451. Growth Secrets From the Best of the Best

(upbeat music) - As a business owner, you have to focus on outcomes at the end of the day, that is the determining factor. But to me, the outcome always has to be tempered by the human impact in achieving that outcome. - Welcome to a special edition episode of the Game Changing Attorney podcast featuring the Firm of the Year Award winners announced at the 2025 Crisp Game Changing Summit. - When you have cases, you have revenue and you're making money, it takes a certain kind of person to say, look, I'm glad things are going well, but how can we really make this better to scale and from efficiency and operations and leadership? I didn't do that until really seven, eight years ago. (upbeat music) - I'm Michael Mogul, founder and CEO of Crisp, the nation's number one law from growth company. I've built my business through practice, not theory. Crisp started, which is $500 to my name and has grown to over eight figures in revenue over the last few years, earning a spot on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. Our approach has been to take everything we've learned about generating massive growth within our own organization and help the country's most ambitious and committed law firm owners do the same for theirs. In each episode of this podcast, I sit down with innovative market leaders from the legal industry and beyond to learn from those who thrive in the face of adversity, challenge the status quo and define what it means to be a true game changer. Today, we're sharing my conversations with Bora from the Pazka Brayer Immigration Law, Coro from Kamala, John from Richmond, Vona and David from Myer Wilson, warning. - When you're small, when your revenue is less than a million dollars, when your revenues between one to 10 million dollars, you never have the mentality that you can become that hundred million plus revenue firm. And that's really achievable, but you just have to trust yourself, you have to trust your team, you have to trust your operations. That's coming up on the Game Changing Attorney podcast. (upbeat music) Before we begin today's episode, I want to remind you that we aren't beholden to any sponsors or run any ads on this podcast. This allows us to present all of our episodes raw and unfiltered. I'm not gonna push any made-to-order meal services on you or try to save you any money on your current insurance. That being said, I have one small request. If you receive any value from this podcast, please give it a five-star review. Pay the fee so we can keep this podcast free. To kick off this episode, we're joined by Laura DePasca-Bara, founder of DePasca-Bara Immigration Law in Gainesville, Florida, and the 2025 Elite Firm of the Year winner. Laura has built a practice that serves as a cornerstone for the Florida Immigrant Community, combining deep-rooted Puerto Rican heritage with a relentless focus on operational excellence. I began our conversation by asking Laura how her original plans to work in the medical field pivoted to entrepreneurship. Reluctance is the name of a gay, I feel. I'd the reluctant entrepreneur where I am has been a combination of luck and strategy and a lot of different things, but it wasn't the plan. And for someone who is a planner, that's been something that I've grown into accepting is that things don't always come out as planned. I wanted to be a doctor. It would fluctuate between OB/GYN or a pediatrician, but definitely medical school. Got good grades, studied hard, and it was undergrad first semester. I went into undergrad as a sophomore because I was able to get some college classes done in high school and day one of organic chemistry. I remember sitting through, I think, it was like a 90-minute lecture, and I walked straight to the academic advising office, which was about block away. I took a little number, I sat in the lobby, and I got to speak to an advisor, and I said, "So organic chemistry, is this like a prerequisite, like, for real, for real?" She's like, "Yup." The really mandatory is, "Yup," I said, "Okay." So we are not going to be doing pre-med. It took one class over organic chemistry. I've senselessly read it's the weed out class, so I don't feel as bad about myself, but we had to pivot, pivot early on, and I gravitated towards what I liked. So I did political science. I got a minor in Latin American studies, got a certificate in Latin American studies, but my personality, with that particular type of degree, if you're not gonna go into lobbying or Washington or politics, which did not interest me, still does not interest me, you're somewhat limited to what you can do, academia, teaching, and law school kind of was the best possible choice. If you ask my dad, he always knew I would be a lawyer. He proudly boasts that he let me arrive at my own conclusion, but he called it from the very beginning, and I do have core memories of he telling me I was going to be a very good lawyer due to my arguing skills, but decided to go to law school. I actually deferred a year trying to make sure that that was what I wanted to do. I got a work visa, moved to Paris, waited tables, and came back, started law school, and here we are. So it was definitely not a linear path, but one that was meant to happen like most things in life. - Wow, so many parallels to my own journey, there's everything you describe, organic chemistry, putting in a year for deferral, like waiting tables, like I went through the very same thing. So I guess then what led you to the immigration practice? 'Cause I think that in itself is an interesting story. - Once again, that reluctance comes to mind, right? The things you aren't looking for in law school, I actually wanted to do family law. I did a family law certificate last year, a full year, not for me, and I've since accepted that, and that's okay. I was able to find a wonderful law firm that had three offices throughout Florida, doing mainly insurance defense work, and I was lucky enough to get roped into covering a deposition one day that led me to become number two at the firm for a rather niche field. It's insurance coverage within the construction defect area. So very, very niche. I was doing tons of mediations across the state around the same people who I respected and trusted, working with great people, great partners, I made partner at the firm. I would have retired from that law firm happily. And one spring day in early 2018, I was approached by a gentleman who up until that point had had a solo immigration practice here in Gainesville where we live. He and I had collaborated together. I was group leader for Inns of Court, like back in 2013 and was very ambitious and did a topic for the group of immigration law, which I knew nothing about. So I had reached out to him and we had collaborated. And I guess he remembered me because for him at that point in time, he had had the practice for about 10, 11 years. His wife had just graduated from med school, super jealous of her achievement, but I'd gotten a great job offer somewhere in South Florida. Sanabelle area. At the time, they had three little girls under the age of five. So he was faced with the decision of, do I close my practice, which now understanding that's not an option to close down all that hard work? Do I commute, which having children myself, a five-hour commute every week, no thank you? Or do I find a partner who would be willing to take over the firm and eventually own it outright? So he approached me with that plan. I do not do well with changes. I'm a tourist. If things are going well, historically, don't, if I didn't broke, don't fix it. But I kept coming back to that proposal. And it came down to being one of those what ifs in life. I think life is full of what ifs. And some of those what ifs, you don't lose sleep. You don't blink. But whatever, I couldn't care less to know the outcome of that. But this was one of those what ifs that I tried to envision myself later in life as a hopefully old lady, started by family. Looking back on my life, would I be okay with not seeing what panned out from this opportunity? Immigration was not something that I had thought a lot of. I do come from a big fat Puerto Rican family. My dad is one of eight. And all eight had left Puerto Rico in the late 70s and settled in Gainesville, Florida, all places. So I knew a lot of people, especially in the Latino, Hispanic community here. I had always been asked for recommendations about immigration. But it's one of those things that it's high stakes. I'm not going to dabble in something that can mess up your life. So ironically, I would always refer to this gentleman. And I decided, you know, why not? And that why not was a lot more lengthy of a process. There were whiteboards, there were checklists. I'm an eight on my Colby. So there were a lot of research moments, a lot of come to Jesus conversations with people in life who's opinion, I value my parents, my husband, and ultimately decided to do it. So I went from a very comfortable partnership at a well-established firm in an area of practice that I was definitely not an expert in, but very comfortable in an authority to owning a business in an area of law that I have no idea about. Where if I mess something up, someone's life could be heroically changed in the span of two weeks. We decided to do this. Simultaneous to that, I mentioned he was moving. So he was also during this period of transition, selling two homes and relocating small children. And so his capacity to teach me everything that I wanted to be taught was limited for obvious reasons. So that was June 1st of 2018, when at the time George and Cabrera immigration attorneys launched. And since then, we are here, we are surviving, we are thriving, I dare say, it is no longer George and Cabrera immigration law. It's now the bus-coded immigration law, which are both of my last names. So it's my baby. And I've grown tremendously since that very reluctance journey into owning a law firm and being an entrepreneur. Yeah. Is there anything-- You know now that you wish you knew then? Oh, so many things. It is okay not to know what you're doing. I have a memory of sitting in front of, and he's brilliant. He's a very, very smart man. He'll be the first to tell you that his organization isn't what he would aspire. To be, I try to be very organized and I like to have all things and all my ducks in a row. And so we're very different. And I remember about a weekend, I was sitting at his office trying to absorb immigration law and sit through consultations and figure out that. But also you're writing a business, you know, things like payroll, what expenses do we have? And I still have it somewhere. He started writing on a yellow legal pad. A bunch of things. I'm like, you know, he's giving me a road bag. He's giving me. He wrote out. It took like three quarters of the page. These are our monthly bills. It was like copy machine rental, $120, Cox cable, $95. And so he just handed that to me and he's like, this is what you pay every month. And I remember, you know, smiling and inside internally screaming and panicking. Like, you're giving me a sheet of paper. What do you want me to do with this? So I think at any point in time during that initial, if I were to quantify it six months to a year time frame, the better part of me wanted to go back to what I knew, go back to that safety of, it's not all on me. I don't have to figure stuff out. I don't have to doubt every single second of every single day that I'm messing something up or that I'm doing something I shouldn't. If I could go back and talk to her, I'd tell her to sit down, take a deep breath. You know more than you think you do. You've gotten this far in life for a reason. Is there more to be learned? Absolutely. But maybe child, you will learn it. So just sit down, don't panic. It will all be okay. And spoiler alert, you're never going to feel 100% like, you know, everything. So get really comfortable with that feeling of uncertainty. Get really comfortable with that voice of doubt. It's going to be louder sometimes than others, but it will always be there. So you know more than you think you do. You got this. Chill out. Yeah. Yeah. Great advice. What were, I guess, what were some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome early on as you were scaling the firm? There were no systems. No, no, no, no, we had, I have a vivid memory early on. He had already left town and I was walking from an office to my office at the time. And so a client who I assume was a client, I didn't know every client at the time at the front desk talking to her receptionist. Now, 20 minutes later, I got back out to make a copy and he was still there. And I remember going to one of the assistants and like, hey, what's this gentleman? He's been here for a while as he been helped. Is there anything I can do? Oh, no, we're just trying to get him the balance owed on his account. And I remember pausing for a second about, you know, like what he needs to pay us. Yeah, yeah, but we've almost got it. We've almost got it. And when I looked down at her workstation, I am not exaggerating. She had two post it notes that had something written on it. She had a printout of a law pay transaction register. And then she had a handwritten note on a random sheet of paper somewhere else. And she was manually doing math to figure out how much had been paid towards the balance on his contract. So that is just a small illustration of the state of how things were at the time. Something that should have taken two seconds to click and here's your balance was taking 20 minutes, three people scrambling to find information that to me had no reason not to be readily accessible. So if you take that small example and extrapolate it to everything else, there were no systems. And because of that, we were working so much harder than needed. We were stressing out and worst of all, it was translating to the client experience. You know, that person came, we look like a hot mess. He just wanted to pay us money and it's taking us 20 minutes to tell him how much he owes, how embarrassing and how unfortunate for that client who may be on their lunch break. So that early on, I knew we needed to fix that. I knew we needed to fix that. The struggle for me, which was a struggle and also a blessing, is I inherited a fully operational law firm with a phone number that had been the phone number for the only immigration attorney in town for over a decade. That phone never stopped ringing. My scheduling book, I hear so many colleagues, so many folks have gone on your podcast that talk about, you know, we were waiting for the phones to ring and just waiting for the first client to come in. And part of me is very ambious of that time to sit and really give intention and thought to crafting the practice you want and the way you want it to run. I did not have that luxury and that was very, very difficult for someone with my personality type and the way my mind works and the way I think to reconcile with do do do and you, your calendar is full, you know, client calls, you have legal work that needs to be done, bills that need to be paid staff, a legal pad sheet of bills that you're supposed to be paying this month without really the time to intentionally craft it to work properly. So for the longest time, it was reactive, not proactive, which is an ideal. Did things get done? Sure. We're here because of that. We're very, very proud of that, but it took so much longer because we had to balance being able to fix what was nonexistent, at least to put in place what was nonexistent to think of systems and workflows and to give rhyme a reason to how we do what we do versus having to at the same time do the work because the work is there and the work is coming in. But as a business owner, you can and if someone's figured out how to put a pause to that willingly to say, oh, you know, clear my books for six months. I got to work on that's, that's not a feasible option. So balancing the knowledge that something needed to be done versus finding the time to meaningfully do it was extremely challenging. And I know you mentioned the client experience. I've heard you describe this as human centered. What do you mean by that? The specific things you do that focus particularly on the client experience? Absolutely. Immigration law and I know many attorneys feel this way and that's not to say we're right versus wrong. But immigration law, I think, uniquely is very human centered. You know, the impact that what we do has on human lives, on family, on our community is is very, very high in this particular field. Unfortunately, historically, there has been a lot of people not necessarily attorneys, although some attorneys, but also non-adjourney individuals who take advantage of this population as well because limited access to resource. You know, you defraud someone out of thousands of dollars promising them a fake result. The knowledge that they can report you or their legal resources in the event that you are in a lawyer are somewhat limited. So it's very easy for immigration attorneys to be countless. You know, take your money. Here's your green card. Buy. But these are people. Outcomes are important. Be honest. As a business owner, you have to focus on outcomes at the end of the day. That is the determining factor. You can't just focus on the end result when you have people going through a process that for many of our clients is going to be the most challenging, the most daunting, the scariest, the most uncertain, and the one that could have the potential to have the most either positive or catastrophic impact for their will be in their family, the lives of their children, the lives of their loved ones. So it's been very important when we focus and have that client centered focus that we're focusing on the human aspect of what we do. Yes, the result is important. Yes, we know we can achieve it. But what's going to distinguish us and what I want, myself and my team to be distinguished in is making sure that we are focusing on the human that's going through that process, that we are guiding and that we're having their humanity and what's at stake for them, front and center to the why of what we're doing, what we're doing. Anybody can achieve results in some cases. It's forms. There is legal prowess and sophistication. But not everyone I think can do it with the empathy, the care, and really putting yourself in the shoes of your client and understanding that what for you is a job and for you is something you do all the time for them is the most important thing and treating it with the respect that that deserves. How would you describe the culture of the firm today? From where we were to where we are, I'm very, very proud of the culture of our team. Most of our team has some experience with immigration. We have some first-generation immigrants on our team. We have a very empathetic client focused and relentlessly striving towards excellence on our team. Immigration law right now is a very challenging practice for a myriad of reasons. At the beginning of the year, we had an all hands looking forward towards the year, what are our goals going to be. We very much took, and this was in collaboration with our coach from Chris Sam. A protect and defend viewpoint for the year moving forward. Last year and the year before was tremendous growth, lots of change, lots of evolution. We wanted to make sure that we were being realistic with the uncertainty that lies ahead in our particular industry. I challenged. each and every one of our team members to not only do what we've done and to abide by our core values to really live our core values, but to relentlessly pursue excellence in everything we do. Down from an initial phone call for a prospective client to the clients who ask us the same questions, 29 times in a row, and we give them the answer 29 times in different ways, having a moment to understand that the stress we're feeling as professionals who work in this space is middle school compared to the stress that our clients are feeling. And the ability of my team to rise to that challenge is a direct result of the culture that we've built. The culture that permeates not only in the how and the why that we do, but trickles into even the hiring process, where we're hiring based on that culture, we're hiring based on our core values, we're hiring not somebody who can cross every T and dot every I, but someone who's going to do that and also do it with empathy and genuine care. I don't want a perfect candidate filling a seat and doing everything perfectly if their heart's not going to be in it because in this industry, having the heart is as important as having those skills. So culture is everything, especially now immigration firms that rely on a team or your culture isn't ship shape. I don't think you can survive this particular moment in our industry. I agree. When you think about the firm's future, what excites you the most about the next chapter? I'm so incredibly proud of how far we've come, but I am thirsty and hungry and ready because I know there's the potential for more. What excites me is what is that next step? When we got off stage, we got we got our award. Like I said, you for you were off. I remember turning to my husband, who's my number one office manager, my right hand, and his words to me were all right, what's next? And I remember being like, bro, I need you to hold on. Can we just like revel in this right now? Like we just did this. Let's enjoy this for a second, but he's absolutely right. And it took me a minute and I pushed back on it. But okay, we did this. What's next? And I think as you know, when you think of achievement, I'm a three one, the award and of itself, but what does this award represent? It represents where my firm was to where it came. And knowing that delta and that bridge and that divide that we have successfully overcome, what's that next bridge? Something that I've learned from so many of the different attorneys that are part of the Chris ecosystem, especially some of the ones from X and select and premiere, there is really no ceiling to growth. You can be as big as you want to be as small as you want to be. It's that intentionality of you get to where you wanted to be. Do you take the award, go home, revel in that and just status quo, or do you chart for more? And so the mindset that I'm coming from where changes and transitions have always been challenging for me, it's really exciting to be at a point in my life where I can look at that unknown. I can recognize that it's going to take work. It's going to take grit. It's going to take loss sleep and hard difficult moments, but to be excited for the growth and the opportunity that can come at the other side of that, I think is the most exciting. Just never ending growth, you know, never ending learning when you stop learning, you start dying and really embracing that, I think for me has been a personality and inside shift that I'm most excited about. I'd love to talk about some of your work outside of the practice of law. I understand you're very active in the community. Are you still a lead vocalist and a Latin fusion band? Is that, have that right? I am. I am. So growing up my dad, like I mentioned, he was one of eight. He was the musician of the family. He plays guitar, he plays piano, and growing up, he always had bands, different iterations of bands. In the late 80s, he had, I think, a 13-piece Latin music band that played out of UF, most were students here at the University of Florida. In my childhood, there was always music around the house. Saturday mornings, you get up to clean, there's Merenga playing, there's some Spanish balladas playing, and I grew up surrounded by that, surrounded by musicians, and I always had an interest in singing. But my dad never encouraged it. I remember for a long time being really bummed out. I must not be very good. He had dad has all these musicians, and he has female singers that are singing in his band, and here I am, trying to sing a song and to see if anyone will listen to me. I have since learned that he had a plan. He knew that I was interested. He knew that I had talent, but he did not want me to hang my hat on the music career. Like he did. He wanted, kind of, to learn from his, on a state seat, he works. He does great, but his ambition for much of his youth was to be a successful musician. So actually, when I finished my first year of law school, almost the day after the semester ended, he called me up. He's like, "Hey, band has a gig coming up in two weeks, and one of the female vocalists can't make it. You want to come to the gig?" Like me? Sing? Really? You want me to? It must be really bad. You must be desperate. He wanted me to be on a track. He wanted me to be headed towards somewhere where it was going to be a career, something that I could be proud of and fulfill my potential and have music be my side hustle. So that was gosh, 2005, and here we are. Oh my goodness. Is it 20 years later? Did I do that math correctly? That is very depressing to say out loud. But yes, it is a family band. I sing. I play the Calvale. That's my instrument. I'm otherwise very uncoordinated and can't hold the beat if I'm singing at the same time. But my dad does piano. He does some guitar. My mom used to be background vocalist, but now she's unfortunately babysitter when we have gigs. My husband's in the band. He sings. He also plays guitar. My youngest brother does percussion sometimes. So we do local gigs, weddings, every fall during Hispanic heritage month. There's a concert downtown open to the public. We usually do something there in conjunction with the Gainesville Latino women's league. So yeah, it's fun. I always say it's the best second job. It gives us a creative outlet. But more importantly, it's something that we can do as a family. Anytime you're sharing art and for Latinos music is really big for many cultures, but especially for Latinos to be able to watch people enjoy and dancing and singing along to something that you're doing is just you can't you can't beat that feeling. I love it. And Laura, as we come to a close, this being the Game Changer Attorney podcast, what does being a game change remain to you? I think being a game changer is believing and striving for outcomes that others think are impossible and being willing to do the work living in those unglamorous moments and having the tenacity to do what is required to actually make them possible. It's tenacity without ego. It's constantly feeling the tension between courage and wisdom and trying to operate in a way in which that pendulum will swing in the direction you need it to swing based on the challenge you're facing at that point in time. Next up, we're joined by Coral Comma, the managing attorney of Common Law in Troy Michigan and the 2025 premiere firm of the year winner. Coral's story is one of grit and resilience. He has differentiated his personal injury practice by serving an underrepresented community. I began our conversation by asking Coral about why the first quarter of this year was the best in his firm's history. Honestly, it's it's my team. You know, I always say that even though my name is on the wall, all the success literally belongs to my team. And this year we're just way more intentional. The operations are there. Now everybody knows what they have to do. And then what we did is we tried to tie everybody all together because even though the attorneys are always seen as like the headhunchals, without the support staff, we literally cannot do what we are doing. So we have buy-in from everybody and I'm excited about that. I love it, man. For people that are tuning in and let's say are not as familiar with the firm, could you briefly share just the I guess the firm origin story and we founded in 2018, but just what led to that? What led to you, you know, becoming an attorney? For me, I'm the youngest out of nine. Born in Iraq, we migrated to the states very early on in like the mid 90s, late 90s. And out of all my brothers and sisters, I was the only boy to really go to school. And being the youngest out of nine, again, I come from a very traditional family. Everybody had to work. We didn't grow up with a silver platter, you know? Everybody had to work 50, 60, 70, 80 hours non-stop until today. My brother still do that. And my dad, he's officially retired. He's 81 years old. He finally took some time off, but they gave him the opportunity of going to school. And I just took advantage of it. And I've realized, yeah, I can go into the family businesses or I can make my own story. And my mom always wanted me to be a doctor, but that was a little boring. For me, so I decided to go to the legal route because I liked to talk a lot. Part of that background is for me, I'm Keldian and I speak Arabic. Now, you might be asking what the hell is Arabic? Well, Well, as a Dianne language, it's actually the actual language. of Jesus that He spoke. And the Kaldians are one of the only people that speak it fluently. And in Michigan, we literally have the highest population of Kaldians in the United States. And we are second only to Iraq. And that's our native land. And there's not too many Kaldians, not too many people speak Arabic. And I have a group of people to where that's how I'm differentiating myself because I speak their language. And the competition is not there. There is some, but it's a market that can really be tapped into. And you can really acquire a really sizable market share if you're doing it correctly. Well, you always entrepreneurial, just from an early age, like I guess what led to, you know, deciding to start your own firm as opposed to working in another firm? One thing I've realized was when I was in high school, I always thought I was going to go into the family business. At that time we had a smoke shop. My brother had a carpentry business. And I really thought I was going to co-on-quote be in the family business. I realized that again, the businesses was not for me. I was going to go to school. And I was undecided whether or not I wanted to be entrepreneurial or use my degree. At the end of the day, I wanted to create something for myself. And I just went on with it. And I actually do have a story of what I did to open up my own shop. And it just goes to show you of how like open and honest I am with people. It's, oh, blow your mind. And I wish like employees can do the same, but you can't expect it. Sure, sure. If you're open to it. The first job I got as a legal job, technically was after I graduated law school. And I couldn't find a job. I never knew what personal injury was because we never studied it. So the first job I got was personal injury. And there's a firm that took me on as law clerk. And then they offered me a position as an attorney as soon as I became licensed. And then I told the managing attorney, I'm like, Hey, I don't know if I can do the plaintiff's site. I might be a good defense attorney. And literally I asked him for a letter of recommendation. And he did it for me because I'm all about open communication. Then I realized defense was not for me because I was like ripping my heart apart. And it's literally selling my soul to the insurance company. So I decided to go back to the plaintiff firm, same plaintiff firm, same managing attorney. And he literally asked me this question is, how do I know that you're not going to leave for the defense? I told him, I'm going to give you one year of my time, literally one year of my time. And I'm going to work like nothing else until I open up shop. At that point, zero clients, I did not know anything about the business. And I literally did not have any ambition of really like opening up a law firm. But then once I gave myself a timeline, I literally just took advantage of it, learn how to acquire clients, learn the law, learn the operations a bit and just open up shop 11 months from the time. I know the firm has scaled quite a bit since then. And I wanted to ask if you'd be open kind of sharing that moment where the firm nearly went out of business and one of the most challenging pieces of the firm's story as you were growing that you had the experience. Yes. So for me, I opened up shop November of 2018, 2019, I kiddie now is 40% growth 2020 when COVID happened when the law changed 40% growth 2021 was my strongest year and that was another 40% growth and 21 and then 22 I stayed stagnant or maybe a slight decrease, but was around 2022 to where it was just word of mouth zero marketing. I am just hustling to get clients and I brought in everything that I can get in. And I remember it was November of 2022 during your summit. I missed the summit. That was the year that I signed up. I missed the summit because I had a two and a half week trial that started that same week. And I was like, it was like three, four hours away. It consumed my life. And I lost that trial. And again, it's even though I was making money in 2022, I could not, I was not able to sustain like a hundred thousand dollar loss that quickly. Thankfully for me, it's I had enough money in my general account to I guess last me, but it made me realize that I needed something different because not only did I spend so much time with the trial, the one attorney, my rock star attorney left for a different position and my rock star paralegal left. I got into an unknown zone to where I have no idea what happened. And it was just a loss of communication between the team. That situation, the loss of communication between that team, it caused me an exposure. I could do not have like two million dollars. And it was two million dollars that I don't have or I didn't have. And thankfully I had a malpractice insurance and they never sued me, which thank God for it. But at the end of the day, we made it work. And it really, really made me realize to where yeah, I was having 40% growth year after year after year. From 22 to 23, I had a decrease in 25%. It was the most straining year of my life. And I'm talking about, I brought, the strain was in my personal life. It wasn't my work life. And just mentally in my head, I just was not in a good spot. And you know, it's like I joined Chris thinking that I'm gonna get my shit together. You know, they're gonna tell me the magic pill or whatever secrets they have. And I'm gonna implement it. But I knew that things don't happen overnight. And I refused to lose. And I told my team is like, the team that I had at that time, they were rock stars. And my team right now, they are rock stars. And I just, I trusted the process, put my head down. I put in the time. And then from 23 to 24, it was literally a 40% increase from 24 to 25. It's a 30% increase. And then from 25 to 26, we're on track of heading 30%. We can do more. But after the research, after the studies, yeah, you can grow the firm to 100% or you can grow the firm at 5%. What kind of growing pains are you willing to tolerate? And at this point, I'm willing to take on risks. But I want to take calculated risks. I love that. What were some of the most meaningful changes that you made during that time that kind of led to the firm really starting to take off? There was a book that I listened to. It was called Rocket Fuel by Gina Whitman. Once I listened to the book Rocket Fuel, it made me realize I am missing a very important component. And that's like an integrator or a director of operations or a COO or whatever you want to call them. At that point, I had my whole staff take Colby test, print test. And then after reading the Rocket Fuel, I had one of my in-house employees. I promoted her into the integrator position. Her name is Lisa. She's a rock star. And she's all about procedures. And I literally put her in a situation to where I'm like, you need to fix this. You need to understand this because I don't have the time for it. You know, my job was to literally settle the cases, acquire the clients. And by me, bringing in the integrator, it really transformed everything. And I think that was literally the most high risk higher that I've made because I didn't have KPIs for her. I didn't know what kind of ROI I was going to have for it. And I just told myself, look, I need somebody to help me with operations and to scale. And that's exactly what she did. And I put her in the crisp experience as well. I love that, man. How have you changed personally just as a leader? Like in terms of, I mean, in terms of either how you spend your time, how do you manage stress? Like how you've all. I have the mentality right now to where I'm willing to lose it all. Literally, I'm willing to take on as much risk as I can to get me to a place of expansion and granted, I have a new born at home three months. And I shouldn't take that much risk. But I know that I trust in my team. And I really do trust in our operations. So we're stress testing all of our operations. And I'm taking on the type of risks to where it can cripple me if we don't expand. And you know how Prisp says, if you're not expanding, you're falling behind or you're failing. For me, if I'm not expanding, I will go out of business. And I put myself in that situation and it just keeps you alive. But the stress is there. So stress management is at the picture, but I'm happy because I really see a vision. And I know that marketing becomes more sustainable, more repeatable operations. You can duplicate it. And it's just it's a good feeling, but it's a scary feeling as well. But I'm excited. I really, really am excited. It makes you dream big. What are you most excited about just looking looking ahead? What's the vision for the firm now? So for me, I started using Grak AI. And for some reason, I just decided to do a 11 year forecast. Don't ask me why 11, why not 10, but I did a 11 year forecast. And the way that I see it is, once we hit our 11 year projections, that's going to make me be one of the top three law firms in Michigan. And the thing about it, these are realistic numbers. I'm not saying we're going to double year after year after year after year. No, this is like 30% growth, 20% growth. I know how many clients we have to sign up. I know how much each case has to yield. I know how many people, how many attorneys I have to hire. And it's literally my forecasting is literally on point to the to the extent that the past two to three years, I was, I kid you not listen 5% difference of my expectation to the actuals. On a separate note, like I know we've talked a lot about just a growth rate and revenue. How do you measure impact beyond revenue? I know I know being active in the community is very important to you. I think it's also your family's story is kind of shape the mission, you know, not just for the firm, but you as an attorney. So I guess just coming back to that full circle, like what does legacy look like for you? It's already in play right now. Me being the youngest out of nine, it really put me in a very privileged position because now my nieces and nephews, they don't have to go through what my family has gone. My nieces and nephews are going through the school route. My niece is literally, she's going to start working for me again in the summertime. I have a few nieces and nephews that want to become attorneys that I'm just waiting for them to become of age. So I can put them to work. And literally I ask my wife this and I ask other people is like, what is the meaning of life? You know, and it's not money. What do I want to be remembered by? And is that leaving a legacy for my nieces and nephews, for my son, for my future kids? Or do I want to make a massive impact in my community or both? Again, there's a lot of moving parts, but I want to bring my family into the law firm. I really want them to carry on my legacy. But I do have an idea that I haven't thought about fully yet, but the Keldian Church and Michigan is very big, very, very big. And I would love to have much more church events, massive church events, to where it brings in everybody. And if I can do like a charity event for like the seminarians, I think it's going to come into like possibly next year, not so much this year, but that's what I want to do. What about the team? I know you mentioned, we've talked a lot about just how proud of your team you are. How would you describe the culture of the firm? Through the KPI intensive, through pretty much talking with people, everybody likes to be incentivized. And once you incentivize on that, they're literally going to put in the work to reach those goals. So since we had our growth, I've increased their pace much more than I used to before. So now they're actually at a very competitive rate. And I make it fun for them to wear. Again, we're trying to get more buying. So if they meet their KPI's and they go above and beyond, they get incentivized. We just start implementing to where each team has to create me a video, right? A fun, funny video. And whoever has the most likes will be the employee of the month, that month. And then we have like a championship belt. And it's actually heavy. It's like 20 pounds. And whoever's whoever the employee of the month is, they get that we have the prize wheel. And again, it's like the gifts are between 50 to $250. So they're really not that much. But the simple fact that you can spend the prize wheel, I think it's like a euphoric feeling. Just like when you go to the casino and you see all the lights. So we try to duplicate that on a much less scale, lesser scale. But that's that's how you get team buying the culture is much, much better. And trust me, everybody is working together. And that's exactly what I wanted and dreamed of. Yeah. What would winning the premiere firm of the year last year? What, what that means to you guys? Because I imagine you brought that back to the firm. Like what, what impact did it have during that time I could you know, it was one of the biggest highs I've ever had. And one of the biggest lows I've ever had. Because the high was winning the premiere firm of the year. And that's something that Lisa and I said, we're going to win this one day. But we just got to get our shit together. But something in the family happened to where I'm like crap. And it just made you realize in life, you're going to have highs and you're going to have your lows. So for me, it's I should have done a better job of being much more excited with the office. But I know Lisa took that on and literally made sure that everybody in the office knew that it was all of us that wanted not just me. And I know we've been talking, you mentioned Grock earlier, but I'm just curious how, how was the firm leveraging AI? Like are you using it in any way to improve just firm overall? Like efficiency effectiveness. Like I guess what's what have been some of the use cases for you? So yes, we are using AI that attorneys are using AI consistently for creating a story. And then my demand writers are using AI to create a story to summarize medical records. But not the whole the whole office does not use AI. And I have not systemized it. I don't have an enterprise level AI just yet. But that's the goal. I told Lisa that's in Q2. What I'm going to do is I'm going to learn how to code. I'm going to start using cloud code. I'm going to mess around with the open claw. And I want to see if I can start using agentics. So for me, I'm taking the initiative myself, but I have not implemented it with the office just yet to increase the efficiencies with the exception of one thing. And it just blew my mind. So there's something called manness. Manus is bought from Facebook. And when we're doing our demands, there's something called the fee schedule, right? And it's so time consuming. And it's it's literally a waste of time. So when I ask my staff, how long does it take you to calculate this fee schedule? I kid you not. These are good demand writers. And it can take them one day to do the fee schedule. And I'm like, are you serious? I wish I knew that. Then I created like an agent on a manness, like a project. And literally it does within five minutes now. So operationally speaking on that end, I'm doing good. And we started doing life care plans, the jury demand, jury pool analysis, just to increase the value of our cases. But again, that's me doing it. And I'm asking them to give me the demand. I haven't delegated it to them because I'm still trying to figure out the accuracy of it in order for us to make it repeatable. I love that you're experimenting, man. It's it seems like it's a very exciting time at the firm. Just looking back across just your journey at this point for the people listening. What's the biggest lesson you like for other firm owners to take away just from your experience? Like if you could give any insider advice. Trust the process. Really, don't be afraid to lose, take risks and just dream big because one thing I've realized is when you're small, when your revenue is less than a million dollars, when your revenues between one to 10 million dollars, you never have the mentality that you can become that hundred million plus revenue firm. And that's really achievable. But you just have to trust yourself. You have to trust your team. You have to trust your operations. And again, to think that big, you have to be insane, but it's very achievable. Everything is achievable. And right now, as yeah, you can call it optimism, but I'm telling you, I know I can scale my business to a hundred million dollar a year of law firm. It's going to take some time and it's going to be a lot of growing pains, but it's very doable. And not just law firms, I have other businesses and it can be repeatable in other businesses. You just got to trust the process and trust the systems. For somebody who's listening and saying, okay, Korra, it's easy for you to say, and I want to take more risks, but I also don't want to lose money. What would you say to that person? What was kind of your experience and where you shifted from perhaps being more versed towards risk versus embracing taking care of good risks? There was something that Alex Shunara said, right? If you're small and you're overhead is small, you're making a lot of money and you can make a lot of money. You can be a solo attorney with one legal assistant, handle 20, 30, uh, okay, so whatever kind of case, be small. You can make a call. $40 million, I have $1.5 million. You can always live that life, but you're gonna be an overpaid employee. But when it comes, if you wanna be the 600 pound gorilla, or I think he called it the 800 pound gorilla, whatever it is, that's gonna be the time to where you're just managing, and that's where you're gonna be making the most money. Now, in the middle, he called it the twilight zone, and that's exactly where I'm at. When I was smaller, I was making much more money, but I was an employee of the law firm. Pretty much I was a slave to my law firm because I'm going on vacations, I am working and I am frickin' miserable. But I realized I have to take risks. I artificially decreased the amount of money that I wanna make, and I just reinvested it. Because now, by me reinvesting my money, it allowed me literally to go on vacation without really having to work so much because the office is able to run by itself more smoothly. Now, to your question, what can I tell them to take on more risk? Just do it. Because if you just wanna be an employee to your law firm, do whatever you are doing right now. But if you don't change anything, and then you're not able to take a step back to really manage, then you're gonna stay in the same place. For me specifically, the way that I've been structuring the past two years to where, say, our goal last year was $2.5 million. My expenses this year is going to be $2.5 million with the revenue goal of, say, like, $3 million. I'm just rounding up. If we don't increase, I am literally going to go bankrupt. Like, I'm literally gonna shut down doors. And again, that forces you to really think outside the box. What you're putting yourself in a situation to where you have to succeed. And that's the kind of situation to where I'm putting myself in and it really keeps you alive because it makes you think outside the box. It makes you think, what can you do to make your operations better? What can you do to literally help others so they can make more money for you? And you just have to do it artificially decrease your base. And literally, if you can go paycheck to paycheck for like two years and just reimburse everything, I highly recommend that because again, the end goal, it's not for us to be employees of the firm as for us to manage a firm that runs without us. - I agree. And I think to your point that some will hear, but based on what you just said, all the risk of, if it doesn't work out, and I find that there's other people that look at it as a greater risk to stay in place and not do those things, right? So at least you're giving yourself the opportunity to achieve that vision as opposed to not investing in the firm and never actually getting that opportunity. So, Quora, as we come to a close, this being the GameChanger attorney podcast, what does being a GameChanger mean to you? Being a GameChanger is someone that's not afraid to lose. And someone that's not afraid to lose everything. Because when you put yourself in a situation, it forces you to adapt. It forces you to think outside the box because if you believe in yourself, if you believe in your operations, putting yourself in a high risk position allows you to stress test everybody around you. And if you succeed, you're gonna be on top of it. And if you're not afraid to lose, you're never going to lose. You're gonna take a step back or two, but you're never going to lose. And I think it was you that said it. Sometimes you have to take a couple of else in order to move yourself forward because again, to make millions, there's a couple of else in it. Next up, we're joined by John Richmond, co-founder and CEO of Richmond, Vanna, in Buffalo, New York, in the 2025 select firm of the Year winner. John has scaled his firm from a two-man operation to a dominant 50 plus person team in just six years. By championing authenticity, he has redefined the personal injury landscape in Western New York. I began our conversation by asking John about his origin story as a first-generation lawyer. - Yeah, so I grew up in Rochester, New York. And first-generation attorney, dad was an entrepreneur and I have amazing parents, but I really had no clue kind of what the legal profession was gonna be about, never even in the beginning had any thoughts of running or owning my own law firm. But I ended up at a big firm in New York City. Learned, I had a lot of great experience there, tried a lot of cases, ended up coming up for an opportunity up here in Buffalo. And really the reason I came up here is I'd been spending some time here and I realized, hey, man, there's an opportunity here. There's some really big legacy players who have been around a long time, but I think we can do things differently. I had a ton of respect for them, but we wanna do it differently and we think we can really kind of show this community what high level of performance is inside a law firm. So started working out another firm to try to get the lay of the land, tapped my current partner Keith on the shoulder and said, hey, don't blow me up, but I got an idea. And if you don't wanna do it, don't, don't, like I said, don't blow me up. But he was all in from the beginning. At the end of the day, we wanna change the way people think about personal injury lawyers. And we want to strive for excellence every day. We wanna set high standards and we wanted to build a culture that was really not just one of camaraderie and accountability, which is great. You need that, but of high performance. And a place where people really felt rewarded for getting back, for going above and beyond for people in the worst times of their lives. And so we started the firm in 2019, like probably most entrepreneurs, not really knowing what you're getting yourself into, which is probably a good thing. Most of the time, the ignorance is probably a good thing. Started to ride before COVID, but honestly COVID kind of played to our advantage a little bit, but ultimately we were off to the races, started off with just me and Keith in the basement. And now there's about 50 of us and we've kind of never looked back. - I love it, man. In those early years, especially, what do you feel were some of the greatest challenges that you guys experienced? - Oh man, where to begin, right? I mean, you start a law firm and you know how to practice law, but obviously we had no idea how to run a business. And no clue about systems and processes and what are KPIs or how to read a balance sheet. I mean, everything and you're trying to hire and you're trying to market and build your reputation. I mean, you're literally wearing every single hat, right? And it's so unsustainable. I mean, there's something kind of amazing about that time. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to it as exciting as it was 'cause I love having the team around me now, but there's just so many challenges. You feel like you have no guidance. There's no roadmap. You really have no clue. It's like you know kind of where you want to go or what makes you tick, but you really have no clue what it's going to take to get there and that's something that we really struggled with early on. - Yeah. What were some of the ways that you essentially navigated that? Like when you did have some of the, you know, the different levels of adversity that you had faced. Like did you always figure it out where there was at some time, it was like one step forward, two steps back. - Yeah, I mean, look, most of the time, you know, look, we may, I'll say this, we made a lot of mistakes and I've heard you talk a lot about this but you gotta fail fast, right? And you gotta do it fast and you gotta learn from it. And if there are some things that we got right, probably by lock or you know kind of banking on you know, our intuition or just, you know, coming things coming from a good place, but I think the key to our success early on and even to this day is just an intense curiosity. We know we're not the smartest people in the world. We got us around ourselves with people who are smarter than us, who are better than us in different ways. And it was really leaning on outside partners. You know, whether it was finding a great marketing partner or you know, I'm not just saying this, I've said it before, you know, once we got our first big settlement, our first big investment was one in our case management system and some more technology and in crisp because we knew we needed a partner to kind of help us, you know, lead us to that next level and show us how to run the business. Show us how to hire, show us how to really foster that culture that was kind of like this thing in the air that we thought we knew what it was, but we had to figure out how to make it. So again, it's really about leaning on other people and being really curious and just trying to get better every day. - Yeah. And I'm curious about that. So I know that you guys teamed up with us, brought on Chris pretty early on into the firm, which is, I wouldn't say as common for a lot of firms, like sometimes, you know, some firms wanna go several years and say, I think we can figure this out and then it's 10 years, 15 years, and then once it's a point of like, I think, you know, we've plateaued or we're not getting there on our own efforts to bring an outside help. It seems like you guys did that earlier on. - Yeah, I mean, look, I think I've learned how to use the anxiety to my benefit and the anxiety or the fear of the unknown of not knowing how to get to where I wanted to go was overwhelming and it was interesting. It was, you know, we were doing COVID. You started your podcast, which I can't believe I'm on right now. And I started listening and listening and being like, you know, I really, you know, it was like, this is so interesting. This is exactly what I'm looking for. And I told my business partner about it and had that time, you know, I mean, modest budget is an understatement. I was like, as soon as we get this big set, I'm gonna be like, this big case, we're working on the kind of fell into our lap. I'm like, it's Chris, but it's tech. And, you know, it was such a huge move for us, like, 'cause really, hey, we have an opportunity, right? Like, I look at, when I'm down in Atlanta, I'm meeting with all the great firm owners. I like tip my hat to the guys that have built these huge, impressive law firms that started in the '80s or the '90s where there is no podcasters, no YouTube. People weren't sharing, you know, how they were building businesses or building law firms. And now, you know, we have Chris, and we have all these firm owners who help us. And it's like, how could we not take advantage of that, you know, for this serious about growth? - Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I guess on the converse, of all that would have been some of the challenges or maybe unexpected challenges of scaling or growing so quickly, right? I mean, from my understanding, you guys have like doubled revenue and you've gone from a six-figure firm to a seven-figure firm to an eight-figure firm and then in a relatively short span of time. - Yeah, we did that in six years and I think going back to it, I mean, number one, it's you're breaking so many systems as you grow, especially when you go back and you didn't understand the concept of scalability and building systems I could grow with you or the culture kind of changes where like, hey, our values are at its core the same, but they change. The things that are really important to us kind of develop as we grow and we learn more about ourselves, right? We learn who we are and what makes us tick and what differentiates us. And look, I think the biggest thing though is learning who's actually right for you. The teammates who really are gonna help take you to the next level, the people who you really should be investing in, you make a lot of mistakes along the way because, you know, look, most people, when you ask them in an interview, you're gonna say, yeah, I wanna grow. I wanna be the best, like, I wanna be part of something bigger than me, but once they realize what it takes, you know, how high the bar is and what's demanded, they don't want it anymore. And so you go through these periods of turnover and it's almost like we talk about it's like a snake shedding its skin, but the good things come from it and then great people fall into your lap or you have opportunities to bring in new people. So it's all been great, but I think the people has been the hardest because again, like, setting that bar of excellence every single day is very, very hard for people to do day in and day out over and over again. - Yeah. - Yeah. - How would you describe the culture of the firm today? - It's a collaborative culture of accountability and of excellence. You know, we are here to win. That's why we're hired. We are winners. We want the bar to be extremely high. We know we can't be perfect. And I guess we'll settle for excellence, but it's the relentless pursuit of excellence and attention to detail, you know, really with the foundation or the backbone of accountability while it's to be accountable for our actions and do what we say we're gonna do. - What about just in going back to John, your background? I mean, even let's say back to college and playing collegiate hockey. Like how do you think this kind of, any of the lessons that shaped you as a leader kind of inform your approach to leadership? - Yeah, for sure. You know, it's funny. I've been thinking a lot about that lately. You know, especially as we've been growing, we have about 50 people now. It started six years ago with just two of us. And I take a lot of pride, especially now in my role as CEO and having more time to develop leaders. And I constantly go back to my time being a goal tender, whether it was growing up before college or playing on the number one division one hockey team in the country. And look, I wasn't the starting goalie. I wasn't the guy going to the NHL, but you know, being part of a team and feeling what you can do or what together when the mission is bigger than just you. And with everybody plays their part and everybody has a unique role, what you can accomplish together. And as a goal tender, you take immense pride in learning how to prepare, how to really operate and succeed under pressure. What happens when you fail or when you weren't prepared? How does that feel? And what does it mean really to be accountable and to be there to bail out your teammates and to be that rock for them? So these are all things that I carry forward to this day. I think more and more about. And I try to instill in my people obviously in different ways, but it's all kind of like, goes back to being a hockey player, which is kind of weird. Yeah. Do you see any parallels to former athletes and in terms of them being high performers in business? Like have you seen any trends in that or just even have a navigated adversity later in life? Yeah, look, I think there's parallels, right? I think when you look at whether it's a high performing athlete or a high performing business owner or CEO, you know, they have that relentless drive, you know, that insatiable curiosity. They're trying to get better every single day. They're not even like going on the go, "Oh no, I got to work hard today and I got to put in a lot of time." It's just what they do. It's something in them. You know, I'm sure it's part of it's learned, right? Part of it's innate, but there's a lot of parallels and you know, the think about like what it takes to prepare and to succeed and to go above and beyond and to see a barrier and say, "I don't care, I'm going over it," or you know, I think about it all the time, right? You know, when you're training for an Iron Man, right? And you know, when you feel that pain and everything in your body is telling you to stop. Like everything and you just don't stop. Like failure is not an option. And so look, I would never compare myself to like a really high level athlete, but I think there are a lot of common principles that will lead to success both in sports and in business. - Yeah. Which one is you and I are biased, but which one do you think is more challenging to be elite at business or sports? - Oh man, that's tough. I think for me, I would say sports only because there's certain physical attributes that you probably need to have to succeed in certain positions and sports. But look, I mean, I'm obsessed with studying the best founders of companies in the world and like, I don't know, man, like when I look at what they've done, it's probably just as hard, right? I mean, maybe you don't have to be, you know, six foot six and 250 pounds to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but there's a lot of other things that you need to be able to do that athletes don't have to. So I might lean a little bit towards being like a super high level like professional athlete, but I don't know, man. I mean, I go back to business a lot, so it's a tough call for me to be honest. Yeah, so I don't know, I'm torn. Here's my thought on it, right? And I've spoken to both sides, right? It's like elite athletes that became entrepreneurs and then entrepreneurs that used to be, you know, elite athletes to some extent. And what I've heard the prevailing thing is that in that set like genetics aside, right? So like the things that you can control, that entrepreneurship is harder for the strict reason that there is no offseason. That is probably the biggest, it's just a 24/7, 365. There's no like, there's no break. There's no offseason. It's just a, it's an endless grind. And there's also not really the same genetic limitations. The physical aspect of it, you're not literally limited by it. Like you could be an entrepreneur into your 70s and 80s and beyond, right? So it's kind of like a never ending game to some extent. That's a good way to look at it and never ends. As an athlete, you have this period of time, maybe where you gotta go full tilt and that's, and then it's gonna end, and then maybe go into other endeavors, like maybe entrepreneurship or whatever, but yeah, you're right, like it never ends and it keeps you up at night, it wakes you up early in the morning. That's a good point. That's a good way to think about it. Coming back to leadership, what's something that, even since the early days of the firm, even to now, like that's perhaps surprised you about your role as a leader? I think how much it evolves and how, you know, being a good leader at a six figure company is not gonna get you to be a good leader at a seven figure company. And as you kind of go, scale up to eight figures and more, right? There are certain things that you have to either shed as you continue to grow, or things that you have to, at the very least really be conscious of and moderate. It's, I've been working a lot, you know, with my coach at Chris right now, and something like that, and it's, you know, studying, you know, certain attributes that a lot of founders, a lot of CEOs, I'm sure probably have, like I'm looking at these things and I'm like, oh yeah, of course, like they have them, and maybe the inclination is to think, oh, just double down on that, just do more of those things. Then you're not being a good leader because being a good leader is creating other leaders, right? And if you're just constantly getting people all the answers and you're constantly having all the ideas and not letting people fail, because, you know, I can do this faster myself. I mean, you're not creating the other leaders, and then you're not gonna grow, right? And I learned the hard way about that and because delegation was something that was tough for me, but I really let go over the last few years and oh my gosh, thank God I have. So I think that's the biggest thing is understanding is that leadership doesn't look the same all the time, you have to continue to evolve and you have to create other leaders so that you can continue to grow as a leader. What have been some of the, as unpopular decisions you've made as a leader, just over the last several years? The most unpopular ones pertain to personnel. And, you know, I think, you know, I was thinking about this, you know, because something similar just happened recently where we had to let go of someone who was good at their job, but just didn't fit culturally. And those can be really tough decisions when everyone's looking at you saying, like, you know, but this person's a really high performer, they contribute so much in this way or that way, but, you know, you got to defend culture with everything. You know, there's certain things that you can't tolerate because you need to ensure that everybody understands, you know, where the bar is, what the expectations are, and it's not fair to others. So I think, you know, those are always the toughest or taking, you know, calculated risks that maybe some people that make some people uncomfortable, but making sure you understand why people are uncomfortable and working through it with them so they buy in and ensure that, you know, that risk is being moderated. But, you know, I think the biggest thing is with personnel, right, because it's so tough. Nobody wants to have to make those calls, but you have to. I agree. I agree. What would you say is like the biggest challenge today at the firm? I think today, you know, really the biggest challenge is, how do we go to the next level? What are we doing now that needs to change so we can go to that next level? And how do we find the people that are going to get us there? And, you know, we've made some critical hires recently and the process of making another one, but really finding those people who are smarter than us, who know more than us in their, you know, in kind of like, you know, their professions or whatever it is that they were bringing them on to do, working with them to help us scale, you know, making sure that we're continuing to seek out, you know, people who can help and pushing like, say, our coaches to help us more, which is, you know, people always, people always love to do that, right, because they want to help. But I think it's really figuring out how do you continue to grow because the biggest thing that scares me is plateauing, right? And that just like cannot happen. Some people get to a certain level, maybe get to an A figure firm and you're like, oh, hands off the wheel, I'm good to go. But no, we got to continue to grow and we got to continue five ways to be better. Figure out things we should stop doing, we need to start doing, continue to get more and more creative. And you guys have been, for instance, the inception of the firm and a pretty competitive market, right, in New York. What have been some of the things that you've done to stand out and differentiate, especially from some of the more established firms at the time? Yeah, you know, it's a great question. It's something that we're working on right now and we're really excited about some new stuff that we're going to be about to roll out. But, you know, it goes back to this thought process that if you're for everybody, you're for nobody. And I'm going to be able to do that. I think really, really early on, even before I joined Chris, it was just like, hey, we just wanna represent anybody who is injured like in these types of ways. And I started thinking about them, but that's not us. We're not being authentic. That's not who we are, right? And we really just started like saying, let's just be super authentic. And let's do things that'll make us stand out. So for instance, I'll give you one example. We really care a lot about branding. We think branding is the most important thing. And look, I get it. Sometimes you wanna bottom of the funnel, case acquisition strategy to grow a new team or whatever, but really at the end of the day, it's all about the brand. I think people struggle with that because you don't get that immediate impact, that immediate ROI from the brand, but that is the thing that's gonna take you into the future and it's gonna help you build a legacy. So I'll give you an example. We started our own podcast and everyone was saying, well, why isn't it about the law? Or what do you mean you're not talking about different types of injury situations or whatever? I'm like, I don't wanna talk about that stuff. That's not who I am, right? We wanna bring on interesting local people, who celebrity chefs, or they could be CEOs or doctors or whoever and just bring them on and talk to them, figure what makes them tick? How do they get to where they are? What are their thoughts on leadership? How do they handle difficult conversations? And it's a slow burn, but it's really started to create this network here locally where it goes back to the saying, the way you do one thing is the way you do anything. And we don't need to be shouting all the time, injured, injured. I mean, like everybody's doing that. Like if you're doing that, you're just competing in this bucket over here, right? We wanna be over here by ourselves doing things that we love to do that are authentic to us. And if it takes longer, that's fine. But we know the people that we wanna attract and we're sticking to this strategy. - I love that, man. I love to talk about client experience, right? So there's obviously the practice of law and then there's the individual and unique touch points that every client receives when they're working with the firm. Could you speak to some of the things that you guys do that's a bit unique? - Yeah, well, you know, look, we learned this from Chris, but number one, people don't know what makes good law, but everybody knows great client experience. Everybody knows what it feels like to be heard, to feel special, to feel like you just know that somebody want to bov in beyond for you. And, you know, for us, you know, we started off from day one, right? We are 24/7. When people call us, they hear empathy, you know, they hear a sense of urgency. They are talking to people who work for us, who really care. We move fast, you know, we onboard the next day. Our clients are asked, how do they like to communicate? They are receiving updates every step of the way, whether it's phone calls or our matter stage updates with videos and explaining, hey, you know, we talked about this on our call. Let's show you more about what we were talking about. Or, hey, your case moves just moves to this stage. This is what it means, you know, we've created all these automations through litifiers, our case management system where, you know, someone has a surgery, you plug in the date, and it sends them a card and some flowers the day before. If they're coming in for a deposition, we have a little package for them. We find out something happened. There's a whole section in, you know, basically on all the systems, or, sorry, all the matter plans about what is this person like? You know, what are the things they're struggling with? Like, how can we help them even outside of how we're representing them? And it's making them feel really special along the way because there's no question, you know, they're coming to us at the worst time of their lives. And even if to us, like in comparison to other clients, that case, it may not be as quote unquote severe, it is severe to them. It's extremely, you know, important to them. And we need to go above and beyond for them. So we need to have our people trained in mental health awareness and all these different ways to make sure that we're trying to be creative. So our clients know that, hey, wow, this isn't like talking to any other law firm. This is just objectively amazing service. Regardless of whether it was a hotel or restaurant or a law firm, you know, and this is something that I think people expect in society and they deserve. - Yeah. What's on the horizon, just for the firm? Just the firm and yourself as a leader, what are you looking forward to? - Yeah, look, I mean, you know, for us right now, we're constantly trying to get better. We brought in a marketing team who's really kind of like helped us start revamping, you know, our image and our brand and really be more and more authentic I asked to talk about early to who we are. We're doing way more in the community. I mean, we started doing a lot in the community a couple of years ago, but we've stepped it up to an even higher degree, something that our team is extremely proud of. We're looking to grow. We're looking to be aggressive year over year. We're looking to grow into new markets. We're excited about a new office that we're looking at building so we can give our team really the amenities they deserve. So it's just continuing to grow leaders within, continuing to get you get better every single day and ultimately, you know, fulfill the promises to our people who believe in us and ultimately bringing we believe to be a super high level of service to our community because we think Buffalo deserves it. - Yeah, now I got to ask you the AI question, right? In terms of have you integrated into the firm? Like is this something that worries you or does it excite you? - It excites me. We're all in. I mean, you know, we've been kind of all in pretty early on, you know, whether it's working with big national partners, more kind of outside of the box stuff, even though we put our own, our own spin on it or working as a design partner with, you know, for instance, like an agente AI company where we're building different workflows and automations and it's really amazing to then, you know, kind of put out these use cases and then be able to get the buy-in from your team and to see kind of the impact that it has so that, you know, our teammates can focus on the things that really matter, you know, getting the trust from the clients, ensuring that they're generating revenue or doing the things that really matter and focusing less on the, you know, the repeatable tasks that no one likes to do, right? This is not something that they should be doing. They're smarter than that. Their time is better spent other places. So we're all in on AI. I mean, obviously, you know, we had a couple of fumbles out the gate in terms of how we rolled it out, but again, like I'm gonna give a shout out to Josh from my coach at Chris, but he spent a lot of time with me on change management, unbelievable, the dividends it's paid off and our team is bought in, they're all in for it and they understand that, hey, if we use this thing together, we can continue to elevate our game here in Buffalo. - I love it, man. John has become to a close, it's being the game-changing attorney podcast, what does being a game-changing mean to you? - For me, it's the relentless pursuit of excellence and being 100% on apologetic of having super high standards and not tolerating mediocrity. That's as simple as I can say. To me, that's what it means to be a game-changer. - And to close out this episode, we're joined by David Meyer, founder of Meyer Wilson Warning in the 2025 Chris Bex from the Year winner. David has dedicated over 25 years to chasing down financial advisors who lie, cheat and steal. I began our conversation by asking David how he and his firm have evolved since his last appearance on the podcast in 2021. - We've had a major transformation. I don't think I'm the most efficiently run law firm in crisp, but I may be the most transformational law firm over the last five or six years because really nothing in our law firm, Michael looks anything like it did five or six or seven years ago. Thanks to a lot of things we've done, learning at Cresp and through our coaching and everything else. We've done a lot of different things. I mean, our technology is 100% different. I think five or six years ago, the joke around this firm is we had more case management programs than lawyers. It was unbelievable because I'd go into a legal conference and anyone with a nice handshake and a smile, I'd buy whatever they're selling. And I just bought everything. And then I had to come back and try to use it. So we stopped all that. I got out of the way. We went with Salesforce and litify. We spent two or three years integrating that. So from a technology standpoint, we're efficient. We have systems and the processes in place. So I mean, from a technology operation standpoint, we're just 180 degrees different than we were. And we've also added Courtney Warranting as a partner. So now we're Meyer Wilson Warranting. That was about a year ago. She's been in the Center second year of law school and she's about 15 years now. And she's running our investor claims practice. So we've got seven lawyers now. We've practiced nationwide. We've also transformed our leadership. For 15 or 20 years, Michael, I know you've heard me tell you this. I ran this firm really just with energy, a ridiculous amount of optimism, positivity, and luck. I mean, really, that's how, for 20 years, that's how this firm I stumbled mostly forward, but sometimes back. But we had no plan. It was just me and a vision and an idea. And then people just trying to figure out how that all worked. And now we have a strong leadership scheme. We have an executive committee meeting every week. And again, this is all things I learned working with Crisp. And so now this is a firm run by David Meyer, Matt Wilson and Courtney Wernie, as opposed to just David Meyer. And we all three of us have different strengths and different things that we focus on. It's really run much more like a business. And the joke was, 10 years ago, I see all my friends. Most of my friends that I'm with outside of my law firm are entrepreneurs. They own their own businesses. And they have executives. They have CFO or CTO or CEO. And I was all, I was everything to that. Now, a lot of these businesses were obviously bigger than mine. But seeing how actual businesses run and then getting some help with some direction and coaching and accountability. Now I have all that here. It's such a better place to be. It's a happier place to be. It's a more productive. It's a more profitable place to be. Our clients are happier. I mean, you change all this. And it's just mushrooms and to just all these wonderful things. I mean, it's a grind getting there. I mean, it was a brutal, brutal few years. But from looking where we were, five or six, seven years ago, it's just fantastic. I love it. And for those that may not have caught you on the first episode, which we'll obviously link to in the show notes, you've got a very unique practice in the sense that when we talk about investment fraud being known as the investor protector, could you elaborate on that and the type of work you do because it is a national practice. There's not a whole lot of people that practice in the area that you do. What led you there and a little bit about that area of practice? Yeah. So what I say is, as in my question, investment fraud lawyer, I chased down financial advisors who lie, cheat and steal. We're investment loss recovery lawyers. We represent individual investors who are customers of brokerage firms and financial advisors who lose money as a result of financial misconduct. That's what we do. When I started 25 years ago, the short story is I was a tax lawyer for about 18 months right out of law school. The lawyer reason I was a tax lawyer is because I did not do so good in high school or college. I went to a four-tier law school. My father had a personal injury firm at the time and he told me, "Hey, you need to do something different." There are seven law schools in Ohio graduating. I don't know. Thousands of lawyers. He said, "You're going to have trouble finding a job unless you do something different." So I got a joint JD LLM, which my law school offered at the time. So I got my law degree and it masters in tax. So I got a job as a tax lawyer, which after three or four weeks I really didn't like. But that gave me a foot in the door. I started doing some litigation. Somebody walked in the door that was referred not to me because I was 27 years old, but referred to my boss. They had a problem with their financial advisor. My boss declined the case because it was a business and tax firm and this person was walking out the door and I was going to the restroom and I literally ran into this person. And I started talking to him and he said, "I've got this problem with my financial advisor and five lawyers have rejected me and I need help." So I took the case and with the permission of my boss. And along the short of it is, it turned into a class action that I filed against potential securities. I was 28 years old. We tried the case when I was 32. We got a $260 million verdict, the largest verdict at its time in the state of Ohio. And that is the verdict that led me to become an investment fraud lawyer. And I decided that at that point I wanted to build the nation's best investment fraud law firm and that's what we've been doing for almost 30 years now. Since you don't go to court when you sue your financial advisor, when you sign up with them, you sign a customer agreement that you give up your right to go to court, you file the case in arbitration. So we're securities arbitration lawyers. So we're not limited by the states in which we're licensed to practice necessarily. So what's allows us to represent investors nationwide. So we're based in Ohio but we represent investors all over the country and we've been doing that now for about 30 years. And I'm curious, when you first started the practice or even in the early years, I know you mentioned kind of the first 15 plus years, what were some of the biggest challenges you ran into it just on the on the business side? Well, the problem is for the from I didn't really focus on the business side. I wanted to be a master in my craft. So for the first five or 10 years, my only focus was getting really, really good at the niche area of the law. I didn't think about the business aspect of it. I mean, I got referrals. I got cases. I won cases. I got money. I hired a few people. I was just reactive. I was I was not doing anything for the business. I made sure my trusted cat was solid and I do the things I had to do. Then you realized after five or six years, we got a national reputation. We're getting a lot of referrals and I had cases and then I hired the people I needed to handle the cases. But what I should have done, I mean, I just I think all the time, Michael, that if I would have started thinking about the business part of this back in 2000 when I started, what has saved a ton of money and you know, and all the things I've done wrong with my hiring and my management and everything else. Obviously, the early you start the better. I know one of your great things is bringing it, you know, you and Jessica early on, you had Jessica to really help with the business while you had the vision. And I didn't have that early on. So then it's just it's really hard once you've got, you know, a full case load. You've got a ton of things on your plate from the legal standpoint. How do you work the business standpoint? So it was hard just from the business standpoint because we were so far along on the legal side, on the law work. We just fell way behind on the on the business side. And you know, they say, you know, money solves a lot of problems. Yeah, when you have cases, you have revenue and you're making money, it takes a certain kind of person to say, look, I'm glad things are going well, but how can we really make this better to scale and from efficiency and operations and leadership? I didn't do that until really, you know, seven, eight years ago. What was that? I guess what was that catalyst? Like what led to you saying, okay, something's got to change. And why was it at that point as opposed to earlier or even later? Well, I'm not intending to plug Michael Mogel and Chris, but that's what happened. It was 2018. And we, I had just done a video with you with your firm. And the video was different because I'm based in Columbus, Ohio, but I sue Wall Street. And at the time, I thought, hey, people might want to only hire a lawyer that's on Wall Street. So when I got a call from your company, you were much smaller than obviously. I said, like, I want to do a video with you, but I want you to come to New York City to Wall Street. And somebody approved it because your whole team came. My lawyers came and we woke up at 5 a.m. on Wall Street right in front of the New York Stock Exchange and did our first brand video, which we still use, by the way. And that led me to come to my first workshop at Chris. And I realized, and I remember this like it was yesterday, Michael. At that point, I felt like I was in the middle lane of the highway. Everything was fine. I was going 65 miles an hour. I had good cases. I had great clients. I had a good team. I was making plenty of money. Everything was fine. But I was approaching 50. My kids were getting it to be in high school and I realized, hey, you know, I've got a really good thing going. I mean, we are nationally known and then very narrow niche practice area. We're really good at this work. Why shouldn't we be able to just expand and grow and help more people and have a bigger impact? I had two options. I could just stay in the middle lane and cruise and I could have kept going for 10 or 15 years where I put my left blinker on. I looked and I looked and I go left and I pass and accelerate and that's what I've been doing. We've been in the fast lane accelerating for five or seven years just because it sounds hokey, I guess. But we had the hard part figured out. We were really, really good. I mean, my goal was to be the best investment fraud lawyer in the country and have the best team to do it. Well, I thought we were there. So why not? Since the hard parts, that's the hard part, right? So let's get the business part, right? Let's get the leadership, the operations, the systems, the processes, the culture. Let's fix that. And I didn't have the skills to do that. I mean, I was completely, completely inept to be able to do that. And then you, you recommended I read Rocket Fuel. That really changed my life because I realized, you know what? I don't have all the skills. I'm the visionary. But if you want some of the cross-examined, a bad broker or a supervisor or a compliance officer or get cases and build relationships, that's, I'm your person for that. But in terms of the implementation of systems and processes and being able to scale and utilize technology, that wasn't me. And I needed help. And that's, that was the catalyst to transform what was a really solid niche firm kicking some serious ass in the actual legal niche to growing to being the firmly are now. I love it. Love it. What about just certain people that you brought on to the firm, like certain hires that you made? I know that you mentioned they've been several, those have been instrumental in your growth. Could you speak to some of those? Yeah. So one of the first hires that I made outside of the lawyer hire in, in addition to an office manager that's built me for a long time was Patrick McEwen. And he was actually you the one that you forced me to do this at the time. This was four or five years ago. I was about to be present of two large bar associations while also running the firm. And you said, Hey, you need an executive assistant. I'm like, I don't think I do. And you said go hired an executive assistant. So I hired Patrick McEwen, which he was right out of college. He had no legal training, no tech training. He was my assistant for about a year and a half. And then he's transformed into now he runs our operations and our technology and our AI. So he's been the single best non legal team hire we've made. And what we're doing now from a technology and AI side, I think is far more than any firm close to our size in the country. Could you kind of elaborate even on his growth? Because I know he's going to grow him through the practice and now in some respects, it's almost like you're right hand. I mean, quite, quite literally what have been some of the biggest impacts that he's made? Well, he's always had an interest in technology. So he came here and he was the one looking at my emails and giving coffee and lunch. I mean, he was just he was an executive assistant. And then he looked at our technology and he said, David, this is a mess. I mean, your cybersecurity technology is behind the curb. All these CRMs, the systems and the hardware was a mess. We were ordering stuff from all over the place. So just because he had an interest in technology, he just cleaned all that up. I mean, now we have a very organized process for when we replace computers and so and everything's labeled and everything's protected. And now the cybersecurity is consistent with our policy and insurance. And now we have all top level security and all that that we never had. So then once he fixed just our technology in terms of our hardware and our software, then he started looking at our marketing. And he was kind of stepped in with our marketing agency and he realized, hey, you know what? David, you shouldn't be the one doing this. You don't need to be having these calls every two weeks with the marketing with the digital marketing company because you don't understand any of this stuff. So he stepped in. So now in addition to becoming director of operations, he's now director of our marketing. And he's built proprietary software that we're using in our firm for, you know, measuring our marketing metrics. We have a competitor analysis, a content tool for our blogs and our social media, all built from scratch. And it's unbelievable. We have doubled our intake in the last two years. I mean, literally doubled it in 24, doubled it again in 25. And we're not doing anything dramatically different except what he's focused on from a marketing and operation standpoint with tools that he is built in house. I mean, it's. really unlippable. Now he's speaking nationwide on AI and technology and it's incredible to look at our little firm. We have 16 people and we represent clients nationwide and we do it all very, very efficiently and nimbly because our leveraging technology and AI because of what Patrick's bill. And on that note, how's the firm evolving in current state? What's on the horizon for the firm? What's next on the horizon for you? So Courtney Warning is continued to run the investor fraud practice area and she's really becoming not only the face of the firm but the face of the practice area. She'll be president of that bar association in a couple of years. She's now on, I mean, podcasts and the news and she's becoming not only the number one woman investment fraud lawyer in the country. She's a top investor of a lawyer of anyone. I mean, she's she's a remarkable lawyer. She's a great manager, a great leader and she's now who people are coming to when they need a new story or a question on policy. So it's just wonderful to see her growth and I'm maturing in both the legal side, the leadership side. Matt Wilson continues to grow our class action practice. So I like I love it here. I'm not leaving. I still love directing the vision. I still like I mean, I tried six or seven cases last year. So you know, I like that maybe to be a few less going forward, but because we have the support and the team, it allows me to do that. So I'd still want to be the visionary. I still want to drive the business. I still want to I want to help us be the voice of the individual investor across the country and continue to watch us grow and in watching our use of technology and AI and in our in our cases. It's just it's remarkable the kind of work we're doing. I mean, we're up against Wall Street who has more money than anybody. So to be able to get fight up against Wall Street and win, it's taking just incredible investment and deployment of technology and AI and I think we're just we're in the in the forefront of that and leading the charge and it's fantastic. I love it. Now one of the things you mentioned in just really empowering other people at the firm, how did you get comfortable releasing, you know, the reins to some extent? I know this is a big counter for a lot of leaders and what do they call it delegation or whatever you end up calling it, but just a lot of firm owners and founders, especially like to hold on to a lot of decision making. What led you to being able to let go a little bit? Well, it's just the trust and the people that you've chosen to put in those seats. I have tremendous amount of trust with Matt Wilson with Courtney Warning and they've earned that trust, right? They've they've shown their ability to win the cases and lead and manage. So I'm comfortable, you know, that I've chosen the right people to, you know, take the reins and the firm and also letting go your ego. Like I think a lot of things that hold us back. I'm sure I think no ego is the book about this, but having just let it down, letting it go to say, look, someone might do something differently than you would have done it, but it's okay. It doesn't have to happen exactly the way you would do it. They've everyone's been around me. Everyone knows, you know, how how I would do it and they use their judgment, their experience and their background and their personality to do what they think is best and you also have to be okay with occasional failure. The old me, if something went wrong, if I did something wrong, like, well, you know, it's my firm, that's my mistake. Oh, well, that's part of the deal. But and if somebody else did something wrong, my impulse would be to get upset and be mad as, and but now I realize, hey, that's, you know, somebody making a mistake is an opportunity for growth. And if I don't encourage, encourage that and get behind it, then that's just going to prevent them from wanting to take that step next time and that's not building leaders, right? That's not supporting leaders. That's not building leaders. So being okay with mistakes and understanding that that's part of the process of of of leading and learning, that's been a really a big change. And that's come from the coaching and accountability that I've gotten, you know, through Chris, over the last six or seven years. So really changing, just becoming a better leader and a better manager and just being able to let go and and and realize and I think a lot of us don't appreciate this that oftentimes those people that we've chosen around us are going to be better at it than us. I mean, how about that, right? I mean, I truly believe that those around me are as good or better than me in all these areas. And so that the firm is a good hands, the clients are in good hands, the team isn't are in good hands, isn't good hands. So it's it's it's been a slow process, but it's been deliberate and we've had quarterly objectives. We've been held accountable. All three of us, you know, with our coach and with Chris, making sure that we have things that we want to do and that we actually follow through. I mean, how many times do you say you're going to do something and you just never do it? That's helped us move along. It's helped me grow and it's helped me appreciate the fact that those around me are ready to leave as well. I love it, man. How you described the culture of the firm, you know, take 10 years ago versus today? I think 10 years ago, this was me running around with my head cut off and everyone just, you know, trying to just pick up the pieces, get through the day, focus on the case and then everything else just kind of happened. I mean, it was always client focused subject matter focus. We're going to be really, really good at pursuing claims against investment advisors. That was it. And we're going to get the cases and we're going to build relationships and we're going to get referrals. There was nothing else deliberate. But now I think everyone sees that we're all in this together. We all have our own goals. We all have our own objectives. We're going to hit. We're going to hold each of us are going to hold each other accountable. We have common goals. We'd note, I mean, instead of just kind of just, I mean, I would literally fall forward. I would stumble forward. Now everything is deliberate and that gives everyone comfort. And like, we're not perfect. There's, you know, we have a lot of things to improve on. And most of them are with me. But we've come so far that I think everyone is aligned. And when I leave and I come back and and nothing's, you know, everything's great. Everything's moving along because everyone is aligned with our purpose. We now have our cultures are thanks to Chris. We just did our event yesterday. We all went and served meals for the Ronald McDonald House. We had lunch. We spent the day together. We never did things like that. I mean, things that that that helped us bond as as team members. And we have some remote people. So we're now very deliberate about getting everyone together regularly. We have three or four of our 16 people are remote. So they come quarterly. They spend time with us. And again, that's because it's deliberate because we're being we're holding ourselves accountable. We have a plan. What about just you personally? How was how's life changed for you? I think about this a lot now because once we've added structure and discipline to the firm, it's really bled into my personal life. Thanks to you, I'm now training for this Ironman 70.3 in a few months. So I am about a month or two for being the healthiest I've ever been. I'll be 56 years old next month. And, you know, as you know, because you're doing this training too, we're you know, we're training six days a week, training about nine times a week. And I feel like I can do this because I have the support and the structure of the firm I could have never have done this five years ago. So now I can I can get up at five and do what I need to do. It would be at the office at 930 in the world's not going to end. So I've taken the discipline and the structure and the accountability from my firm and I moved it over to my to my personal life and my fitness. So I'm the fitness I've ever been. I'm the happiest I've ever been. Everything is it's just it's all it's all wonderful. I pinch myself often because this is I mean, it's all the result of really hard work and also a lot of luck. I'm a big fan, a believer that luck plays a big part of this. But I think I put myself in position to take advantage of the luck when I ran into that first guy 30 years ago. I could have kept walking or I could have said hello and said, look, I'm a tax lawyer. I'm not going to help you and I would have moved on. It was total luck that I ran into that person. That person changed my life. I'm doing what I'm doing because I got I stood up. I went to the restroom and I ran into somebody. But that's luck, right? But because I wanted I knew I wanted to do something different. I know I wanted to be control of my own destiny. So whatever happened, things happened. I just I opened doors. I opened doors and that's been a big part of it and luck's to all to this day. Luck has played a big part of my life. Absolutely. Man, and what you said earlier, this could be like our new test of like whether you have a self-managing firm. Is can you can you train for an Iron Man while while the firm exists right because this is I mean, we're talking like 10 10 plus hours a week easy, maybe maybe more. And it seems like that was not possible when we first met for you to be able to do that plus raise a family plus grow the firm and do all this training. And I think it's amazing that you're prioritizing that now and and to be healthy. So I look forward to you know, to seeing you on the starting line in a few few months. Dave, as we come to a close, what does being a game changer mean to you? As a law firm owner, being a game changer is having a firm where people can learn and grow and do great work and then have clients who feel fulfilled and listen to and helped in the worst time of their lives being able to grow impact. The fact that we've been able to grow our impact and help more people be happy as a firm fulfilled and do great work. It is the most rewarding possible job career I could ever imagine. So to me, that's what it means to be a game changing attorney. I want to give you a huge thank you to Laura, Koro, John and Dave for taking the time to join us on this episode of the Game Changing Attorney podcast. And I want to congratulate them once again for winning the coveted firm of the year awards at the 2025 Crisp Game Changers Summit. If you found this episode valuable, here are three free ways that I can help you grow your law firm. Number one, download the first chapter of my book absolutely free at GameChangingAttorney.com. Number two, you can shoot me a text at 404-531-7691 and I'll answer any question that you've got from me. And finally, number three, if you can leave this podcast a five-star review, it'll help us gain access to more influential thought leaders and bring their lessons learned here to you. For more information on this episode, see the show notes for this episode in your podcast step or visit legalpodcast.com.