← School of Hard Knocks Podcast
School of Hard Knocks Podcast
John Morgan | The Billionaire Lawyer Who Took Down Disney & Coca-Cola
01:16:54
John Morgan is one of America’s most feared lawyers—and for good reason. Founder of Morgan & Morgan, the largest personal injury firm in the U.S., he turned a family tragedy into a $2 billion empire. From taking down Disney after his brother’s acc...
Loading summary
Transcript96 lines
- [00:00]
James
How much money did you make?
- [00:01]
John Morgan
This? Last year, the law firm. Last year we did 2 billion in fees. Most people stop. Most people are satiable. And somehow for me, it really wasn't about money, it was just about winning.
- [00:11]
Josh
What are some of those things that you have done differently from the 99%?
- [00:14]
John Morgan
You have to look for luck, you have to look for opportunity. There's all sorts of ways to find luck. The main way to find luck is.
- [00:23]
James
You went head to head with some of the biggest companies in the world. Did you ever worry about any of those big companies coming after you if.
- [00:28]
John Morgan
You feel righteous in what you do? And I do. No. I've taken on the big.
- [00:33]
Jack
What have you learned about negotiating with these billion dollar companies?
- [00:36]
John Morgan
In the corporate, the only thing they understand is money. They're not going to do it because it's right. So what I've learned is this. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Bring a fucking Uzi.
- [00:47]
James
Jon, if me and you died tomorrow and you had one more guiding principle to leave with the younger generation to take with them for the rest of their lives, what would that be?
- [00:55]
John Morgan
Golden rule.
- [00:59]
James
What's going on, everyone? And welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James and I'm here with Jack and Josh. And we have an incredible guest for you guys today. Our great friend, the legend, the billionaire, one of the richest lawyers in the entire world, Mr. John Morgan, the founder of Morgan and Morgan, one of the biggest law firms in the world and the biggest personal injury law firm in North America. You guys. John, it's great to be here with you today.
- [01:26]
John Morgan
Good to see you again. I've seen you a lot since I saw you the first time.
- [01:30]
James
Well, and I think over 60 million people by now have seen that clip that we did. And so it's. I think that I can say it for everybody here at the table. A lot of people watching may have seen it, but it's one of our favorite interviews that we've ever done.
- [01:41]
John Morgan
Thank you.
- [01:42]
James
So I want to get things started by going right back to 2005, right when you're initially getting ready to start Morgan. And Morgan, before you have 1,000 attorneys working for you, before you have recovered tens of billions of dollars for your clients. For starters, how much money did you make this last year?
- [02:02]
John Morgan
You mean in 2024?
- [02:04]
James
Yes.
- [02:05]
John Morgan
I'm not exactly sure because some of it was capital gain and some of it was. But like I said in that first interview, I looked at what LeBron made, and LeBron would rather be Me than him every day.
- [02:21]
James
Yeah.
- [02:21]
John Morgan
So I don't want to give. I mean, I've watched your clips now, and it seems too braggadocious to give these numbers.
- [02:28]
James
But the law firm, though, you guys.
- [02:29]
John Morgan
Oh, the law firm. The law firm. We do. You know, we did last year, we did 2 billion in fees, and our margins are high.
- [02:37]
James
Very good. But back to 2005, when I first initially interviewed you, you said something that has stuck with me to this day, and I'm getting the chance to ask you about it right now. You set out to build the Google of law firms. Can you break down your vision back in 2005, before you built this company, what it's turned into today? What was your mindset coming into law and building this empire that you've built now?
- [03:01]
John Morgan
Well, the first thing I did is I had to get rid of partners. And one thing I tell your people is there are visions. There's visionaries and there's vision makers. Between the visionary and the vision maker, there are vision blockers that are stopping you from making the vision. I had two partners who did not want to grow. They wanted to hold the money. And so in 2003, the firm was called Morgan, Collin and Gilbert. And in 2003, I said to both of them, I said, look, they wanted me to close Jacksonville. They wanted to close Naples, and just kind of keep all the money here in Orlando, Tampa. So I bought them out. You know, one time I read a thing from Jeff Bezos, Sometimes you need to pay people to go away. And I've done that many times. Pay people to go away. So I said, In 2003, they were wanting to close. Why don't I just buy you all out? And one guy said, okay, okay, okay, okay. And I bought them both out. They had 27% of the firm. I bought them both out for less than $2 million. And then that was that. I kept their name on it for a while because they stayed on working. But in 2005, they came in and said, we're going to go start our own firm. I said, okay. And then from that point forward, I was untethered by the vision blockers. By the way, Jacksonville makes a fortune. Naples makes a fortune. They wanted to close them. They wanted to close them. And so once I got rid of the partners, the dead weight, it's hard to swim enough, but when you put weights with balls and chains on your ankles, it's really fucking hard to swim. So I cut those two off with chain cutters. And then I started going and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I didn't have the Google idea in 2005. I think I had the Google idea in 2009. That's when I wrote a speech called the 21st Century Law Firm. What's it going to be like when there's in the 21st century? And then I started having this vision about the Google law firm. If Google was a law firm, what would it do? The answer was it would be everywhere for everyone. It would be one stop shop for everything. And if I didn't handle the cases, I'd refer it to you and you and you and you. For example, there are certain cases that we don't handle, but we refer it out to people who do. And our margin on that is like 85%. And the clients are better because we're giving them to the law firm who really does that type of work that I don't do. And so that was the thought about the Google law firm. And then I started building it in earnest in 2009. And here we are today.
- [06:00]
James
You know, it kind of reminds us, it reminds me of, we've got a great friend of ours. He's an incredible Internet marketer. His name's Joshua Crisp and he's got this saying of an acronym, wwad whenever he looks at businesses. What would Apple do? Apple's a trillion dollar company. And how are they able to sell their phones or computers at hundreds or even a thousand dollars more than their next competitor? Like, what are they doing with the packaging and whatnot? What are they doing with the pricing and whatnot? And so you took the inspiration from kind of Google. So in a sense you studied those greats, even though they weren't directly in your industry, to model that greatness and kind of go out there and build it yourself.
- [06:39]
John Morgan
Google and Uber. Cause part of my business is referring the cases out. Like Uber doesn't have cabs. Uber doesn't have drivers. They have people they send it out to. But my Uber version, once I get the case and I refer it out, instead of having some, you know, who knows, driving the car I got, you know, I got Rowdy Bush driving my cars, I'm giving them to the best lawyers in America. So if you call me and give and ask for a case that I don't do or that I'm not in that geographic area, I find my Uber driver, which is one of the premier lawyers in that country or that state, and I get it to that person and that business is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's and the margins on that part of the business is astronomical.
- [07:33]
Josh
John, out of all the lawyers out there, you make a lot of money, but why did you want to become a lawyer?
- [07:42]
John Morgan
Well, here's what happened. I'm 19 years old. I'm at the University of Florida. My dad calls me, he says, Tim, who is my brother, has been in an accident. He's working at Disney World. He's paralyzed from the neck down. He is a C6, C7 quadriplegic, can move nothing. You know, we're very close. And my other brother Mike was there with me. He was a freshman in Florida, uf. And so we jumped in our car, we drove down the street, we went into the Catholic church, we cried and then we lit candles. That's what Catholics do, I guess. And we then drove home and went down the street here to Lucerne, and there he was spending 360 on a gurney. And it was like, holy shit. We. Our mother had left a long time ago, so there was no mom around. And my dad was kind of a, you know, we love him dearly, but he wasn't. So I kind of took charge of the whole thing. And we were doing everything, man, we were. We got water from Lourdes, you know, where the miracles were with Mary up here. We're rubbing, you know, we're rubbing Lourdes water on his legs. And we're praying and praying and praying. And I got mixed up in the whole thing, in the medical treatment and the case against Disney, because it happened at Disney. What happened is the question is, was there a third party case or was it just a workers comp case? At the end of the day, I believe that we hired the wrong lawyer because we didn't know. We were poor people. We didn't know who fucked it up, I think. And number two, Disney, even though it happened on the job, treated Tim like he was a Taliban. They just fought and fought and fought and fought and fought to the point where if it's a cop case, as long as you give somebody a job back, there's not a case. So they say, okay, we'll give you a job back. We'll let you be an operator. Remember, he's in high school. We'll let you be an operator from 11 at night till 7 in the morning. 18 year old quadriplegic, he regained some of his stuff. He became a super quad so he could drive a car. But the way Disney fought him, I became enraged when we checked him out of the hospital. I walked into the doctor's office and I Said, what's the prognosis? And he said, I don't think you'll make it to 30. I stood up, I said, you're wrong. And he was. He died last year at 65. But then I couldn't get Disney out of my mind. And I knew what I was going to do. I was going to come back and all these motherfuckers like Disney and insurance companies like Disney and were treating people like that. I was going to represent the Tims of the world. I didn't even know there was money in it. I didn't care. And so I had a lot of job offers. I was president of this thing at the University of Florida called Florida Blue Key, which was the biggest, biggest thing in Florida. All these lawyers are trying to hire me. And I said, no. I said, I only do personal injury. And that's all I did. I only applied to personal injury firms. And that's all I've ever done. Listen, I had a case one time against Coca Cola where I handed them their ass and they tried to hire me. I said, I'm never going to fucking represent a corporation or insurance company. Never. Never. So I was. Tim's terrible day became my career. And then later in life, like I said, Tim became a super quad. And Tim ran my call center and built the business with me. And at the end of every day, Tim would come up with his German shepherd, Sam, and I'd be with my brother. And that's how it ended every day.
- [11:28]
James
Did you ever worry about any of those big companies coming after you because you went head to head with some of the biggest companies in the world?
- [11:34]
John Morgan
No, I didn't. You know, my favorite story from the Bible is David and Goliath. And the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And I got a hell of a slingshot and a damn good aim. And if you got the facts on your side, if you think you're right, if you feel righteous in what you do, and I do, no, I've taken on the biggest ones.
- [12:00]
Jack
Something I find fascinating is you look at a company like Disney, they have hundreds of billions of dollars, they're an incredibly successful company. And you look at a situation like your brothers, where they could more than EAS just compensate him fairly and go about your separate ways. What do you think? What have you learned about negotiating with these billion dollar companies in the courtroom?
- [12:23]
John Morgan
Well, let me tell you another thing that makes it even worse. You know why he broke his neck? A little girl they thought had drowned in the Polynesian lagoon. He got up on A floating raft. And he dove in looking for, he was looking to rescue a girl. And there was a table that was tied down, these little boats, these aqua larks. And he hit his head on the table and was paralyzed immediately. So that makes it even worse. You would think that Disney would have said, hey, even though it's a comp case, even though there's no third party liability, we're not going to make you come be an operator at 11 in the morning. But that's just how they operate. I gave a speech one time to like 2,000 insurance people. And I started the speech by saying, I want to tell you all how to put John Morgan out of business. And my whole speech was. And basically the gist of it was just do the right thing. And when I ended the speech, I said, listen, I've given you all the secret about how to put me out of business. And you know why I'm not worried about it? Because the people you work for are constitutionally incapable of doing the right thing. And I looked at them all and I said, and by the way, all you, all that work for them, they don't give a fuck about you either. They don't give a fuck about your families either. They will cut your fucking throat as soon as they have to to make their profit or get their CEO a bonus. I said, if any of you fuckers are looking for a job, I'm hiring. I got four people out of that speech. And the funny thing is, they didn't know this, but the hotel that they did the event in, I owned the fucking hotel. So I said, hey, by the way, thank you all for coming. I own this hotel, thanks to you all.
- [14:19]
James
Yeah, and so you were asking him about negotiating with the billion dollar companies.
- [14:24]
Jack
Exactly. You've been in these courtrooms with Coca Cola, Disney. What have you learned about negotiating with these billion dollar companies?
- [14:34]
John Morgan
The only thing they understand is money. The only thing they understand is money. They're not going to do it because it's right. The only thing they understand is the bottom line. Money. And the reason it's been so important for me to build the firm I did the way I did, is because if you don't have the firepower, if you go to forthepeople.com and look at my verdicts and settlements, especially verdicts, this is when I went and got a verdict three weeks ago, company offered me a million dollars. Former state senator lost his son a million dollars. They finally offered at the end, guess What? I got 100 million. And next time they see Me, they'll. It won't be as easy for. They'll pay me more. You gotta. So what I learned and what I still learn is they only understand money. I'm on that opioids case. I've been representing states and cities all around. Do you think those opioid people are giving this money up easily? No. We have been fighting this thing for 10 years and we're on the big case up in Cleveland, too. It's all about the bottom line. It's all about the money. They're never going to do something just because it's right. So what I've learned is this. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Bring a fucking Uzi.
- [16:02]
Josh
I love it. You know, you set out to build the Google of law firms. And so a business story that I love and that we talk about often is the McDonald's. The McDonald's brothers and Ray Kroc came in wanting to scale that business up to the moon, and they were super concerned about the quality of the product going from franchise to franchise. How did you ensure, expanding your law firm across the country, that it was going to uphold that same quality and care that you do on cases that you would personally work on?
- [16:31]
John Morgan
All right, that's a great question, because consistency is like I said, I want to do it my way, the right way. Every day. I brought a really smart guy in to help me build my vision. The first thing I told him when he came to me, I said, I want to see transparency and automation. That's what I want. And we kept going back and forth and back and forth. He was trying to get to me a lot of different ways because, look, every lawyer is different. Everybody's got different needs. Everybody has a different business than my business. You might need to settle a case now, not because it's what it's worth, because you need money, you need your bonus. So what we did, and I will say this, I didn't want to do it. He pushed me and pushed me and pushed me. He said, there's the only way I can do it. I built my own software called Litify. And I built Litify, which allowed me to see everything that everybody's doing in real time all day long. And then I got operators, operation people looking over these 1,300 lawyers to make sure it's being done my way, the right way, every day. I sold 60% of Litify to a company called Bessmer for, like, the valuation was like 600 million. I still own 40%. And so litify and that was a big jump because one time I was trying to build a software with some people, we were pumping money. Pumping money was called smart advocate. I was just throwing money, money, money, money, money. And it wasn't happening. One time, I'm down in New Orleans with the programmers, a bunch of guys from India, and we had this dinner down in New Orleans. And when we get out of the dinner, the main programmer looks at me and goes, okay, now where do we get the pussy? I'm like, fuck, these are the. You know. So I'd already had a bad. I'd already had a bad. I'd already had a bad taste in my mouth about building a fucking software. So to build a new software, where do we get the pusey? I'm like, these are my geniuses from India. So I'd already had the bad taste from smart advocate Jerry Parker. To his credit. One day I said, this is bullshit. He gave me my money back because he thought he had something. So it was with great trepidation that I built Litify. But now Litify is not just used by me. It's used by law firms all over America. They're using John Morgan's software. And if they don't, they're stupid.
- [19:00]
James
So you made your competitors your customers.
- [19:02]
John Morgan
Yeah, listen, my competitors are not my competitors. My competitors are my friends. I've never looked at it as a competitor. As a competitor. I mean, you run faster when you run against somebody fast, you know, and if you put a wolf behind you, you really run fast. If the wolf's chasing, you'll run a lot faster.
- [19:22]
James
And I want to dive a little bit deeper into that. About, you know, Jack brought up a great point about maintaining the quality as you scale. And that's a big thing, is that people, they grow too big, they don't have that quality control to ensure that that top level care is going around all the place. But when did you set out that? Because, okay, you got the deadwood out of the way and you're going to go, I'm going to build Morgan. And Morgan, right, How did you initially know that you were going to go from Orlando to Tampa to all the cities in Florida and eventually going just completely national to where you're all over the place?
- [19:55]
John Morgan
Well, you don't, you don't. It's like, to me, it's like pole vaulting. You know, the bar's down here. You can basically jump over by yourself, and then you raise the bar and you clear that bar, and then you clear that bar and you clear that bar. And now you're up at 17ft, and you just keep, you know, you either want to keep clearing the bar or stop. Most people stop. Most people are satiable. 99% of everybody out there has a satiable appetite. They get to enough. That's enough. And somehow for me, it really wasn't about money. It was just about winning. I sold Yellow Pages once upon a time, before I went to law school. And I say this with all modesty and trying to tweak all my Yellow Pages. I'm the greatest yellow page seller in the history of AT&T. I could sell the fuck out of those things. You know why I believed it. But you know what drove me? Every day you had to post your numbers when you sold Yellow Pages. And every year, every day, they had the top seller and the bottom seller and they had the pictures of the number one, two, and three. I was always fucking number one. I was more worried about my picture being on the wall and being number one than the money. But because my picture was on the wall, because I was number one, I made the money. That's what kind of drove me, and that's what kind of drove me here. It's like, you know, I don't golf, I don't hunt, and I don't fish. You know, I hunt money and fun. That's what I'd hunt. And so look, when I first got out, if somebody said to me, john, we're going to give you $100,000 a year and tie it to Cola, I'd have probably. I didn't have any idea about this. I had no idea. So it wasn't, you know, people. Was this your big vision? Hell, no. I just kept clearing bars and what's the next? What's the next? What's the next? What's the next?
- [21:59]
Jack
When you're scaling so you have your first location in Orlando, how do you go about scaling from one location to the next? Is it about, like, what do most entrepreneurs kind of get wrong in this process? Is it about bringing on the right team to help you scale, or is it really about bringing on the technology in the operations? I guess you say in terms of the processes that really kind of pull it all together, what allowed you to scale in that way that most other Allah offices can't?
- [22:24]
John Morgan
Well, one thing I had an advantage. When I first started advertising, there wasn't that much advertising going, so I had an advantage. Kind of like Bill Gates. If Bill Gates was born today, he wouldn't be Bill Gates because it had already been invented. So When I started advertising, people that would, couldn't because they didn't have the money, and people that could, wouldn't because it was a stigma to advertise. So I had this whole. I was like a fullback. They did a draw play on the 10, and I go through a hole, and it was kind of a decoy. And the next thing you know, I'm rumbling to the end zone because nobody was guarding me. Nobody's watching, Nobody saw me coming. If I started today, it'd be very, very hard to do what I do. That's why I told you all that day. I don't pat myself on the back. Timing is everything. And so that gave me a tremendous opportunity. The second thing I did is the way I've always looked at my businesses. All my yesterday and the day before, I was visiting all my attractions and restaurants, and I bought a mall recently up in Myrtle Beach. I went to look at my new. The mall I'm building now, I got this futuristic mall. I want to build like a mall from the, you know, 21st century mall. And so what I do is it goes like this. I always envision it like a teacup. I start pouring money into the teacup, and the teacup gets full. When the teacup starts pouring over. When I'm getting the diminishing returns, I go to another place with another teacup. So the teacup I felt was. I'd kind of maxed out in Orlando. Am I going to get. I wasn't growing. So I go to Tampa, put another teacup down then. Now when I'm taking that teacup, I'm pouring my profits. This is what a lot of people don't want. This is what my partners didn't want. They didn't want to pour the profits back into a new teacup, but they did for Tampa. Then I got that teacup full, and then I went to Jacksonville and started filling that teacup. But as I'm filling that teacup, I got to fill it with the money from these two teacups. But I'm young, so I don't care. I don't care because I'm looking for the end game. And then I went to Naples. That's why they finally said, we want to stop. We don't want to fill the teacups. They said, hey, well, you know, buy you out for, like 1.7, $1.8 million. I'm like, I mean, immediately. So there was no master plan. The only plan was to keep growing. On my tombstone. It will say either two things. I Told you I was sick. Or grow or die. Grow or die is how people know. John Morgan. When I see people in my industry, they'll say, if they don't say for the people, they say, grow or die.
- [25:14]
James
Yeah, it's. I think it was the founder or CEO of GE says that the day you begin, the day you stop growing is that you begin to die on the vine. Talk to us about that philosophy that you have. Grow or die.
- [25:27]
John Morgan
Well, the philosophy is this. If you're not growing, you are dying. And if your goal is not to have it all and look and you know you're never going to have it all, but that's got to be your goal. Roberto Goizata was the president of Coca Cola, and he lived in Atlanta. That's where Coke was. And as Roberto would come down his staircase every day in Atlanta with his Hermes tie and Brioni's suits, he'd tighten his tie up and he'd look in the mirror and he'd say in the mirror to himself, roberto, today is the day you put PepsiCo out of business. That was his mentality. Now, one time I gave a speech to all these lawyers and I said, listen, my goal is not to have some business, it's to have all the business and that you all will all work for me and we're all going to do very well together. And I really think that way. I know it can't be that way, but if you don't think like that, then you're never going to clear the next bar. So your goals have to be outlandish. And if you just get half that way there, people always say, sky's the limit. Sky's the limit. Sky ain't the fucking limit. Sky's the beginning. That's when you pierce. You haven't even got to Mars yet. There's a lot past Mars. What's the last one? What's the last one? I don't know what the last one is. Pluto. Pluto. Yeah. I was Pluto. Did you know I was Pluto at Disney World, So I was Pluto at Disney World, So that's how I think. The sky's not the limit. The sky's the beginning.
- [27:13]
James
You know, one of my favorite things to do now, whenever I go to another city, whether it's Los Angeles, Boston, New York, is go, you know, watching for your logos on all the buses and all the billboards. I mean, we were at Yankee Stadium.
- [27:28]
Josh
And they did the. Yeah, like the, the. The defensive highlights of the week. And it was presented by Morgan and.
- [27:32]
John Morgan
Morgan, I'm a Yankee sponsor.
- [27:35]
James
I know you are, but. But I mean, the branding that you have is something that I think is going to be studied. I mean, whether it's buses, billboards, airport. I mean, you are literally everywhere omnipresent. It's the omnipresence. And you spent $400 million on advertising this last year. Give me your best branding advice right now to somebody trying to build their company and to kind of to ideally grow and optimize for that omnipresence like you've done.
- [28:06]
John Morgan
Well, look, speaking of billboards, I'm the keynote speaker next year at the big billboard national convention in Dallas because I'm the number one billboard buyer in America. But it's two pronged. First of all, when you start, I look at everything like a dartboard. You got all these different numbers, but where you want to hit is a bullseye. So the first thing I want to do any of my business, whether it's these attractions, Wonderworks I have, when I advertise for Wonderworks, I do it. I call it concentric circles. I want to hit the bullseye first. So for my attractions, I advertise with brochures, and I got guerrilla marketers right there and then some billboards as you're coming into the city. So I start with the bullseye, and then I kind of move out from the bullseye. But I'm looking for the bullseye. Like if you're in Pigeon Forge, where I was yesterday, every restaurant around my attraction has a card in it brochure. So same with law. I'm not going to advertise on the Martha Stewart show for my customer. There's customers that I need, and customers are not going to watch certain shows. You know, cheaters. Yeah, that's a good show for me. But, you know, pbs. No. So that's number one. The second thing I did is I call it Purple cow. And every Tuesday, I have a meeting with my called the Purple Cow meeting. We talk about ideas. Here's how my purple idea goes. I want to be. Let's think this. There's 1,000 cows in a pasture, okay? And they're all brown. And I walk out there with you, and I point to one, I go, look at this cow. Look at this cow. We're going to come back in six months, and I want to see if you can pick the brown cow out of the. Out of the herd. So I point to a cow, and you can't take a picture. You look at it. It's got a little nick on its nose. Got a Little sock on its right foot. But they're all kind of looking alike. But okay, you got. All right, we're going to come back in six months. Do I think you can find the cow? No, but what if of the thousand cows, one cow was purple? And I walked out and I pointed to the purple cow and I said, look, this cow, I've seen enough. You could come back in 10 years and pick out the purple cow. I want to be the purple cow. That's why you see me with such crazy shit on billboards and buses and, you know, I want to be the purple cow. You see me at UFC on the Mats. You see me at WWE TV Yankee Stadium. You all remember that. And then I want to be at a place where people will take a picture. One year I went all over America and I made these boards up, but I put graffiti on my boards like somebody had climbed up and done it to me, but I did it to myself. You ought to see these boards. And people are going nuts. People are taking pictures and sending out the news channel. John has been vandalized. I vandalized myself. It was like, why purple cow?
- [31:27]
Jack
Something that I love is that you're a true testament of you love, is that you really understand that where attention goes, revenue flows. And if there's one thing that I think that you said is that you don't look at competitors as competitors. You look at them as friends. And you try to monetize every single aspect of the business, even sending them business, if you can profit off of it.
- [31:48]
John Morgan
A lot of business.
- [31:50]
Jack
At what point did you realize that, look, I should vertically integrate and not only just I can do all the jobs myself, but I can actually use my competitors as resources to continue to grow my business.
- [32:01]
John Morgan
Listen, I started an ad agency called Practice Made Perfect that I started myself. Practice Made Perfect was an ad agency that I went out to have other lawyers to do. And I'd say, look, I'll write your ads, I'll buy your ads. I'll do all this for you. Why did I do it? Number one, there was money in that ad agency that took 15%. But the other thing is, I wanted to have those people sending me all their mass torts. They didn't do it. They. So, like when Vioxx hit, I had Practice made perfect. I said, listen, we're going to drop this in your rotation. And all these practice made perfect clients, that I made them millionaires because they did it my way. But when they would, when there'd be a mass tort, I'd Say, let's drop this in. Send me the cases. I then, with another guy, started part of Practice Made Perfect. I called it Mass Torts Made Perfect. We did two seminars a year in Vegas where all of our competitors came, and they're making deals with each other behind the scenes. And some of them excluded me. I don't care. I controlled the flow. And then what happened later is I got to a point where I started expanding. I had all these Practice made Perfect clients, and my deal with them was this. I'll never compete in your market as long as I have this, and I'll never have you sign a contract. I just got to earn your business every single day. Handshake. And so as I started expanding, I was infringing, getting close. One of my Practice Made Perfect clients was down in West Palm Beach. And I kept saying, hey, do you mind if I come down? Oh, no, I don't want you to come. I don't want you to come. So I finally said, you know what? I'm going to sell the business. I'm going to sell the business. I did well, made, whatever, but now I'm free. And the first thing I did when I sold the business is on Monday. I opened up in West Palm Beach. I'm fucking killing it. All the money. Listen, all the money I made at practice made perfect. I make like three or four times that every year in just West Palm Beach. But I looked at these competitors. I mean, they would come to my conventions and network with each other, and if I got some, that was fine. And if they were excluding me, that was fine. I believe that rising tides lift all boats. And so I've never looked at competitors as competitors. I've looked at them at friends, and people are going to make me run faster.
- [34:30]
Josh
There's two ways to build the biggest building in town. You can either tear down all the other buildings or just build the biggest building in town. And so there's another saying that I love is.
- [34:39]
James
Where did you hear that from?
- [34:41]
Josh
Oh, I'm gonna keep that one.
- [34:42]
James
No, that was a good one, man. I like that one. We just never dropped that one before.
- [34:46]
John Morgan
Sounds good.
- [34:48]
Josh
There's a saying that if you want to be like the 1%, you have to do what the 99% don't do. What are some of those things that you have done over the course of your career that you have done differently from the 99% that put you in the 1%?
- [35:03]
John Morgan
Look, I take chances. I've just finished writing, which will be my third and final book. I've written two books now. One's called you'd Can't Teach Hungry. One's called you'd Can't Teach Vision. The last book I've just finished writing and is at the editor's right now is called Life Is Luck, the Paper Boy. And that's the name of my book. The bottom line about luck is this. There's all sorts of ways to find luck, but the main way to find luck is always be looking for opportunities. If you're not looking for opportunities, you're never going to be lucky. You always got to be. What are some of the ways to look for opportunities? You know, never eat alone if you're not out there. These things I did with you, why did I do it? I'm like, there's a lot of people who go, why bother? And they go, why bother? It's not worth it. Like, when you all first called to do it, I'm like, well, what's it going to take out of me? An hour out of my time, a day out? So I bothered. A lot of people don't bother. A lot of people eat lunch by themselves every day. Peanut butter and jelly at the desk. They going to make shit sitting at their desk. If you don't get there and bob and weave and jab, you're not going to. It's not going to work. So you have to look for luck, you have to look for opportunity. And there's all sorts of ways to enhance luck. But you have to understand that. You have to be humble enough to understand that luck plays a big role in all of this. But you also need to understand you can look for luck and find luck. The more lottery balls I got, the more chances I have to win the lottery.
- [36:51]
James
I love the way that you articulated that in the interview that we did that. Like, more successful people, like, they need to get on their knees and pray and thank God that all this happened. But when you had made it, you have this incredible business, you've got the family, like, all these things are just going in your favor. When did you kind of attribute a lot of that success to man, I'm a lucky guy because there's a lot of people that aren't fortunate enough to kind of be in my shoes. When was that exact realization in your life and in your career?
- [37:19]
John Morgan
Well, I've known for a long time that I'm not that smart. I'm a different kind of smart. I'm not even sure I wasn't dyslexic. I don't know. One time I Got transferred from. We left Christ of Kingdom, went to a public school, and they tested me. I was in the sixth grade, and they put me in fourth grade reading. I'm like, humiliate. I'm the dumb kid. But that was a good day, too. That was bad luck. But once they put me in that fourth grade, I was like, by God, I'm going to learn. I mean, I got reading. I got to read. I've never had. Not had a book since that, so. But what you do is you just have to keep moving. You have to stay humble. And I understood my limitations. Like, look, if Chuck Morgan hadn't sat next to me in algebra in 10th grade, and if I didn't have good eyesight, I'd still be fucking sitting over there at Winter Park High. They're like X's and Z. I mean, what are. They're not even numbers. I didn't know what algebra was. I mean, why are they making me do this? When I take standardized tests, I'm like, I always fucked them up. But here was the great thing for me. I understood early that I wasn't smart. But I was smart enough to know I wasn't smart. And smart enough to find people who were. And humble enough to know I shouldn't be pitching. I should be at shortstop. I read a book called Titan one time that your viewers should read. It's about Rockefeller books, this big titan. I usually underline anything that I think is dynamite. They asked Rockefeller in the book, how did you build Standard Oil? You're not a geologist. You're not a scientist. You're a bookkeeper. How does a bookkeeper build a company dependent on scientists? You know what I underlined? I hire scientists. I'm like, and the thing your viewers should read is letters from Rockefeller to his son. This is must reading for you. Letters from J.D. rockefeller, or whatever his initials are, to his son. It's a treatise on everything y' all are doing. Anybody who's watching this download, Letters from Rockefeller to his son. My God. Because it's just unvarnished father to son, but I hire scientists. I understand. I'm not that guy.
- [39:57]
Jack
People will take you places, you know, People will take you places. I literally just heard you.
- [40:02]
James
Places that money can't.
- [40:03]
Jack
People will take you places that money can't. And when people look at hiring, they often try to hire their weakness or try to hire the things that they don't know. What's kind of your approach to hiring? What's the biggest thing that you've learned from scaling your business To a national level.
- [40:18]
John Morgan
What I know is this, and what I've seen has happened in a lot of businesses. A's hire B's, and then B's hire C's, and then C's hire D's. And before you have it, you got a shit organization. I hire as I want people to challenge me. I want people better than me. And the reason a lot of people don't is because they want to be the man, they want to be the woman, they want to be the king. Well, that's not the way you do it. You do it again by competition. You do it by bringing people in who are going to say, I want to be at your table. I want to be a partner with you because I deserve it. And look, when they come to me and they deserve it, they get it. One of the reasons people stay with me for a long, long time is they got partnership points. They make a shitload of money. And they deserve it. They deserve it. So I hire. I own a lot of racehorses. I own racehorses with the people who own American Pharaoh and Justify. Every year, one of my horses, Ultima D, has a baby with American Pharaoh. If you want a great job, be justafire American Pharaoh. Here's what they do all day, they fuck three times a day, and every time they fuck, they get $250,000. So once a year, American Pharaoh mates with my horse, Ultima D. But racehorses are racehorses. And if you got a racehorse, I want to hire American Pharaoh, Justify Secretariat. But as far as my lawyers go, when I go to the races, because you need to have a great horse, but you also need to have a great jockey. When I go to the races, I don't really know the horses. I never really bet on the horses. I bet on the jockeys. There's some jockeys that can take a long shot and still win, and there's another jockey that can take a dead dog winner and lose. What I try to build the horse is Morgan, and Morgan and the jockeys are great jockeys. So I got great jockeys riding Secretariat, riding Justify, riding Pharaoh, and goddamn, it's hard to beat.
- [42:42]
Josh
In your interview with James, James asked you, have you ever been fucked over in business? And your response was, yes, but I fuck back. Tell us about one of those times.
- [42:54]
John Morgan
Walt Disney World. I mean, they've been paying for it ever since. I mean, not only has Disney been paying for it, but every time I walk in a lobby in one of my buildings in America, I see Tim and I remember that And a lot of times when I fuck back, they don't even know they're being fucked. They've just been ignored. They've just been out. They're done, they're finished. And you know, there's people that I have working for me who don't even know what I know about what they've done or tried to do to me. And I see them in the hallways. There's a song when I was a kid. Smiling faces show no traces. You know, Michael Corleone didn't kill Fredo till Mama died. I got a lot of Fredo still walking around in my life. There's still people going to be taking a canoe ride before it's over. And so I do it every day with the insurance companies. They give me a low ball offer and most lawyers say, hey, we're going to take it. I say, no. And then what they'll do is they'll say, okay. Midway through, they'll say, okay, we'll pay the policy limits. When they tell me that, too fucking late. Too fucking late. There's $100,000. I now want $5 million. Why? Because you're in bad faith. That's the law. Pay me $5 million. Many times they do, and when they don't, I drag their asses all the way to the courtroom. We either settle the case the Friday before the trial, after the jury's been picked, while the jury's out, and sometimes like a couple weeks ago, when they wrote it all the way, jury came back $100 million. I got $60 million in coverage as this a bad faith case. I'm looking for $100 million on a case we'd have probably settled for five. That's fucking back.
- [44:56]
James
I love it. One of our favorite sayings is that concentration builds wealth and diversification keeps it. You know, built your wealth from focusing, concentrating extremely in, in the field of law. But then you also diversified immensely into other businesses. You own some of the buildings downtown Tampa. You own attractions that make what, like $30 million a year?
- [45:20]
John Morgan
33 in EBITDA, which is.
- [45:22]
James
Which is ridiculous to even think that those businesses are that profitable and can make that much money. But what is your kind of perspective, or what has it been in this part of your life now, on diversifying, getting into other businesses, acquiring other companies, acquiring assets. And where did you kind of develop your philosophy for diversifying?
- [45:42]
John Morgan
Well, I think one of the things for me is because of my childhood, I had income insecurity. And there's nothing worse than being broke. That's Why? A few years ago, I bankrolled. I ran a constitutional amendment in Florida to raise the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $15 an hour. Because it's fair, because it's right. And everybody told me it wasn't going to happen. I spent millions and millions of dollars. Everybody's fighting me on, I passed it. But as far as my diversification, like I said, I don't hunt, I don't fish. These people out there golfing, I mean, God bless them, but what the fuck are you doing? And fishing. If I want fish, I'll go to Lombardi's and get me some fish. And hunting. I've never shot a gun, and I don't like to. People eat deer. I'm like, I can taste the fur. I can smell the fur on the damn. So I don't like any of it. So it was kind of like, I don't have any hobbies. And I had these ideas. So that was kind of a diversification. That was, you know, I called moonshots. I built a house. Wonderworks is built upside down. That's called a moonshot because sometimes you do deals where it's burn the boats. You land to take over the city, but you burn your boats because you're not leaving until you own the city. So there's burn the boat type things like wonderworks, but on the other side, what I've always done in my head, my wife used to drive her crazy. We used to lay in bed and count our money, okay? And she'd be over there. We gonna do this again, John? How much you think we got? $4 million. So I kept having these things where I go, because tax free bonds. I love tax free bonds. And I felt like this every time. What do I need to live a year? One time I say, if I could make $400,000 a year, how much would I need in tax free bonds? For that I need 10 million. So the goal was to get 10 million in tax free bonds. Then I need 1.2 million to live a year. What do I need for that? I need 30 million. Four times 30. The reason I like tax free bonds, in the Great Depression, only 1%, less than 1% defaulted. People will pay to flush the toilet and water and electricity. And so I just. On that side, and I call it the B side, this is the A side, which is where my cash is. On the B side is my tax free bonds, my treasuries and my cash. And I never touch the B side because I'm scared, because I got Those nightmares from being a poor kid and losing our houses. I'd pick up the phone, there'd be no dial tone. I wasn't like, there's a problem. I just knew Daddy hadn't paid the bill. I go, okay. Fuck. And so that's how I've done that side, the cash side. And then I'd had other businesses that I thought were kind of a diversion for me. And I had. When I did it, and I did it with opm, other people. When I built Wonderworks, I didn't have it to build. Listen, when I was 26 years old, I started a chain of banks. First National, Osceola, Pasco, First National, Polk, Center State. We rolled them all up into a company called Center State bank. I was 26 years old when I started these banks. We rolled up in this big holding company called Center State Bank. We went on nasdaq and I sold it to South State Bank. I've never sold a share. People are like, you're starting a bank. I didn't even have money, but I started a bank, other people's money. So when I built WonderWorks, opened in 97, I didn't have the money to do it. So I went out and raised money. And the way I did it, I said, okay, I'm going to give you a 10% return. You're going to get all your money back. Once you get all your money back, I'm going to get 50%. You get 50%, because if you don't have money, how are you going to get money? Opm, other people's money. And then as Wonderworks kept doing better, then I'd make a better deal for myself. Next time, I'll give you 8%, and we're going to split 70, 30. But I've had investors in Wonderworks for a long time. It's their single greatest investment ever. But I started it with other people's money. If you got no money, how are you going to get it? But I had ideas. And so that's what you got to do. You can't just say, I don't have any money, so I'm done. No, you got to find a way to get the money. It's called opm. And you work. And I put the most money in the deal.
- [50:18]
Jack
In every deal, negotiation or even case, there's always an X factor. Something where maybe the case is seemingly lost, but when you're working through it, you found this X factor that allowed you to turn this seemingly lost case into something that you actually ended up winning. Could you tell the story of maybe a case that a client maybe came to you and it's seemingly lost. They're out of options. But you found the X factor within the deal that allowed you to win it.
- [50:48]
John Morgan
David Vega versus Key Capital Leasing. My first big case when I sold Yellow Pages. Remember, I'm the greatest yellow Page seller in the history of. Don't ever forget that. That's one of my proudest moments. I get a call at my house from a lady named Trish Gomez. Her husband, Jim Gomez, sold Yellow Pages with me. She was a nurse at the hospital. John, I'm here at the hospital. There's a boy who has been paralyzed in a car accident. They're looking for a lawyer. I get up, I shave, I'm in the shower. My wife walks in, she goes, what are you doing? I said, I'm shaving. I'm going to go sign up this case. It's four in the morning. She goes, you're going now. Why don't you go wake up? I said, no, I'm going now. It might be gone when I get there. I have a saying for everybody. When opportunity's there, fish first and fish fast. Because the fish are not always there. And just because you think they're going to be there, they're not going to be there. So I got out there, I signed the case up. David Vega, 18 years old. He was a boy, pushing the car from behind. Three boys, UCF Boulevard, pushing the car from behind. A car comes up behind him and hits him. And they had no lights on. It was in the dark. This car hits him from behind, and he was paralyzed. Now, the problem with the case was the car that hit him was a lease car, a year lease. And the law back in those days was if you had a year lease car, the company who owned the car didn't have vicarious liability. It's only to the limits of the insurance, which was $100,000, but the insurance had lapsed, so there was no insurance. And I'm saying because there was no insurance, that Key Capital Leasing, that was owned by Key Capital bank, owns the whole thing, owns the whole deal, and I have unlimited coverage. Well, they fought me, fought me, fought me, fought me, fought me. Then they started fighting me, fighting me, fighting me about liability because we had three boys across the back of the car and they couldn't see the headlights and liability and all that. And it seemed to be an impossible case. And I was young. I did the day in the life my own self. I didn't have money for A day in the Life. I was out there filming him getting ready for graduation. And the day, the week, the Friday before trial, John McDonough across the street over here calls me up. I go over lakes and insurance is there, and they offer me a gigantic amount of money, all of it. And I remember the guy said to me, he goes, we don't know if you can try a case or not. And by the way, I didn't either know if I could try a case or not at that point in time, but we're going to pay you. And I settled the case for David Vega versus Key Capital Leasing. And it was unbelievable lawyering on my part. I never let go of it. Now here comes the best part of that story. Years later, I get a call from David Vega. He wants to come see me. I'm like, oh, fuck. He's burned through all his money. So David comes to see me. So what's happened? I haven't seen him forever. He's now a grown man. He's like 50 years old. He goes, I was downtown partying, and my car hit the bus and caused $30,000 worth of damage. And I go, do you have money left? He goes, what? Got a lot of money? I go, you got a lot of money? I said, what are you doing? I'm an architect. Are you still doing it? No, I don't need to work. I said, how's your dad? David Sr. I bought him a place in Panama. Okay. I said, so what kind of money? He goes, remember you put me with Mike Davis? He goes, mike Davis has run all my money. I got a shitload of money, John. I said, you owe $36,000 for this bus. Yeah. I said, so you got the money to pay. You just don't want to. Yeah, okay. I said, I know the mayor. So I called the mayor. I said, hey, there's a client I represented 20, 30 years ago, hit a bus. He's got no fucking money. So I got him out of the. Owing the money for the bus, too. But as we were leaving at the elevator, I'm saying goodbye to David Vega 30 years later. And I look at him. I said, david, what made you call me for this? And he looked at me like I was the man in the moon. He said, john, because you're my lawyer. And he goes, do you know how many cases I've sent you over the years? And the elevator closed, and I went back to my office and cried because he was Tim.
- [56:03]
Josh
Wow, John, you brought up earlier, the book. The letters from John D. Rockefeller have you read it. I've not.
- [56:11]
John Morgan
But you're going to.
- [56:13]
Josh
Of course. I'm a big reader, so I'm going to read that 100%. If you were to write a book and even if you just had one page in it, that was John Morgan's letters to his son, sons to his sons, to his sons, John Morgan's letters to his sons, what would that page say? What would be the key points on that page?
- [56:35]
John Morgan
The key points would be, I always want my children to be compassionate. I would be like, be compassionate. Don't be arrogant, don't be an asshole. Don't judge people. When I used to give money to the homeless, I would always tell my kids they don't want to be there. Once upon a time, they were a little boy, little girl, swang and ate ice cream. They don't want to be there. My lessons would be more not about making money, would be about who I want them to be as human beings. The thing I was always most worried about is if my children didn't have compassion. And one of the things I'm lucky about is I'm Irish and I have a tremendous amount, I think, of just natural empathy. You know, I got bladder behind my eyes. I cry at the drop of a hat. You know, I can barely talk about Tim because I cry. So I would say, but, you know, I would just say, be good, you know, treat people right. The golden rule, it would be nothing about making money. It'd be everything about getting to heaven. And, you know, luckily my kids turned out to be, you know, big time superstars. Big time superstars. And my daughter, she has a structured settlement company and she's. I call her my shrink because she's the one that speaks truth to me. She tells me what I need to hear. And so God gave me four incredible children. But I would tell them, be good.
- [58:19]
Jack
People don't remember what you said. They just remember how you made them feel.
- [58:21]
John Morgan
Right. Right.
- [58:23]
Jack
And you've dealt with thousands, hundreds of thousands of cases just throughout your career. What would you say is just the most fascinating thing that you've learned about people? Because you're dealing with people not when things are right, but you're dealing with them when they're in a time of trouble and they need help and they can't solve the problem themselves. What have you learned about how people act during that time?
- [58:47]
John Morgan
Well, here's why. What I do is righteous. I'm representing people who have had things taken from them due to no fault of their own, their life, their enjoyment of life. Their consortium that's been taken from them. And so I always see what I'm doing as righteous. And so I've always been proud of what I do. And when people are, you know, he's an ambulance chaser, he's an ambulance chaser, I'm like, hey, fuck you. First of all, with technology, I get there way before the fucking ambulance. So anyway. But, you know, I'm there when the ambulance gets there. That's a joke. But you just have to treat every single person exactly, exactly the way you'd want to be treated. I have a client satisfaction department. When there's a complaint, it goes to client satisfaction. Client satisfaction takes the case gets it down to the lawyer. That lawyer has to make that client satisfied within 24 hours. And if it's not, it comes to me. You know, in all businesses, the customer is always right. And so the way I built my business is I'm representing Tim Morgans of the world who've had something taken from him. He had his legs and his. I mean, when Tim would get dressed because he was paralyzed from the nipples down, Just to watch him get dressed was, you know, profile and courage. And Tim was the most positive guy in the whole world. If you went into a party and you heard a lot of people laughing, you knew where it was coming from. Tim Morgan. And he was just amazing.
- [61:07]
James
Your video that you did with Jubilee, I think one of my favorite parts, or probably my favorite part was actually when the gentleman had asked you for some parenting advice, and. And I love that you gave the advice about how if your kids, when they're growing up, are surrounded by any bad people, you got to step in there and make it clear to them, get this person the hell out of your life. Because all it takes is one bad person to fucking everything up. You hear people, business people throw around all the time, you know. You know, surround yourself with five millionaires, you become the six. But really, I want you to just kind of emphasize and talk about how important it is to surround yourself with the right people in any aspect of life.
- [61:51]
John Morgan
There's a guy. There was a guy in this state named Bill McBride, who was the chairman of Holland and Knight, big, big firm. And Bill ran for governor. But I was friends with Bill and his wife, Alex Sink, who later was the CFO of Florida. And, you know, you go through life picking up nuggets, and those nuggets stick. And one time Bill said to me, just remember this, John. Your child is one friend away from total disaster. I was like, bing, bing, bing. I'll keep that one. And I never forgot it. And so as my kids got older and some of the kids would come around, and it only happened twice. There was one kid that every time he came over, he was stoned and kind of belligerent kind of kid. There was one girl that one time was the spring break, and she just couldn't wait to get out to party. So I thought, little Loosey Goosey here. Little Lucy Lucy. And I banned them both. Now, I didn't tell them they were banned. I just said to my kids, because I can't stop them from playing with them at school or whatever. But one kid, his mother called me because Matt told him, I shouldn't have said that, but I'm not allowed at your house, and you're not allowed at my. Why? My dad. So the mother called me, and she's like, what is going on here? I said, listen, I'm sorry you had to find out about that, but that's the way it's going to be. Well, your son's just as bad as my son. I said, maybe he is. I said, maybe the best thing we do is separate these two little assholes from each other, and I don't care. And later in life, the kid was arrested for selling drugs. The girl that I pulled got pregnant in high school. Both times, I was right. Now, the good thing is both those kids kind of turned out later in life to be okay. I mean, at one time, I walked into a bar, and the girl was a bartender, and there she was, and, hey, Mr. Morgan, she didn't even know I banned her. And so. But at the time, and it's a hard thing to do, but children are. You know. And I told y' all in the interview, I told you in Jubilee, I tested my kids for marijuana all the time. One time, Dan was going back to college, and he was my baby. And I said, he's getting ready to go back. I said, dan, I think you've been getting high over Christmas. And all this is ironic to people because I'm the guy who legalized medical marijuana in Florida. But I've spent. Twice. I did two. But I believe this. That mind, the young mind, is very fragile. And we all have these friends who called stoners, hey, man. I mean, these people who are just fucked up because they have fried their fucking brains. And, look, I do gummies every night, but my brain's made. But I was always worried about frying the brain. So Dan's going back to college. I said, hey, Dan. Yeah, Stone? Yeah. I said, I Think you've been smoking marijuana over Christmas? No. I said, okay, well, we're going to sort it out. I said, why don't you go back to the pool room bathroom? I've got a drug test back there. Just pee in the cup. I'll do the rest. And I said, but let me tell you how this is going to work. If you fail it after lying, you lose your keys for the whole semester. If you want to admit it now, before we take the drug test, you're going to lose your keys for one month, and then you're going to get your key back. He's just looking at me, looking at me, looking at me. He reaches in his pocket, he throws me the key. I grab the key. I said, okay, one month. And I said, and by the way, I will show up in Gainesville and drug test your ass randomly. Which I did, because you can't fuck around with your kids. And a lot of parents don't want to know. A lot of parents are ostriches. They don't want to know. Information is power. Drug tests tell the story. If you think your kid's doing drugs, drug test them. If they won't, they are. If they refuse to take the test, they got real problems. Because it's other shit than. It's more than just Adderall and it's coke and everything else.
- [66:21]
Jack
Why did you push for legalization of marijuana in Florida?
- [66:25]
John Morgan
Tim. They had Tim on Percocet. Every drug imaginable always made him a zombie. But when he would smoke marijuana, his pain went away. The spasms dissipated. All day long. All day long. He was getting high all day long, but it cured his body. But he wasn't on all those poisons. And the reason people are fighting me on it, you know who was really fighting me? Who was putting the money in the. The pharmaceutical industry because they didn't want to have people not take the opioids they want people depending on. They have a pill called Marinol made out of marijuana, but it doesn't work. And when I did it, me and Tim barnstormed the state in a Willie Nelson bus. I played poker with him up in Maui once, and he was blowing up big. He had a guy named Mudslide blowing up these big vape things and passing around, sitting next to Paul Simon, going around the thing in Maui. But I did it for Tim. When Tim got hurt, I almost felt like he took it for the family. And so almost everything in my life after that kind of was. And look, the day before Tim died, we were Talking because he's always in a good mood and he never. He's always laughing. And right before I left, the last thing Tim said to me was, I laughed so you all wouldn't cry. If you want to see my eulogy, you can go on YouTube and see my eulogy today, Tim. And hear the whole. And hear the whole story. Most. Tim.
- [68:21]
Jack
I think. I think one of the scariest things out right now and just even available, is just how willing, you know, pharmaceutical companies and people are to take, you know, medicines to compensate for their problems, whether it's Adderall or, you know, antidepressants, all that sort of stuff, instead of just, like, finding different ways to treat people. It's kind of scary about how readily available these prescription drugs are, just made to people at all ages.
- [68:46]
John Morgan
Well, how about this? They're on tv. They're advertised in the evening news. Of the eight largest advertisers every night, seven of them are pharmaceuticals. So we're going in and saying, hey, can I get this? Can I. You know, restless leg. What the fuck is it? I mean, are you just jiggling your leg all night? I mean, we live in what's called the Prozac Nation. There's a pill for everything. I'm depressed, I'm down, I can't pay attention. Somebody, well, give your kids got add. I said, I got something for add. A, B, E, L, T. We're going to fucking stop that. We're going to stop that fucking ADD real quick. And, you know, Adderall, Ritalin, I mean, there's a pill for everything because it's unbelievably profitable. And so marijuana, to me, is the best of all marijuana. I don't know if you guys use, but marijuana is a plant put into nature by God for us. And it works. And I don't know why it works. I don't know why Tim's spasm stopped. I don't know why his pain dissipated. I have no idea. Just like I have no idea when you cut an aloe and rub it on your shoulders that the sting goes away. I don't know and I don't fucking care, but it works. And guess who really goes to all these dispensaries? Older people. Older people. That's who's using it. So I did it for Tim. And listen, a million people in Florida have a medical marijuana car. Everywhere I go, people come to me say, thank you, thank you for that, or thank you for minimum wage, or thank you for all you do. I mean, it's crazy. I Go to grocery. They woke up. I want to thank you for everything you do. And I don't know if it's marijuana. I don't know if it's the minimum wage. I don't know if I call bullshit and speak truth to power or I just don't know if it's my business, But I get thanked all the time. The other day, I was filling some gas up, and this guy walks up. I get out of the car and he goes, Mr. Morio, why? He says, I'd like to fill your tank up. I said, I've already put my card in. Don't worry about it. He goes, I really want to put it in. I said, well, you can give me a hundred bucks if you want. No, I said, I was joking about that, but he wanted to fill my tank up to thank me. For what? I don't know. That makes you feel good. You don't know the minimum wage. I don't know if I. A lot of people come up about their cases. One time, my daughter is coming back from a woods or she was a DG in Florida. She's coming back and she gets pulled over for a suspected dui. And the cop pulls her over and says. And she left the woods because a boy she liked came with a girl. And so she got upset and left. So the cop pulls her over and she gets her out of the car. He says, what's your name? And he goes, lake Mary says, are you Kate Morgan? Are you related to John Morgan? She goes, that's my dad. He goes, he represented my family. We took the settlement money and bought the house I grew up in. He said, get in the back of my car. Taking you home. So she dodged a Dewey. But there's a lot of them out there. And, you know, I didn't like the fact that she might have been driving drunk, but I like the idea that that police officer in Gainesville, Florida, was grateful for what I did for him and his family, because something was taken from them and I gave it back.
- [72:31]
James
How important has faith in your relationship with God been in the last couple years in your life?
- [72:37]
John Morgan
It gets more. The older you get. It gets more and more. I don't know. Listen, I'm a guy. I ask people all the time. On a scale of 10, 1 to 10, 10 being dead solid, certain, 1 being not at all, is there a God? And I'm not a 10, and I'm not a 9, and I'm not really an 8. I'm probably a 6 or 7. But every single night I pray this prayer act of contrition, saying, our Father. I got three people on my prayer list that are sick. I pray for them, and then I pray for faith. I pray. You know, I really want to believe at a 10, but I don't believe at a 10. But I pray at a 10. But then I tell myself I must believe more than I think I believe because I'm talking to him all day long. So. So what I do is, my wife said, she goes, I choose to believe. So I choose to believe, and I choose to live my life exactly as if he's there and exactly as if one day I'm going to have to explain myself and everything I did. So I have some faith. I'm not below a five. There's a lot of reasons people ask me, why do you think there's. I said, here's why. I think that God is probably true. Because these apostles denied him. Judas sold him out early. Peter sold him out after traveling with him all that time, the night before in Gethsemane. And even when he rose again. Thomas, is that really you? Okay, they doubted him and they lived with him. But once he died and once he rose, all those men, every one of those men fanned out on foot. On foot. I mean, Paul's walking to Ethiopia. Shit, I don't even want to walk to Wawa. But he walked to Ethiopia. And every single one of them died a martyr. Peter got the guy who turned him against Gethsemane. He was crucified upside down. They all died a martyr except for John, who died as an old age. You know what I tell myself? Those men must have saw something. All of them don't die. All of them don't take. I mean, one of them would have said, wait a minute. Okay, that guy was, you know, a Mooney. They all died because they saw something. And what they saw, I believe, is the truth. The cross and the resurrection.
- [75:21]
James
We like to end these episodes off with two final questions for you, John. John, if me and you died tomorrow and you had one more guiding principle to leave with the younger generation to take with them for the rest of their lives, what would that be?
- [75:34]
John Morgan
Golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You can't go wrong.
- [75:40]
Josh
And if tomorrow was your last day, how would you want to be remembered?
- [75:46]
John Morgan
He kept his word. The reason people keep doing deals with me is I don't need a contract. All you need to do is shake my hand.
- [75:59]
James
I love it. John, this was an incredible conversation, and I just want to thank you for being here and just pouring into our audience and to everybody tuned in right now. So I want to thank you and for everybody watching. Guys, be sure to like and subscribe for amazing content because every week, guys, we're bringing you guys, the biggest and most incredible business owners to give you guys advice to help change your lives, your careers, your businesses, everything. We're going to put the links down to John's companies as well as his Instagram. That way you guys can go follow along with his incredible journey. And we're also going to put the link down in the description to join the number one community and most powerful entrepreneur network in the entire world, guys, because every week we give you guys direct access where you can ask your questions directly to the multimillionaires and billionaires that we interview on this channel. It's on the inside of this school of mentors. We can't wait to see you on the inside of this community, inside of this network. But with that being said, we'll see in the next episode.