Enough Money is Enough!
“It’s really about making that counter cultural decision that enough money is enough, and that we don’t have to make it all about maximizing profits.” – Ben Applegate
The above quote is from the founding partner of Applegate & Thorne -Thomsen – a law firm that supports everyone to be successful at work and create time for their lives outside of work.
To learn more about Ben’s firm, read on. Or listen to the SoundCloud recording of our call with Ben and two other leaders as they describe how they created their progressive workplaces. Without question, you’ll learn the key ingredient to creating a progressive workplace is valuing time, not just money.
Ben Applegate: “We started our firm 15 years ago after leaving a larger firm. It’s a boutique practice providing housing and community development work, funded primarily through tax credits and the government.
“Our mission statement has always been to be the best at what we do on a nationwide basis while balancing profitability and lifestyle for all of our employees.
“Anytime we bring someone into the firm we talk about our shared vision – to make a good living, but not necessarily the greatest of livings. That filter has served us very well. If we get a sense that someone who we are interviewing is only negotiating hard on salary, we know it’s not going to be a good fit.
“We started with 4 lawyers, we have 22 lawyers today. I’m not sure if all of our success is do with our shared vision or if it’s also to do with being a mission driven law firm doing community development work. But I do know that we never have to recruit, and we have a waiting list of people who are willing to abandon the “golden handcuffs” at their big firm positions to work with us.
“At many big firms the target is now 2,000 billable hours in order for you to get your bonus, and you may not even get your base salary if you don’t hit that target. We have been able to build our firm on a 1700 target. It’s a good tradeoff. The discount on their salary is made up with more time for life.
“It doesn’t always work that way. We go through periods of “episodic overwork” – when things pick up. But when this becomes “chronic overwork” we know it’s time to go hire more people.
“This past year we had two people who billed over 2,000 hours, and what we did was to counsel them to see what we could do to help them get their lives more in balance. Obviously this is the opposite kind of conversation that might have happened at the large firms that they came from.
“The benefits to our clients are clear. If you can operate within the 1700 billable hours model, that leaves capacity for the inevitable periods of episodic overwork. This means you can meet these upticks in demands with greater efficiency and less burn out.
“In contrast, if you are already at 2000 billable hours – if you are already running the factory at over capacity, and then you get another order – something is going to break.
“The whole dollars trade off is something I’ve been preaching forever. It’s really about making that counter cultural decision that enough money is enough, and that we don’t have to make it all about maximizing profits.”
Thank you Ben for leading the way to creating a truly 21st century workplace!