Lisa Smith | From Consolidation to Capital: How Big Shifts are Transforming Law Firm Strategy

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Law firms are in the midst of a transformation driven by consolidation of firms, investor interest, and shifting market dynamics. In this episode, I'm going to talk with a veteran strategist who has seen the cycles and is helping law firms adapt to what's happening now and what's coming in the future. You'll hear about what's really pushing change, how law firms must evolve to stay relevant, and what leaders should plan for now so that they can thrive in a new era of legal practice.

Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome my guest today, Lisa Smith, who is a principal in the Washington, D.C. office of Fairfax Associates. She advises leading law firms domestically and internationally on strategy development, mergers, management and governance, partner compensation and structure issues, and financial and operational performance and management. She's been advising law firms for more than 35 years. She's a frequent speaker at industry events and webinars and recently appeared on the TV show Wall Street Week, talking about the potential for private equity investment in U.S. law firms. Lisa, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Lisa Smith: Thank you very much, Elise.

Elise Holtzman: Absolutely. I'm really excited to have you to talk about something that I think a lot of people know is happening and know is out there, but don't necessarily think that it's going to impact them or wouldn't necessarily know what to do if it comes. So I'm interested in finding out from you, based on your vast experience working with and advising law firms, what do you see as the biggest changes and challenges facing the legal profession today?

Lisa Smith: Well, that's a big question, and there are a couple of different tracks. I'd say one, probably top of the list, is the segmentation of the market. There is a dramatic difference in the profitability of law firms, even within the Am Law 200, but certainly going below that from top to bottom. The clients are segmenting the work as well in terms of who they turn to for work. They're much more sophisticated about how they choose outside counsel and what they're looking for. So the old days where there was really less data available about different firms and different expertise has changed, where there is much more information, and clients are able to make more sophisticated decisions about who they are hiring.

Then the third part of that segmentation is on the talent. Some of that is the ability to pay, which relates back to the profitability. But the level of talent that is going to different firms has changed. Those are big ones on the segmentation of the market. We can come back to some of that a little bit.

I'd say the talent side of things is the second macro trend. It comes up in a couple of ways. One is the mobility of talent, which is unparalleled right now. We just see so much movement from firm to firm, and it can be destabilizing for some firms and opportunities for others.

I think we also see some succession challenges coming up. People are working longer. Then, as we'll talk about, I'm sure later, partner compensation is actually becoming more individual partner-focused and encourages people to hold on to client relationships longer. So it becomes more difficult to transition client relationships than it has in the past.

Then the last kind of talent piece is just some of the generational differences in terms of career aspirations and how people approach work-life balance. I'm a little more skeptical of those than I think I hear from partners. I've been around long enough to have seen these generational changes time and again, and each generation looks at the generation below them and assumes that they're not going to be as successful, and yet somehow they always are. So I think there are differences in generations, but I don't think it means that people aren't going to still aspire to be law firm partners. They might just approach it in a different way.

Then I think the third big trend is the external forces, whether it's the economic cycles, which seem to change almost from day to day these days, and the uncertainty that comes with that, or it is the impact that AI is potentially going to have on the legal industry and the staffing model, or it's some of the external investment that could happen in law firms and how firms are thinking about that. So I think those are the external pieces that are harder to control for, but people need to be thinking about and be aware of. So those are the big picture trends that we're seeing.

Elise Holtzman: To your point, there's so much going on. Depending on the size of your firm, the location of your firm, what the goals are for the firm, any of these things could impact you more or less. I was smiling when you were talking about the talent piece, because that's what I am hearing from so much when it comes to law firm leaders.

You know, I actually recently did a workshop on generational differences. I do that fairly frequently because, as you say, the older guard is sitting around saying, "Well, these young people, they don't want to be leaders, and they don't want to work as hard as we did," and all of that. I always say since cave mom and cave dad were in the cave with cave kid, they've been saying something similar.

But then there is the succession piece, right? The older attorneys, the more senior attorneys, are working longer, and we're all living longer and healthier lives. So then the younger people come up and say, "Well, where am I going with this thing? Do I even want to work this hard?" So there's a lot going on there.

I am really interested in this idea of all of the mergers and acquisitions and then some of this outside investment, as you say, private equity. Some of this, I think, comes from seeing what's going on in the marketplace. Some of it is for my own self-interest because, as I think I've mentioned on this podcast before, my husband's been with the same firm for more than 30 years. They recently did a merger with a UK-Australia firm for a variety of reasons that they thought made sense.

So what are you seeing in terms of, first of all, when we talk about consolidation—the mergers, the acquisitions, some firms going around the country and growing their footprint by gobbling up smaller firms—what's going on there? What's driving all of this?

Lisa Smith: Yeah, there's definitely a consolidation trend. We track mergers on a quarterly basis and actually publish that. So if anybody's interested, you can go to our website and see the merger press releases once a quarter. They're all posted there.

We've seen an uptick in mergers since the pandemic. Before that, actually, pre-pandemic, there were more mergers. It's dropped off a little bit, mainly because of the gaps in economics that, for some firms, there are fewer options. But we see right now a really almost unprecedented level of merger discussions going on. They don't all result in mergers, but even firms that historically have been very merger-resistant are now at least considering options and are willing to have conversations.

In fact, some of them are doing mergers. A lot of it comes down to some of those market forces that we just talked about, which I think is the profitability push. Firms are looking at how to enhance profitability, what they need to do differently. Some of it is the talent, and looking at ways to build up practices and build up geography. There's a scale play for many firms.

I think that scale play comes down to some extent to talent and technology. So it's talent in terms of being able to attract the top talent, being able to invest in talent, particularly in lateral partners. Then on the technology side, it's being able to invest in the AI tools and other tools that really enhance service delivery, which are expensive. It's not just having the tools, it's having the team that can help the firm support that and deliver that to clients. That's an expensive proposition that I think has really started to differentiate the midsize firms from the larger firms. The midsize firms we see are just a little farther behind. Not all of them, but some midsize firms are farther behind on that because of the expense of making those investments.

Elise Holtzman: You're reminding me of a panel discussion that I had the pleasure of hearing. This has to be around the pandemic, either right before it happened or right after, where there was a panel of in-house counsel, general counsel, talking about what was going on in the industry, and basically speaking to the law firms. One of the things that I will never forget the general counsel of a major, major Fortune 50 company said was, "The technology is going to become so expensive for law firms that your biggest competitors are actually going to be the in-house legal departments because the companies are going to invest in this technology, and it's going to be easier for us to do it than it is for you to do it."

I have to say that one, at the time, really shocked me. But what you're saying bears that out, right? We're now moving into a time where the AI and the other technology is the crux in many ways of these businesses. If they don't have the ability to invest, they are going to be left behind.

Lisa Smith: Yeah. We absolutely, we do interviews of the clients of our law firm clients as part of our strategy work. We hear from the clients that they are investing in technology and in AI in a way that will reduce what they turn to the outside law firms for. So they're streamlining their processes, and it's work that used to go to outside law firms. So it's definitely already happening. They do have more resources in both the time and the people to be able to create those processes and make those investments.

The other thing on mergers that is driving mergers is often, and it's particularly true for firms that have a corporate practice and are more reliant on corporate transaction M&A for their sort of revenue, is that that requires specialty practices. Many firms are very thin in some of those specialty areas. So they may only have one tax lawyer or half an antitrust lawyer or whatever it might be. It's what we call single points of failure, where one person leaves, and they don't have that capability anymore. That's critical to their core practices.

So we see that particularly in corporate, but we see it in other areas as well, where some of the smaller and mid-sized firms just aren't able to attract and retain that talent. So sometimes they look to combinations to provide a little bit more depth in those specialty areas.

Elise Holtzman: I want to talk to you a little bit more about the different ways in which outsiders can invest in law firms. But one of the things that occurs to me is that this sounds like it could really be the bailiwick of Biglaw. You know, all of this merger acquisition activity is really Biglaw trying to go around and gather together the resources that they need. For those who are listening in who are at smaller firms, what would you say to them? Is this something where they can just say, "Oh, it's irrelevant to me"? Or do they have to be paying attention? Is this somehow going to be impacting them as well? Or is it already impacting them?

Lisa Smith: Well, I think there are two parts of that. There's the merger part, and then there's the outside investment piece. The merger part is happening at all levels of the market. In fact, in the mergers that we track—and we count it from five lawyers and above as a merger, so if it's a three- or four-lawyer firm, we're not capturing that—but somewhere between 60% and 70% of the mergers in any given year involve firms under 20 lawyers.

So the majority of mergers actually are small firms. Sometimes the smaller firm is under 20 lawyers. Sometimes it's a large firm that's picking up a small firm. Other times, it's two smaller mid-sized firms merging with each other. So we do see the merger activity very much actually impacting the smaller firm end of the market.

I think on the outside investment question, that's an interesting phenomenon, which we're still very early stage on in the U.S. The U.K. is way ahead on this and some of the other jurisdictions, but it's particularly strong in the U.K. We're seeing a lot of private equity-backed firms and consolidation, so that's actually driving some of the consolidation there.

So it's the private equity backing and doing roll-ups of some of the smaller firms. That's actually particularly true at the small firm level. The initial strategy really is a roll-up strategy. So it is taking consumer-oriented firms often and developing brands, developing technology backups for them so that they can deliver services on a broader basis and create a brand. We see that really picking up steam in the U.K.

In the U.S., there are ethical constraints. There are two big things. One is the ethical constraints in terms of outside ownership. At this point, Arizona is really the only jurisdiction that allows for outside ownership. California has just loosened some rules—just this week, I think—that may allow some partnering with private equity. There are a couple of other jurisdictions that are looking at it, but it's still fairly limited in terms of what the options are.

But we do see incredible interest from private equity looking at new asset classes, and legal is a very appealing asset class. But the one other rub on that is the lack of non-competes. Because lawyers can leave and take their clients with them—and that's the client's right to choose their outside counsel—that’s a limiting factor. Because in most of the professional service firms that the outside investors are investing in, there are non-competes.

In accounting or consulting, they have non-competes, so at least they can tie the assets, which is the people, to the firm. In a law firm deal, they can’t do that. So it does make it a little bit less appealing. That’s been, I think, another thing that is sometimes a surprise to the private equity firms that are looking at the industry.

Elise Holtzman: One of the other things I want to ask you about before we go back and talk about the benefits and downsides of all of this and what you see coming in the United States in that regard is something that I have to confess I only recently heard about from a client, which is MSOs or management service organizations. A client of mine has a fairly midsize but growing firm. He was approached by several of these MSO organizations. So can you explain a little bit about what they are and why they're having their moment? You know, is this a moment or is this something that we think we're going to continue seeing? What does all of this look like to you?

Lisa Smith: It's a workaround, basically using a managed service organization concept to buy into the back office of the firm. So not the actual delivery of the practice of law, but the operations of the firm. By doing that, there can be an outside investor in the operational side. It's essentially working as almost an outsourced back office.

That could work pretty well in something like an IP firm, a prosecution firm where there are a lot of non-lawyer professionals who are doing the patent prosecution work—patent agents and technology specialists and things like that—where there can be a pretty large operation relative to the number of lawyers. It could work well in law firms that have consulting arms. We see it there.

But essentially, they're investing in the operation in exchange for a service charge that the firm is paying, that the law firm side of it is paying. So it's really separating. It's a way to separate the practice of law from the operations of the firm and potentially then make some investments in technology and those other things that will help facilitate the growth of the firm.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I was going to say it sounds appealing, right? It's like the law firm owners walk away with some cash that may allow them to invest in other things they want to invest in. It takes out a lot of that back-office stuff, which, let's face it, lawyers don't necessarily love to do because many of them love to practice law and they don't want to focus on that sort of thing. Then, as you say, these MSOs are coming along and saying, "Well, you know, we are doing this with a bunch of different firms, so we have the ability to invest in all of this AI and this other stuff."

So, I mean, I guess if something sounds too good to be true, maybe it is. What are some of the downsides perhaps that are associated with using an MSO?

Lisa Smith: I think it becomes less customized. So it's going to be more standard operating procedure. They're not going to have the exceptions, and many law firm partners like exceptions. So I think it will be a little bit more corporate than they're used to and less personal. I think that's probably the primary thing that it would be hard to get used to from a personal perspective.

From a business perspective, I think the firm just needs to make sure that the interests are aligned—that the interest isn't going to be in cutting expenses to the bone, but in figuring out how to make the delivery of services more efficient, more effective, improve the billing processes, all of those things. But it's going to require a change in behavior to really make it work and get an advantage, a competitive advantage from that model.

Elise Holtzman: If I ask you to look back into your deep experience and then also look into your crystal ball for a moment, what do you suspect is going to happen in the United States when it comes to this private equity-type investment? Is this something that is on the cusp of exploding in the other 49 states or 48 and a half states? Or is this something that you think is going to be slow to take hold, or maybe not take hold in some places?

Lisa Smith: I think it's going to happen. How quickly it happens will be a question. It's interesting when you look at, again, the U.K. model. It took about 10 years from the time they liberalized their approach and allowed alternative business structures to the time now when it's really gotten traction. There were definitely bumps along the road.

Some of the early stages were actually firms going public and listing on the public markets. Those were not very successful. Some of the early private equity-backed firms were not very successful, but I think that has changed. So I think there will be bumps in the road. There'll be a push, and then it'll go back. But I think ultimately, it could be a 10-year cycle. If we follow the history that we saw in the U.K., it could be a little faster.

But I think one of the things that is interesting about the law firm model is that we talk about the partners in law firms being owners of the business, but really all being an owner in the business entitles them to is a share of compensation in any given year. It doesn't really provide for what they've built in terms of value.

Now, some of that is because it's a people-based business, and clients can come and go, and lawyers can come and go. So there's a question about what the enduring value really is. But to some extent, this may provide more of an exit strategy. It allows people to actually take some of the value out of the firm that they have built.

So I think there's some appeal in that to some partners who look at the investment that they're making and building up the firm and building the brand and some of the intangibles that come. It's not just the current income, but the overall growth of the firm. Then, at the end, they really walk away with just their paid-in capital.

Elise Holtzman: What would you say to law firm leaders who say, even if something like this comes along, "You know, this is not the culture we want. We want to maintain the culture of our firm. You know, we're a midsize firm. We're not necessarily huge. So we're just going to out of hand say no to this because we want to stay the way we are." Is this something that you think firms are going to be able to do? Or is it just going to become business as usual, and that if they don't get on board, they're going to wind up not being able to succeed?

Lisa Smith: That's a really good question. I don't know. I think there certainly are options for successful firms to be independent. There's no question about that. I think the question is whether that's going to be limited to the largest, most profitable firms who will be able to compete effectively, or whether that will be something that's an option for some of the smaller and mid-sized firms. I'd say that the jury is still out on that, so I don't know where we'll be on that. I wish I had a crystal ball for that.

Elise Holtzman: This is something that may be coming down the pike, but as you were saying earlier, there are so many changes that are going on right now. How are you seeing law firms adapt to some of the market changes that are already happening? What are some of the things that law firms are having to do? Maybe it's investing in technology. That's one of the things you talked about. Maybe it's changing compensation models because the senior lawyers are staying and the junior lawyers continue to show up. Or whether it's AI, what are the most important changes you're seeing law firms already have to grapple with?

Lisa Smith: There are a couple of things. One is that we do see firms getting more deliberate about their strategy and making business decisions. I think in the past, strategy was really more, well, we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. Now, I think firms are a little more realistic about where the market's going and how they might have to change, and being more open to change. So I think that's one of the things, and I think being more clear about what their business model is, what practices they're going to excel in, and what maybe they aren't going to do anymore.

Part of strategy is about making decisions about what you aren't going to do and what services you aren't going to provide. Historically, firms have been reluctant to call those out. Now we do see firms making that call.

I do think compensation is a big area. Partner compensation is a big area of change, really up and down the line, in terms of it's affecting actually the top of the market, the most profitable firms as much as anybody. Part of that is because we see some big trends in partner comp.

One is the stretching of the range of compensation. So pushing more compensation to the top. That's really about being able to recruit top talent, but also retain top talent. That really is a response to the mobility that we see in the market. So we see bigger bonus pools. We see higher-tier levels or point levels, or compensation levels at the top. We see a higher bar for equity partnership. So the line between income partners and equity partners is just pulling up. Usually it's based on originations or business generation. The dollar amount of that is going up pretty dramatically.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah. I just want to pipe in here for a minute because so much of what you're talking about is I'm seeing this on a regular basis talking to both law firm leaders as well as junior to mid-level partners. When you and I started in this business, I mean, there were partners and associates. That was pretty much it, right? You talked about segmentation of the market, but there's segmentation of their different job descriptions and different titles now and income partner and equity partner.

So first of all, I'm seeing so much lateral movement, as you say, in the marketplace. I recently interviewed someone on this podcast, Tina Solis, who is an attorney at Nixon Peabody in Chicago and is very widely regarded as an expert in lateral partner movement. The numbers of people, even she says that she's seen, it's grown dramatically. So there's so much movement in the marketplace.

Everything from that to me talking to mid-level partners who are saying, "Well, I thought I wanted to make equity partner, and I've been gunning for equity partner all of this time, and I'm helping to move the needle in terms of originations and getting existing clients to do more business with us. But I just don't see this as a possibility anymore. So I'm considering throwing in the towel."

So I think at every level, at least I'm seeing, and then the more junior people looking up and saying, "Good grief, who the heck would want that? Do I even want to stay in law? Do I want to stay at this law firm? Do I want to go somewhere else to just try to make a couple more dollars for the next few years and be able to put money down on a house and then go do something completely different?"

So the stuff you're talking about, as far as I'm concerned, at least, it has such an effect on individuals in such a profound way and changes the way people are looking at the law and whether they even want to participate.

Lisa Smith: I think that's right. I think one of the ways that firms are responding to that is thinking about what that model, what does the partnership model actually look like. We've seen more firms add essentially a variable equity model. It's in between income and equity so that they're sharing in a portion of the compensation that is fixed and a portion of the compensation that is variable based on firm performance.

So they're half equity and half fixed. They're not sharing in all of the upside or the downside of the firm's performance, but they are sharing in some of it. So that's the in-between, a hybrid model. I think that helps to solve some of that because it's a stepping stone between income partner and a full equity partner and, you know, comes with more partner rights and, of course, also comes with capital requirements typically.

So I think that actually is something that makes sense for firms to have a couple of different steps along the way, particularly for large firms. You know, just having partners and associates doesn't really make sense when you're at a thousand or two thousand lawyers, and there are different skill sets that are required. So I think firms are trying to adapt their models to fit some of that.

But I do think there's frustration in people who entered as associates and saw equity partner as something that they were, as you say, gunning for. Then the closer they get, the higher the expectations go. It's always just a couple of steps ahead of where they are. So they feel like the ladder is being pulled up right when they get close to the top of it. So that can be frustrating.

Elise Holtzman: Then senior leaders saying, "Well, I feel like I'm never going to be able to leave because these junior people don't seem to want to take over the leadership of this firm. They just don't want it the way we used to want it. How do we get them to see how fabulous it is?" Part of it is, how fabulous is it? We have to be realistic about what this looks like for the people who are coming up behind us.

I also want to highlight something you said about a focus more on strategic planning, and not that I think it's all about the strategic planning. But I do see that again at every level of law firm, even the midsize firms and the smaller firms, lawyer leaders are starting to recognize that, yes, these are businesses. Look, lawyers are slow adopters. We're smart people, but we're not the first ones on the block to do the newest, most hot thing in the marketplace.

But I'm seeing people even at the smaller firms understanding, look, we are running a business and we do have to engage in strategic planning, and we do have to have particular financial goals in mind and be looking more at profitability and not just the kumbaya of, "We've had the same clients for a long time." Because a lot of those clients are, as you say, they are getting more choosy. They are using data, and they are realizing the power that they have to make choices.

So I think that's interesting too. I'm somebody who's a little bit critical of law schools, for example, for not teaching these sorts of things even today. They're not pushing out lawyers who have any sense of market conditions or had a plan for that thing. So I'm curious about your take on all of that and what you've been seeing.

Lisa Smith: I do. I do think it starts at the law school level. We do see some firms starting to do a business of law class. I taught a single class at Yale Law School last year in a business of law class on partner compensation. They had a whole, it was a semester class. They had different, actually, law firm leader guest speakers come in every week on different topics. So I think there are law schools that are starting to touch on that.

I know a couple of other law schools do that as well. It was fascinating. It was an interesting curriculum that the professor had built. But I do see that, and some of that I think is just the amount of money at stake, and the competitiveness of the industry has forced firms to be more businesslike and make business decisions. Not everybody is prepared for that.

I think it is hard to, if you haven't been a leader in a firm, there's not an easy training course for that. Some people are fabulous at it and some not so much. Some people want to give up, the people who may be good at it maybe don't want to give up their practice to do it either. That's, I think, the other piece is I think the industry still relies largely on lawyer leaders and not, there are CLOs, and some of them are great as well, but I think there is still a bias towards lawyer leaders.

Elise Holtzman: Not a question. I always talk about this idea that what we do is we say, "Hey, Lisa, you know what? You're a great lawyer. You've got a really good book of business. We'd like you to become the managing partner of the firm." It's like, what? You know, what are you talking about? I've never managed anything except a couple of people on my deal team or whatever.

So I think that there is more of an understanding in the marketplace that some of these, even if they're fractional people, some of these professionals with C’s—CFO, CMO, CIOs, those sorts of things—can be incredibly valuable. So, Lisa, if you were advising a firm starting a five-year strategic plan today or a three-year strategic plan today, what are some of the non-negotiables that you think that they should be paying attention to going forward? Or there are just too many to even talk about?

Lisa Smith: I think it's being realistic about the firm's competitive position and likely competitive position going forward. I think that's one of the mistakes that we see firms make is that they tend to be very change-averse. So sometimes want to hold on to what they have, which is admirable because often what they have is very good, but it's not sustainable in the market.

So I think it's understanding those market forces that are going to impact the firm and make sure that the firm is going to be able to weather through those. We've seen some firms where if there are, and being realistic about what the aspirations of partners are, we've seen firms recently where they've lost big groups to other firms, and it destabilized the firm and either forced a merger or forced a dissolution of the firm.

Sometimes that was absolutely predictable. The firm ultimately, in their strategy process, chose not to change because it was what the mushy middle wanted to do as opposed to what the people really driving the firm wanted to do. So I think firms need to be careful not to, as we say, let the tail wag the dog and manage to the bottom, but really need to manage to the top. That's a hard thing to do.

Elise Holtzman: It is. I mean, I think it takes a strong stomach, especially if you've had people around you for a very long time and you felt like you were all basically rowing in the same direction. It's hard to be the one who stands up and says, "Okay, by the way, we're going to shift everything we've been doing for the last however many years."

Lisa, this is such fascinating stuff. I know you and your colleagues at Fairfax have tons of data on all of this stuff, and you're really paying attention to the marketplace. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about the practical side of this, what this means for law firm leaders now.

As we wrap up our time together, there's a question that I'd like to ask you that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show. It's this. There is a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to the dramatic changes we're seeing in the legal profession—as I said, you've seen a lot of it and you see a lot coming down the pike—what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you, but you think is important for lawyers at every stage of an organization or every level of an organization need to hear and remember?

Lisa Smith: Yeah, I think it's, and that's a tough one. I mean, it's funny because sometimes when I'm doing presentations to firms, people will come up and say, "Oh, that was really great. It was so interesting." I feel like I've done this 10 times already. This doesn't seem like it's rocket science, but I think it is to people who are immersed in the practice of law as opposed to the business of law.

I'd say the piece of advice I would have is to recognize that change is happening, whether you respond to it or not. So being prepared to respond to it has to be the priority, that you can't sit still. Status quo really isn't an option because status quo really will mean falling behind.

Sometimes that's a tough message to hear, but there are just so many examples of how firms have navigated that differently. Some who recognize that there's change and adapt to it have been successful. Those who hold on to outdated principles end up falling behind. Ultimately, that's not a successful competitive strategy.

Elise Holtzman: I think it's important for lawyers to hear that over and over again, because we're not typically risk takers and we are not typically the early adopters. I think as the world has changed and as the market has changed, we need to recognize that in ourselves and adapt to what's around us.

So Lisa, thank you so much for being here today.

Lisa Smith: Thank you for having me.

Elise Holtzman: It's been a pleasure. I'm going to thank our listeners also for tuning in. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.