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- [00:00]
John Morgan
I don't hunt deer. I hunt money.
- [00:02]
Sean
You own one of the biggest, if not the biggest law firm in the country. We've seen your face on the billboard from Morgan to Morgan.
- [00:09]
John Morgan
And if you just want to say.
- [00:10]
Sean
Morgan, that'd be great too.
- [00:11]
John Morgan
My big vision was this. What if Google was a law firm? What would it look like?
- [00:18]
Sam
You just became a lawyer to fund your Carney ambitions and that's pretty badass.
- [00:24]
John Morgan
I built an attraction called Alcatraz east.
- [00:27]
Sean
And.
- [00:28]
John Morgan
And it just prints money.
- [00:32]
I've got apartment complexes, I've got shopping centers. That prints money too.
- [00:37]
Sean
He's basically like half Walt Disney, half shark.
- [00:40]
John Morgan
Where my competition gets beat by me is 95% of them are shit. I'm not hunting cockroaches. I'm hunting big game.
- [00:49]
Sean
I got goosebumps. John, I love that answer. That was incredible.
- [01:00]
Sam
So first of all, welcome to the pod. You know, we're on. And I, I'm from the south, I'm from Missouri and Tennessee, I live in Tennessee for a while. And I've been trying to convey to Sean this idea that I call capital men. And I was like, Sean, I don't know how to explain it, but they just kind of follow the process and they just do thing to thing to thing and they don't overthink stuff and they're just ballers. And you are a good example of that. I'm hearing how you talk and I'm like, you are exactly what I'm talking about. These capital men's, these guys who just get into stuff and it's like a, it's like an onion, they just have layers of stuff that you don't even know about. And so for this podcast, maybe we can ask you about like the. I think you have like 10 or something different businesses. We can like ask you about each one. Because everyone knows you as, as the law firm guy. But that might not be the most interesting thing about you.
- [01:47]
John Morgan
Well, believe it or not, I've tell this to my wife all the time. The thing that I'm most proud of in all my businesses has been WonderWorks, the upside down house. Back in the 90s, my kids were little, we'd go to the science center and it was just, you know, they were shit, they were terrible. And the kids were wanting to leave before they got there. And I had a business where I put on fairs around America and one of our vendors had this huge tent and everything in it was interactive, interactive, touching, feeling before interactivity was a thing. And I said, you know, if we built A science center that was interactive.
- [02:34]
That's what a science center should be. Where you're touching, feeling, doing, and that parents would enjoy as much as kids. So I went out around America. As a matter of fact, I went to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and I found, like, four things in the Exploratorium. I found in the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I found a bubble room where you make these bubbles. And I'm like, okay, that's something. I found another thing called recollections. And so I went around the country looking for interactive things from science centers. But I felt like the building had to be great. And this guy comes up to me who had been with Ripley's, and he had a rendering of a building turned upside down. He goes, this is what you should do. You should turn it upside down. I'm like, well, how do you do that? He starts to tell me. I go, well, hell, if I could do that, I would do that. And so the. So I built the first one. Orlando. It's called wonderworks. If you Google wonderworks, it's this right here. There it is. And this is amazing.
- [03:40]
Sean
I've never seen this. Is this near Disney World?
- [03:44]
John Morgan
One of mine is the one in Orlando, is very close to Disney World and very close to Universal.
- [03:51]
Sam
So the inside of the building upside.
- [03:53]
John Morgan
Down, when you go. When you walk in, you walk in and you're standing on the ceiling. Yeah. So you walk through the trusses, and now you're standing on the ceiling. And the storyline is that once upon a time, in the Bermuda Triangle, the greatest scientists in the world were working on the greatest experiments in the world to better mankind. They were trying to build their own hurricane. It got out of control.
- [04:18]
Sam
It.
- [04:19]
John Morgan
The place was located in Bermuda Triangle. Lips lifts it out of the air, spins it, and it crashes down in Orlando. Pigeon Forge, Branson, Missouri. And so then you go in, and now you're on. So you look up and, you know, there's the stairs. And now you gotta. Now how are you going to visit it? So you go through an inversion tunnel where we turn you upside down, so that when you exit the inversion tunnel, you will be defying gravity and walking upside down. And then you go from gallery to gallery to gallery to gallery. And.
- [04:57]
That prints money, too. That. That. Those things. I have zero debt. And I'll do like 33 million in EBITDA this year.
- [05:06]
Sean
Oh, that's amazing.
- [05:07]
Sam
You dropped into kind of a bit of gold that you just kind of stepped over, which was before that you had a A national fair.
- [05:15]
John Morgan
Well, we put on fairs around America. We. We weren't. We didn't own the rise. We were the operator. In other words, Brevard County Fair, Pennsylvania State Fair, Long Island Fair, Nassau County Fair, where we just set it up, we'd promote it, and then the ride, people would come in and we were just. It didn't make a lot of money, but, you know, back in those days. Listen, I remember the first time me and a guy took a piece of land and flipped it and made 60 grand. We split 60 grand. We went on a two week bender celebrating our $30,000 profit. You know, those first profits were like, holy shit. And it was like a side hustle. And I was a lawyer, but I just made an extra 30 getting a piece of land rezoned and flipping it to the developer. So.
- [06:07]
Sam
All right, so John has tons of side hustles upside down. Buildings, crime, museums, chocolate factories. He's a machine. But here's the thing. Every single one started with him. Spotting an opportunity others missed. My old company, the Hustle, built a database with hundreds of ideas like this. Some are weird, like John's. Some are dead simple. If you liked what you just heard, go check out the side Hustle ideas database. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show.
- [06:38]
John Morgan
San Francisco inspired me. I went there once with my wife. We wanted to go see Alcatraz. We go to Alcatraz. Alcatraz is. We get there thinking we're going to walk right in. They go, there's no tickets available. I said, we'll be here a couple more days. When can we go? There's no tickets. It's sold out for the next two weeks. I'm like the. And so the way you. The way you always solve that problem is you pull out two $100 bills to the ticket taker and you say, are you sure you don't have two extra tickets back there? This is not for the tickets. This is for you. So I got to go through Alcatraz. And when I went through it, I thought I had this epiphany, you know, have you have these epiphanies. And my epiphany is America is fascinated with crime and punishment like nothing else. TV shows, movies, books, Netflix, all of it. And I was in the attraction business. Anyway, I said, you know, what about an attraction dedicated to the history of crime and punishment? And so I built an attraction that's in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, called Alcatraz East. And I built it. It looks like a 1800 prison. And it's the history of crime and punishment. And it just prints money.
- [08:08]
Sam
How, how big is that business?
- [08:10]
John Morgan
It makes 5 million bucks a year. Net.
- [08:12]
Sam
Net in. In profit. It's just got.
- [08:15]
Sean
How much did it take cost to build it initially?
- [08:17]
John Morgan
It's an interesting thing because, you know, I got a speech called failure can be your friend. And what happened is I first built it in Washington, D.C. because I thought, you know, the history, you know, I called it the National Museum of Crime and Punishment, and it didn't do very well. And the reason it didn't do very well, in my opinion, is there's a lot of free stuff in D.C. to begin with. But more importantly, they wouldn't let me do anything with the facade. So I was just in a building, you know, across from the National Portrait Gallery. I was doing okay. I was limping along, but paying rent and paying just a little bit. But the landlord came in and said, you know, you're not doing the numbers per the lease, and we're going to call the lease on you. I'm like, but I'm paying my rent. Why would you do this? We're doing it. So I moved everything and built the structure in Pigeon Forge. Moved a lot of the stuff. So some of the stuff I'd had, I bet the whole thing from what I had to build and what I took, I think the whole thing probably cost 13 million bucks, 14 million bucks. But, like the. At the end of the attraction, I have four things that are just. You just can't believe it when you get there. One, Ted Bundy's VW. Two, Bonnie and Clyde's death car from the movie. Three, OJ. OJ's Bronco, and four, John Dillinger sedan. And I just bought John Benet's bicycle and the Murdoch golf cart. And let me tell you, America's fascination with crime is such that people are in this thing for three and a half, four hours. And it's an easy business to run because it's, it's static. You know, it's not. There's not a lot of interactive.
- [10:10]
Sam
I'm looking at your website right now. I've, I've, I've been here. I believe I'm a huge crime fan. And so when you were waiting to name what you were going to name, I was like, you're forgetting OJ's car. This is awesome.
- [10:23]
Sean
And you made a big bet, because after you do the thing in dc, I think the normal entrepreneur sort of starts to doubt the concept, doubt the viability you know, it didn't go well right away, and yet you. You doubled down in the face of that. Is it just blind faith, Conviction? Are you just a stubborn guy?
- [10:42]
John Morgan
That's. It's not that I'm stubborn. It's like, you know, you hear everybody give these speeches about failure is your friend. Failure can be the best thing that ever happens to you, but yet when we lose, we never go near it again. We say that, you know, it sounds good in a speech. But what happened is I had. Had some investors from wonderworks invested in this deal. So I had investors I sent out. My wife kept saying, this is. This is great. It's great. You just got to build it in a place where there's people, more people. And so I sent a letter to all my investors saying, look, I'm going to move it from here to there, and you'll be part of it. And everything was, you know, and not one person took me up on it. Not one person. They all said, you know, you know, we're taking our loss. And then my wife. I said, what do you think? She goes, let's do it ourselves. And, you know, and so the. My new money was like $8 million.
- [11:41]
New money, and I got it back in a year and a half.
- [11:46]
Sam
Were you. How big was the law firm? Or like, what was your financial situation?
- [11:50]
John Morgan
My financial situation was not bad. But, you know, I mean, my financial situation got. The older I get, the better it got, you know, because I was one of these guys that always was pushing my profits into new things.
- [12:08]
And it was good, but. But I did have 8 million bucks.
- [12:14]
Sean
That's amazing. So what's crazy about your story is you're this guy. You own one of the biggest, if not the. The biggest law firm in the country. Right? We've seen your face on the billboards from Morgan to Morgan before that. You've done all these other things. So you were talking about wonderworks, maybe your favorite business that you're most proud of, which was a amusement business. And maybe some of the inspiration from that came from you working at Disney when you were younger. And so, like, I guess, where does the story start for you? Does it start when you're like a little kid? Does it start at Disney? Where does the entrepreneurial bug start?
- [12:45]
John Morgan
I think the story started for me, probably the same way the story started for you two, except you're too young for this to happen. There are people that are born with a entrepreneurial seed. A seed. It just happens now for my generation, you can spot those people because they were paper boys or paper girls. And a paper route was a m effort, because the paper route, you're 10, 11 years old, but it's every single day, it's rain, sleet, snow. If you miss one, you got to go back. You got to collect your money. And I'll bet you two guys, if you went back to your 10 or 11 years old. I don't know if there were paper routes when you all were younger, but you were probably doing something. Hustling money. You two were probably coding or, you.
- [13:38]
Sam
Know, selling stuff on ebay.
- [13:40]
John Morgan
Selling stuff on ebay, whatever, you know. And in my school, I always sold candy. I always. I used to wear army pants with all the pockets, and I'd have watermelon sticks and bubble gum and not chocolate. Cause that melted. And I would sell candy at school and make like 10 bucks a day.
- [13:57]
Sean
By the way, John, you know the evidence for what you're saying?
- [14:01]
John Morgan
What?
- [14:01]
Sean
Buffett had a paper route, plus, you know, sold magazines, gum, and Coke. Jeff Bezos had a paper out. Sam Walton from Walmart had a paper route. Walt Disney, Peter Drucker. There's like an insane roster of people that did exactly what you're saying.
- [14:15]
John Morgan
Oprah. Oprah had a paper route.
- [14:18]
Sam
That's badass.
- [14:19]
John Morgan
And so the reason I know all these people, because I've written a new book that's being edited right now called Life is Luck. And the thesis of my book is, we wake up, we're born, but we're born lucky. You know, we're born in America. First of all. Warren Buffett calls it, you know, winning the ovarian lottery, just being born in America. And then you make a thousand left turns and a thousand right turns and a thousand U turns, and then you end up here. And one different.
- [14:51]
But part of my thesis is the paper boy, the paper girl. These people that were born with that genetic seed of entrepreneurism, and it can't be taught. It's just in you. And it's such an advantage in life. And it's really nothing we did. We were born with it. Nobody wants. Rich people do never want to be told that they were lucky. They want to tell us all. I worked my ass off. I deserve every single penny I got. And they are like 100% wrong about that because one different term. I mean, Buffett. Buffett's company is basically five stocks. If you take with. Charlie Munger died. I read a thing about him yesterday. The other day in the Wall. You take five stocks away from Burkshire.
- [15:47]
Sam
It's not Berkshire Yeah, it's like amex, Coca Cola, Apple and.
- [15:52]
John Morgan
Right, exactly. But, but, but, but we see him as this great investor and, and his, his greatness has really been his patience and his understanding of, of, of index funds instead of, you know, money managers and time and, and power of compounding interest.
- [16:13]
Sam
I believe what you're saying. I, I believe luck to be true. I think that most people, when they get successful, I actually think that they attribute a fair bit to luck because they realize like, like for example, when I saw my company, the CEO got into a really bad accident like two weeks after the deal closed. And I'm like, I mean, if that happened two weeks prior, that could have changed everything. So there is a luck component. But you have, I, I, I have some research here and I think you have like 10 or 12 things that have worked out really well for you. And so there is some, like, there's a lot of good decision making that, that you have on your side. Were you always doing these little hustles? Like did Morgan and Morgan start as a hustle and turn into a real thing or were you trying to build something big from the get go?
- [16:55]
John Morgan
Well, I was not trying to build something big from the get go. I mean, look, when I first got out of law school, if somebody had told me they'd pay me 100 grand and tied to Cola, I would have been, you know, give me the pen. I mean, I wasn't even thinking like this. You know, I got into this business because my brother got hurt when I was in college and it kind of, you know, he was, became a quadriplegic from an accident. And so I was in the middle of all that and our family was relatively poor. And when you're poor, you're helpless, hopeless, powerless. And then you're watching your brother be, you know, pushed back by the, the big companies. And I became enraged about the way he was treated and, and so when I went to law school, I knew what I was going to do. When I went to law school, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to come back and do this work. I was, I had a lot of job offers other places, but this is all I wanted to do and this is all I've ever done, but I didn't. There's no way I could have dreamt this because.
- [18:11]
It was too big to even dream this.
- [18:13]
Sean
Well, it's interesting because I would say personal injury lawyers, I think have a pretty bad perception in the public. I think it's ambulance chasers is seen as sort of a sleazy thing. I think that would probably. I think that's fair as, like, mass perception. But the. When you think about what you were actually saying and what you did, right, like, you know, your brother has this tragic accident on the job, becomes a quadriplegic. You didn't. And, you know, insurance companies and large corporations, they're, you know, they're not trying to pay out, you know, fair compensation or huge settlements to folks that, that were. That needed it. And you're, in a way, like, you know, you're basically helping somebody who needs the most help, who tends to have the least power or resources to fight against those who have a lot of power, resources. In many ways, that's a very noble thing, but it has the opposite perception. Is that, is that how you see it or, you know, what's going on?
- [19:07]
John Morgan
Yeah, it's. Is. Look, it's. It's like this. When I got out of law school, almost when I got out, you weren't even allowed to advertise, you know, and personal injury lawyers were, like you said, ambulance chasers. That was what they were called. Everybody wants to look down on somebody. So lawyers who had a bad reputation themselves anyway, you know, kill all the lawyers. All of a sudden they found somebody to look down on, and that was the personal injury lawyer, the ambulance chaser. I'm not an ambulance chaser. And then all of a sudden you have the advertising lawyers, which is another group to look down on, the personal injury lawyers. Well, I don't advertise. I'm above that. I'm down, you know. And so what happened was when I got out of law school, I would have been the last person you would have ever. I was straight and narrow. I was the, you know, the president of everything at the university. I had all these job offers, but I didn't take them because I. I did have a desire to do what I'm doing. When I got out, I started going around to people who did advertise, who were kind of shady, and they gave me their business and I took their bad cases, I took their tough cases, but I got inside the belly of the beast and I saw the future. And, you know, a lot of times you get to see the future. You know, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, they saw the future. But if they were born today, that future wouldn't be there for them. That was their luck when they were born. Because if they were born today, Microsoft is already something else. And so I saw it and I sat down with my wife and I said, look, this Goes against everything I ever thought I'd be. But this train is leaving the station.
- [20:58]
Sam
And that train being advertising for your services?
- [21:01]
John Morgan
Yes, advertising for my services to get cases. Because when I was doing it, when I started out, other lawyers would refer you business, and you were paying them a 50% referral fee. So if you're. If your fee was $100, you had to give your referring lawyer $50. Well, that hurts margins. And. And all of a sudden, you're seeing a different way. Now, it was still iffy when I did it because it hadn't really. Hadn't become mainstream at all, so. But it. But it was something. I was so embarrassed about it, I didn't even do the commercials myself. I had a friend who was very handsome, and I said, vance, I want you to be my face. And he did it. And then the bar came in and said, well, you can't have spokespeople. You got to do it yourself. So I had to take my. My fat face and go on tv. There. There I was. Look. I don't know, man.
- [21:58]
Sam
You look pretty good to me.
- [21:59]
Sean
You look sharp.
- [22:01]
John Morgan
But I didn't like the way I looked.
- [22:03]
Sean
So. So were people not advertising because they were literally just too proud for. Or was it. Was it a gray area legally, of if you could or couldn't?
- [22:10]
John Morgan
Wasn't great legally, but it was. It was taboo. It was just not done. People who could, who had, wouldn't because they didn't want to be shunned at the country club, people that would. Didn't have the money to do it. How I got to do it was I went to the bank and borrowed 100 grand and went down, did the commercials. You know, when I think back later, you know, and by the way, my credit was so good that this TV station would only run my ads if I paid in advance. Because, you know, that's how good that my credit was.
- [22:50]
Sean
Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book but then tearing out 4/5 of the pages. Point is, you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference, because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com so you're saying the order of operations was you graduate as a lawyer, you know what you want to do as a practice. You saw that there were some kind of lawyers at the bottom of the, of the social barrel there that were advertising. You didn't advertise yourself at first. You just went and took their cases. Like they would catch the fish, you would cook the fish, you would go and actually do the case. And you said, you know, you're, you said, you're in the belly of the beast. And you saw, oh, this is the future. These guys are getting a lot of cases. This is how lawyers are going to get business. And you decided to do it. What, what was it that let you kind of like go against that kind of the country club mindset? Like, you know, I heard this quote from Larry Ellison. He said one time, they were saying how successful he was and he goes, yeah, I had all of the necessary disadvantages you would need to be successful. Like, kind of like I had this chip on my shoulder. No, I wasn't the best student. No, I wasn't the best at this. No, I had everything I needed to be successful. That's, that's what I needed. What was it that you needed to, to kind of break out from the way that other lawyers are doing things?
- [24:17]
John Morgan
Well, I've always been, you know, aggressive and I'm a networker, but I didn't want to do it this way because. But paying that 50%, how I looked at it was this. They were throwing me their trash. I felt like I was up in a dumpster eating a half eaten whopper that had been thrown up in the dumpster. But guess what? It tasted okay, you know, that I was, I was living, but I would rather have just had a fresh whopper right through the drive through window instead of having to climb into the, to the dumpster. And that was my decision. Do I just keep. Because I knew it was going to happen and I knew first to market was always an advantage. And if I could get in there early enough, you know, and become Kleenex instead of, you know, tissue, I had a better chance. And my wife was a securities lawyer. She's very smart. I'm not. I'm, I'm the part of the 50% of the law school class that enabled there to be a top 50%. And without me, there's no them. My wife was in the top 2%.
- [25:32]
Sam
The foundation, we call it the foundation.
- [25:35]
Sean
Yes.
- [25:36]
John Morgan
And so the thing that happened to Tim, it was one of these things where, you know, we're very close and he's in this terrible situation and Disney is really treating him terrible. And the more that we'd fight, the more they would just crush him. And when you're watching somebody you love that much.
- [25:59]
Get manhandled that way, you just. There's a rage that came inside of me. And so I always knew what I was going to do. I mean, I was offered a job of this guy, Mark Hulsey wanted me to come to his firm. And I told him, I said, you know, this is what I want to do. And he helped me get my first job out of law school. And so the good thing about what I've done and the good thing for people that are listening to this is when you wake up and work is not work.
- [26:32]
You'Re a lot better at it. So I woke up every day going, this, you know, I'm going to take care of the tims of the world. So it was never worked for me. And I wanted to go and get my pound of flesh from these people who had bullied us when we were helpless, hopeless and powerless. And so as time's gone on, it's. To me, it's been very noble what we do because the people we represent didn't do anything wrong. But they had things taken from them. They had their health taken, they had their ability to walk taken. They had loss of income, they had things taken. And what we do is we get give them back as much as we can or compensate them as much as we can for what was taken from them. And so, you know, I like the business. Listen, I liked Robin Hood when I was a kid. I always, always liked the Robin Hood story, you know, and so the people I'm going against, you know, look, the tobacco industry, I've had many, many trials against them. What do they do for a living? They are in the business of premeditated murder. They know what they're doing. They're going to kill us. They're going to kill a bunch of us this year. And they know it. And the reason they know it in their internal documents, they call it. They call new smokers replacement smokers. They laced the cigarettes with additives to hook us. They gave it to the kids, they gave it to the service people. They're in the business of premeditated know them.
- [28:16]
And so I don't feel bad at all when that's my enemy. I don't feel bad at all when I'm trying to get compensation for people who got hooked and addicted by a very evil company. And by the way, today those Same companies now own our food companies.
- [28:36]
Sam
Yeah, it's crazy.
- [28:37]
John Morgan
And processed food is the new tobacco.
- [28:41]
Sam
In terms of. So in a little bit, we want to ask about all your businesses because you've. You've had so much stuff. But just to add, to give us some context into the timeline, when you start advertising, do you remember, like, the next 10 years of business? Like, how big did your business grow?
- [28:57]
John Morgan
It was. It was gradual, but the way I always looked at it is I had a number of what I thought a case was worth, and then I had the number of cases that. That I would sign up and I would divide the. The number, the average fee into the cases. And as long as that equaled out where I could break even, I kept pouring more money into it. So if a case was. If I. If a case was worth $4,000 and I was spending, you know, $4,000, and if I was spending $80,000, I had to. If I got 20 cases, that was break even, and if I got double that, then that was profit. So that's kind of how I did it in a very simplistic way. And I felt like as long as I'm breaking even, I'm building the brand. And building the brand was very important, too.
- [29:52]
Sean
When you say building the brand, like, what's the John Morgan school of brand? If you were going to school us and how you think about brand, what do you think about?
- [30:00]
John Morgan
First of all, I want it to be something that's memorable. I wanted. So when I first did it, when I first got into it, I was. There weren't even computers. I didn't have a computer. I didn't have a URL. The first time I really understood what a URL was, I was at a Yankees game with some lawyers in New York. And they all had these devices in their hands called blackberries. And I'm like, what are those? You know, it was like, what. What is this? And they're all there. Oh, my. And they're just thumbing through it, the whole game. And I'm like, what are you doing there? We're getting cases. So I went back to home and said, I gotta get a BlackBerry. And then when I got the BlackBerry, I said, I gotta get a URL. And then. So. So the beginning of it, the beginning of the brand was the URL. And so I wanted my URL to be my mission statement and my branding statement. The two things I came up with in my mind was justice for all and for the people. Those were the two URLs. And I ultimately Went with for the people because I was worried that people couldn't spell justice all the time. But I knew that we could all spell for the people. And so when I built my brand, it was. I wanted my brand to be my mission statement.
- [31:23]
And my URL. I want it all to be one thing. So I never had to say something twice. I could just say it once. So a lot of the ads in, you know, visit, you know, call Morgan to morgan for the people.com so I can say it all just like that. And so. But building the brand was very, very important.
- [31:46]
Sean
Who did you take inspiration from on building a. Like a iconic, memorable brand? Who did you think was doing it?
- [31:52]
John Morgan
Well, well, the people that I admire in my life is Walt Disney. I worked. I did magic at Walt Disney World. And so every time I'd walk out of the magic store, I'd see Walt Disney holding Mickey's hand on Main street and had dream it, do it. And so that was kind of in my mind. It was P.T. barnum, Disney, those type of people. So I like the promotion. Like, when I was building Wonderworks, I knew that the building itself. You've heard the slogan, sell the sizzle, not the steak. Well, there's a lot to that. So when I was building Wonderworks, I was thinking, sell the sizzle, not the steak.
- [32:41]
Sam
People.
- [32:42]
John Morgan
People will pay just to get behind the curtain like they did with P.T. barnum. They'll get. They'll pay to get behind the curtain just to see the human pin cushion.
- [32:52]
Sam
How many active companies do you have right now?
- [32:56]
John Morgan
You know, I got so many K1s that I. I build. I've got shopping centers that I'm. That I've built, and I've got apartment complexes that I built and are under construction. So I. I got that whole part of my life. I've got the attraction businesses that I have. I started building Marriott Hotels about 20 years ago. I've had a. I had a billboard company that I sold to Lamar for a lot of money. I had an ad agency for lawyers called Practice Made Perfect that I sold and did. Well, the new thing I've got going right now is, you know, the. The guy. You know who Guy Fieri is? He's a California guy. Yeah. So Dave and Buster's kind of have. Has it all to themselves. And so we built our very first, what we call downtown Flavortown in Pigeon Forge. And it's basically Dave and Buster's meets Guy Fieri. And we built the. We opened up the first one about a year or so ago. And we're building the second one right now in Pigeon Forge in Myrtle Beach.
- [34:08]
Sean
This fascinates me because so many people come on this podcast, and their message is, you just gotta focus. You gotta, you know, don't get distracted. Don't chase the shiny objects. You just gotta do one thing and let it compound for a long time. But you kind of seem to have done both right. Your firm has compounded. I think you guys do like 2 billion in revenue now. This is, like, a huge firm, but you've had all these other entrepreneurial side quests, so I guess, like, kind of square that circle for me. Are you. Are you focused? Are you unfocused? How do you think about that?
- [34:37]
John Morgan
Here's how I think about that. Those people that tell you to focus, they're also doing a lot of this. Hunting, fishing, golfing. All three off, you know? Now, nothing wrong with off, but there's nothing about business except maybe a little golf. You can do a little bit there. But hunting, to me, makes no sense, you know? You know, killing an animal right up on an animal makes no sense. Venison, I can. I can taste the fur. I don't want to eat it, so I don't hunt. So I got that. Fishing. I don't understand. I don't understand catch and release. Let's go out and have a good time. Let's catch a fish, let's rip its mouth open, let's tear its eye out, and let's throw it back in the water. I don't understand that. And golf, look, it's a great hobby, but I'd rather shoot pool, you know, for an hour than golf. So all that focus that these people. That these people are focusing on, I don't have that distraction. I don't hunt deer. I hunt money. And. And I like it. So instead of collecting stamps, some people collect stamps as a hobby. I collect artifacts for Alcatraz East. I could. I hunt.
- [36:11]
Sam
You're. You're a big fan of presidential note cards, you know, presidential flashcards. You just like collecting those bills.
- [36:16]
John Morgan
Yes, yes. And clipping coupons. So I am very focused. I'm just not hunting, golfing, or fishing. If you take all that. And listen, I watch sports on tv, but there's people that. That are more interested in than, you know, in Lane Kiffin's new job than they are their own job. Well, I don't have those distractions to my focus.
- [36:46]
Sam
Can. Can I ask you about each one of these businesses that I researched? And I want to brag a little bit about you. And also you can tell me if it's true or not. Okay, so listen to this, Sean. So tell me if this is true. Okay, so we have Morgan, and Morgan, that's a huge successful thing. You talked a lot about that. But you also have a company called Litify, which I think you sold. Solidify is a tech company for lawyers. And I believe you sold around 60% of the company. You still own 40% at a 600 million dollar valuation. Is that true?
- [37:18]
John Morgan
That's right.
- [37:19]
Sean
Do you have a method where like you do the vision and somebody you hire a CEO early on, like what, what makes the system work?
- [37:27]
John Morgan
For that, a guy joined me who is, you know, this guy was one of the smartest guys, a young guy and he, he could do anything. And it was like I could just tell him, I called it Magic Carpets. I would say, can you do this? Yeah, I can do this. Can you do that? Can you do this? Can you do that? Yes. When I first brought him in, my vision and I've written a book called you can't. I've written two books, one called you can't teach Hungry, one called you can't teach vision. My big vision for the law was this. What if Google was a law firm? What would it look like? That was a thing that just hit me and I just kept going over and over and over in my mind. Now the problem for a guy like me is, you know, terrible in math, terrible in science, you know, the idea of coding, you know, I had, you know, no idea, but I had that vision. What if Google was a law firm? And then I decided that I was going to build what I called the Google law firm, but I didn't have the. So I'd been close with Obama's team and I was talking to the Obama people, the guys who ran the cave in Chicago, guy named Teddy Goff, and there was another guy named Healing Kriegel. And I'm talking to all of them about the Google law firm. And when I would talk to them, they're just blank face, like, what, what do you mean, the Google law firm? So I found this guy and he got it. And the first thing I said to him was, you know, everything we're going to do, we're going to ask what Google would do. And here's what Google would do. If it was a law firm, Google would be everywhere for everybody. And Google wouldn't want some cases, they'd want all the cases. And, and if they didn't handle their cases in house, they would refer them out. They Would partner with a firm like Uber. So. So I. I was inspired by Google and Uber. So I wanted to build the Google law firm. I'd keep a lot of cases, but I'd refer a whole bunch more out.
- [39:40]
Well, so then. So I say to the guy, he says, what do you want the most? I said, I want transparency and automation. Now, we had a software called Client Profiles and. Which was pretty good, but he kept saying, it's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. We have to build our own software. And that's the last thing I wanted to do because it's just too big. And I'm like, that's not what we do. But he finally convinced me we got to build it. And I had gained such trust in myself. Well, let's go ahead. So we built Litify for us internally.
- [40:24]
And we put it on Salesforce, we layered it on Salesforce. Nobody had ever done that before. So all of a sudden, we got all these engineers. We got a staff of thousands of engineers. Salesforce was interested in us because they hadn't been in the legal space before. And we can change things. We can do whatever we want. So we started Litify. And part of the deal, if you want to be. So I refer a bunch of cases out to lawyers across America. But like with the Blumies, if people want to get my referrals, they got to be unlitify, because that's how we talk to each other. So a case comes in that I'm going to refer out to Des Moines. You know, the case comes in. I got a partner who's on Litify. I refer the case to him. He's got, you know, 12 hours to accept it or decline it. If he declines it, it comes back, it goes to a second person, comes back, goes to a third person, and then. And then there's. Then it's. So it started as something internal for us, but it's. But then it became, you know, so good that everybody wanted it. So we started selling it.
- [41:36]
Sam
What was. How much did you invest in it, and what was the time to exit?
- [41:40]
John Morgan
Well, other people invested in it with this fortress, put some money in. I was on a bank board. I was on the bank board called Esquire bank, which was a. Is a bank for lawyers, trades on nasdaq. I sat on the board, Tiger Capital, put in some money, I would say, from beginning to exits six, seven years. And look, I didn't really want to exit, but, you know, it was time because, like you said, the focus I needed to Focus on the Google law firm. I already had this, and I still have a lot of input with the Bessemer. And I sold it to somebody who I thought would be good. I sold it to Besmer. And they're very good at this. And so, yeah, about six or seven years.
- [42:29]
Sam
Okay, that's amazing, by the way.
- [42:31]
Sean
It seems like there's a flywheel between these businesses. So you said we built kind of for ourselves, and then you used your position and leverage in the market where, hey, if I'm referring to a case, you gotta be using our platform for this to work well, to get more customers. The second business I think Sam's gonna bring up is like this ad agency you created.
- [42:50]
John Morgan
The ad agency was. Here's how the ad agency was. I called it Practice Made Perfect. So what my idea was is I was gonna go out across America and say, if you want to do what I'm doing, I'll write your ads, I'll place your ads, I'll, I'll. And when big cases happen, when mass torts happen, you can put them in and then refer them to me. So I built this company called Mass, or Practice Made Perfect at all these lawyers across America. I was charging 15%. So I made money, you know, I was making. I was probably making, you know, 8 or 9 million bucks a year just running that business. But more importantly, all those lawyers started referring me, you know, when Vioxx would happen or when, you know, mass torts would happen, they would send me their cases as well. So I, I built this. I thought of it like, like Global Crossing, where I'm laying all this fiber optic across America. But my fiber optic where these law firms across America that I would make money, be the ad agency, but I'd make the big money with the cases.
- [43:55]
Sam
They would wait. So was that its own entity and you're saying it was doing 8 million in income?
- [44:00]
John Morgan
Yes.
- [44:01]
Sam
That's incredible. What's. Where's it at now?
- [44:03]
John Morgan
I sold it because. Here's why I had to sell it. As I started to expand across America with all these lawyers. They were all good friends of mine by the end, but I kept. They. They were like, you know, I had a guy up in Indiana and he's like, john, you know, you're. You're infringing on my territory. I'm like, how? Because my deal with these, with my clients, with this, you don't have to sign a contract with me. You can fire me anytime you want, and I'll never compete with you. I'll never compete with you. And it was just a handshake. Well, they were like calling, saying, well, John, you know, I saw one of your billboards. I'm like, well, where did you see it? He's like, well, I saw, I was driving to Louisville. I go, were you in Kentucky or Indiana? Well, I was in Kentucky, but I was driving. I was like, hey man, you're in Indianapolis, I'm in Louisville. So I started getting, I was infringing on my clients, right? And it just became untenable. I was at a crossroad and I either had to not grow the Google law firm or keep this other business. So I sold Practice Made Perfect. I don't know what's going to happen to it. I'm very worried about it because when they bought it from me, the person that came in to run it, they called the person they put in there the.
- [45:22]
Resident entrepreneur or something like that. They had some name for the guy who's going to run him. Just give me the money and go do what you want.
- [45:32]
Sam
How much did you sell it for?
- [45:34]
John Morgan
Like 18.
- [45:36]
Sam
Okay, so that's 18 million. All right, now listen to this. Sean, is this true? So do you still own this? And tell me the story about it. You had a trade show called Mass Torts Made Perfect. And it's a twice a year trade show for, for lawyers. So you're, you basically owned like the networking of law firms, is that right?
- [45:55]
John Morgan
It's called Mass Torch Made Perfect. And we put two times a year people would come to learn about the latest Mass Torch. It was a play on my.
- [46:08]
Practice Made Perfect. I had Practice Made Perfect for my clients and Mass Torts Made Perfect for all the lawyers in America. And I stayed with that for a long time. And at a certain point it was me and two other firms. It was when Johnnie Cochran was alive. He was part of it. And I was helping Johnnie Cochran map out his national strategy, which also helped me learn about going national and then another law firm. But at a certain point, back to your focus. You are right about focus. I mean Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both say focus, focus, focus. At a certain point, Mass towards Made Perfect was not helping me grow my business. And so I sold. I, I let them have Mass Torch Made Perfect. I kept Practice Made Perfect and we, and then I went and spent way more time on the Google law firm.
- [47:09]
Sam
Well, how big was the trade show business?
- [47:11]
John Morgan
It was big, but it wasn't that profitable. What? The trade show itself made money, but not a lot of money. Practice, Practice Made Perfect. The ad agency was really supplementing that. But what we were really looking for were cases. We were really looking for people to say, hey, you know, we're going to send you our cases. So the trade show itself never made money. It was the cases that we got.
- [47:35]
Sean
Where do you see opportunity today that, you know, a younger, more free John Morgan would actually be able to go and pursue? What would you go chase down?
- [47:45]
John Morgan
If I was young, I would probably.
- [47:50]
Because of AI and because I'm not good at that stuff, I would probably be looking toward the service industries for John Morgan. You know, plumbing.
- [48:04]
Electrical, air conditioning. I think that that's where a person like me could thrive because I'm good at scaling, I'm good at building teams, I'm good at sharing the profits. And so I think that, I think I might be in something like that. But the business I really enjoy the most is the entertainment business. And the great thing about the entertainment business, whether it's the downtown Flavortown or Wonderworks or Alcatraz east, is you're not fighting.
- [48:47]
Sam
Can you, can you. Okay, so Shard and I are, I guess, sort of in the entertainment business because we have this podcast. But you know, I love the idea of owning an upside down museum. That sounds amazing. It sounds fun. It sounds like it's good for the world. Like, it's like a, it's wholesome, it sounds fantastic. It seems cool to touch the things you're working on. Can you teach us how to get into that business and how to operate, run, spot an opportunity or what a winning formula looks like?
- [49:12]
John Morgan
Well, winning formula looks like you got to go back to the basics, always location, location, location. Look, my Orlando store does the best, and then Pigeon Forge does the second best. And then Myrtle beach does pretty good. And then. But Branson does less than Myrtle Beach. It's all about where your locations are. And if you don't have a great location for this, for this type of business. Look, Six Flags is having trouble in America right now because there's just not enough people to go to Six Flags. I like these one offs where location based attractions, where it's at the corner of Main and Main, you've got a lot of people coming with, you know, and when people come with money, they're, they're, they're coming to spend money. When the people come to Orlando, they're coming to spend money.
- [50:11]
And so that's what I would, that's what I would focus on would be, you know, the, the cities itself.
- [50:17]
Sam
And is the business model just $30 tickets or $50 tickets or they're not.
- [50:21]
John Morgan
It's like $26 tickets. Yeah. And the value, the reason I think I'm really doing well is the value is incredible because there's probably four or five things inside of each attraction that if you just went out and paid for it on the street, like I've got these virtual roller coasters in malls. They go for $20 a ride, you know, three minutes, 20 bucks with me. You can just keep going and going and going. Ropes course, 15, 20 bucks a ride with me. Go. You know, laser tag, 15, 20 bucks. There's probably five on items inside of a Wonderworks that would cost 100 bucks by each, by themselves. But here a family of four comes in for 100 bucks and they leave, you know, with a huge grin on themselves, sweating from all the activities. And the value is incredible. The thing I love about the business is there's really no fighting like in my law business. You know, I'm competing to get the cases and I'm fighting the insurance company that I'm fighting the defense lawyers, and everything's a fight. The only thing's a fight here is when somebody comes and say, I didn't like it, I want my money back. And we basically look at the ticket and go, how long was, how long were they there? If they were there for an hour or less, here's your money back. When they come and ask for their money back and they were there for three hours, we're like, get the out of here.
- [51:56]
Sam
Is there like a winning strategy? Like, okay, the story of an upside down house that got tossed out of the Bermana triangle. That's kind of cool. Crime and Punishment's cool. What other winning story formulas do you like?
- [52:11]
John Morgan
Well, I have one that I'm gonna, that I'm looking to build right now. And it's called Santa's Chocolate Factory. So imagine.
- [52:21]
This is Santa's Chocolate Factory.
- [52:24]
Sean
Nice.
- [52:25]
John Morgan
Okay. And the thing in the middle. So envision, here's where this came from. Here's where this idea came from. So I'm out at Disney one day and I'm sitting at Ghirardelli's. And Ghirardelli's is an ice cream chocolate store. Right next door was a Christmas store at Disney Village. I'm sitting there and then I go into the Christmas store. Christmas is, you know, a year round business in certain places. So then I thought, what could I build that would be phenomenal? So I thought, well, Willy Wonka. You gotta pay IP for Willy Wonka, but you don't have to pay IP For Santa Claus. So I said, what about Santa's chocolate factory? Santa's living there. This is Santa's house. There's a big chocolate factory. There's ice cream. The booths are made out of sleighs. Then you got all the merchandise you're gonna sell. You got Santa Claus there in his workshop. You got pictures being taken. You got elves working there. And so my idea is to build this complex of Santa's chocolate factory where Santa is. And. And on the hour, every hour at midnight, every hour turns into midnight. The clock turns dung, dung, dung, dung. The lights go down and all of a sudden the store comes alive. The train starts moving, the bears are moving. It's Christmas time on the hour. Kind of a Bellagio moment where people come. It's snowing outside.
- [54:01]
And so that's the next thing.
- [54:05]
That I'm going to do.
- [54:07]
Sean
I love it. Have you seen Enchant. Enchant. Christmas. Have you seen this business?
- [54:11]
John Morgan
Yeah. But here, think about this, what I'm thinking about with this, because the inside is going to be so phenomenal. I'm thinking about doing something that's never been done ever in the history of the world. Charging money to come into a retail store, a dollar to come in. Now, I don't know if it'll work. If it doesn't work, I'll quit charging the dollar. But I think I can build something inside so spectacular that people will want to get in there to see the clock strike 12. The clock strikes 12. All of a sudden, everybody's up on the counters like Johnny Rockets. They're all singing. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. There's this five minute interlude every hour, and I think people will pay to come in and see it. So that's my next thing that I'm working on right now.
- [55:05]
Sean
Sam, isn't it crazy that he's basically like half Walt Disney shark, half lawyer shark? You know, Better Call Saul meets Jeff Bezos. It's like one of the. One of the wildest combinations.
- [55:18]
Sam
That's pretty amazing. It's. I mean, you've been in the. It's kind of funny. There's like a joke here of like, you just became a lawyer to fund your Carney ambitions.
- [55:27]
And that's pretty badass, to be honest, because, you know, being a lawyer is cool and I'm totally on board with helping the little guy. But there's something special about. Particularly in a world of AI, you know, this is a common theme that Sean and I have talked about in a world of AI. And more digital. It's pretty cool to be out of the house and screen free experiences. And so I actually find your attraction business almost probably more interesting than your.
- [55:49]
John Morgan
I told you, I'm, you know, my wife doesn't understand it when I tell her I'm, I'm more proud of my attraction business than the law business just because it's so unlikely.
- [56:00]
Sam
And what do you think? And so that business is 30. What do you think that. Do you own the whole thing?
- [56:05]
John Morgan
Almost. I had some limited partners. Over time I've bought a lot of them out, but. Yeah.
- [56:10]
Sam
So what's that worth?
- [56:13]
John Morgan
8X quarter a billion.
- [56:16]
Sam
Yeah.
- [56:17]
Sean
Hey, quick message here because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works? No friction. Well, I've used Mercury for years now and let me tell you, it just works. And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. From credit cards to invoices. I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told. Please, please visit a local bank branch. None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago I landed a big client and the first thing I did, I sent them a clean branded invoice.
- [56:42]
John Morgan
Boom. Deal closed.
- [56:44]
Sean
Cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want. And that's why I use Mercury.
- [56:47]
Sam
So.
- [56:48]
Sean
So if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to mercury.com and get started in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank bank. The services are provided through Choice Financial Group column A and Evolve bank and Trust members. Fdic.
- [57:03]
Sam
What are you doing with malls? Are you doing something interesting with malls?
- [57:06]
John Morgan
So what I'm doing with malls is this. Everybody's tearing malls down because malls are no good. So up in Myrtle Beach, I'm was going to. I'm going to build this. I'm building this new downtown Flavortown with Guy Fieri. So there was a. There was a mall that was just on its last legs. There's an out parcel that has a Bass Pro that kicks ass. So that's, that's golden. But the mall, what I really wanted out of the mall was I wanted the JC Penney's location. It's, the location is fantastic. The mall is just no good. I wanted the JC Penney's location to build downtown Flavortown. But then I got stuck with them all. But I bought them all. I bought it all for an incredibly low price. So now the question is Going to be, do you level the mall or what do you do? What I've decided to do is to do something that's never really been done like this.
- [58:11]
For your viewers, I'm going to. Now you guys seem, you'll know the answer to this. Are you all familiar with the concept of first principle thinking? Okay, yeah. Elon has popularized this term and Aristotle taught Elon the term.
- [58:29]
So you take these assumptions and you deconstruct them. So right now the assumption is if you buy a mall, you tear it down because there's nothing you can do with it. So I've decided to do some first principle. I do a lot of first principle thinking in my businesses. So I've decided, what about, what if I take this older mall.
- [58:52]
And with new technology and LED and illusions and all that, what if I take this mall and I don't tear it down, I just repurpose it, but I make it a gallery. I make the whole mall. Illusions that, that, you know, like when you're at the Venetian and you see those, that the, the, the, when you're on the water and there's so many things to do with led. So I'm going to take this mall and I'm going to repurpose it and I'm going to call it the gallery.
- [59:28]
And it's going to be, the mall is going to be a museum. You're going to go to the mall just like you're going to go to Santa's Chocolate Factory. You're going to go just to see the inside of the mall. You're going to go to see all this and that. I'm going to have a zip line from one end to another. I'll have my ropes courses in the middle. I've got so many cool things. So when you go to this mall, most malls are now just tore down. That's just, that's what you do. I'm going to take Elon's first principle thinking and I'm not going to turn the mall down. I'm going to make the mall the attraction.
- [60:08]
Sam
You're fascinating. And your wife, your children and some of your close co workers, what would they say it's like working with you?
- [60:16]
John Morgan
Well, I think they would say that, that I have strong feelings. You know, if I feel like something is, you know, it's, I don't want to say my way or the highway because I, I, I do a lot with consensus, but once I form my consensus.
- [60:34]
Then I execute. I mean, I'll spend a lot of time going around the Horn. But once I figure out what it's going to be.
- [60:44]
I execute.
- [60:47]
I would say, you know, procrastination may be what they would say I might put off a little bit. But I don't see it that way because I'm. I feel like I'm like, even on this mall, I'm still thinking of what I'm going to put in it. I mean, over the weekend, I was looking at these buildings where they have painted illusions on these different buildings. And so you pull up to a building and it looks like it's a. You know, it looks like it's something, but it's not. It's an illusion. So, like, this weekend I was looking at all these different things. So it's not really procrastination in my mind.
- [61:22]
Sam
It's thinking.
- [61:24]
John Morgan
It's thinking, planning. Yeah.
- [61:27]
Sean
It seems like you probably meet a lot or talk to a lot of entrepreneurs. If I said to you, man, so many entrepreneurs just don't get it. What is it that they don't get that you've. That you get?
- [61:41]
John Morgan
Well, first of all, it's. I have a game that I play. When I drive down roads, I'll see a new business coming in, and the game is this, is it going to make it or not? So I'll see. I'll see an old Burger King being turned into some, you know, health food store. And you look over, you go, is that going to make it or not? And it's usually, you know, if they're repurposing an old Burger King, they're probably not going to make it. What? I think they make the mistake. They want to do it so badly that they try to put a round peg in a square. You know, it just doesn't work. They want to do it so badly that they forget location, location, location, location.
- [62:28]
Sam
So would you summarize that into just planning in advance or just like. Or basically like, if you nail one thing, everything else is taken care of.
- [62:37]
John Morgan
Yeah. And I also believe bullets before bombs, you got to really test things a little bit. A lot of people try to, you know, build two at once or three at once. You got to build that first one, that first pilot, and really get it down. And that's how I do the law firms. Before I really go big in a city, I come in, spend some money with ads, hire a few lawyers, the bullets. And then when I feel it catching on, then I bring the bombs.
- [63:08]
Sean
And when other people try to compete with you because, you know, if I drive, I was in Vegas and in Vegas, every single Billboard is a personal injury lawyer. It's like insane. I don't know why. I don't know why that is in Vegas, but there was a lot of competition. And when I think about what you did, I guess my shortcut answer of like, why did he win? Why did you become the largest law firm? And then everybody else is, you know, playing for second place. My answer is, you were early. You were first, you know, not. Maybe not the first mover, but you were very early. And then once you figured out the secret meaning, like business is about exploiting secrets in a way, you've. You've figured something out before everybody else's, before it's consensus. So you figured out, hey, we can advertise effectively and we can basically like, pour money into ads and get, get people get cases out of it. That you were way more aggressive with that, that even if other people were advertising, they weren't as aggressive with the advertising, meaning either putting money and effort into the creative or just reinvesting capital to build the national brand. And so that, I guess that's what I would say is the thing. What am I. Is that right? Or am I missing something that was important and why you won and, and everybody else didn't?
- [64:21]
John Morgan
Okay, you're. Miss. Yes. You're missing a very big piece. One of you said, I don't know if you'd heard me say, but one of you is talking about fishing. And, And I've got a. In my business, I call it, you know, first of all, you got to fish first and fish fast. So there's two sides of my business. There's catching fish, and to catch fish, you got to fish first and fish fast. And then there's cooking fish. The value of the case where my competition gets beat by me is Most of them, 95% of them are shit lawyers.
- [65:02]
They're terrible at what they do. They couldn't try case many of them, if they wanted to, so they have to take the last best. Often.
- [65:14]
You'Ll see people bragging, hey, we settled this case for a million dollars. Yeah, well, the case was worth $10 million. But the problem for them is they couldn't do it. They didn't know how to do it. What I did when I was going through all this, I started to really look at where does my money come.
- [65:33]
20% of my cases are 80% of my money. But here's where my money really comes. It comes the Friday before trial. So they've said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now it's Friday before trial, the Friday before trial. A lot of times they say, okay, here it is. The next time the money comes is during, right after jury selection. We pick a jury, they're like, oh, we don't like that jury. We pay us. Then the third time is during the trial. They might say, here's the money. And then the fourth comes is the verdict. I get gigantic verdicts, gigantic verdicts where they're getting, where they're talking about 500,000, I'm, I'm getting, I got a verdict in your city, San Francisco, against Google a couple of weeks ago for $500 million. And so you know, I'm not hunting cockroaches. I'm hunting big game. I'm not, I'm not happy just to get a little bit of money. I want to get exactly what it's worth. So where my margins, where I have separated myself from all of them, his results and reputation. And then the other thing they don't do, there's a concept in my law called bad faith. If there's a million dollars in coverage and they don't pay it, they're in bad faith. Perhaps when they come to offer me the million, it's too late. Now most lawyers, because they need the money, they take the million. I say you, I go get the verdict. I go get the verdict for 10 million. You know, I got one. I represented a state senator this year. They were offering us nothing, Nothing. They finally offered us a million. The day of trial was a death case. I said, you know, f you and we got 100 million. And so where the disconnect is, they're not real lawyers. So what have I done? I've got a stable of racehorses that get big verdicts. I got people who, that's all they do, they just go around the country, they go from here to here to here to here to here to here. They don't even live in the cities, they just parachute in. And I call it the Walter Payton rule. When Walter Payton played for the Bears, he got the ball 50 times a game. When it was fourth and goal, he always got it. So I've got my Walter Payton's, I got my Walter Payton's who I parachute in and they get these big verdicts. So my differentiator between me and my competition is most of them are not real lawyers. They're marketing people who take the last best offer and their margins are terrible. Now on the cases I refer out the Google law firm, my margins on those cases.
- [68:30]
My margins in my business, about 30, 35%. But my margins on my referrals is 85, 90%. And that business is getting bigger and bigger and bigger as my national footprint gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So I got two sides of the business. I got the stuff I do internally, but then I got the cases I refer out. And when I refer them out to my Uber drivers. It's not a Uber driver. It's Mario Andretti that I'm referring these. These customers to.
- [69:00]
Sean
I got goosebumps. John, I love that answer. That was incredible. That should be your next infomercial. That was incredible.
- [69:06]
Sam
John's a cowboy. I mean, you got this cowboy energy, which we love. We love cowboy. You know, we have a joke. We call ourselves manifest cowboys because we, like, dream up stuff and make it happen.
- [69:14]
Sean
Because we're hoping other people start to call us that, we get to stop saying it ourselves. That'd be great.
- [69:18]
Sam
When you nickname yourself, it's not as cool, but I think you actually are the manifest cowboy.
- [69:22]
Sean
Law firms can't really be held by non lawyers. Right. So do you own the. I guess it's a partnership. But do you own a huge chunk of this firm yourself?
- [69:30]
Sam
No.
- [69:30]
Sean
There's no investors, right?
- [69:31]
John Morgan
No, I have. Is mainly me and my family. But I do have a lot of partners in it because I believe.
- [69:39]
That. Look, when I look at this firm or all my businesses, I always envision it like I'm building a circus. And I want to build the greatest show on the earth. When you see some of these circuses in shopping centers, you know, they got an elephant with one tusk and a drunk clown and a seal that's hot. And it's a bullshit circus. The circus I'm building is the greatest show on earth. Why do people go to the circus? They go there for two reasons. One, they want to see the lions and the tigers eat the man.
- [70:12]
That's why they go. They want to see him, and then they want to see the great Wallenda fall off to his death. That's why they're at the circus. That's why they go to nascar. They're hoping that somebody is going to die. How do you not die?
- [70:29]
Well, with the animals, you. You feed them and you love them. I've got a lot of partners who make a lot of money because they got a piece of this deal. The second way is you focus. You're up there on that high wire and you got to pay attention. You got to get from here to there. So in building this firm, I got three rules. Love them. Feed Them focus and then you can build the greatest show on earth.
- [70:58]
Sam
You're very successful. You've. You've won so many times in life. Has there ever been a point where the, the businesses or the firm almost went under because you said that you're a pretty risk. Risk on person. Has. Have you almost had to pay the consequences because of that?
- [71:13]
John Morgan
I don't know about pay the consequences, but I bet. Look, I sent a guy up to Atlanta. When I opened up Atlanta, I sent the wrong guy up there. By the time I got him out, we were $14 million in the hole. It just kept know.
- [71:28]
And he was a disaster. But, you know, now he's gone and my team, I mean, Atlanta makes a, you know, Prince money. So that was. Atlanta was tough. I've had a couple of cities that didn't do as well as I hoped, like Memphis. So, yeah, I've had, I've had some, you know, I've had some things not do well. I had a. I built a small amusement park called Magical Midway that I ended up selling. Lost a million bucks. But that doesn't bother me because nobody bats a thousand. I mean, if you bet, if you bet 300, you're in the hall of Fame, you know, all you gotta do is get on base one out of three times and you're in the hall of Fame. Like we talked about earlier, Warren Buffett has five big stocks. You take those stocks away. He's not Warren Buffett anymore. And he's the one. He's the first person who tells you that. That's why I love him so much. That's why I have so much Berkshire Hathaway stock. I mean, he, he's my guy.
- [72:27]
Sam
You've been doing a lot of media. I saw you on this Jubilee thing and I had known of who you were before that, and I was like, what the hell? Why would you want to do that? You came off, you came off pretty good. You came up pretty good. You've done a really good job of judoing like a bunch of these like, gotcha moments. So that's been pretty cool. What are you gonna do? You try to run for office one day? I mean, what's going on? Why are you. Why do you care about being. Why do you care about being out there?
- [72:51]
John Morgan
Fish. I want fish. I want to catch fish. And you know, I do these things called John in 60s. But look.
- [72:59]
I have had some success running for office. Look, I don't know about that, but, but in Florida with my brother, the brother I told you about that got Hurt. He, he needed marijuana desperately to help his situation. I ran a constitutional amendment twice in Florida to legalize medical marijuana. I spent tens of millions of dollars to, to pass it. And then later, when you, when you have, when you make money, I believe that we have an obligation, a civic obligation, a moral obligation to give back. One of the things that is one of the things that I believe that where the country is headed in the wrong direction and you're starting to hear about it, is affordability. It's all because people aren't paid enough money. That's, that's the affordability problem. The, the, the minimum wage in America is $8 an hour. So what I did with my own money here in Florida is I ran a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. And everybody told me, again, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're nobody. That's never going to happen. Well, it did happen. And so I raised the minimum wage in Florida to fifth from $8 to $15 an hour.
- [74:19]
So because of those constitutional amendments, I became almost like a politician in this state. And everybody's like, we want him to run for governor. We want you to run for governor. When I would go to the White House, they would take me to the side and show me polling about my poll numbers. So you think about it. But then you got to think about the job itself. I mean, I would have trouble with the job itself. I live in Maui, you know, five months out of the year, which I love. I love it out there. And I'm 69, so I don't know. But really what I'm doing is in this day and time is just being out there, and if somebody sees me and they're, and they are favorably disposed by the jubilee or. I was just on this thing this weekend that printed called the Business Insider.
- [75:11]
Sam
Yeah, that was a good interview. I saw that.
- [75:12]
John Morgan
So I just did that. So my thought is it's kind of back to that, you know, why bother? You know, this, you know, some people are going to see this, and some people are not going to like me, but some people are. And look, you can become president with 51% of the people like you. You can get rich as hell if you 51% of the people use you. So I look at these things as new age marketing where people get to see me, you know, with my ads, I look like I'm, you know, working at a funeral home, you know, with what I'm selling. So by doing these things, they're like, you know, that guy actually has a personality. He's not a, you know, a grave digger. But we want to make sure there's enough people watching before I'm going to gotta do it. So, like.
- [76:05]
Sean
And subscribe. Leave a comment.
- [76:10]
Well, this has been awesome, man. I appreciate you coming on Shout out your new book.
- [76:14]
John Morgan
It's being edited right now. It's called Life is Lux the Paper Boy.
- [76:20]
Sam
You're the best. That's it. That's the pod.
- [76:22]
John Morgan
I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off on a road let's travel Never looking back.
- [76:32]
Sam
All right, everyone, if you're listening to mfm, you probably want to make more money. Well, I want to tell you about a podcast you might want to check out. It's called the Sales Evangelist, and it's hosted by Donald Kelly. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts who share their strategies to succeed in sales. They share actionable insights and stories that will encourage challenge and motivate you to hustle your way to the top. If you're someone looking to raise your income level, check out the Sales Evangelist. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.