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No long-term commitments tying you down. So, what are you waiting for? To learn more about how Rise Up Media can transform your firms, visit RiseUpMedia.com/MaxLaw and Rise is spelled with a Z. RiseUpMedia.com/MaxLaw. This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix. Well, Thomas, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. You bet. So, I'm going to start with your role that you had before starting your firm, okay? And so, you were the cheap W.D. district attorney, is that right? Yeah. I mean, it's a fancy title. I was a prosecutor. It does sound like a fancy title. Cheap is once you get the promotion, it's kind of like making partner here in Clark County, Nevada. Gotcha. You get a pay bump and you get the title. But yeah, I was a prosecutor for about seven years, county. Handling a thing about Clark County that's different from a lot of prosecutorial agencies, not that I worked for them, but I've heard is Clark County, you start out. I mean, they throw you right into felonies, you're doing trials right away, jury trials right away. Yeah. So, handling a bunch of serious cases did it for about seven years. How does that help your practice as a criminal defense attorney? Well, it's everything. I mean, the way I actually fell into solo practices after COVID, they made us come back to the office. It was May 2021. That was the order we're coming back to the office and I started coming back to the office and having not been in there for a while. I just wasn't feeling coming back into the office, like a lot of people in America. And so, about four weeks in, I was handling this real serious case out here, about five bicyclists got killed by this DUI driver. And I was the lead DUI death prosecutor in Vegas for years. I handled all the big cases. And this one was a big one and the police messed it up. They really messed it up. I've never seen such a clear case of coerced consent and everybody who looked at the case and knew that. So, emotional suppress comes, blood results are tossed, we're going to have trouble in this case. Five people killed, two people hurt. And I got the case dealt. I got a good result out of the case, but the day of sentencing was June 3rd, 2021, I gave a D.A. steeple of some I noticed two hours before sentencing. I said, you know, I think I'm going to be out of here. And it wasn't just that, but I wasn't feeling coming back to the office. My son was two years old, like a lot of attorneys, you're not getting time with kids. And everybody says, you're going to regret not spending time with your kids. It's true. Yeah. I mean, if I got one superpower in my life, it's like I can take advice from somebody and if it rings true to me, I can change my entire perspective on life. And so my uncle also passed away a few days before that, pulmonary embolism. Oh my gosh. It just came out of nowhere. So I got a phone call. Like he didn't, like he died. Everybody was surprised. So that kind of gave me the extra push. There was a lot of things was that I was going to ask was like through a like some moment that happened was like that the moment that pushed your was there, you said it was a lot of things, but like, do you think you would have done it if he hadn't, if he hadn't passed? Well, I had already talked to my direct supervisor that I was planning to leave the office. All right. So you'd, you'd already kind of committed. Just to him, it was informal. We were really good friends, but I just wanted to give him a heads up and I was like, you know, I'm going to try and make it to the end of the year. You know, I had some cases I'd been handling for years. The family's trusted me. Where were we in the year at this point? This is like, this is May. May. Okay. So you were going to put another seven months in. Yeah. Okay. And I, and I'd been ruminating on this for months and months and months. I tried everything meditating, taking a walk outside, you know, the walks in nature. Yeah. Workout, breathing exercises. What's that? The Iceman where he does like, oh, yes. VIM Hoff method. I was doing that every night. I was trying everything to change my state because I'm like, is it the job or is it something else? Yeah. And it's not the job because, you know, I never thought I was going to be a career prosecutor, but I really liked what I did and come to find out. I'm like, I think I need to make a change. And so I told him the end of the year, he said, well, let me know. He's got my back. No matter what. Sorry. I said, I'll try and make to the end of the summer. That's what I thought. He goes on vacation. I get to call them. My uncle dies. And I said, why am I waiting to the end of the summer? Life's too short. That's right. That's right. Tomorrow's not promised. You know, I look younger than I am. I'm about 45. Okay. And so I'm like, well, if I'm going to make a change, I'm going to do this. And I always had the inkling of like doing private practice. How long ago was this? Three years ago? Yeah. 2021. So we're about three, about a little over three years in now. Yeah. How long were you there? Seven. Seven. And then what did you do before that? I had my own practice for a second. Yeah. And I went to law school late. Okay. Cause I was trying to figure out the man I was a non-traditional student for sure. For sure. I got barred in 2012. Okay. So I've been practicing for about 12 years. How long were you? So that's seven. So you would do that. That's what? A couple of years then, I guess you were. A couple of years before that, yeah, I moved out to Vegas. I worked for a guy. I was solo practitioner. Oh man, I couldn't stand it. He was doing construction and defect. And he was like that typical big law partner that you hear. I guess he worked at big law for a little while. I mean, she would just go off on me for no reason. I've never understood those types. Yeah. I don't get it. It's like, I want to kick your ass. It's like you're not going to talk to me that way. It's crazy to me. When you got to have a little bit of like give people grace, it's kind of like parents that are beating their kids. Their parents beat them. Yeah. Right? He probably got that treatment and he's probably not as bad as he was treated. Maybe. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I was like, I'm not a little too old. And that's a problem with getting in the law too old sometimes is you're just not going to take anything like that kind of treatment. And so I wasn't, I could still take some treatment at that time. I was still in my early 30s. At this point in my life, I mean, if somebody talked to me that way, I'd be out real quick. So I wouldn't last at a firm at this point. But yeah. So he died. My uncle died. I was like, I'm going to get my notice right away. I gave my notice. And I remember I gave the DA the ADA was sitting right there. I was there lead to my death prosecutor. Everybody thought I was going to make a career of it. And Wilson asked me, D.A. Wilson, he goes, well, if you could leave whenever you want and when would it be? And I said, right after this guy gets sentenced and adjudicated today, I'd walk out. The ADA almost spit his coffee out. He goes, today? I said, well, he asked me a question. I mean, let me go home and think about it. I did another 30 days, tightened up my caseload, made it good for the next guy to transmit. I think that's the responsible thing to do. It is. It is. And I always say that I am conscientious to a fault, to my own detriment, you know, because but I did it and I left and I really didn't know what I was going to do after that. So you didn't have any plans to go start your own firm, nothing like that. I said, I had saved up some money, live below your means. I was going to take a year off. My son was too. I was like, I'm going to take a year off, see what happens. And I'll tell you what, back to the question you asked, which is, how did it help me? My cell phone just rings a month later, my personal cell, and it's a potential client. Okay. Right. They've been referred by somebody. They heard I wasn't at the DA's office anymore. So I take the case and I'm like, well, I better get my LLC up right away if this might happen once in a while, right? I get the LLC up within a couple of weeks. I get another referral to my personal cell. I don't have a business line. Do you know where they're coming from at this point? I don't. Do you even do you know where they ever came from? No, I would ask. And they just said, Hey, a lawyer, friend of mine, or my son clerks as a friend that clerks for a judge and they recommended you. And that was the thing about being a prosecutor, you know, I would just I was in the courthouse and the trenches so much that it had just people got to know me. I made friends. I had this community. It was automatic networking just by being in court every day. And so once I left the office, a lot of people knew and I guess people were just referring business. Well, anyways, this guy calls me and he says he had this case is a felony case is referred by a defense attorney in the area. He knew I was out on my own, right? And he gets a lot of business. He's nearing retirement. And he said, Oh, yeah, this guy preferred me. So very, very warm lead, right? I mean, this is like automatic clothes, but I have no office. I have no website. I do have my LLC in my bank account at this point. I don't have payment processing. Do you have a trust account up yet? I didn't know I had that. Okay. I had the bank account. I had my LLC and that was it. I didn't even have credit card processing, right? Wow. So the guys are like, our friend is in jail right now. This is how criminal defense is. Absolutely. Where can we meet you? Where am I going to meet him? I don't have an office. I'll meet you at the jail. No, I said, well, where what part of town are you in? Vegas is kind of big. I said, well, we're in Henderson. I said, okay, well, my office is kind of downtown. You know, why don't I just come to you, right? Nice. Well played. So come to them, meet them in a Starbucks. But I had been in the newspaper many, many, many times and on the news because of the cases I promised you. So you were recognizable at that point? Well, I got there and you know, I just, they just googled me and news articles are showing up. They go, oh, he's legit. We're in a Starbucks. And they go, well, how much is the fee? And I go, well, I charge 20,000. So do you, for this market, was that high, low, right in line? Did you even know? I didn't know. Yeah. I just know that I had been paying attention over the years to every defense attorney I came across. Yeah. I talked to them a lot. So their prices are all over the place. All over the place. You know? But again, I'm also trying to just take time off. And I'm not trying to do work for cheap. So you're quoting a number that you're like, I'll be happy if they pay it. And if not, okay, whatever. Exactly. Okay. If they want, if they pay it cool, if not fine, it was a real serious case to, by the way, like I knew how serious it was. Yep. And they go, okay, they were like, um, I was like, it's 20,000. If you can pay it up front, I give a 10% discount. I still do that to this day. It's 18,000. Otherwise I need half down or whatever. They're like, no, we can pay it up front. And they're like, do you take cash? Yes, I do. And I said, yeah, I didn't have credit card, I didn't have credit card processing. And literally they go wait right here. I'm in a Starbucks. They go out into the parking lot. They come back in, they hand me 18 grand. Could you stop smiling after that? Well, no, first I'm like in Starbucks, like, what are you doing? Am I doing it? Yeah. Do you want to count it? I said, I'll trust you on it. I'll count it like when I get in the car, but that's kind of like the genesis of it. And then two days later, another referral came to me and he wanted to pay it and I quoted him like seven grand and he's like, okay, I can pay right now by credit card. I said, well, I still have my credit card processing. So I'm calling law pay and they're like, it's going to take two or three days. And I was like, I need like, I need to done in like two or three hours. And the guy pushed it through. He got it done for me. Fantastic. Yeah. And I got that case and I said, man, maybe there's something to it. I'm still trying to take time off, but if these kind of come around and they just kept coming. I mean, that long story short, they just kept coming. And so going back to your original question. Yeah. Yeah. The prior experience had everything to do with it. If I just hung my shingle coming out of law school, none of that's happening. Yeah. It is interesting. And he has a district attorney. So I'm just going to call you a prosecutor out here. So because we just called him prosecutors in Missouri. So so as a prosecutor, I mean, I'm sure you saw the solos that would come right out of law school, right? Like you see him come and take a criminal case. I guess what is, what was your perception of those types of people that just hang out the shingle right out of law school? Like, did you have any perception of those, those attorneys that would do that? Well, I know this when I interviewed the prosecutor's office, they asked me why I never did any criminal defense work prior to that. And I said, oh, that's an interesting thing. I said, I don't mind taking a case that I don't know how to do being a young attorney. But criminal defense, I mean, with somebody's liberty at stake, I would have an issue with that. And they kind of laughed. I think the prosecutor, I saw that the quality of lawyering in the criminal defense bar is pretty bad. So you've been able to leverage your experience against that, I guess, in this market? Well, yeah. Of course. I mean, anybody. Is there a big fish here in this town? So like in St. Louis, like in Missouri, like the big DWI lawyer is Travis Noble. He's well known in Missouri. I don't know. I know he speaks all over the country. Scott Rosenblum is the big guy in St. Louis. Okay. Is there like a big fish here in Vegas? There's some very well known attorneys. I think the guy who was considered like the guy, he passed away a couple of years ago. He had had multiple heart surgeries. Bill Terry was his name. Great guy, very respected. I had run-ins with him, but he'd been around since the mob days in Vegas, even around for a long time. The mayor, Oscar Goodman was a big hitter before he became mayor. He represented like, the mob never existed according to him, but he represented these guys. And he was good at what he did. He won some wiretap cases. Next thing you know, he's getting everything. He just ended in a mayor, but there's kind of like a transition period. So there's some guys that are in town, but I don't think there's one person who's considered like, oh, he's the guy, it's pretty much word of mouth where if somebody's been around for a while, they're getting referrals because they've been around for a while and the attorneys know who they are and their former clients know who they are, but it's kind of a vacuum right now. Do you have that? I was kind of thinking of as a vacuum too. Do you have any ambition to fill that void? Why I think is that just as, look, I was a lead DUI death prosecutor, prosecuted thousands of DUIs. Every lawyer wants to take a DUI case, man. They do. Even if they don't practice criminal defense, they think it's easy money. So I do just do injury now. I did criminal defense back in the day, I did DWIs and what really pissed me off about those because in Missouri, we come DWIs, what always made me mad is that to do them effectively, you do need to charge a pretty steep fee to do because we can do depots during the administrative hearing and all that Missouri. But there's some things you could do that are really effective to help preserve this person's license, but also to maybe get them off because of all the criminal cases, they might be the easiest to get someone off because all the technical issues there are with DWIs, but you have someone to take them for $300, $400, $500, it's like, it's crazy to me. And I'm assuming you probably fight that out here a little bit, too, where people just charging nothing for these DWIs, never, and there's no way they could effectively do them out here for that amount. Well, the truth is, like I said, I prosecuted, and I'm actually the city prosecutor for Boulder City still now. So we have that out in St. Louis, too, where you, like people are municipal prosecutors. Yeah. So it's a contract thing, they don't have much crime down there. So I'm still on the other side of these guys, and I'm gonna tell you, nobody's doing anything on those cases. Yeah, that's the thing, but you could, but no one does. They don't even know how. Yeah. Look, that's the problem with going solo right out of law school, okay? You go solo out of law school, or let's say solo before you even know really how to practice, and you're so busy getting business, getting clients, and then you never have time to actually learn how to execute, if you need to, how to actually litigate, right? And then you find like, hey, nobody's really litigating. All these cases are resolving. I can do this with a couple phone calls. I have friends, like they get a lot of clients and they say, hey, it's a phone call and three quarter appearances. That's what I'm charging for, right? Yeah. And I go, man, if you really look at it that way, I feel bad for the clients in that regard. But a guy practices for 10 years doing it that way. He's been doing it that way so long. He actually thinks he knows what he's doing. So it's funny you say that, because I took a case that was in Boone County, Missouri. And I'd been practicing in St. Louis for a few years at this point. And we had a whole process for how to handle DWI. And my first appearance in Boone County was like a DWI docket. And I noticed all these attorneys playing out all their clients on the first appearance, because they offer a special deal if you plead them out on the first appearance. I'm thinking like, what a disservice. This is such an injustice. You know what I mean? Like it is, I could not believe what was happening because there, it was such a disservice to their clients, but it was such a benefit to the attorneys and the prosecutors on the judge. Yes. So everybody involved except for the client is the system, it's like that Dave Chappelle joke. Like you're sitting at a table and your attorney's supposed to be on your side, your agent, but they all work together all the time and they're telling you, take this, take this deal. So really they're doing what's best for them. That's what's best for you. And no, I got a story for you and I tell this to potential clients sometimes. There's a guy and he's actually a decent defense attorney. But even like I said, the bar is so low on what they're doing, right? I'm outside. I'm training a prosecutor. I'm hanging outside the DWI courtroom and it's a busy courtroom, right? One judge here is all the cases and the DUI death cases are there. The injury cases are in there. And then also the misdemeanors, right? And there's hundreds of them. And one, one judge does it all. One judge here does it all, which is, I guess is good to streamline it. But anyways, I'm outside the courtroom because sometimes I would hang out when I'm training a prosecutor, I would just hang out outside, see the defense attorneys and all their clients are out there. It's like a herd of cattle and the defense attorneys are all meeting with them, right? And this real pretty girl comes up to me. She goes, are you my attorney? I go, no, you never met your attorney before? And she goes, I never met him. I was like, okay, what's his name? He says his name, I go, okay, if he shows up, I'll point him out to you. I was like, but what's your case on for today? She goes, trial? I said, oh, okay, I was like, so he shows up, I point her out, I was like, that's him. She goes up to him. He goes, give me a minute. He's got five other clients there that day, right? And he's talking them all into pleading, right? That's what they do. Oh my gosh. Because look, if you're getting paid a flat fee, you're financial incentive is to get rid of the closure of your case. That's the problem. Charging to not enough money, that's part of the problem. Yeah. So I go in the courtroom, I talk to the prosecutor, I say, hey, do you have so and so is case on for trial? He goes, I do. All my witnesses here. I'll look back, the cops there, the nurse, the chemist, everybody's there. It's one of those things where it's going to get reset. It's going. It's going. Yeah. The defense attorneys are using that too. They left it on, had their client come and it's witness poker. Are the witnesses here? Yes. Okay. If they're here, you're pleading guilty to DWI. If they're not here, you're going to get some kind of reduction. And that's the extent to which they do it. But here's the thing. I talked to the prosecutor said, hey, did you ever talk to someone so about the case? Because he never called me back. So I assume that it was just left on. I brought the witnesses in. I go, okay, never had a phone call with them. This is one of the better defense attorneys in the area, mind you, okay. Next thing I know, 10 minutes later, he walks in with her, they walk right over the podium, never comes up to me, never comes up to the prosecutor because there's standard deals in these cases that everybody knows. Sure. And he just goes pleading no contest to DWI and doing the class and the fine and with the standard deal that gets offered in the county for those, which that was it. But me and the prosecutors just looked at each other and went, hey. And so when I was about to go out on my own, or right when I did leave the DA's office, this really experienced defense attorney and he's one of the few guys like prosecutors will refer people to him, right? He doesn't even do that much either, but he'll file at least a motion if he thinks there's an issue and he'll definitely call the prosecutor and try to wear the prosecutor out on the phone. Yeah. That's more than most of them do. He'll actually call you and be like, come on, please. Yes. Why not? Like try something. Try it. Just try. Just try. Yeah. And he took me into his office and he was a DA way back in the 80s for like three or four years. And he goes, he goes, man, I, he's like, I know what you're thinking. When I was here in the 80s, you're sitting there handling these calendars, all these attorneys are coming in and you're going, I could do way better than them. And I laughed, right? Yeah. And he's like, I know what you're thinking and he can read your mind. Yeah. He's like, you're thinking the same thing I thought 40 years ago, right? And so I came out and yeah, I do charge a little bit more for my cases, but, you know, when I'm fighting like these municipal prosecutors, they are very aggressive because they only handle misdemeanors. It's not like the county, right? Right. That are, they're concentrating on felony cases and the misdemeanors are like, let's just try and get our convictions where we can. You know, these aggressive municipal prosecutors, you know, I'll paper them because look, they're used to everybody doing what I just told you. And they're, it's like, they're, they're, they're, they're kind of bullies, like it's like, it's like, it's, because I never thought about the way you just talked about how they're used to like just dealing with just these misdemeanors like this is like their job. Right. That's their murder case. Whenever the actual prosecutors in the county are actually dealing with felonies, but then the misdemeanors kind of almost like a hindrance. It is. So I never thought about it from that angle, but it's like, they, they try to bully people and, uh, these pleas, it's drives me crazy and they know which ones they can because you're dealing with the same. Well, if you, if you're dealing with somebody you've never seen before or barely shows up, it's like blood in the water. Right. And if you're dealing with somebody you deal with with all the time, you know how they operate. Sure. Is this a person who's just going to walk their client and you just tell them to know a couple of times, he might send you a long email with all the issues, quote unquote, and then he's going to plead his client or is this a guy who's actually going to leave it on for trial and do the trial. There's only a couple of guys who would even do that or what I try to bring to the table, which is I'm not even going to let you get me into trial until you've already spent several nights and weekends responding to motions. I've authored and you're not going to be able to use the oppositions that I authored for everybody, the stock oppositions because I know what I did oppositions for. Everybody uses them. So I'm giving like more of a bespoke defense, but I'm putting more time into a case. But with that is like, I carry a big stick, but I'm catching flies with honey because I was the prosecutor. I know how to talk to a prosecutor. I know with their concerns, but I know the ones who are going to be super aggressive, but don't like to work. Right. Yeah, they went their weekend off. And I'll tell you, when you file 10 motions on somebody and they go, does anybody have an opposition for this? And nobody does because they've never seen it. And then they start doing the research. I'll tell you about a week before their oppositions are due, you get that email with an offer. It's interesting, like the prosecutors, they have a big bark and so they give you that pushback, but then you're right, they don't want to try the case, they don't want to do that work. That's right. But the bark works with most attorneys. You need both, a prosecutor's office needs both. You need the ones who just like, they don't know how to litigate, but they'll go in and just brawl. Right. Right. Yeah. And then you need some that were kind of like me at the prosecutor's office, which is I want the defense to file some motions because I want you to be effective because I got to defend your defense. If we go to trial and your guy loses, which he is, two years later, ineffective assistance of me. I'm defending you. That's right. So please file some motions. I don't care, but trust me when I tell you, and that guy Bill Terry, who was like the big shark out here, the big guy, he knew when he got on a case with me, he's going to have to do work because as a prosecutor, I actually filed motions, which nobody was doing. Yeah, that's kind of rare. Yeah. I would do it. And because I want to put the defense attorneys to work because I saw also like, and I know that now that I'm defense counsel, like the last thing I want to see is five process, five motions come in on a misdemeanor DUI from some prosecutor. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, you don't want to have to do that additional work for no extra money. Exactly. And it's, are you, are you flat fee only or do you do that? Yeah. I do flat fee. Yeah. You know, that's how just criminal defense is. I prefer it that way. It's easier sell to the client. It is because it's mitigating their risk, right? Right. As far as the hourly rate goes, like, yeah, look, regardless, I'm going to do your case for this. I actually love that there's guys out here that they're doing the case for practically nothing. I love it. Why? Yeah. Well, I mean, come on. You're looking for a criminal defense attorney. You call five guys. They're like, I'll do it for 1500. I'll do it for 2000. I'll do it for whatever. And then I come in and I go, yeah, I was like, I'll do it for 10,000. I need 7,500 upfront. And here's why. Right. Do you explain why or you? Well, I don't even, I see another thing is these guys will spit the price out right when they get somebody on the phone, you know, number one, they're doing that because they're so busy. Yep. They're taking so many clients, they're running a high valing practice, or they're trying to screen right away, which for me is, I'm just going to give somebody value up front. You're calling me. You're in an emergency. I really know what I'm talking about here. I'll spend a half hour with you on the phone, even if I think you're not going to be able to afford my services, right? Yeah. And then I'll quote the price. And if they don't hire me and they don't have the funds to hire me, that's fine. And I'll even try to direct them to somebody who I think is semi competent and will do it for less. You know, I'll direct you that way. But I'm okay with them walking away. The thing is this, if you're calling around and you really have a dire situation, do you want the $5,000 guy or the $10,000 guy? Yeah. You want the $10,000. That's what you want. Yeah. Yeah. You want the $10,000 guy or the $20,000 guy? $20,000. You want the $100,000 guy? It's interesting the mindset part of that, right? Right. Right. Like those, I always call them the $500 attorney, like they don't realize that, like how much of a disadvantage they're giving themselves by charging so little, they look like the discount attorney. Well, here's what it comes down to. They're starving. Yeah. They're starving. Yeah. Okay. They're trying to get some money. They're trying to keep the lights on. I get it. Yeah. But what they don't realize is that they're creating this gridlock with their docket that they're having to spend so much more time. They know. To get less money. They don't have the value to offer. Yeah. That's why they can't quote that price. That's a good point. Like understanding your value is a massive point. Yeah. Which is, and I want to get to the low. Well, I didn't even say this before you get to that. Yeah. I think they do understand their value. That's why they're voting such a low price. That's a fair point. Yeah. And the consumer picks up on that. Yeah. Right. So I tell people, I go, look, I know most, sometimes I'll even say most people can't afford me. Okay. Yeah. Cause that is really, I think that that is a really, it's a brilliant point because like something that I talk about is that like part of running the business is also like like making sure that you're good at your craft. You have to be good at your craft. That's a part of running the business. Right. They're not two separate things. They're the same thing. Cause if you are not good, you're not going to be confident in your abilities and you're going to be charging dirt and you're not going to be making any money. Right. So, which I want to get to like you focus on like high profitability low overhead. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice to that. White keys. Yeah. Yeah. I mean low overhead. I don't have a physical office. Yep. Okay. I run a virtual office. Does that, does that ever affect trying to get clients? No. No. I mean, look, I have a virtual office. I can get a conference room. Okay. You know, I pay $60 an hour, $80 an hour. You know, they're always like, you want the $40 an hour conference room? I'm like, no, give me the huge one. It's a board, like this board room. The table is like 30 feet long with a bunch of shares and it's just me and a client. Yeah. That's like, give me that one for 80. An extra $20 an hour. Yeah. I mean, what are we doing here? Yeah. Right. I mean, what's the reason why you do that? Why I do that? Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm trying to make an impression on a client. I don't keep an office. Yeah. Okay. But if we need to meet, let's meet somewhere, man, this place, it looks, it's nice. So what do you think it is, something I always notice is like the, who you hired as a, as an, as your attorney was like an ego thing for the client. And so I, I think you're a hundred percent dead on. I think that that was, that's the brilliant move. Mm-hmm. I think that is though, because they, it's like, it's almost like a badge of honor to know that like they have hired the good attorney. You know what I mean? So why do you think that is? Well, I don't, if I'm going to try and understand your question, they want to know there's a good attorney because of the office they're going into. It sounds like they're showing off their attorney, right? Like, cause I've had, I've, I've seen it, you know, like, as my attorney, like that, they're like showing off to other people almost, like that's their guy. So like you're conveying that to those clients, which I think is brilliant. Like the, you're the guy, you've got the big conference room and everything. But I do wonder like what it is about those, that clientele, that they need that guy that is the, or the attorney. I would say guy, the attorney that is like the good attorney. Well, I don't think the conference room has anything to do with it. I was just bringing that up as, look, I, I keep my overhead low, I don't keep a physical office. Yeah. Whatever that is, 1300, 1500, 2000, 3000 a month. I don't spend it. Yeah. Okay. COVID changed everything. Most clients hire me without ever meeting me. I dispose of cases without people ever meeting me in person. I do all the time. Is that what you mean? Or enter a plea, written entry of plea, you know, they're out, you know, even if they're in state, I almost never meet them. And so the conference room is some, some people want to meet and it changed. A lot of the attorneys are now, they're like, they have those offices and they go, yeah, after COVID, everything did change. And then you could just zoom clients like that too. They don't have to leave their house. So that's what's, so it's interesting for us, cause we've been, I saw the shift right around like 20, 14, 2015 where, cause 2010 I graduated law schools and that was when I was like, we were meeting everyone in person, everybody. Yeah. And then right around 14 or 15 is when it really shifted and then we started, get to the point where like we weren't meeting, we, we would sign up the client over the phone or, you know, they would do electronically and then we'd send them a check. We would never meet that person. And that, I always found that wild. Like it's just such a bizarre thing to me. Like I would at least want to meet my attorney. It's, it's a, it's a different world than what it used to be. I would probably want to meet my attorney before, after the case is going. Yeah, probably maybe before, but here's the thing that, look, I paid, and most people would go, Hey, your website, you paid that much for the design of it. You paid that much. It's really important. Right. I go, I go, yeah, I mean, this is what actually gives you legitimacy. Somebody looks you up, you know, uh, that's why I was, I, I'm happy that the prosecutor's office. I was in the paper a lot. So if somebody looks me up, they're not, they don't think like, am I sending a link to a tie carry in? You know, such a gift to you. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that was such a gift. But you know, I went to the DUI unit for a reason, you know, the high profile cases, you know, uh, the news loves a DUI death case, you know, they follow them, they, they track them. You get a lot of those out of here. Yeah. It was because of the casinos. Yeah. That's just drinking and driving. I don't know if there's more here than anywhere else, but we, yeah, we get a lot of them. Cause that's, it's one of the things where like, I wouldn't necessarily consider like out in Missouri, any of the counties really, any of the DUI units as like, like high profile. Cause like, you know, I wouldn't say we see, we do see death cases from, but not nearly I. So like you probably heard about the Las Vegas radar, Henry Ruggs. Yeah. Remember he killed somebody 156 miles an hour? That would have been my case if I was at the office. Yeah. Right. That was a huge one. Uh, the one I did the cyclist, that was a huge one. Uh, there's a case, I'm defending cases now that are DUI death cases and the media is all over. So when you wanted to go to that unit, was it because you wanted to be a high profile prosecutor or that initial eventually you, you thought, yeah, I might go out on my own. Well, yeah, I always had the inkling that I might go out on my own, but the way you started the prosecutor's office, you do general litigation. Those are the garbage cases. Yeah. So if a murder makes it to general litigation, like this is what we call a track murder, like homeless on homeless, probably barely provable, right? Right. Or the homicide team's keeping it. Right. Yeah. And then they have a sex team and they have a domestic violence team. They got the DUI team and they have, uh, the guns team. They got the gang unit. Right. And you're trying to ascend to those positions to get more serious cases. Sure. And so when I was about two years in, there's opening for domestic violence and there's opening for the DUI team and I put in for domestic violence, of course, because the DUI team at that point was considered, uh, you're a pariah. They sent the trouble. Like these got same guys have been on that unit for a long time. Nobody wanted to go there and, um, the domestic violence thing wasn't going to happen for me. Uh, the ADA told me he goes, what do you think about the DUI team? And I said, no, I'd go do it. And I got over there. And so it wasn't, I wish I could say I had it all planned to hold sure, but I didn't, you know, I fell into it. I was over there. I go. Like every sentencing I go into, the cameras are there, right? Uh, every case I'm on, the cameras are there at arraignment. And then you know, I stopped watching the news because the DUI death makes the news. I'm like, I know when I go into work the next morning, I'd rather not know. Yeah. I'd rather the case just hit my desk when it hits my desk. It was ruined in the surprise. It's like, it's like, uh, knowing what you're going to get before Christmas morning. But when I got there, the guys were like, if you're ever thinking about going on in a private practice, this is the place to be. The UI misdemeanors, all you do is accident reconstructionist and car accidents. So if you want to go do plaintiff side. Oh, wow. But I've done plaintiffs. Uh, you know, I came out, these plaintiffs firm always need trial attorneys, right? Yeah. That's right. And so, uh, yeah, I go to try. I do trials for them sometimes. And so yeah, those guys were kind of right there. Like you kind of pick up those skills along the way. You know, something that we've noticed is like, of all the practice areas, criminal defense is one of the hardest to scale. It's really hard to have to grow a big firm because you'll see like injury firms, there's all over the country. There's, there's scaling. There's, you even see with family law attorneys, the state planning attorneys, like they can scale, but there's something about criminal defense. It's really hard to see. I think it is. I've seen it done before, but it's, it's, it's rare. So I was going to ask you what you thought it is. I mean, I'm pretty new to the game. Yeah. All right. So I'm three years in, uh, but I'll tell you, I, I got my mind working on it. I have friends that were on huge PI firms. And the problem, the thing with that is when you get a PI case, there's, it's not like, oh, I got to go down to the jail and visit somebody right now. There's a hearing tomorrow. He's got a probation revocation hearing next week. I got to prepare for it. It's like get the medical records, get them treated case manager, do everything on it. Yeah. Where until we file and then you can have like some attorney that probably doesn't know what he's doing, like do the filings and just go take some depots. I mean, that's the way they run it. So maybe there's something to it with that with the family law firms. I don't know how they're doing it, how they scale it. I just know there's so much work in family law and I don't know if attorneys want to do it. Well, yeah. Well, the way the, the, the one of the keys is like they have evergreen retainers where like, and so it's not like criminal offense was like a flat fee. But if they have an evergreen retainer, it's just, it keeps replenishing. They're never in the negative. So if the client stops paying, it dips below whatever the limit is on their evergreen retainer, they just stopped working on the case. So they're never out money. But as long as they have a steady supply of clients and they can get the attorneys, they can hire enough attorneys, they can just, they're just printing cash and that's how they're able to do it. But I mean, the, the hard part of that is like hiring the right attorneys. They're going to want to stick around. It's hard finding family law attorneys, but I, it's, I'm oversimplifying, but it, it's easier than you might think, but with a criminal defense, like you, I, the big part of it is is a, and family law has this problem too, because they're always in court, but they're billing every single hour for it. From a defense, you're taking a flat fee, you're in court all the time. It's really, really hard to do other stuff other than being in court all the freaking time. Cause you have the morning docket, the afternoon docket, sometimes the night, depending on where you are, like a night docket, which can be really tough. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I got some guys, a lot of guys, I know they run around with like chickens with their heads cut off. Yeah. I mean, I look at their calendar. I go, how many appearances do you have? Cause they're in, they're not charging enough. That's, that's part of the problem. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's part of the problem. But I know that's not the way I operate. That's just not the way I operate. And I'm fortunate enough that, look, I saved up enough money before I left, and then I just started making money. And then I started getting my, you know, ducks in a row as far as having the website down. But yeah, I don't have an assistant. I keep my overhead low. I do my own court filings, you know, with Zoom now, I mean, your court appearances, you can zoom in for your court appearances. That's a really good point. That's something where I had not, I had not thought about that for, for criminal defense. If you can do Zoom, that that's, that's a gift. Because most criminal defense appearances are, you wait around for an hour for your case to get called and it's two minutes. Yep. Well, what they have done, and I've noticed in a lot of counties in Missouri, back in person for criminal, like it's, what a lot of our injury stuff is, is it's Zoom. We use WebEx, but Illinois, a lot of Web, we do, we do use Zoom over in Illinois. Right. We use WebEx on both sides of the river for the most part. But like with criminal defense, I've heard it's mostly like in person. I still show up in person though. Yeah, I do. What if you, if you batch your docket, you can put everything on one day if you, as long as they're all, you know, in the same county. The key, look, these guys, when I went into private, they all go, there's two ways you do it. All right. You either take a lot of cases and don't charge a lot or you take a few cases and charge a lot. Yeah. And I go, why would you ever do the former? Yeah. Yeah. And I go, unless you can't do the latter, I think it's an ego thing. You know, like, oh, another case, like another case, it's, it's like almost like a dopamine hit. Well, it's like, Rick, we're all set. He's like, we don't leave no money on the table, man. Right. Yeah. If they can only pay 1,500, get that 1,500. And it's like, uh, you know, I, I get that, I get that, but there's a couple of guys out here in Vegas who have scaled and they have a bunch of attorneys working for them. And I'll tell you, here's, here's the big problem. He comes to hire me for criminal defense to like former chief deputy deputy attorney. This guy is the man, right? He's got deep connections all over the news. Everything's there. Yeah. Well, when he comes to hire me, he wants to hire me. He doesn't want my associates showing up. It's a really good point. Negotiating the case, being in court and these guys who have scaled always have their newer attorneys showing up to court on the cases and fine, that's, that's the way to run your business. But at the same time, like, it's a disservice to the client and they're getting so many cases again, are they, are they given the best, I'm trying to get favorable outcomes for my client. I'm not trying to process cases through, but that goes back to a point that you said earlier. Like, um, you know, it's hard to scale because of whatever, whatever. But at the same time, like if I, or you said you need to know how to practice to run a good business. I disagree with that. Interesting. I've been on the other side for a long time looking around knowing I could do better than these guys. Yeah. There's a lot of people who are there, it's all, it's just like PI. Just get the cases. Just sign the cases, just sign the cases because finding a good attorney is like finding a good mechanic. It's like finding a good doctor. Yeah. You're an attorney. I'm an attorney. I try to find a good doctor. I have no idea if my doctor is good or not and then he fixes me and I go, at least when I leave there I go, uh, you know, I still have that, uh, cysts under my eyelid or something. Yeah. He didn't fix it. Both criminal law or law in general, you don't know the cases over and it's like, did the case go the way it should have gone? Could somebody have done better? They don't know. I think with, I think with, I think there's enough information out there with the, with injury specifically because there are, if I didn't know specifically like how injury cases work, cause the whole game for, for us is bad faith. We want to pin the insurance company in a, in a corner with the policy and pop the policy, right? Yeah. But I would say over half of injury attorneys don't even understand that. No, they don't even know how to pop the policy. That's right. You're right. So their business is, is, is hurting because we get so many, we pop the policy so many times where it's so much more money for the firm. But how does the consumer know that? Well, I'm not even saying, the consumer may not know it, but that's how you're getting your cases. That's what you're saying. You're saying you got to know how to practice so consumers understand how to practice for business. I'm really more talking about the health of the business because yeah, cause my profits are way higher than the guys that don't know what they're doing when it comes to bad faith. So they're skimming by, but if you're, if you're popping policies, you're actually litigating. Well, and some of the most. And not always in Missouri, not a bad faith statute. So favorable. Oh, you can pop a policy with that pre, we have pre let. Oh, okay. So now there's, there's one insurance company. It's American family. Sometimes I'll say it too, where they'll make you a pop up policy and verdict. But otherwise a lot of the other ones will not make you the you'll, we've had, we had four last year, we didn't file suit on them. So it's, yeah, you don't need it like on, on several of them, the, the, the statute's so favorable. When you have them in the corner, you got them in a corner and pay it. So you're making more per case because you're able to, you're able to get higher value out of these cases. But I'll tell you the business I see is pre let personal injury firms out here sign as many cases you can sign them, sign them, sign them. We're settling, settling, settling, settling. And yeah, they're not getting as much as some of the better firms out here. But the consumers, I'll tell you my stepmother, right? She's, look, she's Filipino, right? And she's not the most educated person. Her daughter is an attorney, I'm an attorney, my son's godmother is a district court criminal judge. I mean, attorneys are, but we throw a birthday party, attorneys all over the place. Her niece gets in a car accident. She tells me about, tells me about in the afternoon, we're sitting there at dinner. She goes, I already called Paul Powell and he's one of these business billboard lawyers who has commercial going, more lawyer, less fee, more lawyer, less fee. She already called him. They already signed with him, didn't even want family full of attorneys, right? And I go, this is eye opening because that's what consumers are kind of going for. And so they don't know who's actually doing a better, they don't, they don't, they don't. I don't disagree with that at all. I really don't disagree with that. Once they get signed, what they, they may start doing their research, now there's a lean on the case. Yep. Yeah. They're attorney once they're acting like they did all this work. I do think, at least with injury, the, the, the clients are becoming more informed because we, we have, we, we have done a better job as a bar generally is like, like educating clients. Okay. Compared compared to like criminal defense attorneys, because it just, we, we do a lot more marketing. It's just, it's just a different market. But overall, I would still say generally they don't know the difference for like, they're, they're, they're more educated than what they used to be, but they're, they really don't. I mean, they, I, I use this example, I think yesterday talking to somebody where I handle early on in my career, I handled a family law case for a buddy. And I probably got mopped, like they probably mopped the floor with me. Yeah. They probably did. I don't know. I, I, I'm not a female attorney, but I, here's what I do remember when I left, my client was like high five of me and like happy. You fought. And their client was like an experienced family law attorney was like yelling at them in the court, outside the courtroom. So like my client, like it was like how you make the client feel is really what it comes down to. And they neither one of them probably to have any idea who got a better deal than the other one. Like they really don't know. And I, I don't even know. Yeah. Like I was on the case. So like it really does come out like how you make them feel. But that kind of goes to my point of it's not how good of an attorney you are that dictates the business. But I get your point, you're saying, well, no, you can increase your profits by being a better attorney, especially if you're in a contingency fee based thing. But I'd also say this, you got to sign the big money cases. Yeah. So if you got a guy out here who's like, just yap in case, I mean Vegas is crazy. Cause all the California attorneys came in now Morgan and Morgan's advertising here. Yeah. They just came in sweet, sweet, James is out here, right? And so this has been a big influx the past few years, but everybody's been making their business just signing cases, signing cases. And then yeah, if you get a big one, yeah, well, then you go over and get Brian Panish, you get panish shaped oil. Hey, well, sign you in. He lit a gate's it. That's right. You get a big thing. He splits it with half on you. You didn't do anything. So the whole businesses get the cases and the criminal defense things the same way get the cases get the cases. So I think you could scale it is my point. Well, how have you kept off that, how have you fought off that temptation to just sign more cases? I just take what comes to me. So I did Google ads for like one month. And I was like, wow, if you're the first one they call, could I go, did you even go to my site? Do you even know who I am? Nope, nope, nope, nope. They're ready to pay over the phone because I'm good on the phone. You would try LSA's. What was that? Which is similar, it's their local search ads. You should try that too, because you only get charged for the actual phone call, not for the click. Yeah, I hate it though, you know, because yeah, first of all, instead of me getting the warm lead, which means they kind of already did their research and know who I am or they got a referral. Right. Now it's a cold lead. And now I feel like I paid for it. So now I feel like I want to close it no matter what, right? Now say I'm against it, it works, but I saw like how quickly volume can escalate for me and I'm doing it all on my own. I need such a small sliver of the market, like such a small sliver that I'm at this point in the year where if I don't take another case for the rest of the year, I'm fine. If the phone doesn't ring, I'm happy actually, because I don't have the intake to be able to field a bunch of calls, to start doing a bunch of client consults to do all that. And if I did, I'd make a kill and I'd be in the seven figures easily. How do you prevent, I'm taking it that you're marketing is fairly limited and that you're focusing around a pound. Right. Yeah, ground and pound, man. So how do you prevent from being like that 55 year old attorney that they're sort of on the back end, they're starting to see a decline in their leads? Because that's where I started to see it. That works, your approach works for a while. And then eventually it stops working. Like you're now the old attorney. I don't think so, man, because like I said, like the living legend who no longer with this, Bill Terry, I mean, at the end of his career, he's in his 70s. Everybody wants them. Why? Because he's known. And so if you've been doing it for 20 years, when I'm 65, I will have handled so many cases. My former clients were referring clients to, I mean, did he do much marketing at all? Well, it was a different era, right? So I mean, the guys who were killing it back in like the 90s were the first guys who like got on the internet. And I was like, no, I'm yellow pages, right? Like, oh, they finally got on the internet. And so everybody's kind of catching up with that now. But it's still the same thing of if you're a known attorney, I'll tell you, there's a couple of guys in town, they represented Henry Ruggs. They represented Paris Hilton. They represented Bruno Mars and the cocaine charge, right? Celebrities call them. Yeah. And these guys, you can't even find them. They don't even have a website, right? Because they're getting clients and they're getting high-paying clients and they're already getting referrals. They're the guys to get, I don't, they're nothing special. They do some work on the case, but that's how you want to gear yourself. You want to brand yourself that way. And this day and age, I'll tell you this, I did a little social media on my own. When I first went out, I started doing, you know, YouTube, TikTok, IG, actually just signed a client for two days ago, go, I followed you on Twitter. You haven't tweeted in two years. My friend just got a DUI. That's funny. Yeah. Right? And I go, I saw on my to-do list to get back into it, but I understand why attorneys don't do it because I'm in that same boat. You started getting too busy and it's a lot of work. And you got companies calling you saying, well, we'll do the content for you, but you still got to make the content. No, the content is if it's, if it's by some company, it's not, it's not going to be authentic. It's not going to be you. Exactly. You got to put the time in. Yeah. I taught myself how to do Adobe, like editing. Yeah. Took a videography course. I got it set up. Everything's set up. Just got to put the time in. But that's really the next level. And none of these attorneys are doing it right because like I said, they don't have the knowledge or they're just too busy because they're taking too many cases like we said. Yeah. So I think though, you could do both. You could still do the marketing and then take the case that you want to take and not take the others and even with the paid marketing, yeah, with the paid marketing. And I, with the way you're doing it, I'm not even saying you spent a bunch of money. I would just say, at least do a little bit. That way you're kind of your name still out there because I've seen it a lot where like, I mean, I've talked to thousands of attorneys at this point where you, they kind of get on that back end and they almost, and unless you are like, you feel that void and you became that guy that's like, he's trying the case all the time. He's in the news all the time. That's a little different. If you become that, I'll not agree with you a hundred percent, but you got to feel that void. That means you got to be trying those big cases. You got to be getting those big cases. You'll keep getting the referrals. That's, but even the top guy out, Scott Rose will even say Louis, he's like the top guy. He still puts on a Christmas party every year for all of his clients. He just still does the marketing out there because it is highly competitive. It's probably, I don't know if it's as highly competitive out here, but it's extremely competitive out there with the criminal offense. You got to market. Yeah. No, I agree. I'm not against paid. I'm not against. Like I said, I did it for a month at work, but I got inundated, right? And I got inundated because I needed to have business processes set up more. And so I focused more on that. And then during the time, it's like, well, things are still just coming my way. How are they coming to me? I guess I'm just fortunate. Is it going to last like that forever? I don't want to be the guy who's like, business was great and now my phone's not ringing. I don't want to be that guy. There's this trend that's kind of where people are, they're following like lawyers on tech doc and Instagram. They're kind of goofy. And you see someone where like, I know you're not a good lawyer. Like it's like, just you're not. And because you know them, you know, you'll in there, they're starting to get those leads. And I wonder what you think about that because you, I do think we're going to start to see more of those, those lawyers getting those leads as opposed to us, you know. And so we got to find a way to kind of combat that a little bit. So I wonder what your thoughts are on that. Well, no, I want to get, I know, I think TikTok, I think Instagram and TikTok and Facebook ads, I think they're great, you know, but like you said, I want to do it a certain way and maybe I'm a perfectionist about it. Those guys are going out and they're just doing it and doing it is better than not doing it and saying I'm going to do it better when I do it. But yeah, no, that's definitely you want to be out there. I've had people from TikToks I posted two years ago hit me up and go, yeah, you know, I always follow you on TikTok. Why don't you post more? Now they got a case and they hit me up. You want to be top of mind. And so no, I love, I love doing all that. I think that's something that needs to be done and nobody's doing it right. You know, there's a couple of guys I see what they're doing, nobody's doing it right. It's something you got to sit back and kind of study it. But what it comes down to is flow overhead, bank profits away, have money in the bank to where if you don't get a case for two months or three months, look, you're, we're in a solo business here, right? I can't have my, I can't be living month to month on my business or in my personal life, right? Like I have to have income like set out to where it's like, if I don't get a case in six months, I'm still okay. Yeah. We have 20 something employees so like I would, wow, you got to get in the green every month. I lose my mind if I didn't get a case in six months. So you're in the red for the first three weeks and then the fourth week you're like, all right, we made money, right? That's the light. That's kind of the pressure you're under a little. Well, I mean, if that, if that happened, we're generating leads every day and like signing case every day. So it's a little different, but I would, I would lose my mind. If I, if we would have to lay off a ton of people if we didn't take on a case for someone. Right. Yeah. But how long did it take for you to get that, that big, that big, for, to that, well, we, we grew fast, we started hiring more than we should have. So we probably, we were probably at 26 within like four, probably eight years of practicing. And then we invested a bunch of technology to then lower that cost. We lowered what we needed when it comes to employees. And so that was, that was great. So then we, we dipped below 20 and that we're back. I think we're like 21 or 22, I think is where we are now. But how long, well, when you first started out, how long did you bootstrap it with just you and whoever you partnered with, like, Hey, we're doing everything. Yes. I didn't partner with anybody. So I started like early on, it was just me for like the first six months. Okay. And then I was doing criminal defense and injury, which there very much was a great thing. It was good at the time. Yeah. And then at the point it became a burden because I couldn't move the injury cases, but then I had hired, I had two employees. First hire was what? She was assistant. Yeah. I can't remember what we called her. I think probably just legal assistance, but I don't recall her. She was the daughter of a friend of mine who was, who worked at the injury firm that I had left. And so, and then I hired his other daughter. So I had two employees, then one of them, she went, I came and she went somewhere else because she just graduated from college because she was working there like part time. And then I finally made my first official hire, which was like more like a case manager role. Okay. Then then another case manager role. Then I partnered with a guy. We lasted for 18 months, which it was, it was interesting from that. That's right. So that was kind of interesting. And did bad because. What was funny? He wasn't pulling his weight. Well, no, it was interesting. It was, it always comes out of money, right? So he and I both did well before. We both did extremely well together and then we both done extremely well since. And it was just a matter of like, I think it's part of its money, I think, but part of it's, because we, it's funny when we split, we all, we both got big checks from the firm. It was interesting. The probably more of that down to, came down to vision, you know, like, like, where's the firm going to be headed kind of a thing, I think, I think that was a big part of it. Like you wanted to grow a big and he's like, I'm fine with it being small. Not even necessarily that. I think we both like case strategy on cases sometimes. I think that was part of it. Yeah. The type of people we should hire. A lot of times like, and the way we did it is, we, it was almost like veto power. Like, if you want to do this, great, if I agree with it as well, or if you want to do that, I don't really want to do that. You can't do it. You want to be the king of your own castle. Right. In a certain point. Well, I think both of us were kind of like, I was the managing partner. I think that, I think there were times where like he kind of also wanted to be too. It was, it was an interesting dynamic. I mean, it was, and we parted on good ways too. It was just, it was, it was an interesting thing because you normally see whenever a firm splits, everyone's fighting and everything, but we, we talked seven days later, we split. It was, it was like, we signed an agreement, boom, done. Right. So it was an interesting thing. How, how it all played out. I've seen some guys, I know some guys, especially in the injury world. I go to these mass tort conferences. I meet some of the big injury guys. It is interesting. Why do you go those? Why? Yeah. It's just like stepping into a different universe. Because it's out here. So it's. No, no, no. Actually, I go on to other ones. Yeah. Like I said, when I was heavily recruited after I left the DA's office, all these personal injury firms want to hire me. Right. And it's some of the really, really good ones. Yeah. Because, you know, what they say, a trial attorney, they're like, you can't make one. They go, you're like, it's just like a unicorn, man. I mean, you're already comfortable in a courtroom. You already know the judges. You know the rules of evidence. You can put trial on like this. Nobody's business. And we just hand you the case and all the depositions and everything's done. Like you could go in and do it. And they go, man, could you come in and do it? I did a few. And I said, but you're handing me the case and everything's not done. Yeah. You don't like it. Yeah. I tried to, yeah. I tried a case a while ago, but like I got, I got the case 30 days before and it just was not ready. It was like, but it was like, the point where the case wasn't getting continued. It sucks trying to shoot a case. It just, it's just, you're like, gosh, damn it, you know, like all these things you would have done differently. Yeah. It's so frustrating to do something like that. But yeah, they recruited me and then they're like, I did some work for them and they're going and delving into that world too. So I had to tag on to the conferences and they're great parties, but you really kind of see like, you know, how that world's operating and how some of these personal injury firms have kind of migrated towards that because, you know, it seems to be a lot of money. There was definitely a huge wave that way it was kind of settling down a little bit. Well, a lot of it's just interesting. This kind of drives me nuts. It's that they will advertise that they're doing these. So there's a new mass tort, right? They're advertising that they're doing this and they sign them and they sign the ship, you know? And it's like, it's my, the thing that I look at, it's like, you're not doing those cases, though, and you're advertising that you are doing those cases and that's the part it's like, you know, that's what Morgan Morgan is doing, right? Right. Well, that's true. Yeah. And it's, it's, it is there's something just not right about it, you know what I mean? That's not your vision for your firm. Yeah. And good for them for signing up. They get the money at the end and all that. I mean, I heard sweet James. I heard he moved to Puerto Rico. So he get the tax break. He's a, you know, make him billions, he's a billionaire attorney at this point. Good. You know, but, you know, is he really getting good outcomes? Is he trying cases? No, he's referral machine. So I interviewed, I don't know his, his title, he might be a COO, but I mean, he's a sharp guy and I, it was interesting, like they're like, they've got it dialed in. They do have that firm dialed in, which is, I think it's a cool name too. It's memorable. I think it's more memorable than like Morgan and Morgan, but what's, what's great, and I don't know if sweet James has this component, what makes Morgan and Morgan great is they do have the trial attorneys that can, that can actually try the cases. And that's, that, that makes them way different than the vast majority of volume firms. Right. Most volume firms don't have that element of it, which is, it definitely is a differentiator. They want that element. Yeah. But it's hard to find good help. Right. Have you ever thought about taking it on a partner yourself? Uh, yeah. All the time. Yeah. I mean, in theory, it sounds great. In theory, it sounds great. Uh, in practice, it's, it's like getting into a marriage. Right? It's exactly like getting into a marriage. You better have your values aligned. Yeah. And this, this is a long-term thing. And here's the other thing, being completely solo, my overhead slow, right? Uh, I can be a workaholic sometimes, right? I have a hard time delegating, right? Cause I feel like it's not going to get done right now. And you have no staff, right? No staff. Yeah. And it usually doesn't get done right. If I, that's why I don't hire savvy. It usually doesn't get done right. And then I get bent out of shape. But here's the other thing is, I like to be lazy sometimes too, right? And I don't need another partner looking at me like, how come you're not working so hard? And I also don't want to feel the same way towards them either, you know? And uh, I did think about partnering up with someone. We almost did it. We almost did it. How close you get? Uh, we almost, we were at the bank to, to the bank account. Okay. Right. So it was, tell me this story. You're walking to the bank. Yeah. We're there. And I guess her office manager had made the appointment at a bank that doesn't do lawyer trust accounts, right? I'm like, okay. That's it. Are you like, is that a sign? Yeah. Well, to me, I'm like, this is why I don't delegate anything. Right. I was like, who, how could you even make that mistake? Right. We're here for an appointment. I took time out of my day. Either way, it was a good thing. Uh, but you know, I just saw some red flags that came up and it actually ended up really bad where, uh, I say, okay, look, we're not going to do this, but there's a couple like clients. I'm just trying to do purely criminal defense, personal injury kind of thing right now. I got some business clients, uh, she was more of a business attorney doing contracts, business deals, whatever. And I had some business clients who were going to be recurring revenue, like basically paying a monthly fee, flat fee, not even retainer, like monthly flat fee for like a general counsel position. Wow. And, uh, she ended up not doing the work. They start contacting me. And then they're like, what's going on? I'm trying to contact her next thing you know, she's going radio silent. Clients wondering what's going on long story short. She told, I think she stole about 20, 30 grand from people. Oh my gosh. And then I just went ahead and cleaned up the mess. I went ahead and just, you know, you had not partnered, right? We had not completed. You're just saying you're clean up. You had to clean up the mess. Well, you know, I had introduced the client. So I'm like, I feel like, look, I want to do it. And then a couple of her clients that I didn't even know were hitting me up. They can't get in touch with her. And so I, I got their cases squared away with somebody else and, uh, uh, and I'm not saying all partners are like that, but at that point, at this point now that I've built what I've built, why do I want to split it up with somebody? Yeah. I don't disagree. I remember part of somebody again, it'll, it'll, I just never will, you know, it's, I'm the same way. It's, I don't want that same obligation. The, the one of my as, as a practicing attorney, one of my favorite days was the date we split up because I, all that pressure of like, you know, the same thing you talked about, like what's he doing? Like, does he think that I'm not, like, you're like, you're like, are they questioning what I'm doing? Am I questioning what he's doing? Kind of thing. Like all that was gone. I'm like, okay. Fresh start kind of a thing. It was, it was such a relief. So you're 100% right about that. Um, what do you deal? How do you deal with situations like you're in court clients calling you? They can't get, get ahold of you. So leave you a voicemail. I mean, you don't have someone answering your phone or do you have an answer? I don't have anybody answering my phone. Yeah. Any issues with that? You know, no, not at all. I mean, look, I tell my clients this, you call me, it goes to voicemail. I'm going to give you a call back. All right. Text me. Text messages go straight to my, my business line goes to my personal phone. I see it or email me. Same thing. I'm going to see it. And I will, I promise you, I will text you back and let you know, like when I get out of court, I'll give you a call, you know, these are the things that separate me from these other guys where it's like, you're selling a piece of mind, comfort, right? Do you take a vacation? Yeah. Yeah. Do you still answer the phone on vacation and all that? Or how do you deal with that? I do. I do. If I have service, you know, I'll let my clients know if I'm going to be out of town. I said, look, I'm going to be out of town. Shoot me any. Look, if you shoot me an email, it's cool. If it's an emergency, text me or whatever, I'll give you a call. But yeah, I still, I still get to my phone. I mean, I just don't see the sense in having a gatekeeper who goes, well, office. Yeah. Well, let me see if he's available and then checking with me and then getting back with the person. It's like, I can text them back just as easy ago. I'll call you tomorrow. Right. Is it an emergency? I'll call you tomorrow. If it's an emergency, I'll call you this evening. So what is your, what's your day, typical daylight other than like, so let's, I mean, are you spending a lot of time in court now or do you, like, so like, for example, today, today or today, Saturday, Friday, Friday, the courts are pretty, pretty, pretty dead. So Monday look like for you, but it's Veterans Day. So are your courts open? Yeah. And Monday is Veterans Day. So there's another court to be closed on. Okay. So what about Tuesday? All right. Tuesday will be a busy day for me. Right. So I have appearance downtown, guy, we're going to appear in court. He's got an arrest warrant. We're going to get that recall so he can get booked over at the jail. That's going to be at 830 at 930. I have a big sentencing, big media case, triple death DUI death is the biggest DUI death in the county this year. It's getting sentenced 930. The judge told me to be there right away because they want to call it first. They have increased security for that case. I also at the same time, I still prosecute cases in Boulder City, so we do a specialty court there. Really? Drug court conference. And Tuesday is like my heavy day there. I only go out there like five times a month, but I'm supposed to be doing a staffing on Zoom from 8 to 10. I've already told them I'm not going to be there for that. So after I get done with the sentencing, that should be done around 1030. And then I'll probably just chill until I got to go to Boulder City at around 230. Yeah. I'll be a bunch of pre trials, maybe 8 or 10 cases where I'm prosecuting. Again, the defense attorneys aren't doing anything on the case. And I've been in the game long enough, like I know how to get the cases done with them. And so I'll get done around five, and then we'll do the specialty court, which goes from five to like seven. So it's a long day. And then go pick up my son after that. That's like a typical day. The only thing that throws a wrench in my day is if a potential client calls me out of the blue. Right. So what do you do in those situations? Because those can create tough situations sometimes. I do it. And I close them. Right? Yeah. But that's going to be a half hour out of my day. Exactly. I spend the time with them on the phone, right? And then I get a gauge on what they need. And then if they do want to sign with me, then I'll make sure I get over to my my case thing. I've got my automated templates I've made for my retainer agreements. Spit it out. They can either zel me or the retainer agreement, but that could throw a wrench. So if I get three consults in a day, my slow day just turned into super busy. Would you want to get some work done, maybe look at some discovery, yes, yeah, all that. Or they call, I need a bond hearing. It's a bond hearing is more kind of a thing. That park can kind of throw a wrench in things too. But that's the nature of the business. But man, if you're doing that, you're making money. Absolutely. That's what I was wondering. Sometimes your receptions can help field those calls for you help. Yeah. But you know what? When these people are calling around, they're calling around, right? And so I know when I first left the DA's office, some criminal attorneys wanted me to work for them because they're like, they know I could just handle the whole case. Even the client, like I can hand hold, like they wouldn't have to do anything. Sure. They go, if I could just be in the office all day, because whoever they call, whoever gets them on the phone first, yeah, I can see that you're going to get them. Yeah. And so I'll tell you a lot of times I answer the phone, I go, hey, this is attorney Thomas Moskull. And they go, this is the attorney? I go, yeah, it is. They're like, oh, I wasn't expecting to talk to the attorney. I was wanting to get a consultation. I go, can we schedule something? I said, well, you got me on the phone right now, what seems to be the situation? And they go, they just go into it. Yeah. Then 20 minutes later, I'm kind of giving them the lay of the land, about around 20 or 30 minutes now. I've done enough of these calls where it's like not to be a businessman about it. But this is what I charge. And this is how it would proceed. Is that sound unreasonable to you? Nice. Hear the answer. If they go, man, that is outside of my price range, how much were you looking to spend? So you, so you'll quote a price, but then sometimes you'll maybe like see what they're, what they're willing to pay. Why? Yeah. This is like something, it's like Alex or Mosey. You follow him a little bit. Yeah. Of course. It's like he says, because you've had this conversation a thousand, 10,000 times they've had it once. Yeah. You kind of, so I like this. That's what I charge. And then if they can't afford that, how much were you looking to spend, right? And then I'll hear it and then I'll go, hmm, maybe I will take the case, especially if we had a good conversation. I got a good feeling. They're not a problem client. Yeah. And I feel like I want to help them like they're in a situation. But if it's something where I'm like, well, you know what, let me refer you over to somebody. I got a guy. He doesn't charge. It's not going to be the Thomas Moskull defense, but your case is pretty simple. You're not going to jail on it, in my opinion. Call this guy. He's been doing it for 15 years. I'll refer him over business. He's a criminal attorney. And he's a criminal attorney that actually refers bigger cases to me. And trust me, when he refers a case to me, because he doesn't want to handle it because it's too big. Yeah. When they come to me, it's like, this is a big case. And another criminal defense attorney has said, this is the guy you want to go for. Those are the nicest, especially situations like that. And then they look you up and they're like chief prosecutor. Yeah. And then I call them and I go, hey, I'm not cheap. What are some of the things that you struggle with whenever it comes like running the firm? Oh, man. Just the normal. If I want to hire an assistant, I'm trying to get my checklist of what I would have somebody do, but ordering the discovery, getting it, I like to make it available to my clients. So creating the Dropbox share file, sharing it to them with the email, organizing the case file. I like it. Organize on my filings by date. You know, there's little things that somebody should be able to do this for me, but I got to train them how to do it. Those kinds of things kind of like can take up a lot of time, you know, organizing as far as file retention, right? Get the stuff scanned in. All right. Let's take it off of our server. Now we got it into, you know, was it backblaze and then also our heart. That's like a big time cloud, uh, uh, uh, file retention. Okay. You could trust it. Okay. Backblaze backs up and it's like you get so many terabytes. It costs most of these criminal attorneys don't want to pay for it, but you do have state bar ethical file retention guidelines, right? And then also I have a hard copy. Just in case something happens with backblaze, even this is the most trusted one, I think. I have the hard copy back that up. I spent a lot of time doing that and then bookkeeping, all right, not that I keep my own books, but I got to check with the bookkeepers putting out, right, uh, taxes, you know, subscriptions, Lexus, Nexus, I mean, there's everything to it when you're solo, right? Sounds like like everything's gone like extremely well for you, which is, which is awesome. I mean, have there been any like, you know, dark moments? I've been through every emotion. Yeah. I've been through every emotion. Yeah. I want to hear about the. I've heard about all good stuff. Yeah. I'm going to hear the other stuff. Like what's, what's on the stuff? You're like, gosh, damn it. Like, any times we were like almost like thinking about hanging it up. You know what I mean? Like, look, man. So I'm in year three. I finally had the moment of like, I have enough data of every month is good. Every month he's beating the prior month, right? It's like record setting month, record setting month, record setting month. Everything's going to be fine. But man, when you first start, you don't know, you know, yeah, you sign two clients. But what was the next one coming? The phone didn't ring this week. Yeah. What am I going to do? You know, should I go get a job somewhere? Man, this is a lot, you know, running around learning how to get from courtroom to courtroom. And at the same time, like I said, I got the two year old, I had the son. He's small. Me and his mom had broken up. Yeah. So I was going through that at the same time trying to get the same time you started to firm. Oh, man. That's tough. I was like, I remember July, 2022, I was sitting there like, I could not just, I just couldn't get it together. And I had all those moments, same thing, the partner just ripped somebody off, right? So yeah, this is having the same time. Yeah, come on. It always happened when things go bad, they go bad, right? But you come out of that and you're stronger. But yeah, you know, the main thing is like, are you going to be able to make money? I mean, that's what everybody's thinking. Can you make money, especially when you got job offers coming at you. And they're like, I'm getting, you know, I'm an experienced attorney. I'm 10, 12 years in the game, I'm getting, when I get offered, like this is a good salary for us. Did any right? Did any of them get to the point where you're like, you were like seriously considering taking the job. Yeah. Yeah. Earlier now that I've had the moment, you're never, look, this is the one thing. My mom, she ran a bar when I was growing up. Okay. That's an interesting childhood. Yeah. Yeah. But she ran her own bar and she was kind of like the, this, well, I'll call her the queen, but she's like the king of her own universe, right? She had her own little microcosm out there. She ran stuff, man, nobody's telling her what to do. And I always had that feeling, but I also knew this in law, just because I watching my mom and watching business owners come up in law, the only way you're going to make real monies by being the business owner. Yeah. There's a reason why lawyers make a lot of monies employees because the business is making a ton of money to pay a lawyer, 200 grand a year, 300 grand a year, how much is the firm making off of you to pay you that much, right? But if you're making that much money, and I know if I paid somebody 300 grand a year, you better be busting your ass. You better be, right? But as an owner, you can make 300 grand a year and not work too hard. Like you could. Potentially. Yeah. I stand right here. I'll go. I'll say it. I go. I was working a lot harder when I was a prosecutor than I am now. Really? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of surprising to you. I think that the vast majority of criminal defense attorneys that would hear that would think that's kind of surprising. I mean, that's, that's good for you. That's excellent. I don't know. I mean, I know some attorney, I talked to them at coffee, but there's guys who haven't figured out. They do have it figured out. Now, that's a small, like that's a minority of them because everybody's trying to get a piece. But the guys who've really made a living doing it, I had a dermatologist, he asked me what kind of law I'm in. I go, I'm doing criminal defense. And he goes, I have a lot of friends, they're lawyers. He goes, the happiest ones of the criminal defense guys. And why? It's not paperwork intensive, right? You got to have a personality to be able to pull it off well. You got to pull the clients in. But 99% of cases, just like in PI, 99% of cases are resolving. You're not going to trial on those. The guys who are having a tough time are the guys who are, and they make a business of it and they like what they're doing. But if you're doing appointed work, contract work for the government, you're doing a lot of indigent cases, which the system needs, right? And not getting paid until the end of the case. Well, or they're paying you 5,000 a month and you're taking a ton of cases. Oh. And then if you go to trial... There's always not paying that much. That's... Really? Yeah. That's... Yeah, they're paying like 5,000 a month to a contract attorney. And you're taking everything that the public defenders conflicting off of. And then the federal, the federal ones pay better if you know the federal panel. The federal, the federal CJA panels, I'm just going to ask you about that. I mean, if you thought about doing federal, because those are all high dollar cases. Like, you're not going to do anything that's under like 20 grand. You know, it gets all going to be 20 grand. Oh, from CJA. Yeah. Or no. I wish somebody had federal, like private... No, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if a retained case comes through, you should be getting over six figures on it. Yeah. If you get retained on it. They're all big dollar cases. Right. Every single one of them. Yeah. Well, also the guys are facing a ton of time. Absolutely. And, you know, it is what it is. People, I do want to get into it just to learn more about the federal system. I do some work with Legal Aid, like some 1983 cases, so I can learn how to do those things. But as far as doing appointed work, I mean, look, even if they're paying you a hundred and fifteen hour, 170 an hour, you know, 200 an hour, whatever it is, and they're not paying that much. Yeah. It's still, it's still not a great hourly rate. They're still slashing your bills just like an insurance company with slashing insurance defensibles, you better not bill too much. You know, like you got a thousand pages of discovery charged about this much for it. But if you actually looked at it, God forbid you sit there like I do want a case and start researching a bunch of case law to make some kind of bespoke motion. Right. Yeah. They're like, you spent how long on that motion, 10 hours? No, you're not taking any more CJA cases if you do that. Right. Do you ever think you're spreading yourself too thin? No, because I don't spend a lot of time on the word. Like, I was a litigation monster, right? So I say this prosecutors I go against, if I spend a weekend putting together three motions, a weekend, right, which I would have to be working morning till night to put together three motions. Yeah. You're going to have spent two weeks on it. Like I'm that efficient with what I do. I practice that much, litigating. Do you do anything other than like run the business and practice law? I mean, because like, do you have any hobbies that you do outside of work? Yeah. Yeah. Dad, my dad, my son's five and a half now. So other than, other than being a father, what are the other things? I mean, that's the huge, that's the huge things like we live in my own childhood. Yeah. Yeah. We have, I got the Nerf War is set up to all the Nerf guns got loaded up today as mom picked them up. I said, Nerf War tomorrow morning, pick them up. All the Nerf guns are loaded up. We're going to do it up. I'd take him to his extracurricular activities. But yeah, when I, when I have a night away from him, that's when I am trying to get my work done. I'm trying to work on my automation. My document automation is the big one for me, right? And then I'm trying to do the work on my cases and do that. But man, I get to the gym every day around 10 in the morning, 10, 30, 30, 40. Yeah, working out is important. It is. And people like, man, you're living the life. I go, I'm getting to the, I'm in the gym with the retire. No, you're putting in the work, right? Got to put in the reps. But it's like that time is available to me. Yeah. I practice a guitar. Call of duty. Six just came out. Six just came out on PlayStation. It just came out? Yeah. No, I didn't know that. October, yeah. The end of October, they released it. So I'm not as into it as I was a couple of years ago, black, I think that was more procrastination with the dark, the dark times of the firm, like, but as long as you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, right? And then the firm, eventually I got the website going and now I'm really at the point with the firm now. That's kind of an exciting time where all I got to do is turn the stove up, you know? Yeah. Turn the marketing up. Like you said, if I run something and I'm really thinking about it, but I had to set up my solo 401k. I did a ton of research on that over the summer. I had to get that set up. I'm at the very final stages of that. Nice. And so that was like one big to do off the list. And then it's like, man, my old SEO company there, you know, I know they know what they're doing because they worked with some PI firms that I was friends with and they got my stuff off. And so it's like, as soon as I call them up, like, Hey, let's go ahead and do it. Let's run about $3,000 a month budget on the Google ads because that's about the minimum we can do until I get inundated. Let's start getting my SEO up a little bit more. I do want to get into the social media back into TikToks and IG, like really doing it the way I do it. Just organic. I used to do it in my car, started getting that out. So as far as the hobbies, like, yeah, I work out just to keep the machine going and I'm there for my son and, but, you know, I don't really go out anymore or anything like that. It's more about the business. I mean, what about you? You probably focus on the business. So I do you do. You're in Vegas doing a. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I got the two business. I've got maximum lawyer and then I've got the firm. So that, I mean, the firm's the main focus and then we got maximum lawyers, a big part of it too. And we were out here for a mastermind, but yeah, I work out. I do jujitsu. I like to fly. I'm a pilot. I like to fly. So I think having those hobbies is really important. How old are you? Can I ask? 41. 41. Just a little bit younger. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So my son's in Muay Thai over at this place called. Oh, nice. Yeah. I'm a Sean Strickland train. I'd love to do Muay Thai. And, but they have the Brazilian jujitsu on the other side. They got the cage and the people are trained and they got some amateur fighters. They're about to turn pro a couple of profighters fighting out of there. And I'm always looking at a Brazilian jujitsu. It's just at this point. It's like, and you'll see, I mean, you're 41. So you're seeing it a little bit, but you'll see when you get injured, it just does. Yeah. Whenever I went, when I shook your hand, my shoulder pop, I had that shoulder surgery a couple of weeks ago. So I was like, Oh gosh, that was for my, this is from a car crash. So yeah. So that was, that was fun. But yeah, I know what you mean, it's, it's, it's tough, but it's one of the things like, because we do work out and because we're healthy, like my recovery's not going to be that long. I mean, I mean, I have pretty good recovery and so I'm going to get into it. And a few years, you'll see, I mean, I was just doing some pushups the other day and my wrist was like, just from doing pushups, something happened in there, right? And I'm going to tell you what, I've been dealing with this. I don't even know how this thumb got, I don't know if I hit it against something, but it's like when I'm lifting weights, sometimes it just taps the bar a little bit. Right. Five months. Oh my gosh. It's still, it's still, you need to go get that checked out by a doctor. It's what? Yeah. What are they going to do? I don't really mind you. When you break a finger, they can't even do anything. It's just that the healing time is insane. So I'm a little bit reluctant to get on the mat, but I've heard great thing. You don't have the cauliflower ear. No, it's funny. This ear swelled up and I had to drain it with a needle. So that's because if you drain it, you'll fry your fine, but I, it did break the cartilage in my left ear to, so that's what causes it in the cartilage breaks. But there's something about it. It's like, it's kind of like trying to case it in a way where like you, sometimes you'll take your lumps and it's, it's not necessarily that you lose, but sometimes you'll take your lumps in a trial. You don't really, you're like, the other side, get some, get some good shots in. And like whenever you are, like you're rolling with somebody, sometimes people get you in a really compromised position and it sucks, you know, it's, it really sucks. But you know what? You also get other people. So like you, you're humbled sometimes which you need that a little bit, it grounds you, but then also there's the confidence part where you're, you're rolling somebody else and you're, you're getting that position and you're making them tap. And so it, there's a lot of that where you're in, there's a lot of the camaraderie when it comes to rolling with people and you're rolling with the same people over and over again and learn these different techniques and learn these little bitty things. And it's kind of like you're talking about like the hormones you think about like, it's their one call they've done. You've done it a thousand times. The same thing with, with Jiu Jitsu, like I'm a white belt, I'm at three stripes. And so if I, if I roll with a brand new person, I know so much more and I don't know anything. Here's the right. But I know so much more just because I've gone just a little bit longer and that's what's really cool. You start to see those little bitty things. It's very intellectual. Yes. Yes. It varies because you're, you're not making one move at a time. You're making like 12 moves at a time. So it's like 12 boob chest. Like there's so many different things you do at the never given moment, but both sides are trying to figure out at the exact same time. And so that's what there's a lot, there is a lot, a lot of thinking involved. It's also, it's very physical too. And I think the humbling part of it is probably the most important part of it though, just to really ground you because I think we do need that sometimes. Yeah. I want, I want to try it. I want to get into it. I know I really enjoy it. I'm a little reluctant about the, because of the injury side of it. Yeah. I'll play a basketball, those things like, you know, being injured sucks at this point. But you got to find the right gym where it's like, you're not dealing with some young guys with egos. Like they, like. Or people that don't know what they're doing. That's right. If you, if you roll with the guys that are like higher belts or that know, then you won't get injured. You'll never get injured because they know how to protect you. Right. It's the ones where you are, if you're rolling with a newbie, that's where you'll get hurt. Right. Yeah. Right. But so I want to, I want to end on this though. I want to know, because it seems like you're really driven. And I wonder like what, what drives you and, and what, what's your end game? Like, what do you, what do you want to take this thing? You know, I'm just, I'm just taking it as it comes, man. When I went to law school, I didn't know I wanted to be a lawyer. I didn't. Interesting. Yeah. I got out of there and I went back to my hometown of my best friend. He's just a hustler, man. And I said, yeah, I don't know if I want to be a lawyer. He says, so you spent all this money in law school. I went, yeah, and he goes, and you, you worked really hard for three years. He got your law degree. I said, yeah. And he goes, but you don't know if you want to be a lawyer. I said, yeah, I don't know. And he goes, but you haven't tried it yet. And when I kind of see where you're going with this, he goes, man, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. So I gave it a try. I like it. I know I wanted to come into private practice. I'm only three years in. I mean, at some point, life could take me a different direction. So I don't really have a long term plan. I just know as long as I'm not dreading this, that's my thing. Like the prosecutor's office, I started dreading going in. Once I started dreading going into a job, I can't stay there. I'm not the, what is the Oscar wild, life-influently, desperation, whatever. And that's not me. Well, you don't want a job, right, as a law, as a law firm owner, you don't want a job. And so you don't have a job right now. That's good. I think it's good. Yeah, no. So it's cool. It affords me a lot of freedom. But I do feel like I'm a little bit wasted. I would like to go work on like some complex litigation. Yeah. I would. Yeah, I would. I think you need something that's going to really motivate you and push you. I feel like you are, I think you're coasting right now. And I feel like you need to be pushed. It is. No, I am coasting. But at the same time, I got my priority, which is I want to be as president as I can for my son. Now he's five and a half. I think once he gets to seven, he's almost there. At seven, it's pretty much like my job's done. And not in a comical way, but really like as far as psychologists say, if you get everything right from to seven years old where they feel confident, secure, everything is good, parenting gets real easy. They start developing their own. Self-sufficiency is great. Yeah. And so I'm just now feeling in this last year, like I'm able to start grinding more. I mean, and this summer is about as busy as a person could be. I was busy. Good. And I was getting these business processes set up. And so it just takes time. I just say, I got a big saying, you know, peace equals pace. Go slow, homie. Go slow. Right? Like you're not in a race with anybody else and bills are paid, finances are good, things look on the up and up. But if I look long term, if I stay doing this, I am looking to figure out how I can scale criminal, right? How can I scale it? Because as soon as I turn the marketing up, I'm not going to be able to do it on my own. I'm not. And so, but financial independence, right? You know, I'm 45. I'm looking at by the time I'm 55, can I be in a position where I'm working because I kind of want to, you know, I'm not feeling that pressure of like that hunched over guy in his 50s, where are my leads coming from? Oh my God. You know, they had a guy, John Momet. He was in the casino, the movie, okay? Robert De Niro's attorneys were Oscar Goodman, and John Momet was right next to him. They were legends, right? John Momet just died about a year ago. But that guy, he married like five different showgirls over his life. He's been married, divorced, rightly, lived it up. But at the end of his career, he's coming up to court every day and he's carrying his oxygen tank with the tubes going into his nose, still making appearances based on who he was. And every prosecutor he'd see, I was a young prospect, he goes, don't leave the DA's office. Get your bench in, get your bench in. That was his advice, right? Wow. And I said, but you know what? That guy, he really lived it up in his heyday, but he did not set himself up to be in a position of, Bill Terry was the same way. He worked until he died, right? And it's like, you got to make sure that your need for money is not there anymore. And law is a beautiful way to do it. Is it like the passion, the sexiest job in the world? You know, I don't know. But I'm hoping 10 years from now, I'm in a position where maybe the business is kind of running itself, you know, I can kind of recede back and kind of be the face, kind of make some rain. Maybe I'm not doing criminal defense anymore. I'm really looking at some of these federal statutes that have attorney fee provisions shifting, you know, where you're suing the federal government for certain things, whether it's environmental, whatever. I know a couple of guys that do that and they make, you know, five, six hundred grand a year and there's only about five or six guys in the country who do it. And nobody, and you just got to find one statute. Yeah. You become an expert in that. Consumer protection here. That attorney's fee shifting provision, you could sue a used car dealership. The more they fight it, the next thing you know, they're on the hook for 75 grand an attorney's fees over a fifteen hundred dollar dispute because they're fighting it. So looking at all kinds of things like that, I think criminal defense can be a huge grind. Yeah. A lot of guys can wear on them. Yeah. Well, what I hope is that, you know, 10 years from now, five years from now, you go like, go back and listen to this and you kind of, you think like, okay, and like you've at that point, you've kind of gotten to where you know where you want to be with this. I think that'd be kind of a cool thing for you to come back and listen to a little bit. No, it would be. Yeah. So hopefully that you'll do that. Yeah, a journal a lot. And just going back to a journal from three years ago, you're like, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. So well, Thomas, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. So I know you're, you're going to get an event to go to. So but really appreciate taking the time. I know we went pretty long here, but I think it was fun. No, you know, man. I know you had a long day, man. So. Yeah. Thanks, man. This spring, we're taking the maximum layer mastermind to Maui, the perfect setting to reset, refocus and recharge. 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