Greg Goldfarb (2:34)

In the entirety of my 32 years of practicing in one form or another, I've been doing marketing, whether it was the organic stuff, going to the churches and the temples and all that, or the associations or the newsletters, which I still do. It's tough out there. It's a big jungle. And you have to be committed. You have to know what to do, and you have to sort of be savvy. And the younger generation that are our colleagues or whatever are bit savvier with them. It's a fluid, seamless thing to go and, you know, do a video and then make a thread or, you know, and it's just like a nothing thing. Whereas when I try to do a lot of that, you know, I don't succeed, I guess. And it gets frustrating. So over time, what I've learned is that instead of saying, okay, I'm going to spend $50,000 and hope I get leads, and then you realize, oh, $50,000, what's my ROI? I got one case. It wasn't good. So what I've learned is that there's case acquisition. There are some really good marketers, and that's all they do. And they market for lawyers, and you basically give them a chunk of money and you set up criteria and you say, I want Camp Lejeune cases, okay? And I want cases where the only injury that I'm willing to accept is, let's just say, testicular cancer. Because you've realized that in the cancer world, it's hard to prove a lot how you got one type of cancer. But there are certain types of cancers that are so rare that it's easier to connect the dots and show that, wow, you have testicular cancer. You're 40 years old. The only way you would have gotten it is, you know, drinking contaminated water, you know, at this marine base or whatever. So I sort of shifted into that because it was a level of certainty that I think helped me stay committed to the marketing world. I still, you know, market organically. I still go out. I still, you know, do go to events, go to fundraisers and all that. But I think it's almost become my bread and butter right now. Like, the video game addiction is a big case that's coming up. Ultra processed foods. A lot of people now are starting to wrap their brain around that, and social media has now really taken over this sort of case acquisition. Case specific type of Marketing and I've been happy with it. I mean there's some downsides in that space also because it's become so competitive and there's so many players and you have so many marketers around India doing. I mean, I'm not, you know, denigrating the Indian country or whatever, but there's a lot of bad stuff going out.

Chris Dreyer (5:02)

A lot of fraud for a lot of fraud.

Greg Goldfarb (5:03)

That's the word. Look. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Dreyer (5:05)

I mean, you know, they see the criteria, they work the system, you know, so I saw that. And also just the pie gets divided too much for some of these. So look, have you found, without naming names, any of the, like you always hear the downside like, ah, they're cherry picking for this firm or that firm or they start you off hot and you get, you know, a bunch of good cases and then they kind of water it down. What's your experience been?

Greg Goldfarb (5:31)

I've had the complete range from really bad to good. Okay. In the mass tort space because it's so big and there's so many people affected and the companies that get sued oftentimes have multiple types of litigation that they're fending off, they're slowing it down as long as possible. So you have to sort of be ready for that, the long haul. A lot of the marketers, they're not going to even talk to you unless you're going to pony up, let's just say 100 grand you£100 grand you get in these cases. It looks good, there's an appeal, then there's a bankruptcy and you're like, how are these Fortune 500 companies filing for bankruptcy or whatever. So you have the possibility of having a great case with a, against a Fortune 500 company which you think has like endless money. All right. And you set up great criteria and then it goes bad. Either it takes forever or the settlement term, like you are not going to be settling these cases. It's going to be a handful of lawyers at the head of the leadership council, so to speak, that settle it and you're like kind of stuck. Yeah, you can opt out or whatever, but then the judges aren't happy with you, they're blowing up at you. Then you are left in the dust basically because leadership is not happy that you did not sign in and join up and they're not going to really help you out. They're not going to be like, hey, you know, you wanted to go forward, you're on your own. And then on the flip side, in terms of like bad case scenario, I've had campaigns where, where, okay, it sounded like a great case, EzraCare, it was this product that you were dropping into your eyes and people were losing their eyes, right? So, you know, I ponied up some money, got what I thought were qualified cases. The law firm that I was going to work with decided they didn't want to go forward anymore. Even though they told me the criteria, they gave me the criteria that they were willing to accept the types of cases. And then I got stuck with 50 cases and something that I really could not handle and nobody else was doing it. And so, you know, what was I going to do at that point? Was I, you know, was I going to sue that other law firm, try to force them to take the cases, try to find somebody else that didn't even work or whatever? So, and then I've had cases, campaigns where eventually every person in the campaign, every client disappeared. Okay, so let's say I had 15 cases. I sent them out to a very good firm, referring them out, and one by one, they can't find the person. I'm sitting there calling the person. So was it B.S. you know, was the marketer basically just like, whatever, you know, I don't care, I got your money. I'm going to just have a bunch of stooges call you up initially, sign up the paperwork, they get a $200 payment and then they're gone. So, you know, you have to be very careful. Worst case scenarios, pretty much on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The great case that just doesn't go.

Chris Dreyer (8:22)

Anywhere and then the fraud, that was really thorough. Thank you for that. I've always wondered that too. You know, you take like Suboxone, some of these individuals have real cases, and then there's just a lot of problems with different case types and, and the people falling off and the dual reps and things like that, you know. So I guess a few questions here. The first thing is the cash flow, right? You know, if you're, if you're auto or whatever, you know, 12 to 18 months is one thing, but we're talking towards it might be five years or, and that's part of their strategies. Delay, delay, delay. How do you think about the portfolio? Do you wait till, you know, you got some high risk before the science established? Do you, do you wait until the sciences later? Like, like how do you think about, you know, selecting these?

Greg Goldfarb (9:12)

So I am definitely a big fan of diversification and I wanted to diversify the types of cases the law firms that I was going to work with and when you go into the types of cases, it's not just, okay, I'm going to do like sexual abuse cases where you don't have any really complicated science that you're going to have to convince the judge that you're theory and your expert is solid. All right. And so, you know, going back to like the, the length of these cases or whatever, the, the baby powder tile cases, they're like 10 years old now. They've already filed three bankruptcies. They did the Texas two step or what have you.

Chris Dreyer (9:52)

Greg just showed us how he stopped wasting money on ads and started buying the exact cases he wanted. To be successful in mass torts, you need diversity in cases. The real edge comes from catching the next wave before it comes ashore.

Greg Goldfarb (10:04)

I try to stay ahead of the game and see where the future is going. And throughout my practice, I've always had to shift, you know, whatever the hot new trophy was, was what I was chasing. Whether it was Rodney King back In, you know, 30 years ago getting beaten up by the police. The next thing you know is I was doing the police brutality. And now with the cars. Yeah, you know, they're obviously, you know, a lot of society would like to reduce a number of accidents and if you can, you know, make that happen through technology and improved automation, you know, the world is going to demand that. So U.S. attorneys need to anticipate that. And so maybe you go from the strict, you know, hey, who's at fault to maybe it was the car, maybe it was the technology behind the car, and maybe you have to become a tort attorney. I want to have cases that are new because those are going to be cheaper to get. And then I want to get the ones that are advanced, that have gotten pass the motion for summary judgment, the Daubert and all that. And there's cases that are set for trial. So right now in the water contamination PFAS world, there's a lot of us are getting excited about the possibilities there because one part of that whole water contamination type of case was with water providers. So states and local agencies, they all sued 3M and DuPont for, you know, contaminating our water. This is our water. Everybody out there probably has a little PFAS in them. So we're all very excited about the fact that there's a jury trial set. The water providers had their first jury trial set over a year ago in Stuart, Florida. And 3M caved in hours before the case was going to go. And the settlement was basically like about an $11 billion settlement to help rectify the fact that they've, you know, contaminated, like, pretty much every water base. So the thinking is, all right, now we're going to have our first jury trial. The judge, actually, Judge Goebbel out in South Carolina, from what I understand, has basically said to the defendants, you better settle up. Okay? You know, they're going to be exposed to punitive damage because we know we've gotten the evidence that they have known forever. There's a great documentary that just came out. I actually had the director of that documentary come on my show, and it talks about, you know, how to poison a planet, you know, if you really want to, like, see just how bad it is or whatever. And so the administration, the last. This one, the last one, they're trying to figure out how to handle it and try to figure out how many parts per billion in a water base they're going to allow of these pollutants. So it's not even like, get rid of them all. It's just how much are we going to let in there and then what chemicals they're going to let go unregulated and what they're going to regulate. So in any event, so that is one where you'll find a lot of marketers. In fact, one of my marketers reached out to me today, and he, you know, he's like, hey, you better buy as much as you can right now because it's going to close out soon.

Chris Dreyer (13:06)

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Greg Goldfarb (13:49)

I've done everything but the standard bodily injury accident cases. I mean, I have in the court, but I started out, you know, I was like a C plus student, so wasn't getting big offers or whatever. And I had to, like, market from the ground going forward as soon as I got my bar license or whatever. And so my dad, he's also an attorney. He's been around, still practices, 94 years old. And I went to him and I said, listen, whatever you get, that's not an auto accident case or your buddies send my way. Can I ask you a question, Chris?

Chris Dreyer (14:17)

Yeah, of course.

Greg Goldfarb (14:17)

Okay. So I was reading, I printed an article, best legal conferences for 2025 at the beginning of the year. And then I was looking through it a couple months, a couple weeks ago before, you know, when we first got connected. And I'm like, oh, my God, Chris has got a conference. But it was not. The date hadn't been released. Can you tell me about your conference? Because I hear great things. I've talked to a couple people and did I miss the 2025 already?

Chris Dreyer (14:42)

So, first of all, I'm flattered. Thank you for asking this. I like getting the script flipped, dummy. So it's October 5th through 8th, so two days. We got awesome lineup of speakers. And I think the main thing that I want to share is the main way it's different because there's a lot of legal conferences is it's all about marketing and like lead gen and revenue on, like, on the front end side. And the other thing is, outside of myself and I believe one other individual, every single speaker is a PI attorney that owns a firm or is actively growing the firm. They're speaking from experience on, like, how they're approaching growth as opposed to a bunch of consultants or agencies or what have you. It's like kind of the people that are eating their own dog food, so to speak. And I think that's how it's different. Keynote day one is Ross Celino. He's got an amazing story, you know, how he approached marketing. Back in the day to current day two is James Helm, who is thousands upon thousands of cases, you know, and a young prominent advertiser. And then also day one, we got Nikki Glaser, so she's gonna do a comedy show, so that'd be a lot of fun.

Greg Goldfarb (15:43)

Nice, nice.

Chris Dreyer (15:44)

Yeah, that's.

Greg Goldfarb (15:45)

That's the show, that's the conference, and that's in California.

Chris Dreyer (15:48)

That's in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the Phoenician.

Greg Goldfarb (15:52)

Nice, nice. All right, sorry. Sorry to flip the script on, but as a podcaster, it's hard for me to just answer questions.

Chris Dreyer (15:58)

No, I love it, I love it. It's great. It's a nice little plug for myself.

Greg Goldfarb (16:03)

Yeah.

Chris Dreyer (16:04)

Yeah. So thank you for that, Greg. You got on the conference circuit, you can identify who the agencies that the social media brought and stuff, like, they're out there advertising to get clients how do you go about identifying who you're going to send the cases to? Do you just look at the steering committees? Is that where you start? Is it just. You get in this world and you start getting the relationships and, you know, that's how it goes. Like, I know Papantonio has mass sorts made perfect and wants every, you know, and I like Mike, and he look at smart from a marketing perspective. He wants everything referred to them. But, you know, how do you find the right firms to. To send the cases to?

Greg Goldfarb (16:39)

So I have sent work to Pap. I have sent work, you know, to Brian Elsock's firm, you know, lots of firm, Pete Seeger's firm. You know, I figured at the beginning I should go with the heaviest of the hitters, right? So you would go to the mass sort made perfect conference. You would see who's speaking, then you would hear who's in leadership, who's going to be the one trying the cases, who's going to be the ones settling the cases. So my initial take was, let's go with them. A lot of times I would really be talking to the marketer and I would say, who do you like? Who should I refer? Right. Because it would add an element of protection for me if I, let's just say, was using Broughton Partners and they connected me to a law firm that I didn't really know. And then, let's just say, and I kind of anticipated, I'm not an idiot, you know, I kind of knew that. All right. I'm not really giving a lot of these firms a huge volume of work in this space. You know, giving them 15, 25 cases, that's nothing for them. They're not going to, like, bat an eye. Yeah, we'll take the cases. Some of them won't even do it if it's a small amount or whatever. So I just kind of started like that. Then I started kind of like, wow, they're too big. You know, who am I, right? They don't care. So then I started to go with smaller operations. Who I was getting to know at these conferences and having longer conversations and who I felt like I got their cell phone number. I know where you live, you know what I'm saying? So. So I figured, let me try them too. But, you know, so everybody sort of has their good, and they're not so good. There's nobody that's been perfect as far as me. I, you know, like, I'll have some of the clients call me up, hey, I want an update. And then I'm like, okay. And I'm like, hey, this guy needs an update. And then it's like two weeks later, the client calls me back. I never heard from anybody, right? So. And you know, you don't want to deal with a bar violation because your co counsel or the person you referred the workout to just doesn't, you know, respond to the client that you told them is looking for an update.

Chris Dreyer (18:35)

That was amazing. That's the first time I've heard it explained in that detail. You know, And I kind of want to hit this just a little bit more because just, I mean, the whole way that you structure a firm's different, right? You're at, you know, you're using these providers to get cases, then you have working with partners to, for the monetization piece, you know, I guess. So what's the team look like? I imagine you're a more leveraged, more lean team overall. Like, how do you put this together and make it all work?

Greg Goldfarb (19:02)

So you have to know, like you said, the world today is completely different. You can have companies answering your phone, okay, just for regular calls. You could have a call center that is specifically trained just to handle intake for lawyer cases. And we know, and I'm sure you know too, if the phone rings and somebody's looking for an attorney, if you don't call them back in a minute, they're gone. They're gone. In the old days, it used to be, oh, you got 24 hours to get back to you. Right? So nowadays, you know, you cannot afford to do that. So what I've done over the last five to 10 years is I basically outsource everything, including my work.

Chris Dreyer (19:42)

Big teams, managed full scale operations, built and run. Greg's done the traditional law firm model at scale, and then he walked away from it because he found something that works for him. The way Greg structures his firm could change how you think about your own practice.

Greg Goldfarb (19:55)

A lot of my work I'm just referring out to other firms. My bread and butter work was first party insurance claims. And I had just so much of that that I had two buddies that are close in Miami, close geographically. So I gave them the work, I gave them my employees, and I've just basically outsourced everything. There's a couple of things more I'd like to. I'd like to outsource my accounting so I don't have to deal with the accountant anymore. I mean, that would be. I'd like to outsource my IT system. That would be wonderful also.

Chris Dreyer (20:30)

That's awesome.

Greg Goldfarb (20:31)

So that's where I'm at, you know, right now, I'm 59 years old. Maybe in two or three years from now, I'm going to shift back and I'm going to be like, you know what? I need to have my crew back in place. But right now, I'm like a very lean, skeletal type of structure.

Chris Dreyer (20:45)

So I kind of. I wanted to ask that because it's a highly leveraged model, right? It's like, you're the strategist. You use the. You can pick the partners. A lot of times people think of, you know, hey, you should. These other people are experts, and they niche in that area, right? So a lot of times when you, you know, they have leverage on those different. They can have different economies and scale. And so I think that's super smart. If you were going to say, hey, here are the things that you need to do to be successful with torts with this kind of model, you know, just 8020, what. What would you. What would you say? What would you recommend?

Greg Goldfarb (21:21)

Well, I think knowledge is key. And what's going on is that. And I think maybe you. You've seen this as well. You go to law school, they don't even really show you how to be a lawyer. Then you come out and you're like, okay, I got to figure out how to be a lawyer. Then you're like, wow, I'm a lawyer. Now I know how to be a lawyer. But now I'm not happy with what I'm doing, and I'm not making enough money, and I'm seeing other people doing that. So you start scratching your head, and then you start saying to yourself, well, chi, I don't want to do that type of work because I want to stick with what I know. So a lot of lawyers are just kind of in this brain funk where they're like, I can only do family law. That's all I know how to do. I don't want to take a chance. And, you know, the downside to going outside of your comfort zone is sleepless nights. You mess up, you know, and when you mess up, you're affecting, you know, a client somehow or another. And the trauma that they are subjected to when you mess up could be really devastating to a lot of people. But I think at some level, you have to have a roadmap because things are changing. I mean, the reforms that are going through, a lot of legislation now, you can't sue the pesticide companies. You can't do this, you can't do that. My business line has been Written out by the legislatures on a couple of occasions. And I've had no choice. So I think you have to. Lawyers that are sitting there like, God, I hate my work. God, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to retire. Whatever I would say, I love the mass to it. Made perfect conference. Okay. Because you can a. You can sit there for four days and talk to every type of marketer, any vendor, caseware, software, intake centers, and you can do what I'm doing, which is just, you know, all right, I don't want a big overhead anymore. I would rather. If I'm going to spend money, I'd rather do it on getting cases than paying my 25 employees to sit around doing whatever it is that they're doing. Right. And we've all had that experience or whatever. And you're like, I'm trying to be a lawyer, but I'm ending up spending 90% of my career chasing after my employees to try to set up metrics so that they can get their job done. So I love the conferences because you can learn a lot. You can talk to other people, see what's going on. I think the world today is evolving so quickly. And the old kind of construct of being like a accident lawyer from the beginning to the end, I think you're going to run into something that's going to be troubling and you're going to have to shift. Or if you don't shift, you could be out. So. And then if you're out, I mean, talk about going from, hey, I'm a family lawyer to I'm a bodily injury attorney. That's nerve wracking. Well, try going from a family lawyer to, okay, I'm going to open up a restaurant.

Chris Dreyer (23:55)

Right, right. Good luck with that. Wild. You started the Cut to the Chase podcast and, you know, you featured some, you know, non traditional guests, like scientists, you know, homelessness advocates, wildlife experts. So, you know, you got a lot of different voices and it's not just the same type of Persona coming on, you know. So tell me about the podcast, kind of, you know, how you're tying it into your practice and everything of that nature.

Greg Goldfarb (24:22)

Yeah. So, you know, I would say that I've been always intellectually curious and I read a lot and I love science. Like, to me, the fact that I don't quite understand the theory of relativity pisses me off. Right. So I would start to read that and then I would be like, wow, you know, I really can't grasp it. It would be great if I could have like, My own physicist to talk to and ask questions. So in a weird kind of way, I started my podcast to help me take all this, you know, complicated information I was reading and bring people on that were the experts and have them basically explain it to me. And I would just ask the questions, and then that kind of said, hey, you know what? I also would like to get some financial information, too, so why don't I just bring some financial person on and just ask them questions that, you know, like, estate planning, whatever. A lot of people want to hear about estate planning. And so I'm like, all right, you know what? It's going to be good for me. Let's see where it goes. So a lot of the podcast was sort of to answer my intellectual curiosity questions, but also because I'm an attorney, I could get guests in that space. And as I'm sure you realize that, you know, having a consistent show with quality guests, you know, is not easy as you get a little, you know, more down the road, more and more people actually, you know, pitch. I'm assuming they. They pitch you and they want to be on your show. They realize it's a good way to get in front of your audience. And so this all kind of came together, like, all right, you know what? It'll probably be good for my law practice. And, you know, I'm getting. I'm not young, but I'm not a spring chicken anymore. And so, you know, where am I going to go after here? I'm always. I've always been sort of like, where am I going next? And so I thought, well, the podcast, I'm not really sure. Back when I started, it was a really new thing. So I figured, let me just see where it goes. I have no expectations. I have no agenda. And here it is, four years and change later, and now I'm a guest on your show, which is great, you know.

Chris Dreyer (26:22)

Yeah. Amazing, Greg. This has been amazing, you know, for. For. Thank you for sharing all those details and being so transparent. I love when we kind of get in the weeds and when we talk, like, how it really is, as opposed to, you know, keeping things kind of shielded. One final question. Where can our audience that has questions that wants to connect with you, where can they go to to learn more?

Greg Goldfarb (26:41)

My website is the best place. Greggolfarb.com G R E G G G O L D F A R B.com I'm the original triple G.

Chris Dreyer (26:54)

Greg built the perfect practice for his goals. You can, too. You can't do it alone. Look, no one wants to see you win more than I do. That's why I created Personal injury mastermind conference pimcon. And it's this October 5th through 8th in Scottsdale, Arizona. Every person on that stage will be a personal injury attorney, sharing what they have learned in practice. If you're serious about building a modern personal injury practice that can compete in today's market, you need to be there. The relationships alone will pay for the trip 10 times over. That's PIMCON, October 5th through 8th at Scottsdale, Arizona at the Phoenician. Tickets are@pimcon.org.