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- [00:01]
A
Are you tired of the marketing guessing game? Does your website feel more like a digital billboard than a client magnet? If you're nodding along, you're not alone. And it's time to stop the uncertainty and start getting real results. Let's talk about your marketing spend. Are you just shelling out money every month and crossing your fingers? Do you ever wonder what impact your marketing is really having on your revenue? Well, it's time to take the guesswork out of the equation with Rise Up Media. We've been working with them for over a year and, and the feedback from our fellow members has been fantastic. Rise Up Media is here to take your marketing to the next level. They'll even perform a full audit of your online presence, giving you the good, the bad, and even let you in on what your competition is up to that you're missing out on. And the best part, there's no obligation, no catch, no pressure. If you decide to work with them, their contracts are month to month. That's right. No long term commitments tying you down. So what are you waiting for? To learn more about how Rise Up Media can transform your firms, visit riseup media.com max law and rise is spelled with a Z. Riseupmedia.com max law this is Maximum Lawyer with your host Tyson Mutrix. So Matt, you've got this really unique blend of like attorney, real estate investor, which I think is pretty cool. I think that's going to be pretty helpful for people when it comes to sort of investing in real estate. But then also you bring a different perspective. So I wonder, how did that, how did that blend happen?
- [01:49]
B
Sort of by accident I would say. I accidentally went to law school and I've always been business minded is the way I would put it. So back in, you know, college I was doing entrepreneurial things, doing multi level marketing and dabbling in different business ideas, figuring things out. And I really just went to law school because I didn't know what else to do, to be honest.
- [02:09]
A
I'm very curious. Okay, so let's, let's get into some of the multi level marketing stuff because I've had, I've actually dabbled in some of that stuff too because I, I was very interested in the whole, I still am the whole idea of that business model. It's funny because it's one of those things that it actually does work if everyone works it. That's an interesting thing. So what are some of the ones that you dabbled in? Because I'm very interested.
- [02:33]
B
Well, even before then I was always into stuff like that. As a kid, I went to the store when they were selling Nintendo gamecubes, bought a bunch of them with my friends, and then resold them and, and did stuff, you know, door to door sales when I was a kid. And so for me, it was just a thing to try to figure out. And it was called monavie. So it was like this juice.
- [02:55]
A
Yeah. Okay, I haven't heard of that one before.
- [02:57]
B
And I had family that was really into it and it didn't work that well for me. I got some momentum and then kind of fizzled out for various reasons. But it was a really good learning experience to be in a young adult, reaching out to people I knew, getting some rejection, some, you know, some acceptance, and just sort of figuring it out from like a sales perspective.
- [03:18]
A
I would say one thing that I did was it's not as effective anymore. But early on, and I did this in law school to make extra money is I would go around to like, Goodwills and things like that and go and find books. And I would, I would go and I would search on my phone, okay, which books are good books to sell? Because some of the books were worth like 50 cents, but some were like, worth like $30 and they were selling them for like a dollar at Goodwill. So I'd go around and I would get. I would a stack of books for like eight bucks and then just go back and sell them. I get to the point where I was even getting. I was finding on Facebook, Marketplace and Craigslist these big lots of books for like $10 and just reselling. And so I had these massive bookshelves. So I had a massive inventory. But it is one of those things where there are a little bitty creative ways of, of making extra money that if you just look at it a different way. And I, I wonder, so taking that approach that you've had, how has that benefited you in the law firm but then also like real estate investing?
- [04:21]
B
Well, the other thing that segued into poker. So when I was in. So after that, I got really deep into poker to the extent where my grades started to suffer.
- [04:29]
A
Like, oh, no.
- [04:30]
B
My buddy here in town, he. He makes. He jokes and tells people how we'd be in our mythology class and I'd be playing four screens of poker, oh my gosh, during the middle of class. So, like, it took a lot of twists and turns, but it's been really helpful from the law side. I think a lot of lawyers don't have a focus on profit and growth and the entrepreneurial side of owning a business and they're more focused on serving clients, which obviously is a great thing to focus on. But I think I've always thought about things in that way naturally. And also from a time efficiency standpoint. Like I'm always trying to figure out how to get the most bang for my buck with regard to time. So I'm constantly thinking about how to be more efficient. Is this the best use of my time or is that the best use of my time? And leverage? How do I leverage people opportunities? You know, like your example, how do I leverage the fact that they're selling these books for $1 when they're going for $30? My mind has kind of developed that way.
- [05:28]
A
What are some creative ways in the law firm that you've identified that you can do that?
- [05:31]
B
Well, the biggest thing for me is my journey with law. It went from learning the craft to figuring out how to spend as little of my time actually practicing as possible, to be honest with you. And so early on, I realized I was going to have to quit my job. But before I did that, I was doing real estate deals. I started a title company. I was doing, I was creating other sources of cash flow and income to where I wasn't 100% dependent on, on the law. So I went from creating other sources of cash flow to trying to figure out, okay, how do I build up this law firm where I'm not the one grinding every day, like the solo law practice attorney you see who does that for 50 years and they do well and they make good money and they probably enjoy it a lot more than I did. But that's not what I wanted. I wanted the law firm to be a business that I could eventually get out of the day to day.
- [06:24]
A
So why the law firm? Why go to law school? I'm curious, because you're doing these other things. And I wonder why law school?
- [06:31]
B
You know, when I was in college, I was, I was very into reading biographies and autobiographies. And it was really interesting, the lawyer side of things. I started to notice how lawyers were very influential in various aspects of how the world developed and then in business. And I really didn't overthink it much other than I was teaching middle school at the time. And I knew I didn't want to do that.
- [06:56]
A
That's. Oh my gosh, you. There's. Okay, we're going to get into that too. Okay.
- [07:01]
B
So I knew I didn't want to do that long term. And it just seemed to me that I could learn a lot, I could grow a lot and then I could apply that in. In any of the areas that I was interested in. And that's about as much as I had figured out.
- [07:13]
A
Gotcha. So it's funny because, like, there are. There are people that have law degrees that you're like, oh, my gosh, like Tony La Russa, you know, the former majors of the Cardinals and the A's, and, like, he had a law degree. But I do. I. I do think you're right. I think that having a law degree is. Even if you don't even use it, is. Is extremely beneficial. So I. When it comes to, like, the actual law firm, what is the ultimate goal? I know you want to get it to the point where basically it's running itself and you can kind of, I guess, step away. And sometimes we'll. I've heard people refer to that as the, like, the owner's box in a way. So do you think that is actually possible when it comes to running a law firm?
- [07:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely do. Hopefully, I'm not disproven.
- [07:55]
A
Yeah, I mean, I hope you're right.
- [07:56]
B
To me, you know, like almost anything in life, it's sort of an experiment. But, yeah, I think it's possible. I kind of decided the only way it was going to be possible was for me to let go of control of a lot of things and find partners and partnerships that worked where we could, you know, use each other's strengths. So I tried for years to do that, and it was. The problem is it was a learning curve, you know, figuring out how to hire people and how to partner with people in a way that would actually mesh together. I do think it's possible. I don't think. You know, I think if you go into any business trying to be 100% passive, you're likely to be disappointed. You know, it takes work. It's just you can build a business in a way where what you're doing and the value you're bringing aligns with your strengths and your personality. Right. So I'm never going to be maybe 100% out of the law firm, but perhaps my value can be generated from business development and relationships and some marketing and some strategy. So I'll be always be there working in some way, but maybe not writing a brief or going to court, necessarily.
- [09:01]
A
How did you find the right partner or partners for that? Because I. What's interesting is, is I've seen. I mean, we've been doing this podcast since 2016, and it's. I see sometimes there's resentment, you know, where You've got the partner that's in there doing things all the time, or partners. And then maybe you have this partner that's sort of on the outside that has had a significant role in growing the firm. But you've got this growing resentment because they're inside, you're outside. So how did you find the right partner or partners for that?
- [09:35]
B
Well, a lot of trial and error. You know, I found I've worked with various people and for various different reasons, things didn't work out. Sometimes it was an ego related thing, sometimes it was just. More often it was just not understanding fit, you know, that certain people are just naturally inclined towards certain ways of doing business or certain roles. Right. So, for example, I had a guy, he's a phenomenal guy, we're still great friends, and we said, yeah, let's do this partnership thing. But come to find out it's just not really what he actually wanted long term. And he sort of had to figure that out for himself. My partner now, I think I've learned a lot. And I understood what I needed, which was rare. I needed somebody who really wanted to lead and run a law firm. But I also needed somebody who didn't have too big of an ego or didn't have certain issues that would prevent her from understanding what we were trying to create and from not understanding the value I could provide. So that's the conversation we try to have a lot. It's not as much about who is billing how many hours. It's about how am I adding value. Right. And so that's the focus that we try to emphasize.
- [10:51]
A
So let's say I hire you, you come in, I want you to be my consultant. Right. And I want to bring in a partner. What sorts of things am I going to look at to determine whether or not a partner is the right fit?
- [11:03]
B
Well, one of the things, and this applies to hiring, that I've learned a lot over the last five, ten years. Mostly just, I mean, I was hiring people. I had no idea what I was doing. It started with the title company because I was running the title company on the side of the law practice. They were two separate companies. So I had to staff up the title company. And I mean, I swear, pretty much almost everybody I hired for the first several years was the wrong person. And I really started to understand the value of getting to know that person on a deep level. So we do a lot of personality tests and intermetrics and multiple layers of interviews. Now, in a way that I didn't used to do to really nail down, who is this person? Where are they going to thrive? Like, what are they meant to be doing? And you got to figure out, is this role what this person is basically designed to do, or they happen to kind of change themselves and morph themselves to try to adapt to that role. And then you got to go into also the character, ethics, personality side of things, too. But it starts with the fact that for most roles, 90% of people are just not a good fit for that role or more.
- [12:12]
A
That's true. Are there any particular personality tests that you all prefer?
- [12:16]
B
Well, I lean on a business coach because I've realized I've tried to do too many things and, you know, I can only master a few things maybe in a lifetime, certainly at one time. So I use. I lean heavily on a business coach for that. And he does like five different personality tests in one. It's kind of like a, you know, grouped up testing. He does. I know one's the disc test. I think one's like an intermetrix test.
- [12:41]
A
But there's several there, there. I mean, there are so many test at this point. Do you hire more for experience or more for the fit? I guess it's one of the things where when we look at people, we look at whether or not they're a peep. So whether they got passion, energy, ability to energize other people, whether they can execute on tasks, whether or not they have edge. All those mean different things. But I wonder, are you looking, Is there a certain person that you're looking for that you will then fit to that role, or are you looking for more of someone that has that experience that you can put into that role?
- [13:20]
B
Yeah, and just to be clear, I definitely don't think I'm a hiring expert. I've made just enough mistakes to maybe help people not make some of the same ones I used to just try to find the person with the experience. It's like, what are they doing? How confident am I that they can do that well? And that's kind of all I kind of thought. And then I started to realize that most of the problems I was having had nothing to do with knowledge. So, you know, it depends on the role. Like, if you're going to hire a partner at a litigation law firm, they probably need to have some experience. And you can see that they know how to do the job because you can't necessarily hold their hand on everything. But for most roles, I think the character, the culture fit and those other aspects are more important, the experience, because anybody can learn A skill or a knowledge base. But sometimes only a small percentage of people can actually do what you're trying to fill.
- [14:16]
A
On the business side of things, I agree with you. I think the mistake a lot of people make is they hire for experience. And I mean, experience is important in many roles, but to me, it's the fit the person, the actual person themselves is. And to me, like, the most important trait is, like, can they figure it out? You know what I mean? Because if you can figure it out, you can get the experience. Some people just cannot figure it out. And that, to me, is one of the most frustrating parts, because you think that you find someone that can figure it out because you put them through all these assessments and everything else, and if they can't just figure it out, that part just drives me nuts.
- [14:56]
B
And that's hard, you know, in the interviewing process. That's tough to. Sometimes that's tough. You can do all the personality tests in the world, but until you're actually working alongside of somebody, sometimes it's really hard to know what they're going to be like.
- [15:08]
A
Yeah. So tell me about the real estate investing. I want to shift gears to that, because I want to. I think that that part's really, really important.
- [15:13]
B
Yeah. So I. It starts with my wife, actually. So I met her in law school, and she had this crazy idea. We were dating. She wanted to buy this house, and I thought she was a little bit nuts. Her mom thought she was really nuts. And we get the inspection report back, and it's super long, and she's like, I want to do this. So we move in, we kind of flip it ourselves. And that was my first experience. And at the time, I had been looking at stocks and investing things, and nothing really caught me, to be honest. Stocks seem pretty boring to me, to be honest with you. And I started listening to podcasts and reading books about real estate investing, and I was hooked, mostly because of the leverage side. You know, when you Talked about the dollar book to 30, I'm listening to these stories of people who are buying houses for $0 on seller financing and doing all these creative things.
- [16:05]
A
Now, the risk is a little bit higher when it comes to houses compared to books, but the concept is the same.
- [16:11]
B
Well, me and my buddy. I have a poker buddy who also transitioned into real estate, and we basically joke with each other that all we're doing is playing poker with. With different chips.
- [16:20]
A
Interesting. Okay, so why is that? Because I want to help me understand that part of it. Because that. Because I look at it differently. But I don't play poker, so I want to hear that.
- [16:31]
B
I mean, it's not a perfect analogy, but I mean, what you're doing is you're playing a game basically where there are certain rules to follow, but mostly it's a game about people. Right. And in poker, if you're going to do well, what you're doing is you're looking for opportunities where there's a discrepancy in value, basically. Right. So I know the odds and I know the bet. And if I make this move, I have, you know, asymmetrical upside to get a reward. And that's really what you're doing in poker and in real estate is you're taking advantages of opportunities that people don't see to create value in the marketplace.
- [17:09]
A
It's interesting. Do you think you could take that same concept and use that to a. To apply that to buying law firms?
- [17:17]
B
Absolutely. So, you know, I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, but one opportunity I see in the future is I think we've got a long Runway, we want to grow revenue. And, you know, I like to focus on one thing at a time when I can. But you can absolutely do that. And I've got a lot of colleagues, friends who, they buy businesses, most of them not law firms, for a living. And they're looking for personnel upside down. Oh, if I bring in this person, I can add value to the business, or if I add this market, I can, you know, So I absolutely think you can do it with business acquisition.
- [17:50]
A
I hear a lot of people talk about how you should really, as a law firm owner, go buy a building and then essentially lease that back to yourself. Do you have any thoughts on that?
- [17:58]
B
Well, I have done that before.
- [17:59]
A
Okay, let's hear about that.
- [18:01]
B
So it's a double edged sword for me. I learned how to invest in real estate first and then I did it. I have people reach out to me sometimes for advice on this exact topic, but a lot of times if they have no real estate experience, real estate really, from my point of view, starts with making sure you get a good deal on the front end. And if you don't have any real estate experience, it's kind of hard to understand whether you're getting a good deal or not. So with that caveat, if you can get a decent deal on real estate, it can be amazing because you can buy the building in a separate entity, you can lease it to your law firm company, probably at a premium. You get to convert. From a tax perspective, you can convert active income to passive income. Because now you're taking some of your income and you're sending it to an LLC that you still own, for example. But now that's passive income that's taxed differently than ordinary income. And you get to be in control of your building. You're taking that money you would have paid in rent anyways, and you're, you're using it to pay down debt.
- [19:05]
A
Okay, so there's a couple things I want to cover there. The, it's the, the passive versus active income. We'll start with that. And then after that I want to get into what actually, when you're looking at getting a deal on real estate, what does that look like? So let's passive versus active talk about that.
- [19:21]
B
Yeah, and I go to my CPA for all this stuff. I don't, I refuse to give people tax advice. But, but, but my understanding from what I've done is, is basically, well, there's a few different layers to it. So right now with the bonus depreciation, for example, if I go out and I buy a million dollar office, and we're looking for this because right now our law firm is renting. If I go buy a million dollar building, for example, I can do a bonus depreciation through cost segregation and probably write off about $300,000 of income right.
- [19:51]
A
Off the bat, immediately, boom.
- [19:53]
B
So it's October. If I close on a building in December, well, the timing might be off. If I can get the cost segregation done in order to apply it for this year, then I can offset $300,000 of my active income through bonus depreciation. So that's huge. Obviously. Then on top of that, let's say I'm paying five grand of rent where I'm currently at. Well, if I up the rent to $7,000, that's an extra 25 grand that goes, you know, comes out of my income that's not taxed anymore. Then on top of that, the 60,000 in that scenario that I was paying towards the landlord is going to pay down debt which I've borrowed maybe at 5%. So I'm borrowing money at 5%. I'm paying down the debt with something that was already an expense. I'm getting a bonus depreciation. I own the building, so hopefully I'm getting appreciation. And if it's a good deal, I'm probably getting cash flow too. And on top of that, the biggest risk of owning a commercial building is your tenant leaving. Well, that's a little bit less risky when you're the tenant if you've got a decent law firm, so you've taken.
- [21:01]
A
Away the majority of the risk, not all risk, because there's no guarantee that your firm's going to succeed forever, but you have a lot of control over that, which is kind of nice. All right, so what then makes a good deal? So if you're looking, let's say you are, take you out of the scenario. Let's say you're just an average law firm owner. They're going to go, look, they want to buy some sort of office suite or a building so that they can lease it back to their firm. What are they looking for?
- [21:28]
B
Well, it's going to be really dependent on the person, somebody who's really focused on the law firm, and they believe they're going to grow the law firm and that's where their revenue is going to come from. They're not trying to be a real estate investor. Then probably there needs to be a little bit more focus on how does the building encourage their business plan for their law firm. Right. So in that sort of a scenario, maybe it's not as important to get a screaming deal on the building. Maybe it's more important that the building serves the business. But I mean, the biggest thing is I was talking to a dentist not long ago who was trying to buy their building, spend time talking to commercial brokers. You know, he almost bought a building and started talking to some brokers and realized, I'm going to way overpay for this thing and I've got a right of refusal on the building anyways, you know, so really just start to lean on experts is what I would say, to understand values.
- [22:23]
A
Gotcha. Would it make sense to buy a building, maybe overpay for it? Are the benefits so great that maybe you overpay for a building, but the benefits are so great that when you get to lease it back to your firm that it would still make sense.
- [22:42]
B
In some scenarios that could wash out to be reasonable. I wouldn't recommend it because there's never a reason you have to overpay for a building. There's always a building that you can buy that's below market value, much less at market value. The only scenario that maybe I would encourage it potentially is like if you're leasing a building long term, you know, you want to be there, you're willing to pay a little bit of a premium because that building helps your business so much, and you can offset that with some of the benefits we've talked about. So it could be reasonable to do.
- [23:14]
A
That in Some situations I've sort of in the weeds. Question. Okay, all right. If you want to make improvements to the building. Okay, so. Because I know that whenever we've negotiated leases, you know, we're negotiate where they'll pay for the, you know, certain improvements and usually the. I usually get a better deal if I do a longer term on the lease or whatever. Who pays for that? Is it something that the real estate part of the company, not part of the company, the real estate company would pay for those, or is that something that the law firm would pay for? Which one's a better idea?
- [23:45]
B
If you own both?
- [23:46]
A
If you own both.
- [23:47]
B
If you own both, it's probably the best idea for the law firm to pay for it because you can just immediately cut that out of your income now. Negatively affects bankability and things, you know you're going to show less income, right. Less profit. So if that's important for you for that year, that could be a consideration. But generally you're going to pay less taxes. If you as a law firm pay for a bunch of things now, your profit goes down.
- [24:12]
A
So that's. To me, that sounded right, that logically that sounded correct, but I wasn't. Because sometimes there's things like that you would know because you're on the real estate side that I just. I wouldn't know. I've already learned a lot from you on just on some of the few things. So that's, that's, that's awesome. What are some of the other little things that if you're, if you're thinking about, I wouldn't say tinkering, you're thinking about investing in some sort of a building or a suite that the average person just wouldn't know.
- [24:41]
B
Hmm. Things that I would know. Well, you know what, One of the biggest things that I've leveraged is financing. I don't think a lot of people understand the financing side of things. And I remember hearing the saying back in the day, somebody said sellers sometimes can be unreasonable. A lot of times they're unreasonable with prices. The seller was asking for a million dollars and it was probably worth 700,000 or something.
- [25:05]
A
That's a little bit of a difference.
- [25:07]
B
And he's like, I'll give you a million dollars. I'll give you a dollar a day for a million days. But the point is people fixate on price. But if you understand the nuances of financing, what you can realize is there's a lot of things you can tinker with to create value. Another buddy of mine calls it debt equity. So you know, normal equity would be you bought a building for $500,000 and it was worth 700 and you have $200,000 of equity debt. Equity might be you bought the building for $700,000, it was worth $700,000, but you got a 30 year loan with 0% interest. Technically you don't have any normal equity, but you have a tremendous amount of upside and value there. So that's the biggest thing I've learned is seller financing, creative financing, figuring out ways to create value there. And it's a really amazing tool, especially in a debt fluctuating market like this, because you can buy things that other people can't buy at prices they can't pay.
- [26:12]
A
Right. So I see people like, I think Grant Cardona said this, so I don't want to fully attribute this to him, but I think he has said that he rents his house, he doesn't buy his, he doesn't own the house. Tell me how that makes sense. Does it make sense?
- [26:30]
B
I think he even uses stronger language than that. I think he calls people idiots.
- [26:36]
A
So does that make any logical sense to you?
- [26:39]
B
I mean, I think for some people you gotta be careful. Like one thing I learned was I love learning from other people, but you gotta be careful not to take too much from somebody that doesn't apply to you. You know, it's like the way I approach it is I can learn from anybody. But probably if for me, I'm a family person, I probably don't want to study somebody who's a billionaire whose family is in shambles.
- [27:04]
A
Sure.
- [27:04]
B
At least not on the family part.
- [27:05]
A
Yeah, that's true.
- [27:06]
B
So for Grant, I think he's in such a crazy position with his huge funds and that it probably makes more sense for him to rent. But for the average person, most millionaires, the bulk of their wealth comes from their home. So in theory, you know, if you can take your money and you can reinvest it in something that makes you 20%, perhaps your law firm, for example, you could take, let's say you got to put $200,000 on a house to buy it, but you're really confident that if you put $200,000 into your business plan that you're going to grow your law firm substantially. Maybe it makes more sense for you to rent because then you can take your cash and maximize the return on it. I think that's mostly what he's getting at. He's getting at taking your cash and getting the most return on it. But the reality of it is most People, and probably most lawyers, that's not really their skill set. It depends on who you are. You need to understand yourself, what you're good at. Some people are better off taking more passive and safer approaches to building wealth.
- [28:06]
A
Got it. All right, so you have, let's see, you had a title company. Do you still have the title company?
- [28:11]
B
No.
- [28:12]
A
Okay, so you had the title company though. You have a real estate firm, you have a law firm, you've been, I mean, you've done, you've done the poker, you were a middle school teacher. I mean, you've done a lot of different things.
- [28:23]
B
I used to own a property management company too.
- [28:26]
A
Okay. And that's. We haven't gotten to that. Right. There's so lots of things. What soft spots in the market do you see now? And I'm talking about generally. And it could be in the legal space, it could be outside the legal space. But I do wonder what. Because what's interesting to me is I've seen a massive investment in legal tech over the last few years. We're talking about massive amounts of money have flooded into the legal sector. And I'm wondering if that is a soft spot in the market generally. I'm using market very loosely. So I wonder if you've identified any other, any other spots where you think you, you might want to invest.
- [29:08]
B
Well, I mean, from the business side of things. Well, let me start with this actually, because I think one thing that's going on that people are sort of aware of but maybe not fully up on is the inflation dynamics to where. So one thing I did years back is I took on as much debt as I could, which might sound counterintuitive, to buy assets that I felt comfortable I could hold onto. And one of the reasons I did that is because with the money printing cycles we're going through, the value of the dollar is getting devalued tremendously. And I don't think there's very little indication to suggest that's not going to keep happening. So the first thing I would say is get a hold of hard assets, like start using your money wisely. Stop letting the lifestyle creep go up so much. Take as much of your income as you possibly can and get a hold of as much hard assets as you possibly can. That's one thing that I think is applicable for pretty much anybody. Whatever that means for you. Maybe it's buying one single family house, maybe it's buying gold or bitcoin. I think that's super important with the AI stuff. I mean, my personal philosophy Is that one of the things it's going to do is in businesses where it has a lot of application, it's going to, like in law, for example. I think it's going to be a leverage point for smaller boutique firms to compete with larger firms. I think it's going to be like gasoline, fuel on the fire if you're trying to grow because you're going to, as we develop this AI, I think we're going to figure out ways to do a lot more with less people. And I don't know about, for you, but for me, the hardest part of owning any of these businesses has been the people side of things. So if I'm now all of a sudden, you know, Maybe to do $2 million, $3 million in revenue, whatever your number is, with one or two or three or four less people, that's a huge advantage. Massive, massive advantage. And I think that's an advantage that's going to be more for the smaller businesses than for the people, you know, than the big firms with 200 people in it potentially. Now some of them will figure out ways to take advantage of it. But my suspicion is that like small entrepreneurial business owners will get the most benefit in areas like law.
- [31:18]
A
I couldn't agree more. The ability to leverage AI is such a leveling of the legal industry. There is. If I were running a massive, massive, like Morgan Morgan style firm, I would be worried right now. I really would be. Because my worry is that the smaller firms are not going to use AI and leverage it because they are smaller and they're all busy all the time and everything. But they'll take the time to invest, invest in that. I think there's a massive opportunity for them to, to take leaps and bounds. Totally do. So I, I think you're 100 right about that. I'll tell a funny, early, funny story. It's, it's funny now. At the time I felt bad, but so like our firm has got this culture of everyone's wanting to use AI and everything. And Perplexity just came out with their, on their Perplex, Perplexity max level. They have this email assistant and it is really good, really good.
- [32:15]
B
Oh, nice.
- [32:15]
A
And my, my executive assistant went into our coo, my wife, her office the day after and I, I, I actually was playing around with it. I was just playing around with it. I said it the night before. I had our Guild live show that morning, Wednesday morning, so this is a Tuesday. I was just playing around with it. And as I was doing the show, she went into Amy's office and was crying. She's like, am I getting rep? And well, the, our whole view on is we're not, we're not replacing our humans, our current humans. It doesn't mean we're. And we are actually still actively hiring. But we, it's one of the things where we're just turning into more of a. I mean, we've always been a tech firm, but now we're more of a customer service based. Right. So everything's more shifting. We're pushing everything into customer service. So it was, it's kind of funny now. At the time, you know, I felt bad for her, but you know, we explained to her, no, you're not getting replaced. You know, you are. All these mundane things that you're doing in the email inbox, you're no longer going to have to do so. I think that's great. You said something else though, I want to come back to. You said lifestyle creep. I think that that is such a valuable point. But sometimes you see that in law firms too. So how do you prevent the quote unquote, lifestyle creep from happening inside the law firm?
- [33:32]
B
Well, I'll tell you what I think the biggest thing is is people, and myself included, we have this 90% of human beings, I think, are so concerned about what people think about them that they don't even really necessarily know or like. Yeah, I think that's what's driving a lot of it most of the time where they feel like they need to have the office that's as nice as the other firm. They need to have the reception area that's as nice. They need to drive the car that's as nice. Live in the neighborhood with the hoa, be a part of the country club. They think they need all the things and they don't need hardly any of the things. I was running the law firm out of. You know, I bought the building. I bought an office building. It was vacant. I moved my law firm in. At first we had a lot of space.
- [34:14]
A
Yeah.
- [34:15]
B
But as soon as we found tenants to replace it, I was, we were basically working out of a closet. I mean. And you know, and so I just think, and I think it's really undervalued because when you take, you know, if you take 10 or 20 or 30% of your income personally or revenue, and you can reinvest it and go look up the charts of compounding, they say it's the eighth wonder of the world. Go look at the charts of compounding of what your business would do or what you personally would do if you just took 10% of what you're wasting and you found ways to reinvest it over the next decade. And it's astounding, the difference between those two people. And that's one of our secrets as a family. What we did was we took a huge chunk of income, reinvested it. Reinvested it, Reinvested it into hard assets. So I'm hoping as a firm, we spend a little bit more on certain things now as we're growing, but I'm hoping that we can continue to be very frugal so that we can push that into fueling more growth.
- [35:18]
A
Do you think that as AI becomes more prevalent, that those hard assets are going to be more valuable?
- [35:24]
B
I don't know what AI is going to do to hard assets. To me, it's all about the inflation. Personally, I think AI is just going to. I mean, I think AI and cryptocurrency are probably going to pare. Like a lot of these digital assets maybe will be fueled by AI, but I'm not so sure. If anything, I think AI is interesting in the sense of more rural areas and office. Like, how that's going to all interplay.
- [35:52]
A
Yeah.
- [35:53]
B
Like, I'm kind of concerned about the downtown office landscape for the future.
- [35:57]
A
Yeah, I. I've heard about that for. Since 2020. I think that that's one of those things where. And it's. It's one of those things where it seems like there's like this internal fight where, you know, a lot of businesses, they feel it's like that. It's almost like what you're talking about, where, like, they feel like they want to have that office because everyone else, Some other people have that office, but then there's other people. Like, no, I don't really need the. It's like this internal fight. And the reality is, is that you really don't need it. I think you're right. You really don't need it. It's not. It's not necessary. But I. I wonder how long do you think that's gonna happen? Like, how there's this. By internal, I mean, like, as an industry, but also, like, as a. As the owner, like, they have, like, this internal fight. Do I need this? Do I not need this? So how long do you think that that's really gonna happen? And to the point where eventually, I think eventually people are gonna be like, okay, we don't need the downtown office, so how long do you think that's gonna. That's gonna go on? How many More years?
- [36:53]
B
I don't know. I mean, and I'm just making. Predictions are one of those things where you just throw things out there and at least half of them are wrong. But I think it's going to slowly develop over the next decade. Where you've got Starlink, I think, if I understand the technology right, used to be if you moved an hour away and you were in the woods, you really didn't have cell signal, you didn't really have WI fi. I don't think that's going to be the same anymore.
- [37:19]
A
No.
- [37:19]
B
It also used to be that you just couldn't get a job if you weren't willing to interact on a daily basis in, you know, in an office setting. That's not really the case anymore. So I can't really see a reason that trend doesn't continue. How long it takes to play out and what the end result means, I don't know.
- [37:38]
A
Yeah. All right, so let's talk about Anderson and Harrison. Okay, so this, I mean, you just started it seven months ago, which I think is an interesting thing. So you're fresh into it, and you started to go. You went with a. Instead of a solo, you went with a partnership. And was that solely because you wanted to scale this into something where you can be in that owner's box, or were there other factors at play?
- [38:04]
B
Yeah, well, so I had started my own firm back in 2020, and I had tried to bring people on with the mentality of that will be my partner. And I never could get it to work. My partner now is Jeannie Harrison, and I've known her since law school. And so secretly, I've told her this already, but she was on, like, I had like, a little list of people who. It might work, and it wasn't very long, and she was at the top of the list the whole time.
- [38:32]
A
Wow.
- [38:33]
B
So I had always thought, man, if, you know. But she was working, she was making good money, she was doing her thing. I didn't know that it was ever going to be realistic, but we stayed in touch, and so I just had a feeling and instinct that she would be the perfect partner. So that's kind of how it played out is there are several years of me trying to find somebody, learning the things we talked about earlier, and it just never working out. And I'm pretty optimistic that this is going to work.
- [39:01]
A
Well, who initiated that conversation?
- [39:03]
B
Well, I originally initiated it years back, and I found I had sent her, like, an offer several years ago that was kind of what kind of like what I do with real estate, where you send an offer and you're like, there's no way this is going to get accepted. So I'd done that, and I'd always told her, hey, I'd love to work with you, or whatever. And I think she got to a point in her life where it made sense for her. And then she reached out to me.
- [39:26]
A
Very cool. And so she was working for someone. You were running your own firm. What was it like once you all started when you partnered? I'd imagine she had her way of doing things. You had your way of doing things. Things. So what was it like melding those two together?
- [39:42]
B
So, you know, like, they use the saying, you know, higher fast or higher slow fire fast. Right. And I think part of the reason for that is, at least in my experience, usually, like, sometimes even the first day, but definitely the first week, two weeks, months, you kind of know, like, you. If you're aware and you're willing to look at it objectively, you kind of know, is this working the way I hoped it would or not? And I haven't done very well of hiring in the past or finding partners in the past. So I'd never had the experience to where you come into the office, you're working with somebody, and you're like, wow, this is going great. Like, this is awesome. And that's what the experience with Jeanne has been like. It's been like she comes in, she's, you know. And another way I've heard it say is when you add somebody, the person needs to raise the bar. So every time you add a person, they need to raise the bar of what that business is like. And for me, that's what she did. So there's been some things. I mean, I probably have an unconventional way of doing a lot of things, but I'm not attached to the way of doing things necessarily. So it's been pretty fluid for me. I've had some instances where it's been hard to let go of control of some things. There's been some instances where we do things differently, but mostly it's worked really well.
- [41:05]
A
That's a great segue, because I wanted to ask you about this. What did you have to change to make sure that this was going to be a successful partnership?
- [41:15]
B
So this is going to sound weird, but I think that a lot of business owners would do a lot better if they went to therapy.
- [41:22]
A
Okay, let's get into this. All right.
- [41:25]
B
And why is because, like, what I think I've realized is that your business usually stops at Wherever your personal development is, especially when you're at the top of a business or you're co leading a business, typically whatever the business is capable of is going to stop somewhere. And that place is oftentimes reflective of the personal development of the leader. And I kept getting in my own way for various reasons. So for example, I would work with people or hire people and not be comfortable leading them. Right. Or holding them accountable. For example, I also had issues with, I probably over emphasized the client relationship. Things that might sound weird, but I was so worried about making the clients happy and keeping them happy that it wasn't always aligned with the incentives of the business. I also was kind of concerned about what other people thought of me. Right. I didn't want to put myself out there, didn't want to get on social media, didn't want to create a brand, kind of stayed quiet. And so for years we only had word of mouth referrals. And that's changing. So I say that, to say that like you need to look at yourself, like what are your fears? What are your worries? Like what are the things that are holding back your mindset around what can and you know and should be done with the business?
- [42:48]
A
You said the thing about the clients and keeping the clients happy.
- [42:51]
B
Yeah.
- [42:52]
A
What's more important than keeping the clients happy?
- [42:54]
B
Well, as a business owner, I think what's more important than keeping the clients happy is having a functional business in that your people are taken care of. Right. So for example, if you have a client who pays you a lot of money, but they berate your partner or your receptionist, then sometimes, you know, a lot of business owners will say, I can't fire this client. They're 10% of my revenue. That works short term, but it doesn't work long term. Sometimes decisions have to be made that don't take care of every client.
- [43:24]
A
I do agree with you. So whenever I asked that question, I wasn't challenging you. I, I almost have always sided with my employees whenever a client is unhappy about something. Now this is a really heavy, heavy caveat.
- [43:40]
B
Yeah.
- [43:40]
A
As long as we have done everything right, right now, if we have done something wrong, we take ownership over it. And that's. But what I don't do is I don't go and berate our employee over it because we are, we encourage mistakes. It was one of those things where we incur. I know people are going to screw up something that's just, it's just a life thing. Right. But it's, it's, it's an interesting thing. Because we also focus on a players hiring like top talent. And you're talking about raising the bar. I really like that how every time you hire someone, you should raise the bar. But what we don't do is we don't berate our people. We just, you know, we talk about it.
- [44:14]
B
Okay.
- [44:15]
A
It's a, it's a lesson. But if it's something where a client is being unreasonable, I will almost always will. If the client's being unreasonable, I will always sit with our employees. Because I do think that that's important because like how destructive it could be. We had, we had an employee that would take the other approach. It was an attorney and he would like, he would try to, he would try to talk down to the employees just because the case was big. And we're like, no, that's not how this works. Because it has a really, really bad effect on the employees, which then are the ones talking to the clients that have an effect, a negative effect on the clients. So I think that that is such a, such an important point. Really important. I want to shift gears to who runs the firm because it's similar. But I do want to know who is running the firm. And by the way, Jeannie will probably listen to this, so it makes I want to. So who's running the firm? Who's in charge?
- [45:13]
B
Basically her. There, there are aspects of things that I'm over in charge of. Like I handle more financials, I handle more if there's collections issues, a lot of client relationships and business development things of that nature. So a lot of the business side of things I'm still running. And she's kind of more learning because she hasn't done that before. But as far as the day to day, hey, run the cases, you know, that's her.
- [45:42]
A
Who's in charge of hiring.
- [45:44]
B
Right now it's. Well, right now it's kind of joint ownership, but I'm pro, I'm doing more of that and taking more of a leadership role on that because I've got. Well, I've already made a lot of mistakes, you know, you know, she might, I would imagine she would make a lot less mistakes than I did, but hopefully I can, you know, help her. Hey, here's what I did wrong the last time and why I don't think this person's a good fit this time.
- [46:09]
A
It's interesting because you talked about your hiring process a little bit and it's somewhat similar to ours because ours, we have multiple interviews, we have multiple assessments, we have personality tests and all that. And I think it's really important. Sometimes what I get criticized for by other attorneys is the length of our hiring process. And I will not apologize for it. It's one of those things where we take several weeks and months to do these, these assessments and tests and the interviews. Because I think it's really. I could game almost any hiring process if you don't put people through enough different scenarios just because it's, I mean, it's just like a test. You go, you prep for it, you can game the system, but getting to truly who that person is is really hard. And we still make mistakes with it. But I wonder how you. Was it just trial and error or did you go and like, did you learn your process somewhere? How did you figure your ears out?
- [47:11]
B
I don't think I have to be honest with you. I think some of the things I'm telling you today are more aspirational than like what I've actually done in the past. I think I'm just now getting to a point where I think I know what I want to do for the future, if that makes sense. But I mean, anybody who's had to fire somebody, especially for a high paid role or important role, it is so painful and it is so toxic sometimes. And it costs you so much money to work with somebody for six months and then you gotta fire them and you deal with the departure, then you gotta find the next person. And it's also like huge momentum, swing in the wrong direction. And the opposite is also true when you find somebody that's a rock star and they come in there and they raise the bar and you're like, and everybody is performing at a higher level. It's very, very valuable. So I agree with you. I mean, you know, it's a tough environment. Like, you've got to be competitive, right? You know, and some people, you find a good person, sometimes you got to make an offer in a reasonable amount of time. But I, I think your way is probably better.
- [48:16]
A
What's interesting is you went five years, you had your own firm, you, you went through all these mistakes and everything. And when it comes to hiring, firing, when it comes to just running the firm in general, and then you bring on a partner, what was the most surprising thing or what are some of the most surprising things about this partnership that you've learned over the last seven, seven months?
- [48:38]
B
I mean, the biggest thing is kind of what I'm referencing is how much of a difference it makes when you find the right person with the motivation and the drive and they're in there doing exactly what they want to do and they're good at it. It makes a huge difference. And there's nothing wrong with any of the people I've worked with in the past. It's. It just wasn't what they really wanted, you know, it wasn't the fit for them. That's the biggest thing I've learned is it's just opened my eyes to how much possibility there is if you do take the time and you're really intentional and you're really clear on who you want, what you want, and you take the time to find that person.
- [49:17]
A
Yeah, the, the vision for the firm, what is your. And I know I'm not talking about the, you know, you basically going to the owner's box. I'm talking more like big picture for the firm. What do you want to happen with the firm itself? Are you thinking more of a regional presence, local presence, national presence? What are you thinking? Do you have a big picture vision for it?
- [49:38]
B
Well, I won't get too carried away. You know, I've got ideas on like 10 year vision and bigger vision, but I try not to get ahead of myself. I mean, the next step for us is to double our revenue. And then hopefully after that, then what we can start to do is to start taking on other areas of law that we're not. Right now we're pretty niche and I've always been very limited on what I do. I pretty much have only worked with real estate investors for the most part, and real estate owners and developers and construction litigation. And real estate litigation. That's mostly what I've done. GENIE has almost exclusively done construction and construction litigation. So we're pretty narrow and we're pretty careful on who we take. So I want to focus on doubling the revenue. Then I want, then we're going to start talking about adding a practice area, maybe acquiring a firm. But I think the opportunity is just tremendous. I think there's a tremendous opportunity to serve the clients in a way that they don't have access to service right now in our market. And some of it's nothing to do with anyone doing something subpar. Some of it's just opportunities coming up like the AI and being able to run a firm with less overhead, like things of that nature, where you can create a better experience for the client and the staff.
- [50:58]
A
Have you all implemented any AI up to this point?
- [51:01]
B
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the other thing I'll say too real quick is I think that a lot of times law firms appropriately get slack for not Having good work environments. I don't think that's a requirement.
- [51:15]
A
What do you mean?
- [51:15]
B
Well, it's almost like a fraternity where it's like, you know, you have to get hazed. Like, it's, it's like you got to come in and your life's got to be miserable. Because my life was miserable. And this is just how you make it. If you want to be a law partner and make decent money as a lawyer, then your life's probably got to be hell for a decade. And I just don't think it has to be that way. I don't think you have to structure your business that way, especially moving forward. Maybe you did at one point in time, but at this point in time, you can start a firm, find out what client you want to serve, leverage technology, leverage AI, you know, and I think it's possible to create a different work environment. Right now we're kind of new, and the AI, you know, we use it some to, for some document review. We do it some to do research and create research memos. Sometimes we'll use it to draft lengthier emails and create articles, different things like that kind of base level. But we're looking into all kinds of cool stuff. Like, for example, I'm being trained right now on how you can use like an hour of your own video to create modules and videos. Training that AI, you know, puts your face, your video, and you're teaching the client about things and you don't have to spend any time on it. For example.
- [52:33]
A
Pretty incredible.
- [52:34]
B
It's pretty crazy.
- [52:35]
A
I will say this. Something more interesting that you just said, I want to go back to, because you were talking about, you know, the, you know, being miserable for the first 10 years and, you know, the, the hazing, all kind of stuff. Yeah, I, I agree, but I want to, I want to, I want to zero in on that a little bit. Okay, I, I do wonder, and I don't want to give my opinion on this. I want to. I'll give my opinion after. After you give yours. But are you saying that is that the same as working hard for 10 years and hustling for 10 years, or is that different from what you're talking about?
- [53:08]
B
That's different from what I'm talking about.
- [53:10]
A
Okay. Can you talk about the differences?
- [53:11]
B
Yeah. Now, don't get me wrong. I think we're entering. Look, there are some things that are really hard to do part time. I would say being a litigation attorney is extremely tough to do part time.
- [53:22]
A
I would totally agree. I don't know how it's possible, but.
- [53:25]
B
Yeah, I've done it for 5 years, believe it or not. You know, I've billed less than a thousand hours for the last five years. But it's hard, it's really tough. So I think there's a place for people like that, like me. But I think I'm unusual. But for the most part I'm not really talking about working hard because I'm working hard doing other things too. Right. I'm doing investing, I'm doing networking, business development. So I'm not really talking about not working hard. I'm just talking about working hard to work for hard's sake or in order to really squeeze the most juice out of everybody to get as much profit to the top of the law firm pyramid as possible. It's more of a cultural mentality thing than about how hard somebody works. I think there's always going to be a place for somebody who wants to come in and bill a lot of hours and is really hard worker. And I think it's really always going to be very hard for someone to find their place if they're not a hard worker.
- [54:21]
A
How important do you think to success is working hard? So do you think that? Because the reason I'm asking this is you have a lot of different companies and really sometimes law firm owners talk about this lifestyle firm, but they claim you can become successful, you know, working part time, you know, not really working hard. That's the sell is you don't really have to work hard, you don't really have to hustle to become successful. And I wonder what your thoughts are on that.
- [54:53]
B
Yeah, I think, and I'm trying to think, I know probably I'm in a lot of networking groups and stuff like that. I know probably 500 multimillionaires by first name, kind of know a little bit of their story or whatever. And I would say I might can only keep think of a couple who were not hard workers first before they figured out how to work smart. So that's kind of the way I think about it is it's you got to work hard before you learn how to work smart. And I think you always, if you want to keep growing and building wealth or building a business, you always have to be willing to work hard. Now there are people I know, business owners who are out of the day to day and they don't know what to do next. But they've got a track record, they've got a history where if something hits the fan, something goes wrong, somebody leaves, they're willing to get their hands dirty and work very hard to fix it. I think that's the mistake in the mentality is I don't think there's anything wrong with the aspiration of I want to create a really freedom oriented lifestyle and I want to work less one day. That's my goal. Or I want to create passive income. But if you think you're going to get there without working hard, you're probably not. Right? Right.
- [56:00]
A
No. And I agree with you. It's one of those things where I, I get frustrated whenever I see people selling, you know, the success with the not working hard because it, it's, those don't go together. And because you, what you see is I've seen this way too many times. You have the frustrated then law firm owner that says, well, I've been doing these things and I, I've got this, I've got this freedom, but I'm not making any money because they're, it's one of the things where like they've got this freedom because they're, the freedom is that they're not working. They're, they're going and doing these other things. But in the reality is I think that you can, if you do a lot of the front end hard work, you can then set up all these processes and everything where you can then on the back end you don't have the hard work. But I think that if you, yeah, sure, you can have this sort of thing where you're not making a lot of money, everything's kind of just okay, you'll have a little bit of the freedom, but it's going to always be that level. It's never going to get better than that. That's as high as you're going to go and you're not going to get any better. But if you do put in that hard work and you know, the word hustle has gotten such a bad name, you know, you know, hustle culture and that's the part that you're talking about. I think it's, yeah, you shouldn't have the hustle culture, but you should still work hard and you should, you should encourage people to work hard. Otherwise you're not going to have the success that you're really ultimately wanting. You're just not going to. Just the reality unless you get lucky.
- [57:24]
B
Well, and you see people, it can be done. You know, people win the lottery too. But, but I also think that if you don't earn something, it doesn't end up being as great as you expected is typically how it Tends to play out, but, you know, like, I bought a building at one point and it was like an easy project and it ended up creating $50,000 of cash flow a year. And I'm like, wow, that was easy. And somebody who saw that, they're like, wow, that's amazing. And like, I wish that was me sort of thing. But what they didn't see was as a baby lawyer, me working full time, taking investor calls while we're flipping our own house that we're living in, while we're driving down an hour away to renovate ourselves small multifamily houses. And how over 10 years I figured out how to put myself in a place to be able to do a project like that. And when I bought it, I had, you know, this contractor relationship of 10 years, this commercial broker relationship of 10 years, the people who could help me that I'd built relationships over a decade. So that was a lot of intentionality and hard work to get me in the place to have the opportunity to not work hard for that money.
- [58:30]
A
10 year overnight success.
- [58:31]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [58:33]
A
What's harder, real estate or the law?
- [58:36]
B
Oh, the law is way harder.
- [58:37]
A
Why?
- [58:38]
B
You know, that's a good question. It's just takes a lot more technical expertise and a lot more eq. I mean, you're dealing with, every area of law is different, so I really only know mine. But you're dealing with clients who are dealing with difficult situations. You're dealing with lawyers who are out to basically, you know, gut your case. You're in high stress environment, you're on deadlines and then hiring is tough because you got to find people who are really good, really good. Whereas real estate, you know, I can, I can keep low staff, low overhead, find a good opportunity, take my time and find a good opportunity. And it's just easier to be honest with you.
- [59:22]
A
Talk about the importance of eq. You mentioned that. I think that that's a really wise thing to bring up. So talk about that.
- [59:28]
B
Well, in the example of, I mean, it applies in so many different ways, but just use clients as an example. There are some lawyers who are phenomenal lawyers. And then at the end of the case, their clients think they suck.
- [59:41]
A
Yes.
- [59:42]
B
And then there are other lawyers who, they're not that great, but at the end of the case, their line, their clients think they're amazing. So there's something there.
- [59:51]
A
It's funny you say that because I had a. I. It's one of the three family law cases that I took on. One, the one was, it was a favor And I'm sure I got just, just rolled in that case. From a legal standpoint, I'm just positive I just got my butt kicked. I was going against some, you know, family law attorney that knew what the heck she was doing and. But her client was just screaming at her in the hallway and mine was hugging me. You know, it's a completely different experience. But it is interesting how like the way you can make someone feel.
- [60:26]
B
Exactly.
- [60:27]
A
Has such a major impact on the relationship.
- [60:30]
B
Exactly. I think one of my biggest skill sets that I sort of stumbled into was creating high levels of trust with people in short amount of time. And. And then the other one is being selective. I think I learned this from tenant selection. You learn early on as a landlord how super important it is to select the right tenants and to avoid a bad tenant. And I think it's similar with clients. You know, if like the client selection process I think is under developed in a lot of firms where it can be really, really nice to have almost exclusively great clients.
- [61:05]
A
Interesting. Could you talk a little bit? I was going to wrap with one other question, but I want to go into this. If you're looking at tenants, what are you looking for? What makes a good tenant other than the ability to pay?
- [61:18]
B
Well, you got to be careful nowadays, because you don't want to accidentally. If you don't do things in a consistent way nowadays, you can get in trouble with discrimination, things of that nature. Even if you're not intending to do something, just say there's processes in your state you need to follow. But you know, there's the obvious things like no bankruptcies, you know, bad criminal records and not paying things on time. There's obvious things like that, but there's also softer things like responsiveness, accountability, responsibility, sort of mindsets, you know, things of that nature that you can pick up on as well. You can't use those as much in tenants anymore, if you ever could, because you got to make sure you're doing a fair process where there's no discrimination. But for clients, you can take whoever you want or not take whoever you want. And there's. I heard this quote forever ago, which is like when somebody shows you who they are, believe them the first time, Right? Yeah, I've used that a lot because it's like I used to when I, you know, because I've basically gotten all my own clients for a very long time. And I used to, I'd hear something like, I don't like what they said there. That gives me a little bit of a knot in my stomach or like, I don't know if I believe what they're telling me. There'd be these different things and I'd overlook it because I really wanted the client and I really wanted the money. I started to learn that almost every time my gut told me this is going to be a difficult client, I was usually right and worse than I expected. So I just started to to be very intentional about feeling the clients out and the cases out. And basically, if it wasn't a definite yes, saying no.
- [62:57]
A
All right, let's wrap with this question. And Jeanne, turn the show off. Everybody else, keep watching and listening. But so you're looking at the next 10 years. You can invest in one thing. The law firm or real estate. Which do you choose and why?
- [63:14]
B
Well, I mean, I think she would know the answer to this. It would not be the law firm for me because for me, I'm going to have to be dependent on other people. The reality of it is, is I got to a place in law where I almost walked away from it because it just was creating too much strain on me personally, for my life. I think I'm a good lawyer. I think I'm a really good lawyer, but I don't think that it fits what I want for my personal life long term. And frankly, like I said, real estate's easier and more fun for me. I think she already knows that. But that's a good thing also because it allows me to come at the law firm from a mindset of we can create something special here and we can build up something and it doesn't have to be about me, right? Like, I'm only doing my job with the law firm. If I'm helping, making people better and creating ways to add value to the other people in the firm, I don't have to, you know, take any certain thing from it. Like, as long as I'm adding value, then I've got a role.
- [64:15]
A
Love it. Matt Anderson, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
- [64:18]
B
Thank you.
- [64:33]
A
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