495. Special Forces Lessons for Building a Self-Managing Practice with Sam Goodner

The instinct that built your practice from scratch is the same instinct that's keeping it dependent on you.

In this episode of The Game Changing Attorney Podcast, Michael Mogill sits down with Sam Goodner, a former officer in the Swiss Special Forces who went on to build and sell multiple technology companies, including Catapult Systems and Flash Parking. A call about his father's cancer diagnosis once pulled Sam out of his business for five weeks. He came back to find his team running things better without him, and realized he'd been the bottleneck all along. Now the author of Like Clockwork: Run Your Business with Swiss Army Precision, Sam breaks down how founders can build a practice that runs independently of them, from staging decision rights to designing a first day that sets the tone for years.

Here's what you'll learn:

Why the best predictor of future performance is a candidate's past, not a hypothetical answer

What it takes to train your own replacement before anyone asks you to

How codifying your best practices lets you step out of the day-to-day without losing quality

If your firm still runs through you on every decision, this episode shows exactly where to start letting go.

(00:00:00) Introduction (00:02:23) From Texas to Swiss Special Forces (00:06:17) Time-telling vs. clock-building (00:09:08) The call that exposed the bottleneck (00:13:53) A special forces first day (00:19:58) Cultural indoctrination day (00:22:27) Codifying your best practices (00:29:10) The topgrading interview method (00:31:18) Training your own replacement (00:42:12) Be different, not better

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Links & Resources:

Like Clockwork: Run Your Business with Swiss Army Precision by Sam Goodner

Sam Goodner

Built to Last by Jim Collins

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Topgrading by Bradford D. Smart

Scaling Up by Verne Harnish

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Learn what sustainable growth can look like for your firm at crispcoach.com.

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Past guests on The Game Changing Attorney Podcast include David Goggins, John Morgan, Alex Hormozi, Randi McGinn, Kim Scott, Chris Voss, Kevin O’Leary, Laura Wasser, John Maxwell, Mark Lanier, Robert Greene, and many more.

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