0:13 let's go grab a cup of coffee oh don't do this
0:58 oh i could have predicted it i suppose it's a uh a password that i don't remember all of a sudden so if you'll bear with me here while i see if i can figure it out no words that's not yet so
1:38 i think this is it either it's not working how much i helped my wife out a little bit too long at work so to speak tried my wife a little bit too i'm home soon
2:20 facebook oh that's okay okay there we go all right so okay yep great
2:55 all right so we are live now and i'm going to go ahead and start the recording which is [Music] so welcome to the way to wow people making money i'm your host kevin bemel and this is our live broadcast we broadcast every week on wednesday at 12 30 p.m pacific time 3 30 p.m eastern time and
3:31 mountain an hour later or two hours earlier and all that kind of stuff so thank you for joining us for those of you who are live on social media just want to recap the show from last week just for a moment my guest last week was kira storagev and kira talked about cryptocurrencies and investing in foreign exchange and for those of you i mean it's a it's a very very hot topic i had a call um earlier this morning with a friend of mine who has done extremely well in cryptocurrency to the point where he was
4:07 able to cash out on some of it and use it as a down payment for a house um so he got into bitcoin when it was at um i think he told me 8 000 maybe and bitcoin is what around 40 000 or something right now anyway so he we were talking about that and um uh you know kira's explanation of cryptocurrencies was the clearest that i've ever heard um and that includes having um attended um a um a meeting of some of the top crypto people cryptocurrency people in the
4:43 world who obviously knew their stuff um but uh but kira's ability to explain it to someone like me who doesn't know a whole lot about it i i thought was was was much much better i left uh or i finished that that interview having a much better idea of what this is all about so if you have any interest in uh cryptocurrency or foreign exchange um i i recommend that you check out that episode you can go to the way to wow show uh youtube channel um at um at
5:18 youtube.com slash ch slash the way to wow and you can find past episodes not only of of season three of the show people making money but of the previous two seasons you'll see it's a little bit different format but you might enjoy that as well especially if you like cocktails and um if there's um something you like obviously we'd love to hear that and if there's some idea that you have to make the show better we'd like that to hear about that even more and if you have an idea for a guest or if you think you'd be a great guest so um do post a comment um and uh we
5:56 track those comments see if maybe you'll be a guest on a future episode of uh people making money so my guest for today is michael schwartz and uh michael and i have known each other for uh quite some time we reconnected uh maybe about what six months ago i think we were at a wedding um and uh michael had uh taken a new direction in his professional life so uh right before i came into this meeting i was talking with a friend of mine uh who lives in new york um and telling her
6:32 about the show and i mentioned her that my guest was michael schwartz who's a lawyer and we were um discussing how many lawyers we know who really do not enjoy practicing the law it seems like that's the vast majority of lawyers certainly of the ones that i know and what i think is terrific um about michael is after 27 years practicing law and i'll give you a little bit about about his background in just a moment i think michael has finally found or maybe not
7:07 finally but has found his metier as as the french say his place in the law that he really enjoys and and that is certainly a big step for anyone in finding their way to wow so michael began his career in law as a deputy public defender in ventura in riverside counties here in california he litigated over 150 jury trials to verdict and um he currently or well and then subsequent to that he worked for a number of law firms typically doing
7:42 employee defense and uh criminal defense cases and that really became the area uh that of his expertise um now he will typically uh be defending uh peace officers police officers i assume sheriff's deputies etc um when they are accused of crimes um and let me give you just a couple of his accolades um so he's been described as a california by the california daily journal as an extraordinary talent and world-class lawyer and by a former assistant riverside
8:18 public defender uh jorge alvarado as quote one of the best trial lawyers i have i've ever seen michael's also been selected by la magazine's super lawyers five times okay a friend of mine was telling me about that last week and he was characterized by npr's la first as one of the best defense attorneys in the country michael is also working on authoring his first book so this is a an individual deeply deeply immersed in his career and so michael without further ado welcome to the way to wow
8:53 people making money thank you for uh for joining me today how are you doing thank god good good so i want to first of all um have you take us through your journey and and if if you don't mind start you just decide to become a lawyer you broke up a little bit right before the become a lawyer part yeah um so what you know i want to start kind of at the beginning of your professional life why did you decide to become a
9:28 lawyer you know of all the professions that are out there right why law i mean some of the rnas when i was growing up i was the one who defended my friends with their girlfriends with their parents and a lot of them thought i'd be a lawyer one day i was the advocate for them but actually at the college i went into broadcast television and i wanted to be a writer i wanted to get into writing creating sets and shows i was doing a lot of contract work for a contract where contractors do a lot of construction work as well and so i had an eye for designing sets constructing sets writing
10:03 and that's what i'm going to get into and i'll put it this way that a lot of times most people have some i would call divine providence but they have more than one time in their life when things line up to change gears and sometimes they don't see it because either they're too afraid to see it they're too i guess stubborn and where they want to go but things line up i was living in queens with a buddy of mine i was commuting into the city of manhattan abc work at abc television i was basically a glorified clerk at the time because you try to get into the
10:38 unions you have to know somebody i was taking the subways back and forth and there was one particular warm summer night i was on the subway train and i was sitting down and i noticed standing right next to me with two producers i had worked on their shows and i recognized them they didn't recognize me because i was basically a glorified clerk a college graduate and one was discussing how he's about to have his third child and i think he was talking about that the child will be born due around the same time as the indianapolis 500 because he's producing that this year and the other one said that he had a child born during the kentucky derby and
11:13 he had his his daughters like you know sweet 16 was during the super bowl that he and he started comparing their lives not by even you know their families but by which sporting events had been you know i guess relative to some kind of family event and i thought to myself in that moment is this what i'm trying to aspire to am i going to be here for 20 years from now it will be important to me it's not even so much the family i have or the contribution i gave to society but which sporting event that happened to produce or work on or whatever because that was something the epitome we can get to in that industry so
11:50 i thought about it i saw some advice from an old poli sci professor i had and he said he'd be great at a lawyer or even just getting a law degree and then i said okay i took the took the course of the lsat switched gears took out some loans and about a year and a half two years later i was in law school and then we look back it actually has helped a lot because one of my forte's in the law now is one of the police officers is video evidence and audio evidence and even though that was 20 plus 25 years ago at 20 i've got a background in it i've got an eye for it so it helped me in the
12:25 long run but that was a turning point that you know it's kind of a wake-up call just where's my life going and really am i doing something i feel is it's kind of contributing society making me a better person fulfilling and i switch gears for that so you you know you go to law school right and um what is how was the transition then going from law school to actually getting into the law right i think we all we all have this idea that okay you get out of law school and you know 50 firms are chasing you for a job right
13:00 but and and that may be for the you know top 10 percent graduating from you know harvard law or something like that but my understanding is it's not nearly that easy for the bulk of law school graduates so what was that like you know taking that next step i had gone to law school thinking when they get into some kind of international business law because i enjoyed the politics i enjoyed the international i was reading the hell tribune page to page and papers like that i fell in love with advocating i worked with two judges i was in law school as an intern and so i decided i wanted to get into being a
13:35 public defender when i got out so that was a matter of just you know throwing out the resumes and cut and i did that even i was in the east coast through california i would say maybe the top one or two percent have firms chasing after them maybe another 10 to 20 percent can find a job get a job in a firm or something of that nature because the grades are well um i would say after that you know it's this like any other any other career you've got to put the effort in and find the job i mean there's a lot of
14:10 lawyers but there also was a lot of jobs but a lot of the corporate and civil large firms yeah they go through people that's kind of the nature of the business so for me i fell into being a public defender i enjoyed defending people i enjoyed uh being an advocate and i enjoyed being in court and to this day the one pair of the law that i enjoy the most is being in court did you find that your your prior experience in the entertainment business was of value to being in court it's again our most certainly my although i've been in court when i was
14:45 when i had a real estate management company it's it doesn't look anything like what it does on television right and yet somehow there still seems to be a bit of a drama even in court how it actually is so how did how did those two things sort of work together if they did at all they worked together and i broadened it a little bit after i answered the question directly they worked together well because working in broadcast television working different parts of it i worked for three or four years i was both behind the camera i worked for usa network in the control
15:20 rooms i worked for i did freelance work with cnn behind the cameras working like i said incorporated for abc television a trial is a play basically you're putting on a play and there are different characters there are different the evidence may call them props but it's it's a morality play that's one of the things i put in my in my book to tell young attorneys most trials are morality plays and most juries want to side with this decide they think is in the rights some morally speaking and they look for the evidence to help them get there so
15:56 you have scenes you have characters you have league characters you have you know you're trying to build a story and a lot of great great trial attorneys jerry spence is one of them he's got written books he's he trains attorneys uh some great great trial attorneys they're telling a story that's what they're really doing through the trial the reason i said i broaden it is because reality and trial work my kids laugh but both before during and after college and before during and after law school i worked a lot of different jobs in my life and everything from you know as a kid in
16:31 high school washing dishes and restaurants and then you promote to being kitchen help you promote to being an assistant chef and you promote to being a busboy and a waiter i manage a bar in law school to make money i work construction work so i can relate to a lot of different kind of people and it's not surface oriented i mean i can relate to where they're coming from and that's a huge part of being in a courtroom in a trial setting is you're going to have whether it's different jurors from different backgrounds whether it's a judge from a different background whether it's the courtroom staff everyone's from a different background and if you get if you have no
17:08 you know relationship or no understanding of their background no empathy not even not even just a background in the background it's hard to relate to somebody except on a surface oriented level and juries get that they know when they're being spoken at or when they're being spoken with and it's a big difference so i i i really appreciate that point can would you expand on it how how do you then use that background of of having known people from all different walks of life etc how do you then use that that knowledge
17:43 and background to connect with people because while you're talking about in the context of a courtroom i think for all of us as we build our professional lives it's that's a crucial crucial skill right to be able to connect with other people especially people who aren't like us right so how how can you give can you give give me an example of of how how you actually do that a lot of this is strong in your own background and trying first of all most people unfortunately don't want to expand past the service because the surface is safe
18:19 to go beneath the surface with anything in relationships and gathering news or information it takes effort it's not as safe so a lot of people don't want to go beyond the surface but if you can force yourself especially dealing with people that's where you make connections and i give you several different examples both from the corpsman from profession and professionally one of the a corporate example picking a jury which is i guess the easiest example to give in the beginning you're talking to a group you also talk individuals you start questioning the visual jurors when they give certain
18:54 answers to questions or they have a certain background and sometimes you're talking to them to make a connection which is most of the time sometimes you're projecting yourself to them hoping they can connect back with you and sometimes you just want to make a point you're picking the right juror to make the point with and you open the other jurors are getting the point to you know what's sitting behind you that aren't in the jury box yet and how do you make that point if you if you only can if you can only relate for your own personal background and your background is very myopic it's very narrow a lot of people aren't going to get that point when you start seeing who's in the room and how they answer questions there's so there's some some common
19:30 ground and then there's other things that just may be very you know in a vernacular colloquium i mean i wasn't religious my whole life i became religious in my 30s so i grew up a real american kid in a working-class town so i've got that whole background too so a lot of times you can relate to people because i can mention all kinds of americana that they'll they'll know but they won't be expecting me to relate that because i've got this on they'll think you know he saw that he knows this but that's he really i remember one time this morning general level when i went to go visit my parents in florida before my father passed away i
20:05 love islam and my father sent the car to the airport i could have taken whatever he decided to send the car they were living in a retired community in florida getting the car it's one of the guys in the community that had a side business driving with people and i was already orthodox then and actually then i looked a bit more authentic look now and he was a real floridian and wasn't jewish and you know how we sit in the car we're gonna sit there an hour and a half in silence but i just asked him a little bit about himself he asked me about myself that we should chop something like like on a plane and somehow he talked about how he likes
20:40 to golf because the retirement community they all lived and had like 18 golf courses so it's perfect for him and then we got into scotch and we got into a little bit about bourbon i used to bartend and we had my hair out for an hour and a half we spoke about golf my father loved golfing too so i knew about golf i played a little bit i was a kid i talked about different kinds of whiskeys and different and the difference between different you know whether it's a highland whether it's a spy side different kinds of bourbons and we got out of the car and my parents see me walking up here's the religious guy and here's this other guy and he said they thanked frank a lot and frankly to my mama said you got a great son i love talking to an hour and a half and we just had this great conversation
21:16 actually look what would you talk about golfing whiskey right but i had an interest in it i knew about i had a background in it and it made him feel like you know we're not just making small talk he actually was something he was interested in that i could relate to be interested in i think when you're building a business there's a lot of networking and it comes in all forms it can come in text it can come in emails can come in just speaking to people personally and most people if it's on the surface we'll just talk about something you know let's all talk about the pandemics everyone's mine for two years all right great but that's nowadays that's kind of
21:53 surprised if you get into the weeds on that you can get into somebody's politics somebody's too personal and then it gets a little bit hard talk to somebody and then after one or two maybe one one or two or three sentences you kind of glean with an interest might walk into someone's office the first thing i do before i look at that i look around the room and see what's on their walls what kind of knickknacks they have awards pictures of the family it gives you an idea who the person is and if they see anything that that is a i can relate to some experience in my life oh you've got does that florida yeah my parents were living in florida for a while oh i see that oh you've been to montana i
22:29 love montana we did a cross-country trip anything to break the ice and then start people talking about themselves about life and yeah you kind of put the business part in and you filter it in you do the same thing with jurors do the same thing with judges you know it's you do the people want to connect and they want to relate but to really connect with somebody has to seem much more personal and when you give up yourself a bit and they give themselves and there's a certain amount of the vulnerability that it becomes personal and whatever message you're trying to get
23:04 across whether it's in a trial whether it's to a judge it's much easier because now they feel connected to you absolutely so you're you're working as a public defender from there you went to work for law firms why did you decide to leave the public defender's office and and you know go into the you know the law firm end of end of the business i've been working about maybe close to seven years and i was in riverside i was a senior felony attorney which means i was getting a lot of horrible cases and
23:40 i've always connected with my clients that's part of what's helped too is you find something you can connect with even this person to something horrible but they're your client they're a human being and you have to find something you connect to and they're depending on you but the cases are getting more horrible and and riverside has real crime actually it has real crime and people do there's murders there's all kinds of violent assaults there's gang shootings there's charm molestation and i'm just getting burned out a little bit because you pour yourself into a to a certain degree but it just i was getting kind of burned out
24:17 and at the time the public defenders were not represented by a union and they were always way behind the salary of the district attorneys and they tried to form their own union and they knew that i was on the union board i was in ventura in the public defender's office they asked me if i'd be on the board and i i said yes and i reached out to the law firm that had been worked for smiles at ventura as a union uh board member uh executive board member and that was steve silber's office but at the time was one of the premier public employee defense firms in southern california and reached out to stevie a little bit of work for us he got us incorporated in
24:52 union or i actually recognized as a union and a bargaining group and then i dropped off the board because i was getting married i was trying to save money for the wedding i had all the headaches that go planning a wedding you know and i decided i didn't want to have the extra headache and i got a message from steve and i'm a voicemail he said you know mike it's not a lot of money i didn't do a lot of work for you guys but i did some work and they stiffed me on my bills been two or three months you know can you look into this and i wasn't even on the board anymore but i called him back i left him a message saying you know what i'm not on the board i dropped out a few months ago got
25:28 to have these kind of headaches but i brought you in i will make it a point to find out what's going on i'll get you to check if i wasn't saving for a wedding i'd had a pocket myself and get the money after the fact they reimbursed so i apologize very much you should get paid so then he called me back because he liked the fact that i was apologetic you like the fact i was gonna make sure he got paid even though i was on the board i didn't just kind of it's not my problem and in the conversation he called me back he offered me a job he said we need a criminal defense attorney uh because you know we defend police officers and firefighters and they get criminal cases we only have one attorney
26:03 who does it and he's one of the senior partners but we need someone else to help him with the caseload he's burnt out you've got experience you left me a job and i went and i interviewed at the time was based in santa monica and my wife and i were going to live in l.a and i said instead of a community from riverside here it goes private and it's in santa monica based and in la and it's more money so another piece of divine providence trans transition came together and took the job and how did how did that go how did you
26:39 find the transition what was difficult and actually is still difficult about the transition is billable hours i wasn't good at it i didn't think about it i just thought about just doing my work just work for the client work hard i didn't think about having to calculate all the time 0.1.2.3 i just did what i did that was the hardest part the clientele it was a bit of a change defending police as opposed to being a public defender because they arrest your clients all the time but after a short time they they enjoyed the fact i had a lot of experience and i was a zealous advocate for them and i
27:15 hadn't and i just i'm pro police officer i am not i'm not pro police officer who commits a crime per se but i'm a pro police officer and i in law enforcement and i believe in defending people and the system is going to play itself out they all everyone everyone deserves to have an advocate and a system is what has to play itself out so it was somewhat of an easy transition on a professional level it was somewhat of an easy transition on a personal level the hours were a little bit difficult because i wasn't getting enough billable
27:50 hours and not because i wasn't working hard because i just was missing a lot of hours in my times because i wasn't thinking about i just wasn't used to it that's changed but it's still difficult for me and so now you're in the firm environment and talk about um uh you know how how that developed aside from the billable hours aspect what were what were some of the challenges that made it you know difficult what were some of the things that made it uh enjoyable if there were
28:26 things one of the things that's enjoyable and it was enjoyable in a public defender's office it's you do have hopefully your camaraderie got good people you work with people you can brainstorm with you can run cases off of you can schmooze with you can kind of in a way unwind with at the end of the day if you happen to be in the office this line of work down the office a lot because you're servicing police officers all over the state and you're driving to them most of the time and we have different outlying courts but the camaraderie and the i guess network of brain trust
29:02 that's that's very good about being in a firm or being working with other people the negative is matter who the people are no matter how good people they are the people i work with very good people there's always politics there's always personalities and you're always you're always working for someone else at the end of the day so you're always asking somebody else for more money you behold it to somebody else and yeah if a person's making wonderful money they can support their family they can have the lifestyle that they want and they can put it through get you college and everything else is wonderful
29:38 but at the end of the day there's a glass ceiling and someone else is in charge of how much you make and how much you're going to work to make it and i didn't jump i probably could have should have and i've got a couple of close friends of mine they were almost begging me to jump up on my own and i just was very hesitant because even though i wasn't making the money i should have made i want i needed to make to support my family i really wasn't we struggled a lot many many years i was making what society considered good enough money but not not living in the middle of los angeles not in a religious community and not sending kids
30:13 to religious schools with tuitions so but i had a fear what if i jump off and i get i don't make enough money i make less than making now and you know that fear kept me around for a lot longer than i probably should have and i just remember when i actually did jump off six months ago so i i actually had not planned that jumping off when i jumped off i was gonna have a few more ducks glide though but i did what i did that was another things coming together but i just remember a quote from a book that i had a friend of mine that i read
30:48 on the second time reading it by napoleon hill think big and grow rich it's from the 1930s and it's a very it's topical to this day but one of his quotes in the book that always and has resounded with me to this point don't wait the time is never just right always wait for that perfect time if we had if if you come across the perfect timing there's no need for a transition it's not you have to make your transition you have to take the risk to close your eyes that's what that's what you know we call the hebrew moon that's what faith is you you make you're going
31:24 to take that step that's part of the process of succeeding is being willing to fall down that's and we a lot of us were so afraid of the falling down part and we don't realize that many times we're already on the ground we don't realize that so we're so afraid of fun but we've already fallen we just don't realize it because now we're comfortable with hanging on the pavement and that's that can stifle a person that's thanked for me for many years so one of the issues that i've um talked with many people about who who are looking to make these kind of transitions um one fellow comes to mind uh
32:01 um a a military veteran that i've been uh mentoring for a couple of years now so he wanted to make a change um but he found that his wife was reluctant so how i mean was was that an issue for you um and i'm not looking for i'm looking for you to be disparaging but but look our family members have a concern about our family's well-being as well right and we have to take that into account so how did you manage that issue if it was you know part of of of this you know journey that that you're on
32:38 i'm probably more blessed and then my wife has been asking me for years to do it and i was too afraid because i figured she didn't know the ins and outs of the business so for her in her mind look you have these big cases and you win them you're successful everyone knows you you'll do great you can always and i i would tell her it's not so easy you know and every new business is slow i'm not going to make the money i've been making now to start a business and you have to invest in it in the first place which means you're you're going to be in the red coming out and if we're already behind the eight ball how do we have money to invest i don't start it and i was always reluctant but she was always a big fan of you'll see you'll see you can do it
33:14 then when it came time when i wanted to do it then she said well wait a second and it became hard but at the end of the day she you know god bless her she still said you know what um it's your your decision i disappoint 100 i always thought you needed to so if it's scary be scary together this is great and that's having that that little extra push at the end it's you have to have you have to have both on board you have to have both on board so if one of them is too heavy to reluctant it's going to be that much harder to work
33:50 because you're going to have to tighten your belts you're going to have to regroup about what you spend and more effort and time put into things and i was not billable and time will you know whether you know time weight could be sitting like this on a computer but you're still sitting like this you're not spending time with the family or you have to go meet this person whatever and a lot of it's just the you never like i said most people aren't going to start out but all of a sudden making a lot more than i'm making before so you have to be ready for that both emotionally as well as you know financially and that's the hard part so both people are
34:25 on board that part makes it very difficult so that's that's a perfect lead into my next question so you you you now have transitioned from being you know an associate or a partner at a law firm now you're a lawyer but also a business owner right so how did that affect the way the way you look at your your identity is that does that question make sense it hasn't completely sunk in yet to be honest um
35:00 i'm still learning about the whole business aspect of it i'm trying to keep things as simple as possible one of the one of one of my i guess uh handicaps is that technology really can make things very easy but i'm not ironically even with my broadcast background i'm not as technology technological based for doing things online and so because i'm much more hard pay for a lot of things it's it's a little bit more difficult for me in this period because no one's expecting everything on our paper anymore and in this law firm i could do it that way because i would just tell my paralegal assistant it was pretty much print me out this and do
35:36 this thank you very much can you please do this print this out for me now i'm doing all that myself and you know it's it makes it more difficult but i'd say overall it's very liberating i mean it's tedious and the business part i don't enjoy but it's my business and so it's on me the responsibilities it's on my shoulders but it's very liberating because i don't have to consult with somebody else about decision about that and you know if i just if i felt like i worked eight hours today and i got a great day's worth of work and i'm not
36:12 worried about if i'm worried about that i have to make more money and the work is there to actually work fine but i'm not worried about somebody else build 10 hours and yeah i've got some stature but do i have as much to him can i ask i get as big a bonus or am i on track to be a principal on the principles my business i work but i feel i need to work as far as both support my family and doing well for my clients and i'm done and have to worry about afterwards i had a you know they still i'm still not counsel for middle firm and i still have some cases through them and colleagues still called me to consult with me and had a colleague that wanted to insult me and he said you know can i call you after my hearing tonight
36:47 uh 8 39 o'clock and i said no i can't wait till tomorrow well tomorrow i'm gonna hear okay then you can call me over your lunch hour but i'm not in that place anymore you wanna ask me a question i've got that's my family time that's my learning i don't have to put it aside because we all work for the same boss and i better make sure they're happy no that's you want my you want to you know my opinion we'll talk you know when i have the time i'll make time for you but it's not going to be dropping everything because we're all a bunch of cogs in the machine and that's very liberating
37:23 yeah i could imagine i could imagine so in in you know starting your own firm what do you feel are the two let's say the two best decisions that you made as you contemplated and then actually launched your firm one is seeking out and following the advice of a close friend of mine who's had a very thank god you know he's had a very successful practice for 25 years his mother wants to beg me to do this for many years and seeking out his advice and continuing to seek out his advice and
38:00 uh not being afraid to follow that advice all the time see next to the business model but good role model for all that and not feeling a little bit you know our ego takes over sometimes like i can do this i can do this myself no he's got a great model and he's willing to give advice and help out so that's one thing is to seek out advice and to follow it once good advice and not to be afraid to ask people for that kind of help and the second thing i think i mean thank god i'm probably making about what i was making before in reality so i really haven't gone down
38:35 and i think the second is just the freedom of being able to i think when people go in there with their own business they have to give themselves a certain amount you have a set goal for what they want to make but needs to be realistic so that way they're not going to fall short and get discouraged per se but given realistic a lot of it is time you know no one's going to walk down the road most of the time in the first you know four to six months now they're multi multi million unless
39:10 that's the trading of bitcoin and maybe hit the jackpot right so right so give yourself a year or even two years to start really seeing a real change where you're doing very well and one of the things the attitude i had i told this my friend michael i said you know i've had a number of calls for potential clients and then you you quote them you have a nice conversation quote whatever and they've followed through that's always going to happen and i said to him i'm not discouraged because i'm getting clients here and there i said but in my eye sometimes god does that for you because he's got some great things waiting for you but he knows that if you
39:45 don't get at least something along the way you hope about or you get you know encouraged about you may quit so it kind of keeps you going it doesn't have to be the big thing right now but it keeps you going because you're all right people are calling me it's coming in and it keeps you going a little bit till you get to that point and that's happened a few times so realize you know all these quotes that we like to trade around but different people really actually live that you know well there's thomas edison saying i didn't i didn't i didn't fail 10 000 i did i just found 10 000 ways that don't work but at 10 000 1 he invented the electric
40:21 light bulb right in the phonograph i mean we we look at people's finished products but they didn't start out that way you have to keep reminding yourself of that so um i think sometimes we learn more from the mistakes that we've made right than from the things that we did right so would you share a couple of mistakes that you made um on this journey and and why you think you made the mistakes perhaps and and what you learned from them how they helped you you know take
40:56 it to the next level i think one mistake i made i tried to make this very big quick but i planned on jumping off my firm uh right after passover to give him notice last year and i probably could have put a couple other things in place but that was my time and some things came together where the managing principal found out and we're actually we were good friends and we're good friends now and as a courtesy i was going to give them a face to face i'm leaving as opposed to just an email because they're up north in san francisco that part of the firm and i'm down south we found out
41:34 he wanted me to fly up there i ended up back and forth i flew up there two days before passover because the only time i had to do before passover started we spent the entire day they paid for the flight it was just he and i he's a great guy and for the whole day he picked my brain about my thoughts about the firm and all the personalities and he had a light bulb go up like i've got this guy i thought was just like our big troll attorney down there but he actually has a lot more vision about this whole business and other people working in it and i was i've been missing that for the last eight or nine years so he made me an offer that he thought i couldn't refuse and i didn't say no i had to talk my wife about i got on the
42:10 plane and i thought about it i thought about it i i texted him and we had a bunch of texts the next day and a half but the gist of the text was your offer really is it really it was a nice offer i mean it wasn't going to sneeze about it was really an outstanding offer i said but at the end of the day your offer was still to be a worker bee and you know at some point i'm not going to be the horse biting a bigger carriage anymore i got to be the wagon driver i mean i mean i'm 56 at the time i was what i was know just turning 50 so i said i have to be the wagon driver and i
42:45 really appreciate the offer but i'm not going to be buying bigger carrots and we had a whole backup form so the long short of it is we ended up negotiating for three months and we went back and forth where he flew down a couple of times i thought the first time and at the end of the day the offer got progressively better and better but never was what i really needed because i needed something that was going to secure my future both financially emotionally personally the whole nine years you can say yes to more money and then you're still going back to work
43:21 feeling like you sold yourself out not because you didn't make me a nice offer because inside it feels like i'm still really happy and so i think those are three months that yeah i learned from them but i should have jumped off when i planned that jumping off and get everything rolling sooner timing-wise and so i kind of regret the reason i didn't it was still out of fear [Music] it was still he's off me more money so isn't it safe and you know finally my wife and i decided no and it was something she said to me
43:56 she said you have to listen to yourself she said emotionally you've already checked out you don't want to be there anymore and so even if you said yes how's it going to make you feel every day and she was right and she's not someone she my wife is much more introverted so she's not somebody that's going to have these long thick conversations all the time so when she comes out with something like that you know it's it's coming from a higher place in a way i mean she's she's thought about it that was one i guess it's one mistake i made is that the second mistake really is for many years
44:32 really just discounting my worth i just didn't realize how much i really was not just to the firm but just in a general way how much i allowed myself and this i think is a big part of all i allowed myself to value myself based on my thought other people's perceptions of my valuable number and so i undervalued myself immensely for many years i had good friends and i had clients tell me that oh you should go on your own you do great but i don't think so because the people i worked for were telling me you make for this niche you make good money for this niche you know i only make this oh we can only
45:07 afford it we can only afford that well the unions only pay this well that's great so i felt like all right but it's an initial make good money that's why this is the niche i'm in and they could never see leaving that niche so i can't leave that niche and then all of a sudden you know i had i actually had an associate that wanted to jump off with me it wasn't going to work out because i couldn't take another person or whatever but since the associates if she had she was going to bank her family on that i was going to be able to make a good business something clicked well you know what why am i letting him define my my ability to succeed
45:43 i can't define i think they can't define that and the self-confidence i had really for the first 37 years of my life kicked back in and you know somebody who took risks somebody who was able to take risk somebody you know you fall down you wipe yourself off you get up then you smile you do it again and i lost that for a number of years in this business because i kept letting other people tell me how much i really was worth and i said i'm not gonna do that anymore and that self-confidence yeah things are difficult financially i mean i'm not pretending that all of a sudden i've got you know
46:19 but they're not horrible and personally emotionally spiritually i've never been in a better place like the last 25 30 years and everybody around me sees it and that's because you have to look you have to know your worth and you can't love the outside world to find it for you so what does the future hold what are the plans for the next year the next i don't know five years hopefully the next year at the very least building the practice that much more and that's going to be you know trying to get in build a practice
46:56 finishing the first draft of my book about halfway through i had to i had a goal of being about halfway through by december 31st and i hit the goal in january first okay so about halfway through i've got an idea of another couple uh i've got a children's book that my wife's niece was illustrating for me for small children that my wife may pick up the slack on that to get that out as well and uh that's for the next year or more and then for the next five years to be in a position where financially i'm out of i'm in a position that this
47:32 you know this endeavor worked that i'm not just supporting the family properly but building something where i can kind of i would like to transition to some form of teaching and the book is a book about trial tips and tactics for young lawyers it has a lot of life things in it too i think anyone can enjoy it but it's about 27 years worth of trial experience and put that into this so i'd like to get into that aspect of it too uh as far as you know maybe teach and try advocacy criminal law
48:08 maybe criminal procedure things of that nature as well even on the high school level at some point if i can make if i can do well enough here i can do some part-time teaching too very nice very nice gentlemen um any questions for for michael as you've listened to uh his talk i'll sort of open it up there see if i can unmute everybody
48:45 oops hi there hi stu stu meet michael michael stu hi um i'm appreciate what's what you've gone through in regard to your career because i i have a son who is a lawyer and his managing partner of his firm and uh so many of the things that you related to i've lived in the first in a uh as a close observer it's uh it's it's really uh
49:20 particularly in today's world with the amount of concern we have for physical space um going out and trying to search for for new business uh is extremely difficult because of of the you you're just you're limited as to the physical contact with people and you rely you rely more on uh materials you send or or as kevin has done creating a zoom opportunity right
49:56 that is that is one of the challenges definitely so how how have you how have you dealt with that michael i just keep a lot i keep in touch very much with all my former clients and whether it's remind them on my own whether it's you know texting or sending them things i think it's it is a challenge and especially like i said technologically i'm not as grounded as people younger than me and that's all the social media which is very popular nowadays so that's one of the challenges too is to be not just on social media which i had never been until now i have to
50:32 start doing that but also be on it in a way that is consistent with my religious principles but still is you know has some kind of productivity to gain new clients and be something you're going to want to connect with and that's you know a lot of the younger crowd even the religious younger crowd that maybe even competitors in some certain respects but they all know social media very well and that's something that is more of a challenge for me but i think if you really work hard and you put out a good product and you keep in touch with people and it's part
51:08 of my you know religious fanaticism that's that's our effort and god will come through without what he should come through for me and i'm not being cavalier because i'm raising a family so i know you know practically speaking what i need but he's come through my life in every transition i've got a whole bunch of them that are unexplainable but for the right person at the right time reaching a handout at that right moment and there's too many to count so that'll happen again but you have to put my effort in and that's part of the whole networking that's that's part of the challenge that's part of the business i don't like
51:44 that's and i that was one of the things that made me very reluctant over the years to go on my own because that's part of this i don't like i just wanted to be a lawyer and it's much easier in a firm just to be a lawyer but the problem is the firm is still a business so there's somebody above you that's still looking at that business aspect that's their responsibility and now it's mine so it's it's interesting because um for years i looked at it in a very similar way and then you know about a year ago when i you
52:20 know realized i was making my next transition going from the navy you know back into civilian business so i was talking to a friend of mine uh some some of you may know bill gross and you know the whole sort of networking thing and all of that it was never anything i particularly enjoyed myself and i think bill gave me a piece of seminal advice and that was you're not don't worry about the networking worry about or not worry about but just work on creating relationships because we used to talk about from my navy days so stock and trade for a
52:56 chaplain is somebody walks into my office they've got something on their mind typically a problem if i'm going to be able to help them i need to connect with them pretty quickly so they'll actually hear what i might be able to say that will help them right and so that that that connecting ability and the ability to develop relationships was was a primary skill for any any chaplain and really any member of the clergy i would argue um and and so what what bill has me doing and he's my accountability coach on this is every every day or actually four days
53:31 a week monday through thursday um typically for my first hour to two hours a day i'm just on the phone calling people to talk to them um how was your day um or how you know how how is life going um how is business going what can i do to help you uh marty's marty's laughing because he got a call from me on that like that a week or two ago and so did stu um a while back um and just you know developing those relationships right um and what i've my fear was always why do
54:07 people want to hear from me if i don't have anything for them and this i think gets into what you were saying before undervaluing ourselves i think you're absolutely right when you say people want to connect with other people and just a 10-minute conversation calling them up and and just say how are you doing how's life how's the family what are you working on um i think it makes a big difference in people's lives um and i one thing i don't do is ask them for anything because i'm i'm not there to ask them for something i'm there to
54:42 to offer my help um and not necessarily you know for in a remunerative way so i was talking to a friend earlier today what are you working on he said well and he's he's involved in the logistics and supply chain stuff and he said he said you know the part of this that i'm really struggling with is understanding all the policy dimensions of this so i'm saying okay so i said how are you doing that he says well i'm looking to join this particular organization i said oh well do you know such and such he's like oh the name rings a bell i said you know he's really heavily involved in the organization would it
55:17 would it help you if i connected the two of you oh yeah that'd be great right so so you know there's there's a call you know well meant you could say it's a networking opportunity i'm just i was just looking to help him out he's a really great guy and you know um we like each other uh will i ever get business from him i'm not sure that it really matters per se right right so that's i think that's if we're you know if we're willing to look at our lives and our businesses that way um i don't think you know i don't think you have to believe in god for that i
55:52 have a close friend who's an atheist he looks at life the same way like if we just help each other out then somehow it all kind of works itself out in the wash i think i tell my kids all the time you know again this could be much more in the general way egalitarian you get what you give in this world yeah if you're creating positive positivity around yourself you're going to have positive people gravitate towards you negativity you've got negative people gravitate towards you that's how it works so you have to ask yourself
56:28 would you rather hang out with right yeah knowing too though that when we hit those crisis points in our lives if we've invested in those relationships yes people are really uh i will tell you that that is the lesson that i've learned over the last you know eight months is um you know it was a difficult time for me um in personal life um and you know people were were there just to listen uh to offer their thoughts to offer their support sometimes it would just be a text message that i got hey it was just
57:03 thinking about you hope you're doing okay right so you know it makes it makes all the difference in the world that we have those relationships i think yeah other questions comments i'm gonna have to leave you guys yeah sure nice to meet you nice to meet you thanks thanks for tuning in stu well actually we're coming up to the end of the broadcast here the hour just just you know no no pun intended zoomed by so um i uh first of all i want to thank you michael for for being my guest today um i think a lot of
57:39 really wise things that you had to say it's about you know overcoming fear first of all i think that's that's a big reason why we don't advance our lives and find our way to wow right um and and what you talked about in terms of getting the kind of experiences that allow us to connect with a wide variety of people again i think that's a lesson that any of us can can absorb um and and really make useful not only in our professional lives but just in in our lives in general um and and the third point that really
58:16 resonated with me is is the whole idea of we can't the the perfect is the enemy of the good and the excellent it's there's never going to be the perfect time so i think i think you know we we we make our decision and we and and we may not be 100 ready when when when it comes time comes time to you know uh execute that decision but but we do it and we're gonna bump along in the beginning and and we're gonna bump along no matter what so you know at least we're on our way um and so i think those are three great takeaways from
58:51 from from your talk and and i appreciate those very very much thanks for having me thank you very much you're welcome you're welcome so i want to any any of you who are out there watching the live stream thank you very much for tuning in um if you um have uh thoughts or comments uh please drop them into the comment box again we we read all of them we would love to hear um what what you have to say your your thoughts on the show um if you have questions for michael um just you know drop him in there and make sure to tag him so that they'll so that you know he'll be able to see them and um
59:27 um i'm sure that uh you know he'll be happy to to respond to you you know as as as he's available to do so next week we're going to be talking with captain uh mark brooker uh u.s navy retired um and uh mark is a navy colleague of mine and he is um absolutely fascinated by the subject of leadership he has he spent his entire navy career pursuing the question what is good leadership and when he got out
60:03 of the navy um or retired from the navy um he wanted to pursue that question but you know he still had to make a living and support a family so he has been able to turn the the passion he has for this question into a business and he he um trains and he writes and so we're going to be talking to mark about um the book that he published last year he's working on another book now and the work he's doing with various clients helping them learn to be better leaders so i invite you to tune in next week uh january 19th again 12 30 p.m pacific
60:40 time 3 30 pm eastern time and uh welcome you to uh to join in the meeting live or watch it live stream the show will also be available on our youtube channel so feel free to let your friends know if they they weren't able to see it that they can watch the replay of michael's uh talk uh on the um the way to wow on youtube and uh you can you can uh they can get all of uh his wisdom that way so uh marty thanks for tuning in hanging with us the whole show michael thank you thank you so much for being my guest
61:15 and uh we will i'm sure talk again soon thank you you