457. The Operational Advantage Your Competitors Don’t Have

(upbeat music) - I would just be putting out fires all day. There was no management here, and I was successful in spite of myself. I don't think we could spell vision when we started. I just wanted to survive. - Welcome to a special edition episode of the Game Changing Attorney podcast, featuring conversations with four law firms who have completely transformed their practices by building systems, processes, and people behind the scenes that help their firms excel. - I've taken a lot of these lessons over the last three or four years now and added them into my repertoire and just made me a stronger person. I fired people now. We had performance reviews last month, which we didn't use to do. So, you know, we're actually running much more of a business-like organization. - 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 ink 500 lists 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 diving into the not-so-flashy side of building a law firm, the systems and operations that create a foundation you can truly scale from. Getting that right means you serve your clients better, make a greater impact, and build a business that doesn't require you in every decision. We're joined by four firms who have moved beyond the traditional practice of law to build high-performing organizations. - It's all about leading people and coming alongside them and finding where their passion lies because if they're able to trust their leader and know that they're gonna come alongside them and you're able to build that respect and they can see where they're going and where you're going as a company, they're gonna follow. - That's coming up on the Game Changing Attorney podcast. (upbeat music) Before we begin today's episode, I wanna 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 car 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 Stephen Groff, founder of Groff and associates in Toledo, Ohio. Stephen has transformed his practice from what he once called a "Frathouse" into a highly structured, impact-driven firm that prioritizes both business excellence and community involvement. I kicked off the conversation by asking Stephen what led him to start his firm. - I think I've always been a helper of people. When I was in younger and in college and whatnot, I think I was always willing to jump into help folks. And then as I was getting through my education, I started in sports management and business and was working my way through sort of athletics and academia. The law kind of came to me and it seemed like a natural fit. And then once I got involved in that, it's been great ever since. I don't think I woke up necessarily one morning and said, "I'm gonna be the world's greatest attorney, but I'm gonna be the best guy it can be." And the law really was my avenue for that. It's given me tremendous opportunities, it's taken me places, it's gotten me on national television, but I'm not really an accolades guy. It's just given me this wonderful opportunity to live my best life. Like yourself, my parents were immigrants. I was born in a apartment in California, so that's like plus two, 'cause it's California. Modest background, always worked hard, probably worked since I was 14 years old, always a bit of a hustler, and just found my way into the law and the law kind of found me. - I believe you said before that, I think it was like Clarence Dero's defense, like that had really lit a fire under you. Like what really compelled you to want to more specifically kind of fight for the people, right? - Yeah, on the criminal side, then later the PI side as well. - I've always connected with the underdog. You know, I think I've always felt sort of a bit of an outsider, very fortunate, be treated, you know, well, I think by the world in many respects. But I remember very specifically, I remember like photographic memory, I'm in the USC library for a doctorate in education. I'm reading the Scopes Monkey trial, Clarence Dero case, which he lost. Most people didn't realize he actually lost, but that fight and the fact that he was willing to take on the powers that be, I was like, wow, that's really something. That's meaningful in life. I'm not a boat guy, a house guy, a car guy. I have a couple watches, not even really a major watch guy. Although I look like Mr. Wonderful, maybe I should have two watches, one on each wrist, I don't know, but any event. So yeah, that, that, there's nothing greater, you know, and it's fed into it. I hope I'm sure we'll talk about, you know, when we were honored with crisps award for community service, that feeds right into it because when you're helping people and you're doing that sort of thing, there's nothing more rewarding. So take me back 20 plus years ago to have a booths around 2001, you leave the prosecutor's office, you don't really have a safety net, you've got limited resources. What's going through your head, like what led to deciding to go out on your own and start the firm? I think if you are a self-reliant and you feel strong enough about yourself, you can do whatever you think you need to do. And so in 2001, with really nothing, I had never run my own law firm, I had never had any real background in running a firm or understanding what was going on. I end up in a $200 a month back room of a glass and mirror building, like basically in the hallway. I look back at it and I think, who would ever hire a lawyer in this little circumstance? But I also was a fan of Robert Townsend's Hollywood shuffle. He was a guy who produced a major movie, financed on his credit cards. Just that story resonated with me and I just felt, I've never missed a debt, I've never missed a payroll, I've never defaulted on anything with anyone in this business. I always did whatever it took to get it done. So there I am in this little office, frankly, didn't have much support from home, things at that time. And just in classic, steven fashion, I sort of made it up as I went along. Now if I had crisp back then, Michael, I might have had a different origin story, but you came along at the right time. I was in high school back then. You could have been even younger than that. (laughing) So what did that first year look like for you? Do you recall any of the experiences of just year one, starting from ground zero? Yeah, every day of the phone ring, I would answer every single call, anything, whatever it was, for $250, I would drive an hour to court, get a parking ticket, not a speeding ticket, but a parking ticket, maybe two, and then for $250, drive back, put it in the bank, pay the light bill, pay whatever it was, and then service crazy debt. I just had huge bills that I had to pay. And of course, I was raising a family and had a wife and two kids and was always responsive to them. I remember one time, the only thing I really did back then was I would go to a bowling league like once a week. I didn't have a poker night, I didn't travel, I didn't do anything, I just worked. Even on vacation, I would have a yellow pad. That's how old I am. I'm young, but I'm old. I would have a yellow pad at the pool on our occasional Florida vacation. I'd be on the phone the whole time, answering calls, and I would just say to the world, look, this one call could pay our bills. I have to do this. So I did what I had to do. It wasn't great. When it is really start to gain momentum, was there a specific moment where things just started to really move in the right direction, moving past some of the adversity and more into positive momentum? Yeah. Well, I think there's two answers to that. I think there was the pre-CRISP era where I was working so much and capable, very fortunate. You know, I'm sort of ADD and I'm able to do 30 things at once. But Jack of All Trades Master of None. So the problem was I would just be putting out fires all day. There was no management here. And I was successful in spite of myself. And this is my, you know, my really thank you to Crisp and I've always been honest about it, you know, how I feel about things. That dynamic changed for me when I was able to manage my firm and put it in standard operating procedures, do all that stuff. So part beat of that thing is when things change is when I got structured through Crisp and organization and coaching. And frankly, kind of a wake up call to do a little more adulting. Because as you know, I like to say, I ran this place like a fraternity house. And I am Brother Bluto. So it's been a good, really a good run. And I can't say enough about structure and purpose and whatnot because I'm 63 years old now. So I was in my 60s when I signed up with Crisp. I could have sailed off into the sunset. My life wasn't terrible. I paid my bills. I traveled. I don't want for anything. And I'm not a millionaire far from it. In fact, I paid my bills. We had some losses last year. We took a shot with family law, a division that just didn't work. I have zero regrets. I'm mad at myself for not managing more because I should have done better. I should have listened to Jessica, your wife, right? Everybody who listened to the podcast, no, who Jessica? is some of her lectures are like right on point. In fact, two years ago at the summit, when she's talking about the type of leader, my team is pointing at me like, that's you peacemaker, that's you. I'm hiding under the table, but I know it's true. So anyway, Mike, that's it. That was the turning point A and B. A was just long enough in the business to be mediocre or as we often say, right? Top of good, bottom of best, average, no good. Not good enough for me. And especially once I adopted the right mindset with my coaches and all that. So as long as, let's see, it's Miguel and Yesica. As long as they don't sell this company, man, I'm in. - Yeah, the only, the people from the summit, two years ago, we'll get that reference. - Right. - Stephen, how would you describe the culture of the firm today? - We're good. - Really good. You know, it has gone through a lot of change. We did a couple of things right. We started to fire people, which I couldn't have done that five years ago. It just wasn't in my, I'm a nice guy and I have this, let everybody do whatever they want. And you know, sometimes I was too busy to pay attention. Or not that way anymore. So we have cleaned house politely, nicely, you know, we're not mean. In fact, I should have fired a whole group of attorneys in November of last year, but I gave them not only the month of November, but in crisp fashion, I let everybody have the last two weeks of the year paid off from December 19 through the end of the year. Even though I knew I was gonna fire five people who were horribly underperforming, but I just felt like, what's the darn difference? So I gave them a little grace, but the culture's wonderful because in its reflection of how well we do in our community. We are there for people. We donate not just money, but time and effort. And also, newsflash, I'm in Toledo, Ohio, which is a very small market. It's a modest city. You know, it's not in a growth spurred of any kind. It hasn't had much of a renaissance, but there are great opportunities here. But I feel like we do the most with what we have here in our community. And you know, that's been a great thing. You know, I got a bunch of stories that are personal to me about the things we've done that, you know, that's not, nobody needs an extra dollars. But those things, other people will never experience. I hope they get the opportunity to you. I hope they get the opportunity to say to them, thank you for sponsoring this event. Thank you for being there for our family. To be honest, yesterday we got a thing where an autism scholarship was in my name for donations that we did for autism, for this little girl to get the special device. And I'm very emotional when I read that letter. I think to myself, wow, that beats a hot of some stupid settlement or fancy whatever. No question. I love that, I love that. What about, I know you said you have a lot of stories of some of the impact that you make. Please, I love for you to share some, like what are some of the stories you think back on that when you're having a challenging day or a challenging week, you look back on and say, hey, this is worth it. I need them sometimes, you know, I think we all do. I love when I listen to the podcast, the reality of how life is, it's not all perfect, you know, it must be nice. Yeah, work harder. It must be nice, work harder. So the reality is people only see that part of it. Again, that autism scholarship was very nice. We had a male person who's been on the job like 40 years. Nobody ever did anything for him. On his anniversary, he gave him a gift. He sent us a letter. On a regular basis, we get notes from people who say, you know, nobody's ever done something like that for us before. Nobody's ever even come to our organization and done anything. So that's a tribute to my team and our culture to throw that back because that is everybody pulling all their ores in the same direction. So we've listened to "Sai Wake" in a few times, read our books, assign it upon hiring. And when people actually read it, it works pretty well for us. What about, I guess, thinking more broadly about the vision for the firm? What was it when you started? How is that evolved to now? I just wanted to survive, you know? So I mean, I think I always felt that we could do well, that there were opportunities to be successful. You know, I lived in Los Angeles for a while and then I moved to Toledo, Ohio. And I've always said that, you know, you can be happy in a very average place and unhappy in a beautiful place. You have to decide what you want. So in some respects, my vision to come to Toledo was to the best I could be. But I wasn't ever going to get there because not only was it not going from good to great, I was just average because I wasn't managing, I wasn't taking it in a more professional and direct fashion. And the game changer book was great. So I read that and then I came to the, I've come to every single summit. I'm going to throw that in early. When you started with the coaching program, that was it for me. I was like, yes, that is exactly what I need. And all the other groups out there that do wonderful good work for their clients and all of them. I have nothing bad to say about them. But the rigor with crisp and the amount of read investment and resources for our lawyers is outstanding. So now my vision is, we're going to be the best firm we can be. When I sat at game changer last year, where a year ago before this one, I said to my team, we could be firm of the year. You know, little Toledo Ohio, modest budget. One man banned sometimes, couple of great admins. We could be firm of the year. So the vision for us is, I want to be the best I can be. That should be everybody's goal, right? You, I know when I first met you and you were urging everybody not to eat their cookie till the second day of the summit, you're not the same guy physically or mentally or even professionally than you are today. But you have always evolved to make yourself better. I think I haven't evolved to you shirt at home too. Well, I like that path, Michael. I really do. And so for me, that's the vision is the vision is, be the best person you can be and then bring everybody with you. I want to get into some specifics if we can, seven. Just in terms of what are some of the initiatives that you do internally at the firm, just in terms of things that are culture related or operations related that you believe are a competitive advantage for the firm. Sure. So in a very structured fashion, we have a monthly calendar of events that we plan a year in advance with input from everybody in the firm. So not only do we do internal events, we had a potato tasting thing and we had to find the ducks contests and good stuff that builds rapport and then we'll go out to dinners and we'll have events and then we sponsor things. We do a mudhens game where we invite a lot of our clients. We do the charity events. We support races. We support any kind of charitable opportunity. So on that culture side, I think everybody's engaged and they feel good about it because they know we're all doing good and that's at good vibe. And then internally, again, still developing in some respects because we've had such dramatic turnover, you know, any time you essentially fire five people in January, but we're already rolling. Can't say enough about the focus retreats which we engage in here. I love my monthly coach. I love my quarterly meetings. I love the Super Summit. But the focus retreat, absolute gold. First, second might be the podcast 'cause I really do like the podcast, but the focus retreat is great. So quarterly, we go through our list and we usually hit eight or nine of our 10 things. It's so gratifying. And if people don't know what the focus retreat is, again, it's a crisp opportunity to have somebody on site call you out, give you the tasks and make a specific set of goals. And then shame on you if you can't take care of business. So internally, I think we, you know, we're starting to have the regular meetings which we have been haphazard a little bit. I'm again, I'm the guy who's busy working on my business or not, I'm sorry, yeah, in my business and not enough on the business, but hey, one day at a time, one day at a time. And Stephen, I know you've described yourself in the past as like a peacekeeper by nature. And how has that served you at times? How have you evolved as a leader? Like, wait, it's talked to me about that. - I think you have to look yourself in the mirror and you can't fake it. I think I'm pretty authentic. I take some pride in that. I am who you're gonna see. I'm not a dope, you know, I know how to be an appropriate trial lawyer. I don't know how to negotiate with people. I do know how to work things. I'm not a guileless, but I do think that nice guys don't always finish last. But I've, you know, I've taken a lot of these lessons over the last two or three or four years now and added them into my repertoire. It just made me a stronger person. I fire people now. All of the questions, by the way, provided by Chris. Thank you so much. (laughing) So, you know, we're actually running much more of a business-like organization. Our trust account has always been on par, but now we actually have real numbers. And we were successful in spite of ourselves. We produced some big jumps in the last year. I was surprised, frankly, because again, when you're running a million miles an hour, you don't realize it, but now we're having regular reporting and a dashboard and all those internal structures. And that just makes our firm much better. - What about externally? Just, I'm curious for what do you believe the firm, your firm specifically does differently? What sets you apart from some of your competitors? - We are, always the first people to call people back. So Gary Falcoitz would be proud of us for returning calls on the dime and we're very accessible. Now that's a trade-off in life. If you say to your clients, which I do, here's my personal cell phone number, you can call me anytime. And I do get calls all the time. And I've traded some of my life essence I know and I'm sure lawyers have this dilemma. And I'm a quick start. So if somebody calls me at four o'clock in the afternoon I can take that call, I can handle it fast. It's in my nature. Not everybody works that way. The famous open door policy. Most people, that's a bad policy. 'Cause then people come into your office and I get that. But I'm okay with it. I know that there's some structural things. So I think the fact that we are very responsive to our clients and of course we're gonna have a Chris quarterly coming up to talk about the client experience. But I think we've always been very focused on that. So we send the swag and we follow up with the phone calls. And you'd be surprised how one nice phone call a month after a case is over, out of the blue just to say hello to somebody. It seems to me like that should be automatic. But when we go to Chris quarterly's, I learn things all the time on site that I didn't think of their magic. The shared experiences of all the lawyers. So I hope I give somebody at least one good idea today. That'd be my pleasure. - In your experience, Evan, because you're obviously around a lot of really successful firm owners. You're one yourself. Like what you need to, in your perspective, what separates the most successful firm owner from everybody else? - Much like Basque and Robbins, there's 31 flavors of people. So some of the folks in the room as an example when we all get together, a very quiet, they'll never say a thing and they are spectacular business people. But they're quiet, they're introverted. So you're not necessarily gonna hear from them. And then other people are more extroverted, more likely to talk, they wanna share such and such. I try to find a nice middle ground there myself. So that may surprise you based on today's discussion. So I do think though that it's probably the idea of focusing on processes and making sure that you are doing things in an orderly fashion. Because I was very haphazard for many years and you can get lucky, but we've had a whole seminar, I'm luck. The truth is luck is the residue of design, yes. And you need luck. I'm a lucky guy and I do count on that once in a while. I hope I get lucky. But the harder I work, I get luckier I get. So I don't know Michael, I don't know that there's a simple answer to it. It sounds like a great question for an MMA, what defines the better owners. And I think those people who are committed to the craft, committed to making themselves better and willing to learn, listen, and all that good stuff. What's next? What's on the horizon for you and the firm? Some great things. This year, in spite of, you know, really, what was, most people, I don't think could survive the kind of financial hit I took with family law. But again, since I don't need anything, really, everything I have, what's essential is invisible. That's what I need. The health of my grandchildren, my own health, my family, and of course my staff and friends. So we're doubled down on our success. We committed again to every program and more and better social work. But also, we've increased our budget with all of our vendors to increase our personal injury practice. Now that we've gotten rid of the family law focus on criminal defense, but personal injury were a sponsor of the world famous Toledo mudhens. Talk about it. So for people who don't know what that is. So, you know, Toledo Ohio was made famous a little bit, my max clinger on the TV show, MASH. He wore the mudhens jersey. And of course, that sort of led to a national understanding of Toledo and the mudhens. And Toledo mudhens have a fantastic minor league baseball park here. I invite you, Michael, and your whole family. And anyone who listens to this on August 7th to Grafton Associates Night at the Toledo mudhens, all you can eat ice cream on me. (laughing) But we sponsor the mudhens now. We're doing more advertising. And the only other answer honestly is to work hard. That is the answer. I didn't like to lose that money. I don't like to lose. And I'm gonna make myself better by learning from those mistakes. And we're gonna go hard this year to get that back. And then use it wisely and enjoy ourselves. - Steppen outside of the wall. I know we sort of led with this, but obviously, you're training, you've done marathons in the past, you've done the Spartan races. What are you up to now when you're not practicing law? - I'm a little more boring, a little more focused, I would say. I host a monthly cigar club for men and women. I do it at a local cigar place. And for me, it's unlike George Burns. The cigar is a little bit of a prop, but it's a social thing. Get people out, get to talk. I'm not a big drinker. I don't really drink much at all, but I always say travel is my gin and tonic. So I'm very fortunate. I'm a hell on wheels with points and miles and all that stuff. And I make a point of it. And I've even said this at closing at Chris Cordellies. I urge everybody to travel more. If you are overworked and you haven't taken a vacation in forever, and I've been there, so I understand it. But if you've got a modicum of success, get out, travel, see the world, nothing is ever guaranteed. So I'm a huge believer in travel. In fact, if I may humbly say, when you mentioned you had gone to a recent event that was based on a video game and the concert. - Yeah, it's a honor. - In your mention. And you mentioned all the places that they were around the world. I had been there. So I thought, okay, I'm doing all right then. And again, you know, we're only, you know, I only live once that my strongest message to everybody is live, travel, enjoy the life. Don't get so caught up in the mundane. It's important. And maybe I am a little bit too cavalier about it, but there's a balance. And you know there's gonna be people listening and they're gonna say, well, Stephen, easy for you to say, it must be nice, but I think it's a testament to everything we've just discussed prior in terms of how you've been able to grow and build the firm over these years that have enabled you to be able to do that travel. - Yeah, I love the must be nice speech. You nailed that. And for those people who weren't at a summit, but I mean, the reality is, of course, people only see the big things, the travel, the this, the that, the glory. They don't see underneath iceberg. They don't see the depths of despair and depression and the fight. If you're gonna run a business and run a law firm, you're gonna endure that. And how you choose to celebrate and enjoy the benefits of your success, that's your choice. You know what, Michael, you'll never meet a hater doing better than you, right? I love that quote. I love that quote. I use it all the time. People are, you know, they think, oh, you know, he's going to Vegas, he's going here, he's going there. Yeah, come, come take a look at what I've struggled through, what it took to survive, how I got here, the pain. I've probably had 20 people who have either stolen from me, embezzled, failed to work, failed to do things. And that's on me. I get it. I was too busy working in my business to manage those people. It's a cautionary tale. You really have to pay attention. And I've been guilty at times of not, you know, benign neglect. It's not a great policy when it comes to running a business. And Stefan, as we come to a close, this being the, the Game Changer Attorney podcast, what does being a game changer mean to you? I put some thought into this, Mike, I'm going to read you a quote if you don't mind. A game changer is someone who decides that normal is unacceptable, designs a different future on purpose and is willing to endure the pain to get there. Now, I love that quote because normal, I could have easily sat back, you know, and just not done anything different and cruise right through life. I could design a different future because I wanted something better for myself, my family, the people around me. And I'm willing to endure the pain, the pain of 515 6am or 5am wakeups, workout. I've worked out in 20 cities around the country, I mean around the world. Every day, I haven't missed a single day. Not one, no cheat days, every day, some form of very good exercise and whatnot. But I want you to know that, do you know where that quote comes from? Bell. Mogul AI. Ah, okay. Can I take credit for that, right? The AI set it. So I thought to myself, and I've used Mogul AI quite a bit and I want to thank you. I have a wonderful mattress because of Mogul AI. Oh, good. I have a very good AG1 creatine morning routine because of Mogul AI. Mogul AI has helped me with, of course, sleep has been great. And so being a game changer is all of that. Deciding you don't want to be normal, you're going to change your outcome, you're going to accept that it's going to be difficult and you're going to take those hardships. And then at the end of the day, it's going to be nice. It must be nice, it's going to be nice. Steven's story is about creating impact in his life, business, and community. Next up, we're joined by Michael Beckman and Kayla Grayson of Viles and Beckman, a Florida-based firm known for their trademarked five-star client experience. I began our conversation by asking Michael and Kayla about the origin of their firm. The origin story is Marcus and I. We started this firm. We started it with very similar goals of what we want to do as attorneys. We both enjoyed being creative, thinking outside the box and getting the most value we could for our clients. And we were growing OK, but we were missing direction. We were missing having unified team. we were really good attorneys. And the biggest thing we were missing was being more than just a firm, being a company to what we are now. We're now a brand, the five star brand where our main goal with every client is not just to be the great attorney that fights are, but to actually provide that exceptional service that's part of our core values, that's part of our vision, to make sure that each client, and this is what Mark is used to say before he passed, he wanted to always be the Ritz Carlton of law firms. And the service that we've put in is where we're at today. - Kale, what about you? Like how did you come into the firm? - Yeah. - And obviously you've grown throughout the firm now. - I have, actually, so I started with the firm 11 years ago, and I've kind of worked in almost every position throughout the firm. And so I have a unique experience of being able to see where we were when I started, which was from an employee's standpoint, you walk in, and I remember my first day, like I got walked to my desk and was like, here's your desk, here's your logins, good luck. (laughs) And to now we have a full onboarding program, we've got first day lunches, and the whole week is just culture and diving into our core values, and that sort of thing, and really getting them encompassed into the culture. I've seen the firm grow from a culture standpoint that way, but also from the client service standpoint. It's gone from everybody works their cases their own way to now we have system-as-highs case work and procedures, and that sort of thing. And it's been really fun because we've been able to grow it from what I loved about it back then was that everybody felt close, and it was a close in a team. And we've been able to capture that and keep that as we grow and even make it better. How would you guys describe, I guess, the original vision for the firm and how does it evolve since then, just over the last several years? - There was no original vision for the firm. There was no, you know, until we joined Chris, we actually had no vision. It was Michael and Marcus just trying to be really great trial lawyers, right? That was really our vision. We're actually on our second iteration of our vision. Our first iteration was kind of, we just put a vision together. And it wasn't completely us. We've actually tweaked it in about a past couple of years because we wanted to expand and make sure it was for all the communities we serve, but probably the most important part was exceptional service in making that a key part of our vision. So it won from, and it was, you know, is embarrassing how little, you know, like Kayla was explaining with she's, but she came to the firm, was like, here you go. I mean, there was literally no vision except, hey, do well for the clients, make money, or that was it. And now we have a nice, you know, strong vision that each one of our team members, you know, follow, you know, within, you know, and it's really grown our culture. - We'd be remiss if we didn't, we spent some time talking about Marcus, who I originally met when we first started working with Vowels and Beckman, and it, you know, in his passing in 2023, that's often a very, very challenging thing for firms, especially when you have a name partner that passes on, but it seems like you guys, you didn't just respond, but you responded so strong and so well to like honor his legacy and the firms continued to grow since. Kayla, can you talk about your experience during that time? I know you were working very closely with Marcus just for several years even prior to that. - Yeah, so before Marcus's passing, and before he got sick, really, he really started us in the Chris Journey and the Chris ecosystem. And it was funny because he used to always come back, like fired up from workshops. And I had no idea what he was talking about naturally. And it wasn't until we started getting me involved that I was like, oh, okay, now I get it. And so he really started us on that path. And then I have to give Michael a lot of credit because, you know, up until that point, it was Marcus and I really doing the business end of things. And Michael, you know, his passion was litigation and he was running our litigation department. And when Marcus got sick, Michael really had to come in and learn business and learn not business, but like marketing and finance and hiring and culture and all of that in a very short period of time. And so I give Michael a lot of credit because he, you know, where some people take years to learn it all, Michael just dove it in and learned it, you know, in two to three months and, you know, continued to learn over the course of time. And so we were able to take what Marcus started and his vision and that and really build on it into something that has now been, you know, Michael and I's vision and build off of that. It came through that at the five star law firm and our trademark there. And really everything that we've built around client experience and serving in the community and all of that really started from that turning point. Michael, what about on your end? I'm just curious as to what your experiences like during that time. And then as Caleb mentioned, I'm transitioning from like litigator to really more of a leader within the firm. Yeah, it was tough for me. He was a friend, you know, very much like a brother, you know, we were together, you know, for, for you know, almost 20 years. And, you know, he was an economics major. He had an economics degree and I, you know, my bachelor's was in theater, you know, it's, you know, it's kind of obvious which one is going to handle the business side in that type of scenario. He had a very brilliant creative mind as both an attorney and a business panel. Like Caleb would say, he would come back fired up and half of the stuff made sense, you know, and, you know, half of it. Another half did it because I, you know, I wasn't there, but you know, I trusted, you know, he was bringing back these ideas, you know, moving us forward in the direction, we, you know, the direction that we really needed to go. When he passed, you know, like Caleb said, it was, it was a big momentum shift for me to learn about marketing, you know, I, I didn't know the difference, you know, for instance, between a lead generator versus branding, you know, but the billboards, to me, it was just all different types of marketing. So there was, there was a lot to learn. We implemented some changes after Marcus is passing, you know, as we learned, as we developed such as, we didn't just have a pot of money. We actually, you know, allocated so much towards marketing, allocated so much toward owners, you know, allocated so much towards operations. We made it, you know, it was much more strategic when we started the bill. These were a lot of things, you know, Kaelin I together sat down together, learned from Chris and developed and we, you know, put a lot of time in it. I'm glad that Kayla's, you know, you know, given me some props here, but honestly, she is probably the most incredible CEO. I'm glad we're doing it too, because she has been the absolute support and brains, you know, behind your operations that has really helped, you know, working along with me to, you know, to get us to where we are now more of a brand than just a firm. - And Kayla, I want to dive into your background, just even in the Navy, like, are, were there any principles that you brought from, from your experience there to, you know, to the leadership that you do today? - Yeah, so many. I think that's why Bernie and I get along so well as, (laughs) he's really able to take, you know, those Navy leadership skills that they teach us and implement and kind of take it from like the military perspective over to the civilian perspective. But for me, it's all about leading people and coming alongside them and finding where their passion lies, because if they, you know, if they're able to trust their leader and know that they're gonna, and that you're gonna come alongside them and you're able to build that respect and they can see where they're going and where they're going as a company, they're gonna follow. So much of what I've learned in the Navy from leadership, I take over. And then also the other part of it is, you know, things like that we're talking about at the last Chris Burke shop was, you know, having contingencies in place. And looking at, you know, strategically planning how you're gonna roll out initiatives and how you're gonna train your team up so that they're in the military, they're ready to go to battle or they're ready to accomplish the mission and the civilian sector, it's really, how are we gonna accomplish this mission and how are we gonna deliver five-star experience to through it? And that to us is accomplishing the mission here. And so it really does parallel. It's funny because up until I got into the business side of things, you know, through Chris and that sort of thing, I never noticed, like you always know the Navy's core values of honor, courage and commitment, but I never really realized, oh wow, the Navy is set up as a business too. And so now I see all of the parallels and I've been able to really connect the dots and it helps me kind of set everything up and play on both sides. I've heard you guys mentioned, there's five-star client experience in like this. I believe you even trademarked it. You guys speak to what that is, what why it's important to you, like how it's essentially marketed within the firm. - The five-star experience we have, you know, to ensure that each client receives, you know, I'll give you a minor example of part of the five-star experiences. They must be called back. Now we're not talking about it in taking it when someone's a client, they must have a call back within 24 hours. The attorney and the case managers have to have a conference with a client within 24 to 48 hours of signing. So there's a lot of different things that we put into our operations, our processes to make sure that the clients have that absolute experience because we don't want them to just come to us. And every attorney out there says they can fight hard, they're gonna go on their take on the insurance companies. But when the client is with us, you know. We make sure that everything about them is made. All their needs are met. The empathy is there with our team. We have team training on empathy. We make sure that five-star experience that we make sure to provide that to the clients. How we were able to trademark it was kind of interesting 'cause there's a lot of law firms that tried to trademark it. We were able to obtain the trademark not because we were using it as an adjective, but because it was in our vision, in our mission, it was part of our core values, and we had a five-star client experience well before we even applied to the trademark office. For us, we're gonna client comes to us. We don't want them to walk away from our firm after everything's over and absolutely despise our firm or not even think about us. We want the client to always remember us to know that we did treat them like family. We did fight for them like family. And that whenever they had a question, they didn't have to wait two days for an attorney to get back to them. I hear of our stories when clients come into our office. And the one thing I wanted to be is, and I hate to say this, but not a doctor's office, where you go into that, you get there in the lobby and you have to wait a half an hour, then they put you in another room and you have to wait another half hour. I didn't want that for the clients. I wanted our client experience for multitude of reasons. I wanted it's the right thing to do. To when that client has that experience when you have that communication, you actually can represent the client better. You can understand them, you can understand their pain they're going through, you can understand the liability. There's so many factors that communication bridges that gap that also creates the value for the client. And later on when they want to refer somebody to you, are they going to refer an attorney they had that treated them like they were the Motel 6. And Motel 6 is a great brand, but it's different than we want to provide. Or do they want, you know, or they want to refer somebody to the law from that treated them like the Ritz Carlton or the Four Seasons would. So that experience is the cornerstone of what we do for every client every day. - Kale, anything you'd add to that? - Yeah, I would just say, you know, it's really based on the theory of unreasonable hospitality. And the fact that people, you know, will not always remember what you say, but they'll always remember of how you make them feel. And so that's what we've trained our team on is we want our clients to feel like they were family from the very first phone call. So from the very first time that they call our firm, they should be feeling that all the way through the end of the case. It's funny because I had a moment about a year ago and I was sitting there getting my car maintained at the dealership. And as I'm sitting in the lobby, I get a text message and I click on the link and it's a video of my mechanic walking me around my car and showing me the air filter and showing me this. And it was just an epiphany to me of, you know, if a car dealership can do this, if a mechanic can do this, surely we can do this in the law firm. And so that's kind of the challenge and that, you know, I brought back to the firm and I brought back to the leadership team and we always want to up our experience. We're not just competing with other law firms down the street. We're competing with the amazons of the world and we're competing with really everybody because you can order something, I can order something right now and have it on my doorstep in two hours and have a picture of it and that sort of thing. And that's the level of service that people expect nowadays. It's not just how the law firm down the street is going to treat them. It's how the expectations have risen. And so we're constantly challenging our team to think in that aspect of, you know, how can we better serve? What is that unreasonable hospitality next step that we can do to go above and beyond for our clients? - And I know you both have had seen the inner workings of some of the most successful firms in the country and the leaders behind them. And I'm just curious just from your experience, what do you believe separates top firms from the average ones? What do they do differently? What's, like what would you pin that to? - Me personally, yeah, it's great to see some of the top firms, you know, in the country and get to pick their brains. I would say the biggest thing that the top firms do is they run it like a company. They don't run it just like a law firm. They actually have everything they do, they do intentionally. Everything they do, it's for the company to make sure the company is stronger, the business is stronger. Not just to be good attorneys. Now being great attorneys is very important because you've got to go get the verdict. You have to win for your client. All that is important. A lot of attorneys can offer that, you know, they can offer being a good attorney. But I think that is one of the biggest separating factors is that they run it like a business. They run it like a company. The things that I have learned in, you know, some of the breakout groups in CrossFit had been invaluable. Every time I come to a workshop, just any of the conversations I've had, I'm always learning something new. I'm always learning how to be better. And you know, sometimes I reflect on, and I can't believe we, I can't believe some of the times we didn't go back to pick up tears ago the way we ran the firm. You know, you get a big case in and boom, you just end that money. There's no intention, there's no intentionality. Like you're gonna put like we do, you know, 25% behind marketing of every dollar that comes in. That separates, you know, companies, you know, versus companies that just, I'll pay, okay, wow, we got this big check in. Let's keep this much for ourselves. And you know, let's allocate this much, you know, a thousand dollars towards marketing. You know, having that plan, having a design, having a process and, you know, being intentional with everything you do, I think is probably the biggest separators. - I agree with Michael. I think definitely running it like a business is really important. The other factor to me is really what, what measure of success you, you know, when you're looking at success, for me, the ones that I'm most inspired about are the ones that run it like a business, but also, you know, invest in their people and you can see their people like really, really are invested in the brand and the mission that they're doing and, you know, there's so many law firms in Chris that I've been so inspired because I grew up in the legal industry kind of in my career of seeing, you know, just basically billing hours and this and they work you to death and that sort of thing. And I've been so inspired by the firms in Chris because they really do care. They care about the clients. They care about course the business, but they also care about their team and building their team up and really creating a mission that their team can get around. And I think that that really is inspirational and is really like the next wave of the legal, you know, market and the legal field coming up is it's really cool to see people investing in like culture and client experience. Of course, working the case is really important, but like those other aspects are also just as important. - I want to come back to you guys and I'm curious just from over the last several years, like just some of the challenges you've overcome, Michael, I'll start with you. Like what do you know now that you wish you knew then? - That putting the client first is probably the most power amount to, you know, success. Had a pretty big case and wound up going to another law firm and I was working the case extremely hard. Like I was putting time in it, putting effort into it, but the communication between my firm and the client where, you know, between Valsbeck and the client was zero. It was lacking and would they can't see, they don't know what's going on, you know, they can't see it. Now we have a system where any time of phase on their case changes, this where we have currently, they get an automatic update that sent to them from the file. We send surveys out the constantly, you know, how's your team perform, what's that? So we're actually making sure that the client has that communication because lost that case, you know, you're talking sort of a millions of dollars. That realization of just with the client, if the client doesn't know what you're doing, if the client doesn't know your case is being worked on then as far as they're concerned, you're not doing the thing. And there's somebody else out there who's advertising on TV or that they're receiving emails from, that's basically telling them, you know, we can fight for you, we can fight for you. And they hear that, they don't see you fighting for them because they're not hearing from you. That was very instrumental in, you know, changing the way I was thinking on how I would handle cases from there and out in communication. - Okay, well, what about, you know, in your case, what do you know now that you wish you knew then, just based on the obstacles you guys have overcome and the challenges you've solved? - I think for me, you don't have to be afraid to break them old, you know, like, when I first started it was, well, what are other law firms doing? And what is, what should we do and be doing? And when we really let go of that and then like, well, what do we want this law firm to be? And what is our vision? And stepping outside of like the legal box, so to speak, of what everybody does and really opening up that creativity and seeing that blank canvas is really when it's like, it hit for me of like, we can create this into anything that we want. And that, to me, was a big turning point for us and in the business side of things. We can create our own vision. We can create our own mission and we can do things differently than every other firm out there. And that really was when it like it really like lit the fire for me. What would you guys say is the biggest challenge today? Biggest challenge today is as you grow, keeping it all together, making sure that you have the right leaders in place as you grow, you keep your culture as you grow. You don't lose that culture, you know, you know, you know, when you expand to different locations, making sure that those new locations are operating correctly into the culture that you put the right leader into that spot to run that location. Because if you start opening another location, expanding in growth is not going to work if that foundation starts to crumble, that foundation that allowed you to become a brand to start that building to give that five-star experience. If that starts to crumble, you know, you're no longer going to get those five-star Google reviews. You know, one thing I'm always proud of is we just don't get, you know, the one line, go to attorney, great attorney. People on their own Michael and I absolutely love going through our reviews and sometimes looking at them, we get almost like war and peace novels with, you know, with some of our reviews. And if we don't keep the leadership, the culture aligned as we grow, all that's going to crumble. What about looking ahead, Kale? I'm curious to your perspective, just in terms of AI and what's coming next, what is what is the future look like for Vosembeppen? It's interesting. We've had the conversation so many times down because again, like I said, we're not just competing with law firms. We're, you know, we're looking at potential non-atranny ownership coming in and, you know, bigger pockets of money, that sort of thing coming into the legal industry. And so for us, you know, it's being on the leading edge of technology and, you know, and it's empowering our team to not be afraid of AI, but to lean into it. And for me, it's, you know, how can we take away that mundane task and those being the mundane task that take a lot of time that nobody likes to do? And then really take that time and pour into more client experience or more strategy so that we can better wing cases and better serve our clients. And so my biggest thing is, yes, we're utilizing AI in many different areas. And that allows us to serve our clients better because we're not spending so much time on that Monday and stuff. And so we're doing a lot of focus groups right now on the freeing question of if I take away X number of hours from you this week by utilizing AI, how are you going to better serve the client or how are you going to be more strategic in the case? And so really getting our team to think in that way is really exciting and that's where we're going. Michael, what about you? Does anything keep you up at night? Lots of things, you know, keep me up at night. But probably, you know, making sure that everything is aligned. I'm always afraid of attorneys derailing that. And, you know, if you get a few bad apples in there trying to break down the culture. So there's lots of things that keep me awake at night. The Arizona Supreme Court, you know, allowing non-attorneys to own law firms keeps me awake at night because I've thought about the different ways how even though it's in Arizona, how they can infiltrate Florida with no problem just because they're in Arizona. It doesn't mean they can't take those cases, you know, from Florida. So it's scary, you know, and technology allows them to do that. But then again, you know, I love technology. I think it's one of the things where our firm leads. It was a big part of our vision day. It was a promise we made to our team that we will always keep on top of change shift whenever needed to make sure that whatever technology's out there is available for them so they can always make sure that they do the absolute top shelf job for the clients. So technology on some hands, you know, you know, concerns me. And then on in other ways, it really excites me. And I know it's the big part of our growth. And guys, as we come to a close, this being the game changer attorney podcast, what does being a game changer mean to you? And Michael, I'll start with you and then and then Kale, you can close us out. Yeah, being a game changer to me, you know, it's kind of like it's funny when I was a terrible businessman, but a good attorney. I was a game changer as a attorney. I was on $10,000 insurance policies. I was turning those into, you know, you know, multi million, you know, cases to be a game changer. It's to when you see you keep up with what's going on. If you see a shift, you just don't go, you know, what, I'm going to just keep running into a while. I'm going to just keep going straight ahead. Game changing to me means you actually change. If there's a law firm that's opening up, you know, that's not attorney owned and Arizona. How do you ship what you're doing to make sure that in two years, five years from now that they're not your competition, they're competition for other firms, but they're not your competition. Thinking outside the box, not just from an attorney standpoint, but from a, from a company standpoint. And I think by being an art firm, being game changers is one of the reasons why we won the client experience award at crisp. And you know, as we're talking a little bit about in the podcast, there are incredible firms, especially in the Chris Beck's program that, you know, had that culture to win that was huge for us. And being a game changing, you know, law firm prior, there's no way we could have run that, but we did it just keep going straight. We made sure that when we saw problems, we shifted and we shifted in the right way and we did it intentionally. And we did it with a lot of collaboration between Kayla and myself. And to me, that's what game changing is. Being ready to change it every moment, no matter what's going on. I agree with Michael. I mean, for me, a game changer is somebody who sees obstacles and turns them into opportunities. And, you know, we've we've done that in many different ways. We've seen our fair share of obstacles and they're not going to stop just as in life, you know, you, you see an obstacle and it's, it's going to help you grow and it's going to help you be better. And so a game changer is somebody that sees that and embraces it and even leans into it. Vows and Beckman is designed to deliver next level client experience, but our next guest applies a different kind of rigorous process to his work. Next up, we're joined by Craig Greening, founder of the Greening Law Group in Texas. Craig has differentiated his criminal defense practice by applying his background in science and engineering to gain a decisive advantage in the courtroom. I began our conversation by asking Craig about what marketing moves he's made to stand out from the competition. A lot of these lawyers get on TikTok and they dance and get naked and and do all those kind of things and I just didn't want to be that guy. I wanted to build a brand of somebody you can trust. Somebody that's going to help you. Stale of trouble. I think that that's the best thing you can do as a lawyer is say, hey, you know, I don't want to have to represent you one day, but I will if I have to. And so what we did was these pop up lawyer videos to kind of build our brand. We did the Chris videos too, but you know, those are those are big brand producers, but just something to set us apart. So we got together with y'all and did some pop up lawyer videos and it was more of like, I brought my son into the mix. He's a he's an actor in Atlanta, a real IMDB actor. And we got him in the videos as kind of the person that's about to commit a crime. And then I would pop up out of nowhere and say, hey, don't do that. Here's the law and keep about a trouble. So it's really been, we've got a lot of traction on him. I think one of them got, you know, million views or something. We wouldn't fire off a couple of them, but it's really, I think the feedback from everybody has been that, you know, thank you for kind of informing us kind of a PSA type thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to go back a little bit to the Craig Greening origin story. We always going to pursue law, become an attorney, start your own practice. Like it was there a bit of like entrepreneurial like that type of behavior when you were a kid. Yeah. I remember in high school, I went to kind of a a CD high school. A lot of bad things going on. And I remember some of my friends getting in trouble. And I was really good friends with our vice principal, the school. And so I would negotiate punishment for them and things like that back then. Didn't really know why I was doing it. I just wanted to have friends and some of those people were working in trouble quite a bit. I think the real roots though, why I wanted to be a criminal defenciler when I was young is when I was 16 years old. I'll never forget this. I was 16. Walson Road, San Antonio. I'm driving with two of my African American friends. We got a couple of girls in the car. And we got felony stopped by a police officer guns guns taken out made us get on the ground handcuffed us. And the police officer says to me in private. He says, what are you doing with those? And he uses the N word. I'll never forget that. That was it was defining. And that's really, I think where my criminal offense career started was then because that was that was the moment that I understood what power looked like when it's pointed at people who can't fight for themselves. And I knew I wanted to be the person that who could stand up and get in the way of that. That was life changing for me. And that's not the only time that kind of thing happened in San Antonio. With those same friends. And let me let me preface that by saying those two guys now that were with me. One is a was a is a retired colonel in the Air Force. And the other one's got the number one radio show in Atlanta. These are guys that were on a path to be successful just like me. me. I was on a path to be successful, but we got treated that way. And that's that's really what started my career. Yeah. So, so then what was the emphasis behind starting your own practice? Right? I mean, there's one thing to say, Hey, I want to stand up for those who've been wrong. You can go work it off from what led to you starting your own firm for starting your firm. It's it's being in control of your life, being in control of your vision, being in control of the motto that you want to live by. And I've worked as a as a prosecutor. I worked for another firm. And first off, being a prosecutor, I felt like I was just punishing people, not helping people. So that's that's one of the reasons why I left that position. But I was with another firm as an associate and a partner. And it just didn't have the same vision that I wanted. I wanted to help people. I wanted to to be out there at the forefront and change people's lives. The motto came into effect of winning where it matters in the courtroom and in life. And when I talk to clients, I talk about the life part more than the courtroom part. I'm curious to think, Craig, with your background, we've you got a batch of like mechanical engineering and like you're also like a forensic lawyer scientist. Why take that, I guess that path met approach? Well, how is it a competitive advantage for you? It's definitely a competitive advantage. If you think about, you know, when I'm in the courtroom, I think about this case I had, I had a 0.23 blood test case. My client was in an accident. It was on St. Patrick's Day. And most lawyers would have pled that case out. And I'll never forget there was a forensic scientist with DPS. He was considered the best in the state. And I started going through some of the data. And because I was trained on it, because I have actually tested blood tests or blood blood case, I've actually tested alcohol and blood myself in the lab. And I knew where things could go wrong. And I realized that none of the instruments that he had was calibrated. And it what the defining moment was when I was in the courtroom and I looked into his eyes and he knew I knew more than him. He knew I knew more than him. He knew I had him. And he started sweating. And he realized that he had screwed up the entire test. And we're talking about 0.23 blood test. That would be the equivalent of having 20 beers for some people. And an accident. He knew I had him, but he still would lie. He's still a lot of understand. He's still try to cover it up. And the jury found my client not guilty in 15 minutes. And he was gone the next week. That's what you have to have if you want the defense that you need. A lot of lawyers get into criminal defense. They don't have the expertise. So be a forensic, a lawyer scientist. And having a mechanical engineering background. Those are the kind of things that give you the advantage in the courtroom because I have that scientific knowledge. So it's just, but the great thing about it was you got to be a lawyer that knows the questions to ask. And so I think that a lot of lawyers get into the DWI field or the in talks man's slaughter fields or drug drug cases and don't have the knowledge to be able to ask the right questions. I'm sure you've got a lot of war stories. I'm wondering if there's a specific case that you look back on that perhaps was a challenging case that for you was something that built a lot of confidence for you. And then I'm curious if there was a case that you were confident that you were going to win, but didn't go your way. That happens every day. I think the case that I'm most proud of was I had a January six case and it was controversial. And I'm a political. I don't get into that game. I'm here to defend my client. And I had a client that he had a little brother with him who was 15 years old and they thought it was cool to go to the rally and then go down to the Capitol because that's everybody said to do. And then they get trapped. And the only way out was to go through the Senate parliamentarian door and then go through the hallway and then get out that way because the police were tear gas and a pepper spray and them and that kind of stuff. And they arrest my client. I never forget this call. The FBI called me and it said we want to arrest your client today. Can you turn him in and Houston? And I said, yeah, I'll bring him down there. And he was scared, of course, but we got it. We got him out of jail. May many trips to Washington DC for the case. But what I'm most proud of is that we fought that case so hard and so long that the judge didn't want to try the case. I think she thought we had a good chance of winning. And she postponed it to February 2026. Well, we all know what happened. That case got dismissed in January. And I'm proud of that because I really think my client didn't do anything wrong. He didn't attend. It wasn't when these people that went all the way into the house area or the speakers area. I'm just proud of that client. I get more proud about my clients than anything else because he had the courage to say, I'm going to fight this. I'm going to move forward instead of taking the plea deal that they were offering. What about on the other side? Just something that you were so confident yet such a strong case didn't go your way. Like what happened there? And you said, I mean, it happens to the best trial lawyers, but just just just what you learned. Yeah, those are the heartbreaking cases. And when you think that that you're going to win, I had a police officer that I represented that was just over the legal limon on DWI. And in with my scientific background and all the things that I know, I say, this is a point one zero. I'm going to win this case because there's no way that the jury is going to convict this guy based on that result, the basic way he looked on the video. But I made the fatal mistake. I'm not realizing that my client was kind of a jerk to the police officer on the video. And I forgot about that. And I'll never make that mistake again. But I remember going back to see a jury after they found him guilty and he lost his career that they said he had to have been intoxicated. Why would a police officer talk to another police officer like that? And so that was heartbreaking because what I try to focus on when I represent somebody is keeping their future, their dreams intact, their career intact, their family, their way of living, the way the support their family. And that was one case where he lost everything and he had to start over. And so it was very disappointing. But I learned a lot from that too at the same time. How do you move on from cases like that? I imagine it weighs on you. I mean, it's difficult, but obviously you have to, are there any strategies you've employed to be able to carry on? Honestly, it's the next client. You just move on to the next client and you get a win. That win cheers you up and gets you back on the path because you know what you're there for. You know you're there. You're on this path to make people's lives better, to win in the courtroom and in life, life especially. And so the next win gets you there. And you don't ever forget those losses though. They always haunt you, but the wins keep you going. So I want to talk a bit about the firm. You found the firm in 2010 college station. What made that a very unique value proposition in the sense that I imagine that the majority of your clients at the time were college students, right? Texas A&M students. Yeah, being in college stations in unique place is funny because when I came here, I'm a UT log graduate. So a lot of my friends gave me a hard time about coming to college station and we got 100,000 college students here. We have Texas A&M University, Blin college. We have the Relis campus, which is, which is a more of a technical type campus, but 100,000 people here. And what makes it unique is I have a son. He went to college and he, you know, when you have somebody off at college, the thing you worry about the most is that 2 AM call, right? I've been arrested. And that brings you to the most anxiety. And so when you have, you know, basically kids, the young adults that are down here and there's not a ton to do in college station. I mean, we don't have the things you have, like on a land on New York places like that. I went to college in Boston where we had a ton of things to do. And so they go out and party and they make mistakes because they're young. But the reason why I came here is because I, because I knew I could help people, but also at the same time, it is a good community for clients. I mean, I get, I get 30,000 new clients every year that come into town, possible clients, people that could be possible clients. There's no other place like that. And obviously, from a business person's perspective, you're in a place where your kid gets in trouble. You're going to pay to try to make it right. And so the parents, the parents definitely are very involved with the cases. When you get that first call at 7 a.m. after they've been arrested to a, you have to put them at ease. I mean, you have to say, look, I understand where you're coming from. This is probably one of the worst moments of your life, especially your son's life or your daughter's life. But it's going to be okay. We're going to make this right. And we're going to try to keep that feature intact. Could you share an example of just, you know, where you help the student get a second chance? I mean, I'm sure this happens now very often for you, but any particular case that stands out. Yeah, I had a student about five, six years ago that this one really stands out to me. He was charged. He was a bartender trying to work his way through college. And he got arrested for serving alcohol to a minor, which is a very serious offense. The Texas class A and misdemeanor comes with license suspensions and things like that. And I remember getting the call from his parents in the morning. And I sure don't we would do everything we could to get him on the right path. Because he wanted to be a firefighter, EMS guy. He had a career path and he was about to start that in the next three to four months. So we started looking into it. We got our investigator out there. And kind of find out we go into the bar and they have surveillance videos. So we grab all the surveillance video. And we realized that a TABC agent, which in Texas is called Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. And they police alcohol violations. And we watched the video and it was actually my client looking at the young 17 year old girl on the sting saying, you're not 21. You can't have a drink. Well, she looks around and says, Hey, that's my dad over there. And you can see or do that on video. And then he hands the beard of the dad and the dad hands the beard of the girl, which in Texas, a dad can give a daughter an alcoholic beverage. There's an exception there. Well, they immediately arrest him after that. So we found, so I got the police officer on the stand, the agent, and he lied. The minor lied. I'll never forget that moment because it was the moment where I knew everything was gonna change in the state of Texas. And I was on national TV for that. I was on every newspaper front page. It was a defining moment. And while I was so defining, was my client got his like bat. And even more so, we made a policy change. Now every TABCA agent has to have a body cam whenever they do any criminal sting. And I haven't had a TABC case where a client's violated that provision since I tried that case because I just don't think they do it anymore. I think they're done prosecuting or done policing those cases. Did you see a kind of a, an us versus them type of situation between you and the police or do you find there's times where you can work collaboratively? Like what's the dynamic like? - Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of police officers come to me for advice. I have a friend that's an ATF officer now down in Houston and sometimes he'll come to me and ask me questions. For me, I want the community to be safe like anybody else. And I have a lot of friends that are police officers. We go out and get a drink together or we'll hang out. I always tell police officers, I'm gonna always be nice to you. I'm always gonna be respectful. I'm just doing my job. It's the moment that you lie or try to cheat. That's when I become the Craig Greening you don't want to see. So I know we talked about just being in college station, like the fact that there's so many, I mean, like you just said, new clients every single year. But I think as a March of 2020, something interesting happened, right? So all the kids get sent home. It's the pandemic, like what was going through your mind then? Like how do the firm, how were you able to pivot and adjust? 'Cause that could have been scary times. - You know how scary that was back then. I remember that was the decision that when I made to start scaling my firm and start growing as a lawyer. I had been in practice for, I had my own law firm for 10 years and my revenue was the same for all 10 years. And I remember signing up with Crispin October of 2019 and invested all this money. I invested all this money in marketing, doing the coaching. And I'll never forget, when March 2020 happened, I panicked. I panicked. Like everybody else did. We all panicked. He had his way going home from school, the bars aren't open, the courts are closed. And then you remember we had this talk. It was April 2020. And we had just like this, we're on video back and forth. What changed my life, and I'm not just trying to kiss your butt 'cause I'm on the show. But what really changed my life was when you told me, don't be scared. This is the moment where leaders rise up. You got to double your marketing. I get off the call with you. I go to my wife, I says, we're doubling marketing. She goes, well, why would you do that? We don't have any money. I said, we gotta do it. We gotta do it. Michael said to do it. Who's Michael? (laughs) And we did it. And we almost doubled our revenue in 2020. Almost doubled it. And it was game changing because we were able to get these ads cheaper and get six times, 10 times the value that we would have gotten that kind of value pre-COVID. So, all of it is, and since that time, I guess what are some of the other investments you've made in the firm since 2020 have you scaled over the last few years? I mean, hiring. Hiring's been important. I've stumbled on hiring though. I made some, I used to hire by a gut by feeling resume, those kind of things. Just until recently, honestly, I finally got the hiring down. And so we started having a funnel to go through. We used to think called CRISPR Crute, which has been wonderful. We've got Tammy now. We've got Kimberly, our intake specialist. Tammy's my executive assistant. I mean, just great hires. Hiring the wrong people is the most stressful thing as an entrepreneur. I've had more sleepless nights over hiring and losing people and having to fire people than anything else. So if there's anything that I've learned over the last seven years is that hiring is the most important thing, getting the right talent. And in you know, in crippled offense, it's different. We've got to have lawyers with empathy. I need lawyers. I don't need A-players. I need warriors. People that come in and know that these clients have encountered the worst moment of their life. And they can't be scared. They got to get up there and fight, but they also got to have the empathy too. So I always add this motto of, we hire people that are warriors with empathy. And that's changed everything. Talk to me through, I guess, a hiring or a team member that was a bit of a horror story. You have to say who they were, but just one of the lessons learned and how you've applied that to future hires. You know, I had a director of operations that her resume looked great, but she knew everything to say in it. You know, I'm EOS, I'm this, I'm that. And then it, and she played the game for a while, but because I didn't put her through all the systems and the funnel and the Colby and the print, and I didn't do all the right things, I just fell in love with the resume. I really did. And I was desperate to hire somebody. I was desperate because I needed somebody to take all these items off my plate. And it just ended up being the worst thing ever because we hired several people underneath her that I ended up having to fire after I fired her. And almost every single one of those people are gone. I think there's one left and actually I hired that person. So everybody that she hired has gone now. You scale up, you get to this point, you got all these employees, and then you got a fire them all. And that's the worst possible scenario. And so I've really been patient with hiring and just making sure I got the right person. Don't just don't rush the judgment on that kind of thing. What about the converse? Like what's been a hiring success story? Some of you that you've hired that's been just an absolute godsend for the firm. Oh my, my EA right now, she's a killer. I was on my way to this podcast. And she gave me mint, water. She gave me a one-pager that things I needed to remember to talk about. I mean, she's a killer, man. She's been great. And I'll give a shout out to her, Dave's Tammy. She's just been wonderful and I'm about a success story. I mean, every day she proves herself. I love it, man. I love it. How would you describe the culture of the firm today? The culture of the firm got great in 2020, 21. Fell apart for a while, but the culture is great now. Because you know, what I do these scorecards, so I'm about to do, after this podcast, I'm about to go do my Q1, one-on-ones. And I had this huge scorecard where there's actually a number associated with it where you get so many points for meeting the core values. So each core value, I do one through five. Five means great. One means you're really bad on the core values. So I'd go through that and then I go through what you're expected, what your KPIs are, and things like that. And I come up with a score at the end. And then we talk about it. How can we get better? That just makes the culture so much better because they know what I expect. I think a lot of leaders kind of run from the things that they don't want to talk about. And the one-on-ones, I just have a candid conversation about what I expect and what you expect. And you could say anything you want in this one-on-one and nobody's going to know about it. It's between me and you, but at least you can give me the hard love too and say, hey, I wish you would do this or I wish you would do that. And I'm good with that. And I think that makes you a better leader. Craig, what would you say since the inception of the firm to now, how have you evolved as a leader? If you were looking back at the Craig Greening that started the practice, how are you different today? I think I used to think that if I'm the best lawyer in the firm that everybody's just going to say, oh, Craig's the greatest and let me do what he does and let me just follow him. It's more than that. When you own a firm, you've got to, first of all, you'll leave by example. You've got to do the things that you want other people to do. But at the same time, you've got to expect with you inspect. So you can't just hide from things. A lot of leaders hide from problems and don't hit them head on. One thing I've learned over the years, I used to hide from them. I was just like, oh, well, that'll get better. If I don't set the standard now of what I expect, then people just run over you because they don't know what the standard is. They're not going to try to meet it. And if they don't want to meet the standard, then they can just leave. And I think one thing I've learned in addition to that is high or slow, fire fast. I never used to fire people fast enough. And nobody wants to fire anybody. But if you leave people around and they fester, the culture gets so bad. And so the fact that I got rid of all those people from the ops director, because they were just creating-- the culture was just getting horrible. It was over time. It just-- I couldn't even want to come to office. And so I got rid of all those people. And I built this new culture of people that know what to expect when they come to office, know what I expect when they come to office. I train them. I make sure that they're fully trained. And if they cause problems, if they don't meet the core values that I've set, then they just go. And we get rid of them fast. And that keeps that culture intact. Because if you have one person in there that is destroying your culture, everybody else is going to come in and destroy the culture at the same time. So it's just like an avalanche. What's next? What's next for the firm? What do you look forward to? Is there anything that keeps you up at night? So we just signed a lease on a San Marcus office. So if you don't know where San Marcus Texas is, it's in between Austin and San Antonio. It's the third largest college in Texas. And so what we just realized is we do a really good job of college students in college station Texas. And so we were like, what's another place we could go to to grow this similar? And Texas State is in San Marcus. So that's our next venture. We'll be open that office June 1st, trying to hire an attorney right now for that. So now we'll have offices, college station, a wake-o, and San Marcus. So we're very excited about that, but I'm spending a lot of time on this keeping you up tonight. I know you've shared that your mission is winning where it matters in the courtroom and in life. What does that mean to you? Like how do you define success? - I've got a client that lives in my neighborhood now that I represented 15 years ago, I believe. Yeah, I was about 15 years ago. And he was selling drugs in college. And luckily enough, I got him out of it. We want an issue, a motion of suppress and the case got dismissed. And I'll never forget when he moved in my neighborhood 10 years later. He said, look, I want to thank you for this house that I got. So why are you thinking me? You did the work the last 10 years to get this house. And he said, well, I wouldn't have this house if it wasn't for you. And that's what it's all about. And that's why we talk about the winning in life. We got to set our clients up for future success. And that can be drug treatment. It can be life coaches. It can be counseling. It can be anything. And I have to have those hard conversations with my clients. Hey, you're addicted to drugs. We got to get you off of it. You're an alcoholic. We got to get you off of the alcohol. We have those discussions. Like let's get healthy. Let's try to have a good future. While my college student kids, their parents are enablers. They've enabled them. So their whole life, they told them to the best. And they can't do anything wrong. And then they do something wrong. The parents don't know how to handle it. And so a lot of times I have to come in there. And you call lawyers counselors when we are counselors. And I have to counsel them and help them. And sometimes that means let's go place golf together. Let's have a conversation. That's where I really like representing college students. Because sometimes I can help them. Because they didn't have the guidance. I can help them get on the right path. What's the typical day in the life look like now? Even outside of the practice of law. I'm working out now. I've lost 25 pounds. Thanks to you inspired me actually, because you gave this little talk to us. It really inspired me to get my health back on track. But I get up at the 25 a.m. Get a little light there. P get the get. You know, I'm not going bald anymore. Because I got the red light going on the head. I get up. I work out. I got a longevity trainer in Austin. It kind of does all this longevity training with me and the supplements and things like that. But just get my diet right. And I feel so much better. I have a lot more energy. And the suits are fitting now. The suit didn't fit me six months ago. So just decided about that. Because you can become a better leader, a better lawyer, a better entrepreneur if you're healthy and you have the energy. And my days used to just fade off about noon. Now seven o'clock's about the time I start trying to widen. Well, Craig, as we come to a close, this being the game changing attorney podcast, what does being a game changer mean to you? I think being a game changer is trying to have an impact on people as a criminal defense lawyer, having an impact on people that it's going to last forever. Just like I said, I told that story about the guy that said, I got the house because of you. I'm living in the neighborhood with you because of you. I think that those are the things that as a criminal defense lawyer are game changing and just living by the motto of being a warrior with empathy. If you can be a warrior with empathy, as a criminal defense lawyer, you're going to change the world. Craig's story is a master class in standing your ground. And our final guest is focused on the next frontier. To close out this episode, we're joined by Jamie Oliver, founder of Oliver Law Office in Columbus, Ohio. Jamie has successfully scaled her boutique law firm by leading into cutting a J.I. and standardized systems to ensure that quality remains at the core of her firm's growth. I began our conversation by asking Jamie what was harder, starting her firm or scaling it. I went out on my own. I would say 25, 26 years ago, so it's been a long time. And I was always of the mindset that smaller is better. I had just sort of resigned myself to being a solo attorney, keep your overhead low kind of thing. And I did that for a long time. I did it pretty well. And then during COVID, I think maybe one or two part time employees I was trying to keep employed. And I thought, I can't keep going like this. This is ridiculous. Like what's happening to the world? Either stay small, Jamie. Make as much money as you can, sack it away, and then retire, or build something that will last to sort of like that, the idea of contemplating your life during COVID. I think that happened to me and to my firm. And so that's sort of when I started this SBA program, small business administration, got a master's in business. And it was shortly after that that I joined Cresp. And sort of continued the things that I learned during that program because I was like amazed at what I didn't know as a lawyer. And then the business part of running a law firm became almost as interesting to me as being a trial lawyer. And so now we've grown quadrupled, maybe probably more than quadrupled in the last four years. So that's sort of the long-winded story of how I got here. What would you describe? Like if you were talking about the culture of the firm, how would you describe that? I would say the culture of the firm right now is one of support, supporting each other all sort of being on the same page, working towards the same goal, which is, I can't always say it was always like that, but I really feel that now. I'm curious, it's just in the, over the last several years, what have been some of the biggest challenges that you've experienced and how did you overcome them? Just really kind of how have you evolved as a leader? Yeah, I would say to get down to the nitty gritty of it, HR. (laughs) As people, like working with people, everybody's got a different personality. Every, I mean, you hear this all the time. Different strengths, people learn differently. You've heard people say, you hire for personality, you can teach skills, hire for personality. What I found is I had to sort of balance all of that figure out a formula that worked for me and for my firm. And for me, it was, I've got to find the people that are bought into what we're doing. And as soon as I could find those people, then I secondarily looked for the skills, but HR has been the biggest challenge for us, finding really good, as Chris would call them A-players, right? That's been the biggest challenge. You're not alone in that. I'm curious, what do you look for? Just for your firm specifically, what constitutes an A-player for you? - An A-player to us right now is somebody who wants to jump in and learn and wants to jump in and help other people. And that's really hard to screen for, you know, because some people have it down, like they know what to say during an interview process. It's almost innate, if you will, it's either have it or you don't have it. The people that want to win, right? As opposed to always being right, we don't need you to be right. We want you to want to win and be part of a winning team really hard to find. - What does the hiring process look like right now? - The hiring process, it takes about six months to get hired. And that's up from a day. (laughs) You know, I used to just say, I need somebody in this position, whoever applies gets the position. But now it's like this complicated hiring funnel. Sometimes we'll use, you know, an outside resource to do that. But if we're doing it in house, like we literally have an Excel spreadsheet and a funnel. And I have people that are helping me basically to get an interview with me, you've got to be all the way through this funnel. Like everybody else has to have screened you. And that's working finally, I would say finally for us. - Now some people hearing that, they would argue and they'd say, well, that's why it's so difficult for you to hire Jamie because it takes, it's so difficult to get a role in your firm, right? What would you say to that? I mean, I'm just curious as to your perspective. Like you said, it used to be a day. - Yeah, yeah. The problem with it being a day is that it was hit or missed. And most of the time it was missed. And it cost so much money to onboard and train somebody and then let them go or have them quit. It's not worth it. I would rather hire very intentionally and have them be an amazing fit and stay with me for years. And then they bring in other employees and we're seeing that happen right now. I just had somebody start the other day who worked with one of my current paralelials and she so far is amazing. So yeah, I would argue that if you're just gonna plot people down in seats, you're gonna get what you ask for. - I think it's also something you do really well just in terms of really positioning the firm and how you differentiate yourself from other firms in Ohio, like other litigation firms. Like you could speak to that just kind of like what's the unique value proposition of the firm? What do you do differently from other firms? - I get this question all the time. And I feel like sometimes my answer changed this a little bit. But I think what it obviously personal injury is very competitive. So we struggle with that, especially here in Columbus, but I think everywhere. I think what differentiates us is our ability to maintain the quality, it's sort of like quality control and we do that with our SOPs and all of our procedures and operating manuals and things so that everybody's doing things the same way. And everybody has the same sort of goal in mind, which is the client experience and the client satisfaction. We want 100% Google reviews. We want 100% five star Google reviews every time a client leaves the office. And so if we can maintain across all employees, whether it's five or 10 or 20 or 50, if everybody can maintain that same standard of practice and business, the level of business we're offering are customers, then we can scale and we can still get those five star reviews. And then they start accumulating, right? As they start accumulating, then your rankings, your SEO and all that continues to rise. So I would say that sort of our value proposition is our ability to have standard operating procedures so that we're all offering the same amazing level of service to our clients. - And it sounds like the growth rate things have been growing year over year from last year was a great year. Thank you. projecting to grow beyond that, at least by 50% this year, from a case acquisition standpoint, if you could speak to like, what are some of the things you're doing on the marketing front? The marketing is constant challenge, obviously, because of the competition in the personal injury. We're sort of refocusing now on run full death cases, which is, you know, something I love and have been doing for a long time. And having so much experience, you know, my personal life with losing people in tragedy and that sort of thing, I know how to handle run full death case and I know how to communicate with families. And so I think we're really good at that. So we're starting to rebrand or refocus towards wrongful death. It's a challenge because it's still competitive. But it's it's almost like an immersive process. I mean, it's intentional. So I don't mean to say I'm throwing money at every possible advertising avenue, right? Because you get bombarded with that. But very intentional making sure your website's up to date, making sure all your pages are here. Make sure you have the best SEO people. And it's a challenge finding really good SEO companies, right? Because they're not all they're not all the same. So of them don't even know how to do a service industry. I think for 2026, 2027, 2028 for the years coming up, we're really going to focus on the wrongful death. And we're really going to focus on finding the best SEO and they call it a you now. I don't know what the formal term is for AI searches, but I had this conversation with our marketing folks the other day. And I said, listen, this is what I want. I want you to focus on AI. And they're kind of staring at me blindly in the zoom screen like, oh, AI again, do we have to talk about this? Yeah, we have to talk about this. Half of my clients are searching AI now. So I need to be ranked. Actually, on that note, if you could share like what are some of the ways in which you are leveraging AI in the firm? I know you're big on, like you mentioned, like on the operation side, but what are some of the AI use cases that you've been using internally? We have an internal software program that's a closed system that we use for anything from drafting interrogatories to answering interrogatories to reviewing medical records, reviewing medical bills. I mean, even our medical records, people like literally use the system to search for things that are missing. So we no longer have to sit for hours and scour medical records to find out if there's a radiology bill missing or an MRI treatment missing. So we use a system right now called Eve legal. Not I mean, I'm not promoting them at all. I'm not a paid promoter for them. We're looking at adding anytime AI right now. And honestly, if you're not using it, I was telling somebody this yesterday, if you're not using it, you're going to go out of business. You're not going to make it right now. Our demand letters go out in 24 hours. Who can say that? I mean, it takes an hour now to write a demand package using one of these closed systems and they're accurate. Everyone's afraid. They're not accurate, but it's what you put in is what you get out. So if you're not prompting it, right, you're going to get crap out. But we were constantly like bringing in speakers and trying to bring in trainers and doing our Thursday lunch and learns and to try to help our employees and our team members learn how to prompt and learn how to use AI without being afraid of it. And you seem pretty bought in. Was that was that always the case? Is it relates to AI and like, where do you see the stuff going? No, I really wasn't always bought in. It was a slow progression. Once I realized I talked to the team members who were using, because I don't write the demands anymore, right? That's not where my time spent. But when I started looking at them and they were all uniform, I mean, they all looked like I want them to look. So I started talking to the folks that do that and they're like, oh, yeah, that took me an hour or that took me 20 minutes. And then I got into it and I was like, holy cow, interrogatories are coming out in 20 minutes with my objections in them. So it was a slow progression because I got to tell you, I get emails from my clients now that say, hey, I want to tell you how to negotiate because Claude tells me my case is worth x, y and z. And so you need to do this in this. And that's a whole nother ball wax. I mean, that's a whole nother conversation. And so I still have my concerns about AI. And I still watch people getting trouble for, you know, using a system that hallucinates a case, right? You see lawyers getting trouble for that still still not just one. It's multiple lawyers. But this system that we use is closed. And we do not use it to cite case law. So I know we talked a little bit about some the marketing, but one of the big pieces I know that's very important to you and you've done a lot is is on the community side. What does community outreach look like for you and what are some of the things you're doing now? Community outreach is really, really important to us to me personally. And I think my team would agree with that. We do, we still do purple stride every year, which is that pancreatic cancer reaction that we're there. And you'll fundraising walk. I lost my mom lost my uncle, lost my sister just a few years ago. And is we still do that every year? The entire team shows up. It's 100% involvement. I expect it will be coming up here in April again. The other thing we like to do is we have a quarterly, we call it all hands, but we have, we have a monthly all hands, but every quarter we talk about charity and community involvement. I was like, I showed up at a Westerville Public Library a few months ago and did a talk after everybody read a book, right? And we talked about how does the book compare to real practice of law, trial law, judges, courts. So it's those kind of things that we try to encourage people to do, but we're open to all ideas. I mean, we're talking about backpacks for kids. We're talking about working with traumatic brain injuries. We're talking about working on support for people who've lost loved ones and crashes and it's constantly developing. But our focus is making sure that we're given back because we don't exist. We don't exist without the community, without Columbus. And it's really important that we get back to them. Otherwise, I don't, you know, I'm at the age where I don't understand what my purpose is unless I'm giving back. From your experience and you won an excellent and community impact award at the Game Changers Summit. So you obviously know a thing or two about community impact. What mistakes do you feel some firms make when they're trying to give back, right? Like, where do they go wrong? It's not having people bought in. If nobody's interested, nobody understands what the mission is. They're not going to buy in. Everybody's busy, right? Why would you want to go to a walk on a Saturday afternoon? What does it mean to me? There has to be a conversation about that. It's just like having people bought into KPIs or SOPs. You can't just expect people to drop their lives and want to jump on board to your to your charity of choice, right? I get the same thing. I get requests all the time. If I want to help everybody, but I can't help everybody. So the things that mean something to me or the things you're going to get a response from me on. And I do the same with my team. I'm like, this is probably the last time we're going to do a purple-strived walk because I want the team to pick something that they are invested in, not just Jamie, the boss, right? What are you all invested in? So I think that's the biggest thing, Michael, is getting the team invested, which means giving them a say. I agree. I know a lot of firms, they focus on community impact because the aim is, you know, they'd say, well, it's a good thing to have, right? And ultimately, I want to be able to get cases from it, right? From active in the community and we were good. From a business standpoint, how have you seen cases come as a result of the community events that you've done in it? And if so, like what was kind of the timeframe over which that happened? Right. Well, and I say this to the lawyers that work in the firm, networking is networking. Networking is long, it's a long-term play. It's not going to happen overnight. It's 10, 20, 30 years of building relationships. So you have to just keep getting out there. Of course, the folks that I walk with at Purple Stride and Race Money with, of course, they're going to refer cases to me because I've been doing it for so long and they know me and they know what I do. I just think it's really important that folks understand that it's not, the goal is not to get the case from the networking experience. The goal is to build a relationship. And if the case comes, it comes. If it doesn't, it doesn't, but you build a relationship. I think that's really important. Today in the firm, what would you say is like the biggest challenge going forward? I mean, I know you mentioned just obviously people, but anything else, any barrier to growth? Keeping on top of the technology, it's constant. I mean, I've got causes after you and I've got cause tomorrow interviewing tech companies and apps trying to figure out what I need to add. That's a big, big challenge, but it's also financial. I think cases have become incredibly expensive in our business. Anything that's plaintiff related, probably on the other side also, but experts are expensive. Just the cost of running the business keeps going up and up and up. The normal thing, salary is health insurance, but technology, the expensive technology and experts. So I think making sure the budgets are in forecasting are correct, which requires data and the data requires time and technology. So I think I just keep going back to technology is making sure you've got the best of the best and you can get the data and keep your income ahead of your expenses. I think it's interesting. You're describing just having all these conversations with various tech companies and just AI enablement taking place at the firm, I would argue that most law firms are not spending their time that way. And I know it's caused new a bit of paranoia, but from your perspective, those that aren't paying attention to this stuff, what would you say to them? - Well, it's two parts of me. The competitive Jamie's like, continue to ignore it, you're okay. I'll figure cases when you don't have any left. I care about people, I care about my colleagues, and I would say you start somewhere, start small, start with an affordable AI software that will at least do your demand letters for you. At least review your medical records and write your demands. That will cut your paralegal time in half, maybe more than half. And if you're not doing that, people like me are gonna do it, and we're just gonna keep, we're gonna be able to take more and more cases. I'm not really a volume type firm. I'm more of a smaller boutique, we're very selective, but with technology, I can take more cases. And we're texting our clients into our software every single day, all day long. I can touch 100 clients a day. My paralegal can touch 100. In the old days, we couldn't do that. - How would you describe it? I guess day in the life for you today versus maybe even five years ago? Like what's changed? - I would say five years ago, I would have been wasting my time calling back clients, playing phone tag with clients, talking through property damage issues, interviewing potential clients, looking at potential cases. Our intake system is so streamlined that I don't even know what's happening over there most of the time. But when I spot check it, it's all happening, right? Hundreds of leads a month, hundreds. I only see the ones that qualify, and I see them after they're signed up. So I would say I spent a lot of time doing what my intake folks are doing, and what my paralegals are doing right now. And now I get to run the business. And I still get to try cases. - Which side do you enjoy more? - Honestly, I like the business. I do like running the business because I think I've spent 30 years trying cases and got pretty good at it. And not that I don't have some big ones in me 'cause I know I do. I've got a couple, but learning this business stuff, it's just reminding me how much I love to learn and how much I still have to learn. - I love that. What about outside of the firm? How was life changed, right? Just in terms of family, like basically when you started the firm today? - Well, I will tell you last year, 2025, I took more vacations with my two adult kids than our family has ever taken in all the years that I was raising those girls. So we took a vacation a quarter last year. That has never happened. And in fact, there were years where we didn't take a vacation at all. No spring break. Part of it sports and things were the kids, but I couldn't get away. It was me answering the phone. My clients had my personal cell phone. When I think about that, now it blows my mind. - Well, we're the biggest things, and just for somebody listening, let's say they're in that, you know, before scenario. Like what are the biggest shifts that they can make to kind of move to where you are today? - Yeah, I would update my software. (laughs) If you update your software, no one has to have your personal cell again. Ever again. And that will free you up evenings and weekends. Trust me, you'll still get the messages. You can still respond to, you know, a big case. No one wants to miss the big case. You'll still see it or a client that you know could go off the rails if you don't respond. But for the most part, most of that stuff you get that interrupts your personal life, you don't need to think about it till Monday. - And looking ahead, 'cause I want to kind of come back to present day and really look to the future. Like what gets you excited? Is there anything that scares you? I mean, what is the future of the firm look like? - Everything's scary and exciting all at the same time. (laughs) Sometimes I feel like my personality is split. Sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm you to worry about this. But then the other part of me is like, "Jane, my gosh, look at your success journal. Look at all the things you've done in the last five years. You are on a course. There's no destination, right? I'm never gonna get to the point where I am where I want to be. I'm just gonna keep moving the goalpost because that's my personality. But I think the thing that excites me the most is adding the team members that make it fun to go to work, that just make you feel like you're successful, make you feel like your firm is the best of the best, right? You are then, you built this. Like you and these people came to work at this firm because out of respect for you and what you've built and they want to take it over. I don't want to work in this forever. I want to retire someday. I want to rate books. I want to educate. I want to speak. I'm gonna do all those fun things everyone talks about. And I need to have that team ready to take over and they know it. So I slowly start handing responsibilities off to folks that I know can handle it. Like let's learn how to do a closing statement. Let's learn how to disperse, right? Or let's learn how to handle vendors, our operations folks. I don't need to talk to every vendor. Let's teach you how to do that. So a lot of my time right now is spent teaching but it's also like my biggest excitement for the future is I saw today my operations person had a call I didn't even know about with a potential vendor. I had no knowledge of it and it made me so happy. You know, because that's only gonna snowball and eventually I'll be able to step back and you know, and sort of pass the reins. Jamie, I'm curious, how do you define success? I knew you mentioned it a few times. I'm just curious, what does that mean to you? That's hard to define. I would say success is happiness. If I can be happy relatively happy day to day, nobody's happy all the time, but I can look at my life and where I am right, like if I died today, NACOM would, right? I would be happy because I'm happy with what I've done and the effort I've put into everything and the way I've treated people. So I think it comes down to happiness. Happiness to me is success, regardless of what happens to this business. - And then as we come to a close, this being the game changing attorney podcast or what does being a game changer mean to you? - Being a game changer to me means learning as much as you can learn, implementing it and then sitting back and watching the results. - I wanna give a huge thank you to Stephen, Kayla, Michael, Craig and Jamie for taking the time to join us on this episode of the Game Changing Attorney Podcast. (upbeat music) 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 gamechangingatourney.com. Number two, you can shoot me a text at 404-531-7691 and I'll answer any question that you've got for me. And finally, number three, if you can lead 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 in your podcast app or visit legalpodcast.com. (upbeat music)