Welcome to the Level Up Your Business Podcast! Owning a business is a challenge. Knowing how to keep innovating in your business is an even bigger one. Join restaurant owner, motivational speaker, and innovation expert Sara Frasca this week as she guides attorneys on how to level up their businesses. If you've ever pondered hiring a business coach but want a sample first, come along for the adventure!
Send us a message to join the show for free business guidance: https://pointnortheast.com/contact-us/
Transcript:
You're listening to level up your business, the podcast where we talk to hardworking business owners and leaders and help them solve real issues in real time. I'm your host, Sarah Frasca restaurant owner, keynote speaker and business coach. I've spent my career not only in corporate America, but also as an entrepreneur, carrying on my family's legacy through my restaurant. Now a business coach and consultant. I'm helping other businesses to use creative problem solving and innovative thinking to drive lasting change. Stay tuned to hear some inspiring guidance that will help you to level up your business. Yeah. Oh, it's a gorgeous location. It's so amazing. Well, good morning, John. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. You and I are both in West Palm Beach today and in a little bit of different locations, but together on the podcast. So welcome to the level up your business podcast. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, looking forward to the interview and the next couple of days. Me to truly, and it's a little bit warmer for you tell, tell us tell all the listeners kind of where you hail from. You know, I I'm from upstate New York, it's very cold, there's lots of snow, it's freezing. So this is a great sort of escape for for me, and really great. We're here as part of the mastermind. You're here as part of a mastermind. And we're really looking forward to the next day and a half. It's great. Well, thanks for coming all the way from the North Country. You probably remember, I'm from Minnesota, so I can commiserate with all of the kind of January winter temps. Happy to be here in the sunshine. So thanks again for the invite. Well, I wanted to have you on today. I mean, you have such a unique kind of stance in the industry, you've done so many amazing things. But first, will you go backwards a little bit just to kind of explain to folks where you've come from? Why did you decide to become an attorney? Why did you build this career in this path? And tell us a little about that? Well, Mark Twain once said that there's the two most important days of your life are the day you're born. And the day you find out the reason that you were born the purpose of your life, basically. And this goes back to when I was just a lawyer. I was I didn't really know what to do. And a young 30 year old black male came into my office, he had sustained a traumatic brain injury in a bus wreck. No lawyer wanted his case, there's a multitude of reasons for it. I said, fine. I don't know anything about personal injury law, but I'll try to, I'll try to help you out. I started getting into it. And I would say within just a matter of days, if not less than that. I realized this is what I was meant to do with the rest of my life. I absolutely loved it. And my wife would be like, you're so obsessed with this stuff. You know, every time we go to a park, you're reading and you're studying. And it's like, yeah, exactly that this is what I love doing. I love representing I have a passion for the rights of the disabled. It's not about money for me, and it never has been. And so really, that is the purpose of our firm. And so about 11 years ago, I was invited to my first mastermind, no lawyers, it was at Infusionsoft in Chandler, Arizona, and the chief executives of Infusionsoft had this meeting with business owners from all around the world. And I have to tell you, Sarah, my mind was just I just couldn't believe the things that I was exposed to business owners from South Africa, from Australia, from United Kingdom everywhere, who are sharing their story and helping me run my small law firm in upstate New York. And I thought, this is the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. So two and a half days of that, I come back to New York, and my wife says, I'm so excited. I'm telling her all about it. And my wife says slow down. How much did this cost? Me? Like, it doesn't matter? And so she said, No, no, no, how much? I told her $10,000. And she goes, Are you kidding me? We could have had a vacation for that amount of money. We could have done all this stuff. I said doesn't matter. Those were the three best days of my professional life. So Sarah, what I did is I started looking around and at a lawyer masterminds and they existed back then in 2013. I didn't like what I saw, like it was so expensive, like $25,000 a year and all this other stuff. And I just kind of felt like what if we built a mastermind that wasn't based on money or profit, and we did it solely for the view of sort of leveraging the wisdom of others, maybe making a little bit of money. When I turned out Sarah, none of those things actually worked out because I do leverage the wisdom of other people. That's really important. We lose money on every mastermind so that I'm a terrible businessman. What I found out Sarah was that watching younger attorneys thrive in their law firms has got his what his made this worthwhile. And just recently, lawyer posted a video on social media that he was just he broke away from his law firm. He's starting his own firm. He's got like 10 clients. And he thanked our our mastermind for helping make this happen. That is the reason why we do this when Ryan McCain has $100 million verdict last about a year ago. That's why we do this to help. Michael Smith, your partner, he was at a Chicago mastermind looks at us with us in 2017. And Ryan Mateen, who's a lawyer from Connecticut went to that mastermind. And he said that Michael Smith changed the way that he thought about the practice of law, he's no longer thinking of it as a lawyer, he's thinking as a business person. And that, that gave him sort of the business foundation, to the sort of the the inspiration to develop a business rather than just a law firm. And be and he needed that business. Because if you're spending 200, or$300,000, on a single case, you better have a good foundation, or you're going to be honest. And so that led to his success, and he attributes that to Michael Smith, your partner, and Michael has just been invaluable. I mean, it's we he and I met by accident, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Wow, I need to actually that's so funny to hear you say that Michael has been just a key to my life as well. I mean, I think that's why we do what we do is to help people and to give them, you know, better chance of success, not only in their business, but also in their life. You know, John, I just I have always been appreciative of the effort that you put in to help others. And I would say, you know, I think of it as kind of an investment, right? I mean, the money you put in, and don't always get back is kind of an investment in the futures of others, you know, and hopefully, you glean some insight as well. But I just want to thank you, honestly, on behalf of the people who care, I mean, Michael, and I care about people getting the life they deserve. I mean, it's like, so many business owners, it's like a one way street, right? Like, I'm giving all this money and all this energy, and all this time and all this passion, and nothing comes back. I mean, what a what a disaster, it should yield the benefit that people want. And the law industry, I think, has really yielded a lot of benefit from you helping people to run it like a business. Well, thank you for saying that. But I can tell you, I've had so many conversations over the years with Michael Smith. I've never gotten a bill for any of that. I mean, he just helps me. And he says, Hey, I don't know the person for you, but I can advise you. So we're in a mastermind in Chicago. This is probably about seven or eight years ago, and I get a call during the meeting at a mastermind. And it's from one of my friends who's a lawyer in upstate New York, and he said, I've got a problem, my partner and I, it looks like we might break up. It's going to be a total mess. Do you know anyone who can help me? I said, I've got no idea. So I walk into the next room. And there's Harland Schillinger. there and I said, Harland. Do you know anyone who can help with a partnership issues like this? He goes, I know the perfect person, Michael Smith. So I just took the information I gave it to my friend didn't hear anything for six months. And then six months later, my friend said, John, I have to tell you, Michael Smith was the best thing that could have happened. He met with us he flew into New York, he went over everything. We couldn't resolve it, but we did. We broke apart but we're still friends. We work everything out all the details. And what a resource that is for anybody to have someone like you or Michael. And I tell you, Sarah, I hear from Craig Goldfarb all the time. We like Sarah Frasca. It's amazing. And she has laid sort of the core EOS principles for our firm and, you know, and he attributes a lot of his success to his work with you. And so I think really, the whole concept of the mastermind is to be around people who are higher achievers than you are. Ideally you would be the I wouldn't be the dumbest person in the room surrounded by much brighter people were willing to do anything to guide you not only on the day of the mastermind, but after the mastermind, because I think no one's taught business foundations fundamentals, no one we're not taught any of that stuff. But we're expected to know it. None of us really do know that. Focusing on the business fundamentals is so critical and that's marketing and managing a law firm. and leveraging the knowledge of people who've already done it, who've made all the mistakes. That's the best advice I could have for a young or old attorney. Yeah, it's funny, you talked a little bit about your passion. And I would say one of my personal passions, is teaching business owners and business leaders how to, you know, kind of upset the applecart, how to think differently, how to find new ways of navigating either servicing their clients or serving their team or, you know, breaking into the industry in a new way. I call it positive disruption. And so my next question, I'm just kind of curious, are you still doing what you did in Arizona all those years ago? Like, are you looking at other industries? Are you looking to find and glean insight from other places all the time, all the time? I wasn't really reading other businesses like Amazon and Jeff Bezos, when Jeff Bezos started Amazon, people didn't even know what the internet was. I mean, that was just a crazy concept. Here's a guy who had a high paying investment job in New York City, his future was bright, he was married, everything looked great. He was like, I think they're around 30 years old. And people were like, wait a minute, you're gonna move to Seattle, Washington, you don't know anyone there. And you know why he moved to Seattle, Washington, that do you know that he moved there? Because back at that time, if you you didn't have to charge sales tax or collect sales tax, if you didn't have an office, or a physical location in the state where you're selling goods? So Washington's a small city, figured if I'm in a small state, I'm not going to have to collect sales tax on anything that I sell outside of the state of Washington. That's why he moved there. Wow. Yeah. You know, it was really a thing is, and but but you know, it was really a crazy idea, but he didn't. And that's what we think, in the mastermind, to inspire people to do things that are outside their comfort zone, things that are crazy, our law firm changed our name, from my name to the New York injury and malpractice law firm PC. And just yesterday, I was thinking, we wanted to expand our practice to medical malpractice outside of New York State. Because we currently do that I practice in Alabama and a few other states. And so I think maybe we should change that make a firm that's called America's medical malpractice, law firm PC, most people Sarah would laugh at that and say, well, that's ridiculous, why not just Joe Smith PC, I don't like the idea of using my name, I would much rather brand it and use that not just for the Internet purposes. But also, because it's an asset that at the end of my career, I could sell something that has my name, I just don't view that the same that it would be an asset that I could sell. Because if I'm not there, it doesn't have that much value. So the idea is to take myself outside the business as much as I can. But Sarah, one of the thing that Craig Goldfarb taught me a long time ago, and it's a valuable lesson is that not everyone's meant to be a CEO. Not everyone wants to be a CEO. And that's perfectly okay. You have what you want to do with your life. And for me, if you told me, I couldn't go to do trials, I couldn't do client meetings, I couldn't do depositions. And I just had to sit in an office and look at graphs and charts all day, I would be I quit. That's, I'm done with that. I don't want to do that. So you're different like that. He wants to be the classic CEO. And I'm more somewhere in between, because I like I like handling cases, stuff like that. So I'm not gonna give that up. And you know, grace is one of the few people I've met who says, that's totally fine. You don't have to be like me. I really appreciate that. Because each one of us has our own unique skills. And in Strategic Coach, we call this your unique ability. And unique ability means what do you do that you're passionate about that you do better than anything else, because most of us spend 5% of our day in our unique ability, we're doing all the other stuff that we hate. The goal is to basically take what we hate, delegate it out, and focus an 80 to 85% of our day, doing the stuff that we are uniquely skilled at doing. And everyone has that there's things that each worker has that if they really thought about it, they do better than anyone else in the world. And that's where you need to spend your time. Yeah. Well, what you described is kind of back to the beginning where I said it, it better be a two way street, right? You're spending your life this precious, precious, fleeting moment of time that we get as humans and if you're not having benefits, and I I don't pretend to know what everybody's you know, that desired benefits are it could be, they want balance. They want money they want, you know, security. I mean for everyone, it's different. When you can find that sweet spot when you can find a business that gives back to you. And you can be in that 85% moment where you're doing the thing that your heart beats for, right? You're passionate. I mean, it's like this whole new energy, come with excitement and exuberance, and you're ready to go when you're thinking and you're, it's, it's, it's a shame that people don't recognize how few of us are not having that on a daily basis. I mean, you think about the energy drain in just the corporate world, just business. I mean, it's so sad that someone would be slogging it through every day, I mean, find, as a business owner, find the purpose that you have, find the things that make you happy and are making you challenged and excited. And again, for some folks, that is coming up with ideas, networking in their community, being the CEO of their business. But for some of us, it's being an artist, that I mean, I love serving. So having direct contact with the people that I'm serving is very, very much in my interest. And I know it is for you as well. So I love all that. And you know, so I really think is as important as business fundamentals are and knowing your numbers, which are critical. I agree with all of that. I also think it's a very shallow life, if all we're focused on is, is how much money do we make? That's a really shallow existence. So that the purpose of our law firm, and it took a while to come to this is really simple stopping medical injustice. I spent three days figuring that out with our team. And I just kept saying, why do we do this? Why do we do that? And, and it boiled down to one simple thing, stopping medical injustice, it's not make as much money as possible. Because I don't think that inspires anyone, and anyone on your team, if they seem to think that they're solely working to make as much money for your law firm as possible. They're not too inspired. But if they know that we are serving a purpose, a higher purpose than simply making money. I can tell you, Sarah, I never one of the Forte, we only have four core values of our law firm. One of them is we never agree to confidential settlements. And some people will say to me, that's not a core value. I'm like, well, it is for us. And I can tell you, it's amazing. Because in the world of medical malpractice, I'm not aware of any other law firm that that has that value, they all agree to confidential settlements we never do, including now. And they'll say to us, that's I'll go to a client, I went to see an Orthodox Jewish woman in Brooklyn once and she and I talked, she was interviewing law firms, I spent about an hour in her living room. And then finally I said to her, I just want you to know, if you hire us, we never agree to confidential settlements, because our job is not simply to compensate you, but to improve the quality of medical care for others in the future. And if we agree to confidentiality, that's not going to happen. And holy cow, like she and I had not connected at all. And she goes, Wow, that's exactly how I feel about it as well. So she hired us, in fact, her case is going to mediation in February. The reality is, the core values. And this is something I learned, they don't only guide the conduct of your team, but you can use them. It's almost like a marketing tool. They hear your values. And if they are value driven people, they will be inspired by your values. And it's a really cool thing that you think, Oh, this is only good for our team. But no, it's much more broader than that. It can actually be promotional. How many law firms, you know, in medical malpractice that never agree to confidential settlements, other than our law firm. I don't know of any in the country. I Yeah. Anyway, I think working on the purpose, values and mission of our law firm has been central to what we do, the mission of our firm is to have 1000 referring attorneys by October 19 of 2026. We currently have 599. And we're working at it every day. And when we get a new one, we strike the gong and we keep moving. So you know that? Like that? Yeah. Yes. Oh, John, that's great. And again, I, I really commend you for having crystallized your values. And your mission, it it will almost act like a magnet, right? Drawing in people that have the same values that believe in the same things. And it's not to say that those that don't agree or don't believe in it, or bad by any stretch, but everybody gets to kind of come up with their own story and their own values. But it will, you know, really, really crystallized and make this such a uniquely wonderful place for your people to serve people who appreciate I mean, it's like, in the five languages of love, it's like you've figured out what your clients need to be loved and your people, you know it Like you've figured out the formula. Well, you know what, Bill Biggs, we hear the word culture thrown around all the time. And I kind of feel like, well, it's so nebulous. What does that mean. And Bill Biggs defined it really well, which is, it's basically having a core a set of beliefs where everyone is aligned around the same beliefs, and then our firm. If you don't have a passion for the rights of the disabled, you're not going to work out at our firm, it's the bottom line, I don't care how skilled you are. But if you are passionate about the rights of the disabled, that you can get through hard days, you can accomplish anything. And when we were starting out our firm, this is now 11 years ago, the first couple of years were hard. We lost money the first year, the second year, we were basically just breaking even. And people were like, Hey, do you think that will make it and I said, if it takes every last penny I have, we're gonna make it. I'm committed, I hope you're with me, because we're going all the way on this thing. They need to know from the leaders how committed you are to your beliefs. And I say there is no plan B on our law firm, there's no no escape option or anything like that. We're going I'm going all in. And if we lose the next three cases, we're just going to keep going. Your team needs to hear that they need inspiration, I believe Jeff Bezos does this an annual letter to the shareholders. But Sarah, you know what's really cool about that letter, it's not just reciting revenue, and here's what we're doing blah, blah, blah, he uses his as an opportunity to inspire and motivate the, I think, a half a million employees that he now has, that's what he uses it for, because he doesn't really care what the numbers of Amazon are, they want to be inspired around, thinking long term, being frugal acting like it's day one, being creative, coming up with ideas, and he inspires all of his team members to think that way. Because everyone's got to do it can't just be the head of the organization. So I really, you know, I've never invested in Amazon, but I do take inspiration from from the way they conduct the business. So a really cool thing in this mastermind, Sarah, is the homework was that each, each member of our mastermind in Florida has to come up with their annual letter to the shareholders, what you achieved last year, and what you hope to achieve those crazy dreams for the upcoming year. And I can't tell you how amazed I am by these, there's 20 of them, I share them with you, just by what not only what people have accomplished, but just the big like one of the I think I can share this one of them didn't focus on his law firm at all. He said, I want each team member to share their dreams, what their goals are for the upcoming year. And that is such a cool thing to focus not on you and your revenue. But on each individual team member. It's great. It's really lovely. And, you know, I think a good leader in my opinion, will recognize that not all of the ideas has to come from them or from the top. But if they can empower the whole pyramid of people to think to act like owners to have that passion drive what they do, I mean, financially increase the chances of success and the champions of finding positive disruption, finding new ways. And, and I love the idea that you're actually asking the members of the mastermind to distill it, it's, you know, it's easy sometimes to pretend that you have it or or to even come up with it in the moment. But when you have the homework, to distill it to be succinct to be, you know, actually able to communicate it clearly. I think that was an amazing exercise for you to have the team go through. And I was also really impressed with a lot of the the balance of the human side of the business. Well, you know what I tell every mastermind, don't, don't come here with your achievements. Don't come here with your BS. Come here with your problems, your challenges, let us help you because it doesn't matter that people are impressed by what you've achieved. Let us let us work on helping you. And we had in in a Maui mastermind, John Morgan of Morgan and Morgan came, spoke with us for about two hours, and was so honest and candid about the issues and challenges that his firm faced. And we're all sitting there like, wait a minute, he's got 900 lawyers. This is like the plaintiff's firm in the country. And here he is sharing like all of his issues and problems. We didn't know that he had the same problems that we do, but but we all do share the same problems. And I think ultimately, and I fall back to this all the time, Bill big says it the best. You have to love, love your team, but demand excellence. And I think that it's really important. So when we work with people, not just that they're highly skilled, they come to work, they're honest, but we like working with them, that we love working with them, but also we need to demand excellence. So if we see things that are not being done correctly, we can't just let that slide because then we're accepting mediocrity, we have to be brutally candid with them and say, hey, you know, there's a problem here. This is not what why did this happen? And demand excellence. And I've had people come to me and say, We want to continue working here. We'd love it here. No, we love the whole team. And I'm so sorry, that the work has not been up to our standards, we have to part ways in a very compassionate way. We i i don't see enough of in our industry, we have to be compassionate and loving with everyone we work with. Yeah, no, that's great. Well, okay, tell me a little about the future, John. I mean, where are you headed? Next? What are your aspirations? I mean, maybe even share a little bit about your own shareholder? Letter? What what's coming up? Yeah, well, this was a year like we are a small law firm. We have an incredible team, we have five people, and I'll share some little inside football with you. Our firm is almost entirely Jehovah's Witnesses. There are we have a five person intake team, we've got to we've got a phenomenal litigation paralegal in Knoxville, Tennessee, we have people like all over the place, basically working for our firm, amazing people who I love. They're just great people. But here's the problem in New York State Medical Malpractice, we basically have done a great job with that. But it's because of limitations on legal fees in New York state. For med mal. It's very limited. Some of our cases are just 10%. So our goal over the next three years, is to expand to non medical malpractice, catastrophic injury including truck wrecks, train wrecks, I just handled, worked with a firm in Virginia and a truck wreck worked out great. But the reality is, we want to expand our practice. So this year, I gave myself the greatest gift maybe I've ever given myself, which is a full time integrator for our firm, that chief operating officer who has an experience of 20 years as a principal at a large public high school. And the guy has phenomenal organizational skills. And basically, Sara, the whole goal of this is get all the stuff that I've been talking about and just get it done. I don't want a year from now, I don't want to be talking about this stuff anymore. I just want it done. We're expanding to New York City, I've been talking about that for years, I just need to get it done, I need to get it off my plate. So we hired it's a big expense. But we hired the integrator, he starts on March 4, and I'm really looking forward, it's a gift I need to just make. And because I am working on cases, it's hard to get all this other stuff done. But that is something that I'm really looking at in the next we've set our goals on a three year timeframe. So we are looking at three years having generating more than 50% of our revenue on non medical malpractice, which is essentially construction accidents. That's great. And I'm glad that you saw that, again, I'll use the term investment because you're investing in the future by bringing on someone that can help you get things done. And the cost or the you know, even the onboarding takes a lot of time to bring someone new in. But that investment, I think, you know, can not only kind of help you grow, but hopefully it helps you get some time back so that you can do the things that you are the best at you can work on that 85%. Right, exactly. It really is. A really good book this year that I read is called buyback, your time by Dan Martell. And it's basically about looking at the different things that you do throughout the course of the day and thinking are those things that you really love you're passionate about. And if not, you should be delegating them. And you've got to be ruthless in delegating tasks. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a full time employee. It could be anything. So our firm delegates, basically everything. We don't do appeals, we don't do probate work, we, our team doesn't retrieve medical records, we don't do lien resolution. So all this stuff that we're not very good at, we just give to other people who are phenomenal at it. And that's a great gift. Because we're able to get a better, better outcome for our clients yet we're not doing the work. And we can still charge for the time of these other people in probate appeals lien resolution. So we have a great team right now, here's the only thing we really I've always been very adamant about is intake that we do it in house, I'm not comfortable outsourcing that to a third party company. I think that the compassion has to come in house that the people have to show that we care. And if so, it's not a case if somebody's died or suffered a horrible injury, take as much time with that person as they want. Because that's the worst experience they've had in their life. And that I don't view that as trying to monetize every call. I just view it as showing compassionate and that is Part of the values that we have for people, but it's nice when you represent people that you really respect and like, but if you record if you represent people or work with people that you don't like, it's really hard. Yeah, I think that empathy is hard when someone doesn't understand the full impact. So I think it's great that you, you know, have paid such careful attention to that intake. Really, really great. Okay, this is a tough question, but maybe you can think about it for a second and answer it. What's keeping you up at night right now? Like, what are the, like, things that are worried about challenged with? And, you know, just, I guess, I guess the question would be what's keeping you up at night? You know, it's interesting, Sara, because there's so much that is not legal related. And by that I don't necessarily mean business related. And this is something that you find out in masterminds, we have very high achieving people who have made a lot of money have great businesses, but they have personal issues. And that is something that we all need to focus on. So I can share with you, Sarah, I've jogged every single day for 1009 days. And over that course of time, I've done the equivalent of 87 marathons. And so this is something I've really put at the center of my life, health, fitness and nutrition. It's really important to me, and so there are, I call this streaking. So a streak is where you deal with something very little every single day, and you just keep after it every day. And so I've learned this from someone who came to our mastermind named Jeff Downes, who wrote a book called streaking. And it's amazing how when you when you do little activities everyday how the results compound over time, and develop into things that are really amazing. So I've done a monthly print newsletter for our law firm called lawyer alert. It's just for lawyers. It's about marketing, managing a firm, it's gone out every month since December of 2010. It's the best marketing X asset that we have. Craig Goldfarb has had a lunch with a referral partner, or a prospective referral partner every week, since I think 2002. So it's doing these little activities every single day, week or month, that add up to amazing things. That's fantastic. Okay, on the streaking, I haven't read the book, so I'll have to try to tell me about the jogging did you start out with a small amount and then make it bigger over time? Nope, or streakiness to make it super, laughably easy to do. So the stroke is I'm going to jog at least one mile every day. If I did it more than that, I wouldn't be able to keep it up over time. So tomorrow is actually the biggest challenge. I'll be on it like five in the morning, I'll be out jogging around downtown West Palm Beach, and people will think I'm crazy. No one will even be up at that hour. But it's just like, hey, if I don't get up at 5am, I'm not gonna be able to keep the streak alive. So when I say streak, you'll do anything to keep the streak alive. It's an a streak doesn't have to be daily, it could be weekly, monthly, you name it, sir. But I documented I share it. And we just keep after it every day. And anyone could use that for their business as well. Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, the interesting thing about that is, you know, I, in a lot of the teaching that I do, I use the principle of Kaizen, it's the small, incremental improvements over time will equal great change, but it's breaking it down into a small bite sized and manageable components. So whatever you're working on, whether it's your health, personally, whether it's your business, whether it's, I think a lot of folks expect, you know, either like a light switch, or silver bullet, or they want some magic potion. And what I have found is that it all comes down to discipline, dedication, it really and truly, if you can do it on a, you know, small bits over time. I think there's more, and I should probably do a study on this on the statistics, but I think there's a better chance of achieving, because you put the muscle in place, you've practiced the patterned behavior over time, which allows you to have that long term success versus just, oh, we're gonna do something overnight, and then expect massive results. It'll go back to the same way. In my view. Absolutely. So Jerry Seinfeld, when he started his career as a comedian, his streak was that he would write at least one joke every single day. And he's been doing that for I think, like 15 or 20 years. And all of these shrinks over time. You might think, well, that's not that hard. That's easy to write one joke a day. But if you do that every day, and here's the key word, at least, you can do more than that if you want. So this more running, I jog five miles. But my streak is at least one mile. So if I wanted to do a mile, I could just leave it at that. But a lot of times, I'll feel like doing more. And here in Florida, it's gorgeous. So I just jog a little bit more. But the reality is, when you streak, you will do anything to keep the streak alive. And it's good to be in a group of strangers, because then you encourage and inspire others. And the results become amazing. Oh, and by the way, listeners would like my book that just came out. It's called win today. And it is about the power of daily simple activities. If anyone would like a free signed copy, I'm gonna give you both my cell and my personal email. If they text me or email me, I'll put it in the mail. Jay Fisher fish er lawyer@gmail.com. Or my cell is 518-265-9131. they text me email me, I'll mail them a signed copy of the book. And well, well, you can confirm if I got it right. But we'll put it into the show notes as well, John? Yes. Okay, perfect. That is so generous. And so gracious of you, I think. Thank you for that. And on behalf of the listeners and viewers, thank you. You know, I was going to tell you, Michael Smith also did the streaking, and I don't think he called it that. But he set out in his business. And what he says, and I think you'll appreciate this, the sun will not set where we won't get back to you. So if we have a client or we have someone that's asking a question or needs help, we will not let the day pass, even if it's on the weekend. And so one of the things I think about that is like, you know, sometimes you're on the couch,
and it's like, Oh, it's 10:
30pm, or whatever, I just put the kids to bed or whatever. And it's so exhausting. And you're like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine having a business conversation. But if you keep up that discipline, it gets easier over time. And the added benefit is the and I'm going to use it as like a marketing or even a core value. We have become this team of people who do not let our clients down because we have we are on it. For them, we are their first call because they know we are on the other end of will help. So I don't know if that's considered streaking, you'll have to tell me but one of the things that is so invaluable of you, Michael, and your company is I think every lawyer should have a strategic advisor when they make important decisions about their law firm. And most of us just say, wow, you know, we'll just see how it goes. Well, that's not really good plan. It's great to have somebody who like yourself or Michael, who can guide people through these decisions and say, slow down. Do you think hiring that person is really the best move in this situation? Or merging with this other law firm? Will that dilute your core values? Really hard? But important questions. And I think having strategic advisors like you, and Michael is just so invaluable, and more lawyers should do it? Well, thanks, John. I mean, even if it's a friend that they can bounce things off of, I mean, I found when I was opening my business, my restaurant business, it's lonely at the top, I mean, your employees are not your friends, you cannot talk to them, like you would, you know, a partner or another business leader, and it's not appropriate to so when I was opening my restaurant, you know, I would tap into the knowledge of a lot of the folks from my General Mills days, who were my friends, my colleagues, they had good business knowledge. When you have a business, in my opinion, it's it's imperative that the owner or the top of the pyramid, the leaders are finding that place to ask the dumb questions up, right, like the what do I do? What should I do in this case? So you know, how should I? What have you seen other people try and obviously I'm very biased as a pro towards coaching because I've made my career you know, that's and I'm, but every professional athletes, you know, people that have made their careers acting, I mean, everyone has a coach, if you want to achieve, you know, the next level, perfect your craft continue developing. And so again, I appreciate that you've said that. Like, every day at 845 in the morning, I have a nutrition coach who calls me and I document every day what I eat, wow, I think and my exercise, and he reviews it. And then at 845 Every morning, he'll give me comments. He didn't he and I just spoke minutes ago, and he'll say, wait a minute, John, you're going a little bit heavy on the carbs this week, slow down with that. And it's like, Okay, gotcha. Great. It's a powerful thing where you're you have an accountability partner, not just professionally but also personally, who's, who's watching over things and making sure you're doing what you say you're going to do. That's amazing. And what an incredible again, gift you used the term gift that you gave yourself to allow. I mean, investing in your health and your future. I mean, what better investment than having someone help you from the outside looking in on your nutrition, your health, those sorts of things? Gosh, I have to look, we don't have our health. We don't have anything, right. It's so important. Yeah. And I think that so many lawyers neglect that. They'll say, Well, I'm focused on the business, and all this or then then they get divorced, they get out of shape. And it's like, wait a minute, none of this stuff matters. If our kids hate us, and our spouses don't like us, that stinks. You know, I think what Craig has shared is that he's had 12 vacations with his wife last year 2023. And I was like, that is amazing that because all of our spouses and our kids, all they want from us is not our money, but our time. And when we give them our time, we give them the most valuable asset that we have. And so you know, when I when I talked about building relationships with kids, I don't talk about giving them stuff I talk about just going to be with them spending a weekend with them, spending the weekend with my wife with her as she's my wife was always against our mastermind. She's like, This is crazy. You lose so much money every time you do this. Why are you doing this? Our firm's bookkeeper hates the masterminds. And I say to Lee, I said least why don't you just come. And so she came about three years ago, and she's like, this is the best thing I've ever seen. It's amazing, you should never stop doing this. And so you have to come to a mastermind to see what it's like. And once you do, it's like holy cow. All these elite people from across the country are becoming your friend and they're willing to do anything to help you. That's, that's more valuable than anything. And that's the power. You've built one, two, and I would say, you know, I come into these events with a little bit of skepticism. Because sometimes I find that business owners, they want to beat their chests and talk about all their accomplishments. But your mastermind is filled with people who genuinely care about each other, who have no ego, they leave their you know, I mean, that's a rule you've given them, they have to leave their ego, whatever level it is, you know, outside and come prepared to help each other. And I mean, the, it's actually a little bit emotional to think about, you know, what I've seen in your masterminds, and the dramatic, dramatic difference in the character of the people and their intentions to help each other and it's on the business front, it might be on a personal front, it might be anything that someone is thinking about or suffering from. So it's all in the character of what you have built. So again, kudos to you. Well, thank you. Jerry Spence, of the travelers college once said, The most powerful person in the courtroom is the person who's most vulnerable. And when you start a mastermind, and you share your vulnerability, your weaknesses, your fears, it's rather than, Oh, this is a great year for us, we made a ton of money, everything's wonderful. No, I frankly, nobody wants to hear that. What they want to hear is that you're just like them that you have problems, you have challenges, because we all do. And so when we start with with and we have breakthroughs, every mastermind where people will share not just person not just professional, but personal. Like a death in the family, the death of a little child in their daughter died, you know, 10 days ago or something like that. It's like holy cow. You know, when people are crying in a mastermind. That's real vulnerability. And to me, that's real power, because that person is bonding and building credibility with everyone. And that's what I feel not just with a mastermind, but is a trial lawyer, that we take the most the worst thing about our case and just share it with the jury as soon as we possibly can say my client. When he died, they did an autopsy. And they found out he had he had cocaine throughout his body. I've gotten no excuse for that. I know. And I had no idea why that how that happened. And I'm during the course of this trial, I'm not going to explain any of it. And if you think we should go home right now, then that's fine. Let's go home. And they'll go back. Wait a minute, go rescue when you that. When you do that. They'll be like, wait a minute, he's a passenger in this vehicle. What does that have to witness cocaine have to do with that? I'm like, Well, I mean, that's for you to decide. And so they start rallying to your defense. And if somebody attacks you and says, You're a jerk, I hate you, then the other people, they see the vulnerability that you have, and they'll rally around you say, no, no, you're not a jerk. You were just sharing something and we appreciate that. So I really do think vulnerability is so important in life and our weaknesses and fears that we have. And that was share that with our spouse this year share Sarah, I wrote a love letter to my wife and to my mother around the New Year. And as a Christmas present, I wanted them to have I put photographs, I had our graphic designer, like make it all out. Because I think if I die today, I want them to know how much I love them. That's so important to me. And I don't think a lot of us take that time to share like that with the people who we really love. And so I think, you know, and that's where I mean, what a great thing in our mastermind. When, you know, Bill, the law man, you Matzke, we'll just say he, he ends every conversation with me, I love you. And I'm like, I love you too. And that's a really cool thing. Because men too, are not like that. Oh, great. It is. And I mean, just knowing law, man, he means it. And I know you mean it too. You know, it's, it can be a platonic love that can be a love between business folks. And it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. So again, a lot of credit to you for opening your heart, opening your mind opening your doors, you know, wherever you have these masterminds to like minded people who are comfortable enough with themselves competent enough to be vulnerable, and who want to help and serve others. So I'm excited today and tomorrow are going to be fantastic. I really am honored that you included me. Oh, we you know, the response has been amazing. People are just so excited to have you with us. And so am I and I really appreciate everything that you've done in the past, but also, today and tomorrow. So it's just great having you with us. And I know everyone really appreciates there's amazing group of people. And Sarah The one thing is, when you say to somebody you love them, it can't be BS, it can't be just like, I love my clients. No, no, no, no, no, no, I totally agree. Throw this stuff around. It's got to be real and genuine. But I feel like I mean, while man was at our first mastermind in 2015, in Chicago, and since that time, you know, he and I have have built more than just a business relationship of friendship and, and so it is genuine when we share that stuff. And I think that the people in our mastermind, like, we went to Cuba, so in the Dutch Caribbean, which is right off the coast of Venezuela. And when we're going there, I get a call like a week beforehand. And Seth price who's been to every mastermind, he goes, he had said to me, I just can't make this one. I've got all this work, I can't do it. And then a week beforehand, he goes, I'm coming anywhere, I don't care. I'm canceling all my appointments. And now I get on our Facebook page, and the law man and Bill you Mansky. He said, If sets come in, I'm coming to like, okay, so, you know, that's the kind of fact that they just come and they support each other. It's, it's fantastic. It's a camaraderie that is unparalleled. And so, you know, again, looking forward to being part of it yet again. So with that, I guess maybe I'll close with you know, John, how can folks get in touch with you or what is the best route I know we'll put your cell and your email, right in our show notes. Maybe a website for the mastermind, perhaps so they can find out more information? Sure, mastermind. experience.com is the website. If you have any information you can call my cell you can email me. Our next one after West Palm Beach is in Boston on April 12. It really gorgeous site. We're doing it back to back with Craig golden Forbes seven figure attorney. So he does it on a Thursday at the same spot. And then the Friday we do it. So his is April 11. Ours is April 12. Thursday and Friday. His event is fantastic. I think it's an amazing two day event for people. And then on Saturday, July 6, we're going to be in Sicily, the mastermind and the one thing I can share about that is we do a lot of fun stuff. We're going to be at a winery, we're gonna tour mount the the I'm losing the name of the mount the mountain the volcano in in. What's that? Is it Mount Etna? Yeah, so we'll be in Siracusa. And then we're going to do a trip to Terra Mina. We'll look at Mount at now we'll do a tour of a winery. And then I think we're also doing a trip to Malta which is visible from Sicily. So we do incredible things with incredible people. If anyone is interested to learn more, just email me call me go to mastermind experience.com. And we'd be more than happy to share more. Oh, and by the way, I do have a law firm books called the power of a system and the law firm of your dreams. If anyone would like a free signed copy, email me, I'll get you signed copies of the books to you. Also my new book called win today happy to share a free signed copy of that as well. We'll put all the books also in the show notes and remind folks that they can get a copy from you I again just Thank you for being willing to share that. I've read the first two. So I'll look forward to getting the third one and reading. So you'll have it tomorrow. So, okay, good. Good. Well, John, thank you again for spending some time with us. Really appreciate you being on the podcast and helping others. I am proud to know you so just from a human perspective, thank you for Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Michael, is an amazing Michael Smith is an amazing person. And so, you know, oftentimes when he says, You got to know someone like he did for me with you, He's not wrong. And it's just been an honor to get to know you. So, thank you. I shall see you later. Thank you again for being a part of this and helping other business leaders. Sounds great. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you for what you're doing right. Talk to you soon. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of level up your business with me, Sara Frasca. If you have a problem in your business that's keeping you up at night. Please join us in a future episode so we can help get you unstuck. Just clicking the link in the show notes and send us a message. Please remember, stay innovative friends.