Most lawyers who start their own firm have a plan. Gordi Mikalacki had four cases, a ring light, and a ton of grit.

She opened Elmm Law Group in 2020. Two weeks later, the whole world shut down.

No partners. No playbook. Just her phone and a conviction she could build something better than what she'd seen from the inside. So she built her firm around a simple pledge: she’d never take more from a case than the client takes home.

Gordi posted content from her car when no one was watching. She hired people she paid more than they asked for. But when she finally stopped doing everything herself, her firm grew 50% in a single year.

In this episode of The Fireproof Podcast, we covered:

→ How she used Instagram to compete against firms with massive ad budgets

→ The pledge she makes to every client on net settlement proceeds

→ What burnout taught her about hiring and letting go of control

→ The community work that's become the core of her firm's culture

→ And what finally changed when she joined Fireproof

She doesn’t pretend the early years were easy, or that she had it figured out… Gordi was a single mom running a law firm off her cell phone fully convinced she could handle it all. But she can attest that everything changed the moment she chose to trust other people.

Thank you so much Gordi for coming on and being honest about the hard parts of building something from scratch - your story’s going to hit home for a lot of people in the Fireproof community.

Chapters

0:00 - Introduction & Welcome

0:51 - How Gordi Built Elmm Law Group From Scratch

2:43 - Why She Left Her Old Firm to Start Her Own

5:27 - Why She Waited a Year Before Joining Fireproof

7:16 - Hiring Strategy and the 50% Growth Year

8:00 - Using Instagram to Compete Without a Marketing Budget

12:18 - The Client Pledge: Never Take More Than the Client Gets

16:55 - Burnout, Bottlenecks, and the Cost of Doing It All

20:26 - Community Events and Staying Top of Mind

21:13 - The Backpack Program and Giving Back

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There was never a moment Mike thought “this is too hard”...

Mike Morse was trained by his dad to practice law, lost him in law school, and was let go from the firm that was sending him 70% of his work. On what would have been his father's birthday.

He decided he'd never rely on anyone else to fill his pipeline again.

He began to build a firm from scratch, operating only on the belief that quitting was never actually on the table.

Fast forward to today… Mike runs one of the most successful personal injury law firms in Michigan with 290 employees, 70 lawyers, and $360 million in settlements. He's written a bestselling book, built a thriving mastermind community, and now coaches law firm owners across the country to build what he spent decades figuring out on his own. And now he’s launching The Fireproof Podcast.

In my conversation with Mike we covered:

→ Why getting fired twice was the foundation his entire firm was built on

→ How a 3am phone call about a burning building forced him to finally hire an integrator

→ What delegation actually looks like when you're the visionary and ego's in the way

→ Why most coaches in the legal space have never run a law firm

→ How transparency with your team builds the kind of retention most firms only dream about

So much of Mike’s success came in refusing to let hard things be a reason to stop.

Mike, thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me interview you as the very first guest on the show! I can’t express how much I’ve already grown from the lesson’s you’ve shared.

Chapters

0:00 - Welcome to the Fireproof Podcast

1:02 - Mike Morse: Origin Story and Building the Firm

4:21 - The Night the Office Burned Down

6:26 - Mentors Who Changed Everything

8:18 - The Case for an Outside Coach

10:26 - Grit, Resilience, and Where It Really Comes From

14:21 - Learning the Value of a Dollar Early

19:02 - Daily Routines and Mental Clarity

23:17 - How to Pick the Right Coach

26:25 - Why Mike Still Shows Up

29:36 - The Power of a Peer Group

36:02 - Delegation and Freeing Yourself to Grow

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This episode is powered by Fireproof Performance.

Ready to fireproof your firm?https://www.fireproofperformance.com/

Connect with us:

https://www.youtube.com/@FireproofPerformance

https://www.linkedin.com/company/fireproof-performance/

https://www.facebook.com/fireproofperformance

https://www.instagram.com/fireproofperformance/