gets up early, and does it every single day and works on the weekends. So I've got a very similar mentality. I've had to structure my life so I could spend more time with family, but other than that it's very, very similar, and I think it gives me honestly, it gives me a huge advantage. That hustle gives me a huge advantage because I know I've got to work hard.
Katie Wolf:
It also makes me think about how especially with personal injury law, having a basic sense of equality with your clients is a really crucial virtue, because clients can clock on super quickly to arrogance or a sense that ... You know when people are speaking legalize or bringing a sense of entitlement into that relationship. Do you think your scrappier upbringing helps you with that as well?
Tyson Mutrux:
So I think that allows me to relate really, really well with my clients when it comes to them telling me, "Hey, I don't have money because I don't have a car, I can't get to work. I really need to work." I can really relate to that with my clients and say, "listen, I know what that's like. I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, so I completely understand what you're going through." And whenever I show up to a meeting in jeans and a t-shirt, they don't judge me for that. They appreciate. They really like it. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I expected you to be in a suit, I'm so much more relaxed because you're in jeans." So yeah, I think that background, it really allows me to relate to them, it allows me to understand where they're coming from. So I think that's also a huge advantage to me.
Katie Wolf:
So would you advise to other lawyers that they ditch the suits and wear jeans and t-shirts if they're personal injury lawyers? What would you advise others to do?
Tyson Mutrux:
No, I mean, I wouldn't say that. Just because to each their own. For example, my trials, how I present in trial is way different than how other peoples present in trial. I'm not going to say that one way is right or the other. I mean, just be yourself is really what the message is. Be who you are, don't be fake, because clients can see right through it in a heartbeat. They'll know when you're being fake to them, so just be yourself.
Katie Wolf:
Before you ever went into law you were an army medic. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and how you became a lawyer?
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, that's a good question. Not many people ask me about that. But yeah, so I was in my freshman year of college whenever 9/11 happened, and before I'd gone to college I'd wanted to go into the military and my parents talked me out of it. So I'd actually ... At that time there was a very patriotic feel in the country, so it kind of got my parents past that initial like, "Hey, don't go to the Army," kind of thing. And so after my freshman year I joined the Army and then right after I did all my training, so I went to basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia, which was a blast. I loved basic training, it was a blast. And then I did my medic training down in San Antonio, Texas. Whenever I got done with that, I was immediately ... Because I was actually going to be a Reservist, and I was immediately activated. Everyone kind of knew it because they were telling us when we were in training, "Hey this is coming. War is coming." They were telling us, "Hey, you're going to war."
Tyson Mutrux:
I actually wasn't. I was actually pretty fortunate. I got sent to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin which [inaudible 00:05:27], put me in a really interesting position because I got to see people leave and then come back. So that's actually kind of ... All of that is part of the reason why I became an attorney. I had always wanted to be an attorney, I never thought it was really in the cards for me, but I was playing basketball with this guy who had just come back, he'd come back earlier than his unit. It was a buddy of mine that we used to play basketball for hours on end because there's nothing else to do in Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. So we'd play for hours before he left.
Tyson Mutrux:
When he came back, we were playing like normal and I just happened to ask him, "Hey, why are you back early?" And he pulled off his shoe and he was missing part of his foot. There was just a really mind blowing thing for me. And it really opened my eyes like, "You can't make excuses for yourself. What are you doing?" So my presentation at Legal X is stop the bullshit, and that's kind of one of those things where I tell everybody. That's sort of whenever I stopped the bullshit because you can't make excuses. There's people like that that aren't making excuses, so I shouldn't be making excuses.
Katie Wolf:
Can you tell me more about your presentation that you gave at Legal X? It was a lot of people really appreciated it. But I wasn't able to hear it, so just, do you have a few little bits or notes about what it is that you presented there?
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, so I mean, in a nutshell, hopefully this doesn't do it any disservice, because it's such a condensed version of it, but in a nutshell we're all freaking awesome people, you know? And especially people that are listening to this and people that were at that conference, they're awesome people. I know that they're awesome because they're bettering themselves. People are listening to this because they want to improve themselves, so and I talked about the Dunning-Kruger effect and how most people think that that's a study about people that over-estimate their abilities, and that's one part of it. But there's another part of it where high achievers, they actually underestimate their ability. So the gist of it is get us to stop the bullshit, quit making excuses and do the things that they want to do with their lives.
Katie Wolf:
So, a lot of lawyers when I look at their websites they say, "I am hardworking. I will fight hard for your case. I care about you." But what I noticed when I looked at your website is that you communicate through stories. You share stories about your father and stories about your time as an Army medic. I wanted to ask you, what is the role of stories in legal communication?
Tyson Mutrux:
So I think storytelling is crucial from the moment someone calls your office to telling their story to a jury. Stories are really powerful, people attach onto those. So for example, our staff does a really good job whenever someone calls the office, and it's a client that's sort of on the fence, they know to start telling stories about me. "Tyson's had this type of case in the past, here's how he's dealt with it." Those are all stories, you know? And it's [inaudible 00:08:36] your people to know your story is really, really important.
Tyson Mutrux:
So going to the website, I can't tell you how many times people have gone to my website and said, "I love your story. I love the story about the book. I love the story about this, I love the story about that." I think it really is incredible. So people can attach onto those things and latch onto them and it makes you memorable.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah, and on the other side it also makes me think about how so much of representing the client is telling their story in the most powerful way possible.
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, so the way I put it to clients is I say ... I tell them how much they've got to get me all this information, and I tell them how basically I'm an artist. You've got to picture a blank canvas and you give me the information, so that's the ink, you got to give me the ink to pain so I can paint the perfect portrait for you. So it really helps them visualize that, and that that's my role in all of this and shaping that and putting this case in the best light possible.
Katie Wolf:
So you run your own personal injury law firm, but in addition to all of that you are also a co-founder of Maximum Lawyer. Can you tell us about Maximum Lawyer and how it came into being?
Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, so Maximum Lawyer is now just an amazing community of lawyers that are willing to share and live those go-giver principles. It's made up of, what I'll call a few different divisions. You've got the podcast, Maximum Lawyer podcast. That's how it started, and I'll get to that in a second. You've got Maximum Lawyer Guild which is sort of a virtual mastermind of lawyers all over the country. We meet every two weeks and talk about the issues affecting us. And there's a hot seat every two weeks, and that's how that goes.
Tyson Mutrux:
We've got the Maximum Lawyer Facebook group, which is a really big component because there's people just willing to share all their great information. There's the Maximum Lawyer conference which is every year. Next year it's going to be June 11th and 12th in St. Louis. This is going to be the third year and we expect to have about 300 people at that.
Tyson Mutrux:
And then one of the most recent things we added was the Max Law Media, which is we shoot videos for lawyers, and we do these nice, great stories. You talk about stories, we shape these nice, wonderful stories for these lawyers and put in a great video. We're able to do that fairly inexpensively by batching the videos. So we'll batch a group of attorneys together, shoot them in one week as opposed to flying to Atlanta one day and then Los Angeles the next day. We batch them together, and it helps save money for the lawyers, because there's a lot of services out there that are really, really expensive, and that's why we do it that way.
Tyson Mutrux:
How it started, so Jim Hacking and I are the hosts of it. Jim is an immigration attorney in St. Louis, and Jim was one of my law school adjunct professors. He taught law practice management, and he and I ended up staying in touch after law school and talking about business stuff on a weekly basis, if not daily basis. And then we're like, "You know what? Let's start recording this stuff and then maybe people will listen to it, maybe not. But people will get something out of it." And next thing you know, it was growing like wildfire. So it's really incredible just the group of people. It's not me and Jim, it's a whole community that makes it amazing.
Katie Wolf:
Well, it's mind-blowingly cool, but I also imagine it's a ton of work. Why do you put in the time to do the work to create Maximum Lawyer? Why is it important to you?
Tyson Mutrux:
I mean, for starters it helps other people. It helps me, too. It helps me get better, and so I can't be this guy out here talking about how amazing I am or whatever. I mean, I've got to actually live that if I'm going to do that. So, if I'm going to be talking to all these amazing lawyers, I've got to better myself. It forces me to better myself. The other thing is, is that just by virtue of us having all these amazing lawyers on and asking them questions about things and having other experts on the podcast, it allows us to just learn from talking to these people. So it's really incredible, and so I guess that's why it started. It's grown into something that's much bigger than what we had anticipated, but that's why it started.
Katie Wolf:
Have you ever read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin?
Tyson Mutrux:
I have not, but I guess I should.
Katie Wolf:
I just, when I talk with some rare few lawyers like yourself, it just feels like you have this fundamental Benjamin Franklin drive for perpetual self-improvement. I think it's really quite rare, even though obviously lawyers are driven and ambitious. You don't get there without some hard work, but I feel like there's some who just have this special extra drive to constantly improve.
Tyson Mutrux:
That may be the best compliment I have ever received in my life, so thank you. But no, I love it, that's great. I do, I mean I think it really is important to learn and get better. I think it was 2017 I had to stop reading books, not completely, but I had to slow down my reading because by April I'd read like 22 books or something like that. It was just like, "Okay, this is kind of ridiculous at this point." So I [inaudible 00:14:03] myself a little bit.
Katie Wolf:
Oh, now you're making everyone feel bad that you run a firm and run Maximum Lawyer and you read 22 books by April.
Tyson Mutrux:
It's all time management. That's what it is, it's as simple as time management. And people are like, "Oh, yeah right." No, it really is. I think if you schedule things and you schedule time for things that are important to you, you'll do them. It's as simple as that.
Katie Wolf:
I have a specific question about your time management, because when I first emailed you about this podcast, I received this automatic response which I thought was the coolest thing. It told me that you only check your email twice a day and you prioritize responding to clients and judges and other lawyers, and I have seen someone have such firm and clear boundaries around their email. Why do you have that automatic response?
Tyson Mutrux:
Well, I get the initial idea from Tim Ferriss, which a lot of people know who Tim Ferriss is. It's my adaptation of it changed over time, sometimes I put less, sometimes I put more. To me, this is probably the best iteration of it that I've had. What it does is it lets people know, "Listen, I don't like email." It doesn't say that, but you get a pretty strong whiff of, "Hey, I don't like email." I mean, I understand that email is a necessary email, but it also gives them a set of boundaries to know, "here are my rules when it comes to this email." And if you don't like those rules, essentially there's other people in my firm that you can contact.
Tyson Mutrux:
So it gives them those basic rules. If they need something that's urgent, they know the ways of dealing with that, so that's ... And the reason why I initially started doing it was because of the four hour work week and Tim Ferriss and all that, but he really has helped me over time. And the way I've changed it and edited it, this I think really is the best because it gives them other routes, other avenues of getting in touch with us if they do need something urgent. It really does help control my time.
Tyson Mutrux:
The other thing is, is that some people just don't like emailing me as much. So that's fine with me. If you wanted to send me a text or if you want to give me a call, that's great. I'm fine with that. But I don't want to encourage more email, I just don't.
Katie Wolf:
Can you talk a little bit more about why you don't like email? What it does to your workflow.
Tyson Mutrux:
One, I think it's a time suck. I also think it's an energy suck. I'm sure everyone listening to this, they can think about at least one time, and probably 1,000 times where they go into their email to find one thing and they find that one thing and they deal with 30 other things. Next thing you know, a [inaudible 00:16:43] that was going to take them two minutes, they're now in there for two hours. So it's a time suck.
Tyson Mutrux:
The other thing is as well, I've got some people that are listening to this are afraid of their email, they're afraid of seeing what's inside of it. So that is another reason. It's just an energy suck.
Tyson Mutrux:
We all have these other attorneys that we deal with that just want to be prick. They just want to be a jerk to you, they want to send you that 5:00 PM motion or discovery request just to get in your crawl. And it works, and so I think it's better off just setting aside certain time for that and dealing with it at that time and then move on.
Katie Wolf:
I was reading some psychologist talking about how she noticed that people would stop breathing for a second when they opened their email, you know? They felt so much stress just about that act that their breathing would stop.
Tyson Mutrux:
Oh my gosh, I'm not surprised. That backs up my point though, that's incredible. That's insane.
Katie Wolf:
Just holding your breath every time.
Katie Wolf:
I want to get back to Maximum Lawyer. I want to ask you more about Max Law Con.
Tyson Mutrux:
Sure.
Katie Wolf:
What is sort of the fundamental driving principle behind that conference?
Tyson Mutrux:
Whoa, fundamental driving principle is if I had to give it one-
Katie Wolf:
Too deep?
Tyson Mutrux:
No. If I had to give it one, it's just growth. The desire to grow and get better is what it is. Because what it is, we don't pay our speakers to come out, you know? So these are people that are willing, and these are big names that come out and they speak. People like Mitch Jackson or John Fisher that will come out and speak at this conference and not expect a dime, and they'll fly out on their own dime, they'll pay for their own hotel rooms, and they'll come out and give their biggest and best tips on stage to this group of lawyers that just want to get better. So it really is quite incredible, the amount of information people are willing to share.
Tyson Mutrux:
And then I guess another, this isn't really a point of the conference, but another great benefit is just the community. All these people that you communicate with on a daily basis in the Facebook group or via text and phone call, you get to see them in person, and it's like you know them. It's like you've known them for years. I've never experienced anything like it in my life.
Katie Wolf:
When you first floated the idea of sort of hosting an annual conference, I mean, was there a part of you that was like, "Oh let's just go to the conferences that already exist." Or did you know from the get-go that you just had to have this space, there was nothing else like it out there?
Tyson Mutrux:
Well, I didn't ... I guess I was terrified that no one would show up, but that's the first thing. Because I figured okay, 20 people are going to show up, right? And people are like, "If you get 30 that's a good number for your first conference." And I'm like, "That sounds awful." And the first one, it was 70 people and I was blown away by 70 people flying to St. Louis for this. St. Louis University School of Law let us use a couple rooms and it really did help. So Jim and I didn't take a huge financial hit.
Tyson Mutrux:
No, I didn't really have any desire in going out to a bunch of other conferences and to do it that way. No, to me it just didn't make any sense. It just, we wanted to get our group of people together and get better together. To answer your question, no. But I was terrified though.
Katie Wolf:
Explain what it's like now.
Tyson Mutrux:
Right, os this year was 150. We had it at Delmar Hall in St. Louis, which is a much bigger venue and it costs us money. The next worry was, okay, we knew people were going to come but are we going to go in the hole big time for it? So, luckily we managed the finances of it quite a bit. We didn't go in the hole, which is nice.
Tyson Mutrux:
Very similar concept, you know, growing together, people flying in, we don't pay speakers. The biggest difference between the first year and the second year is we got sponsors, which was a lot of sponsors. Filevine has sponsored both conferences, which has been great. And that has helped quite a bit, and this year we had a lot more sponsors which allowed us to offer a lot more to the attendees. It was much more interactive. And then next year, so next year we're going to have breakout rooms which is going to be quite different than what it was the last two years. That was speaking to a room of people. This time we're going to try to ... We're not going to create tracks, but we're going to try to batch topics together. So it's not like you're going to have a marketing and a management track, that's [inaudible 00:21:32] conferences. We're not doing that, but we're going to try to batch topics so that you don't feel like you're missing something else that's really important.
Katie Wolf:
Cool.
Tyson Mutrux:
That's going to be our biggest struggle is doing that, but it's going to be pretty neat.
Katie Wolf:
That's exciting. So I know that the podcast originally came out of these conversations you were having with your former professor. You decided why not just record those and put those out, but what are your thoughts about podcasts? Do you think they're in important sort of genre for lawyers to take on?
Tyson Mutrux:
Without question. It's another way of communicating. You're in peoples ears. I'm sure there's someone right now that's mowing their lawn or they're trimming their hedges or they're playing with their kids and we're in their ears right now, and they've got the same ability of doing the same thing with their clients. So I think it's a great way of connecting, whether it's with other lawyers, whether it's with their clients specifically. I mean, here's an idea which I'm happy to give away to people because it's not like ... I've got an abundance mindset, but I don't have the scarcity mindset, so you know, how about you record 20 or 30 episodes with people ... We do personal injury, so I'm actually assuming that majority of people listening to this do personal injury, but maybe they do other things, but what if you explain the entire case process through a series of 20 or 30 episodes, you tell your clients, you send that to your clients and say, "hey, here's our podcast that we do, it'll give you a great overview of your case, it'll tell you what to expect, what to do, what not to do."
Tyson Mutrux:
So if you do something like that, that's also going to allow the client to feel like they know you better. So it's another way, and that's something you can put on there, you can set it and forget it and never have to deal with it again. You've recorded it once, it's there forever.
Katie Wolf:
Getting right into peoples ears. You're giving us these tips, you often at different conferences and on different podcasts as well you're often giving people tips, you mentioned earlier that you have an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset. What does that mean for you?
Tyson Mutrux:
In general, there's plenty of money and clients to go around for everybody, okay? We can all be happy, we don't have to get all the clients, you don't have to feel like everyone's a competitor. I give all of my forms, all of my [inaudible 00:24:01], my advice to my biggest competitors, I don't care. I really just don't care, because there are plenty of cases out there to work on, plenty of clients.
Katie Wolf:
And if you had a scarcity mindset, you would be more closed down, you wouldn't give out your ideas, you would be keeping things more just to yourself?
Tyson Mutrux:
Oh, there's plenty of lawyers out there, some that may even listen to this that they won't share their forms with another lawyer because they're afraid that because they're a competitor they might use it against them or something. And I don't even quite understand the mindset. Like if I give you a form, how is that going to hurt me? You've already got the client, big deal. So, they're afraid of something, I don't know what it is, but they're afraid of something, sharing that little bit of information is going to make all the difference in the world in their life, and it's not.
Katie Wolf:
Well Tyson, I just really appreciate the balance that you bring with this abundance mindset that's sort of balanced with your firm boundaries around time management and the way that those both work together to create a really full life, it seems. What do you do when you're not working? I mean, besides reading all your books.
Tyson Mutrux:
I really like bourbon.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah.
Tyson Mutrux:
I've got a vast bourbon collection, so that's good. I do like to read quite a bit. My wife and I, we've got a lot of shows that we like to watch, and so that's a big part of it. And here's another thing, Ryan [McKeen 00:25:38], I think you all know Ryan McKeen. He and I both believe the same thing when it comes to this. It's okay that your firm is your hobby, we like building and working on our firm. So that's okay. It doesn't have to stress you out, it's okay if you enjoy it and you like doing it, right? We all have this ... There's this idea out there that because you work all the time and that for some reason that's a really bad thing. Maybe it's fun to people, maybe people enjoy doing it, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as you and your family are okay with that, there's nothing wrong with it.
Katie Wolf:
Yeah, I've seen that. The work-life balance isn't about a certain number of hours, it's about the internal workings of your body and whether you're doing good or not. You could maybe work 16 hours a week but feel horrible because you hate what you're doing.
Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely.
Katie Wolf:
Well, it's so wonderful to talk with you, Tyson. Best of luck with everything going ahead, and hopefully we'll hear from you again.
Tyson Mutrux:
Thanks Kate. I really appreciate it.
Katie Wolf:
This has been the Filevine Fireside and I'm Katie Wolf.