It's beginning to become a tradition. If it's January, maximum lawyer is heading to Scottsdale to Mastermind. January is the perfect time of year to step back, assess where your firm is, and create a strategic plan for growth. This Mastermind is designed to give you a jumpstart to make sure 2025 is your most successful year yet. Our day and a half events combine business training and hot seats. On day one, you'll learn how to use AI and automations to drive growth with the latest tech innovations for law firms, followed by Mastermind hot seats on day two, where you'll receive tailored advice and strategies on what to do next. You'll walk away from this event with an action plan created from personalized solutions that you can implement immediately. To learn more about this event and grab your ticket, head to maxlawevents.com. This is maximum lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix. Today's guest is Paul Yokabaitis, who runs a highly successful estate planning firm in Kerry, North Carolina, called Kerry Estate Planning. Paul has founded multiple highly successful businesses and is just a high energy person. Overall, I think you're really going to like this episode. We dive into a lot of different topics, such as scaling the firm, differentiating in a very crowded market, how AI is affecting the legal landscape, dealing with employee resignations, handling criticism from others. Plus, we also touch a little bit on Paul's work with Planwell Legal. I really hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Hey, how you doing? Good, man. How are you? Good. Good to see you again. Likewise, been a while. No kidding. I'm going to jump right in. We were talking a little bit right before about your last episode. I'm going to read to you a quote from that one, and I want to know if anything's changed. All right, so the quote is, and I've clipped it a little bit. Most of my referral partners, they were loyal to me. They were with me before I joined my most recent firm, and they're going to continue to be with me moving forward. And that's largely because I actually care about them. And that was your first day. Has that stayed true, or has that changed? In some respect, yes, I think the relationships have shifted a little. About three years ago, two years ago, I guess, we launched a financial planning practice. And it kind of is distanced some of the financial visor referrals that I had at the time, which was kind of the bedrock of law firm revenue when I was first starting. But it was only after we had built out a pretty substantial digital marketing engine and became just less reliant generally on referrals. But a lot of my attorney referrals, good clients that have always been around and referred their friends and family, they're all still there. And the key, I guess, bedrock of that statement is still true, that everyone that we've ever created relationships with, we still care about, we still nurture those relationships. It's just I think that us opening a financial planning firm created some bad tastes and some people's mouths who maybe didn't have growth mindset and that kind of thing, right? Not really within my control, I guess competing against them was. But if I had it my way, we'd still have the relationships. Yeah, so whenever I read it, I just kind of like chuckle because I was like, this seems very, very, very naive, you know, like whenever I read them back to, because you listen to it, like any part of that episode, you're like, oh my gosh, I gave it like I said that, like any of those moments. I think one that always resonates is, I think you all asked me like how big I wanted to get. And now looking back, I mean, we have 32 people in our team now. And I think at the time I said one associate, maybe five staff members, that's as big as I wanted to get, and it's interesting because that's all I ever knew. And if you look back at the firms that I had worked that previous to opening my own firm, it's all that I ever experienced. And I think a lot of what I've realized over the years is your growth goals, your perspectives always shift by what you see as possible, what you know to be true and what you experience. And so, you know, getting in rooms of bigger firms, seeing what's possible, I think really changes that. And I guess it's just all that I knew at the time. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's fair. So there's something that I've noticed about you, that you've got this fire. And I wouldn't say it wasn't there during that first episode. But it's definitely amplified from then. I mean, had something changed or was it always there? I just wondered, like, where does that come from? Yeah, I think, you know, that day was literally day one, October 8th of 2018. Which isn't insane. Time to do it. A podcast, right? Yeah, it just worked out, right? Yeah, absolutely. No, I think at that time, it was very new and kind of scary. And while I was confident, I still didn't know where the clients were coming from. I know I was busy that month, but it wasn't a consistent thing. And so you really are just like white, white knuckle in the steering wheel and just hoping that everything's just gonna work out. At the time, I mean, I had a, gosh, three year old and a one year old. My wife didn't work. I mean, I really needed work and so there was a lot of fear at that point. A heavy dose of confidence in a lot of experiential knowledge that I knew was gonna be helpful, but it was a lot of fear. And I think now, I've gotten to the point of consistency that it would take a lot to knock me off my, you know, perch now. So it's interesting you say that too, 'cause I wanna, I referenced you not too long ago, episode 392. So it was not too long ago. And I said, and I was talking about, but the most successful people, the Paul Yoke abiduses of the world, they go and they understand the risks of it and they go in with an agenda every morning and they go and attack. Those are the ones that are the most successful. They know exactly what they should be doing every single day. So tell me where I was right and where I was wrong there. 'Cause I mean, that seems like, like that's you, that to me that's you, but I mean, is that reality? It is. Yeah. And I think it's just that I kinda, I guess I label it like an aggressive patience, always being open to new opportunities, prepared for the worst and always hoping for the best. But this is a game that I've got a lot of reps in now. And so not a lot of stuff comes up that I haven't encountered or dealt with before. But we're always prepared to seize opportunities that really make sense and really entrenched and defensive at the same time. So a lot of that has to do with financial controls and cash flow and capital reserves to really give us a massive defense to really weather any sort of market storms or competitors. And so I'm always kind of patient, but willing to jump out and grab stuff, but it really has to be, it has to be a 10, it has to be a perfect circumstance, 'cause there's a hundred things that come up in any given year. Alright, so I used to have that mindset I think. I think I've shifted a little bit. I think I'm mostly in that camp. I don't think it's that easy. I think sometimes we say things like that and I believe them for the most part, but I think there are some things that aren't a 10 that I'll still do whatever I need to do on that thing, because it's just not that easy. It's not that clean cut. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I think you can get away with some nines and eights when you've built something that exists without you and doesn't require so much of your day-to-day attention. I've definitely got some less than 10s on my portfolio currently that certainly early on, you know, I started getting maybe two, I don't know, plateaus or walls that we're getting harder to break through and started sort of just looking left and right and sort of saying, "Is there anything else out there we could be doing?" A lot of our growth, I say often, my earth is a state planning, but I've got a lot of satellites that orbit it, and so the through line has always been professional planning and client focused and those sort of things, but it's creating organizations or separate entities that support that goal I guess. Alex Ramosi calls this the woman in the red dress, there's always something that will come along and sort of look attractive and be, I guess, distracting, right? But I think it's always a measurement of return on investment. I've got an opportunity right now that I'm probably going to say no to that will probably be a $10 or $12 million company pretty quick, but it will require me to not focus on my family. It'll require me to take more time away from my business that will vastly exceed that number, and so it's sometimes saying no's to things that are going to be monetarily very lucrative, but just don't make sense in terms of the time spent. All right, so I'm going to play with this a little bit because you just launched Elite Planner, and I think that some people might say, "Well, that's a woman in a red dress." Why is that not a woman in a red dress? Yeah, back up. What is Elite Planner? Elite Planner was my answer to the proliferation of garbage coaches that are just basically trying to sell. They're charging $500 or $1,000 a month for the secrets to get to a firm that only they could create. Have you found the secrets yet? Yes, I found the secrets on how to grow my exact firm. Exactly. I think that's the point is it's a little bit of, I don't know, I don't know if it's a flex or it's this distraction or what where people, they get to a million or they get to two million and they're like, "Oh, I did this so I can teach everybody else how to do this." And so I really wanted to give the value that I've learned over time without anybody having to pay for it. It also obviously can support my marketing company, Discover Elite Marketing and other endeavors that we're trying to grow, but it's been a gratitude exercise too and so a distraction potentially, I mean very literally it is pulling me away from the primary businesses, but it's also been an exercise in me remembering back to what it was like at $500,000 a million and all these different things. And so it's been kind of centering and grounding and a lot of the feedback I've gotten from it has been amazing. There's about 400 people in the group now and a lot of great feedback on the stuff we're sharing. And it's really super tactical. It's not coaching by any means, it's just, this is what I've experienced. I mean, it may work for you, it may not, but what it looks like. Yeah, there's a couple things with that too. So I mean, I found your Facebook post about it, it's like in May, pretty telling compared to a lot of the other quote unquote coaches out there that are, it's a bunch of promises, right? Yeah. And yours is like, here's how I did it. Yeah. You know, I think I can help you out. It's just a, it was a different approach. You had very specific things that you talk about, which I'm going to get to hunting unicorns in a second. But that, I think that is, I think that's important and that that's a key distinction between, you know, the, there's just a lot of bad coaches out there that are promising the world and someone that's got experience. And it's something that I find really interesting about Max Moyer, because I've been doing this now since seven years, eight years, and it makes me be sharp. So like with a lead planner, if you're not sharp, guess what, like people are not going to follow you. Like they're not going to listen to what you have to say and so it makes you be on your game. Well, and it's interesting because even though it's free, like there's no, there's no opportunity to buy anything, right? Even though it's free, you'll, you still have this underlying expectation that it's going to be solid, right? And there isn't as much grace, even in a free mechanism or a free community of like, that wasn't that good equality. So I have to show up every time and it's also, well, it's a gratitude exercise and a grounding exercise, but it's also making sure that I'm always, you know, delivering 10, right? But I mentioned earlier, like you only know something is true if you experience it. Like otherwise, it's just kind of academic, like obviously there are firms that are massive. But until you know somebody who has grown a firm to something significant, it doesn't ring as practical or true. And so that's kind of my way of, of proving to others that these other levels exist and that they can push past where they are. There's so many barriers that exist between zero and, and, you know, four or five million that it, you know, if you don't know better, if you don't know who to ask or what to look at, they're impossible to get through. And so that I guess was kind of trying to give the value that I wish I would have had. And one of the struggles I've had over the last few years is trying to find a firm bigger than ours to look up to. And they don't really exist in a state planning. So it's, it's really trying to find analog firms or concepts from other types of firms and even other industries that may be helpful and actionable here. So far so good. But it's kind of running blind. Like I, I joke a lot about, um, do you remember growing up playing Super Mario Brothers? I love Super Mario Brothers. Well, you, any time you'd advance to like a new island, you'd approach it and, and you'd be at like the beginning and the rest of the island would be shrouded in clouds, but you can see the end of it. Yeah. And, and that's kind of law firm growth when you don't have anybody to look to. And so now we're just kind of like, you know, jumping into clouds. All right. So I'm glad you mentioned about the, the other firms, like there's really no other firms that like this, like massive estate planning firms. There's, there's massive PI firms all over the place, right? There's a lot of defense firms that are massive. The state planning is very, very rare to find a big firm. So you launched a lead planner and you talked about in their, the importance of differentiation in the market and creating a blue ocean strategy, which I agree 100% with that statement. I think it's 100% right. You got, you got to look for differentiation. I've got what maybe a little, a tough question to ask you, but how are you, and I, you've been able to do it. This isn't me questioning whether or not you can do it. But how are you able to differentiate in a niche that is, is potentially on the cusp of being just cannibalized by AI? Like it's, it's one of those things where I know a lot of people are afraid of. I think it's a concern that we should all be, it should be on a radar. But how are you able to differentiate and, and still convince other estate planning attorneys that they should still be doing this? Yeah. I guess I'll start with the comment on what AI I think imposes in terms of competition on the industry. I think attorneys who do document preparation are in trouble, right? The ones who are really just delivering documents and people's word names on them and, and you know, importantly with clauses. And I think that's true across all practice areas. If you're just a doc prep exercise that's, you know, in the form of attorney advice, then you're in trouble. We have really excelled and differentiated on the client service and advice in terms of the practical use and utilization strategies. Recently, we started really leaning into the branding of planning, not paperwork. And that is where I think AI actually fails. And I don't know that it will effectively pick up the, the difference is the integration of planning tools into an overall like financial and family scenario to accomplish an outcome. And so that's what we've leaned into on the estate planning side, certainly, but also with financial and tax planning is trying to be this modern family office for practical advice for ongoing support because where I see the value is actually, it's not a document competition at all. I think eventually we'll all be using the same documents. And I think AI makes that easier, but where we show value is every day when a spouse calls us, when their spouse has passed away, or when the out of state son or daughter calls us and says mom died, that will never be replaced by AI. So I'm glad you went there because that's what I was hoping you would say. And I think that that's where firms should be focusing their time. We talk a lot in our firm about, it's not even that we're a law firm anymore. We are obviously, but it's really a customer service firm. Our entire focus should be customer service. And that's where, yeah, we should be afraid of AI, but it's not going to replace us. Our focus should be on that customer service part, making sure that they understand the process. AI is not going to do that at least yet, maybe at some point it might be able to. It's not going to be able to take into consideration that special clock that Grandpa had, that Grandpa wanted to make sure it went to granddaughter Susie, you know, but you can. Humans can do that. So that's where the focus needs to be, use these tools as a tool that supplements, it frees up your time, that way you can devote it to customer service. Yeah. And I heard something today that kind of resonates is AI is not really artificial on to intelligence. It's hyper speed Google searches. And so. 100% agree with that. Yeah. And so what does that mean then? It means your document production is going to be outsourced. I mean, it's clause selection and tool creation is going to be 100% automated. But AI cannot replicate, you know, 4000 client meetings and nuances of drug addicted kids and all these different things about the actual care aspects of legal representation. And and so it's not meant to be hubris in saying I'm not worried. I'm I welcome it. We utilize it. I think it's going to revolutionize the way that we produce documents. And I think the people who are worried and the people who see the agreements between like trusted will and LPL financial wealth.com and facet, I mean, all these different integrated financial planning and document production agreements, you just got to innovate a little bit. You just got to pivot. You know, it's it's the ability to bob and weave like you got to be Floyd Mayweather. You got to be able to dodge and still stay in it. So I think pivoting is huge and I think that I firmly believe this actually. I think a lot of PI turns the thing up crazy, but at some point car crashes are going to go away and it may not be in our careers. And but it it's going to go away at some point. You got self driving vehicles. You might have product liability cases. You'll have dog bites, falls, things like that, but the bulk of PI will go away, which means all these massive firms are going to go away too. So it's something you've got to be ready to pivot. And I think there are people like you that are it's not going to be an issue, right? And this is where I'm going to segue into I'm going to pivot, I'm going to segue into talking about unicorns because I think a way you could do it is with the right people. So I think you could take your firm and you could you could take it into a completely different industry right now if you wanted to because you have the right people. I think we could do the same thing. When you were posted about a lead planner, you talk about you help find hunt or hunting unicorns. Those two good to be true candidates that can't afford to pass pass up. I'm not going to ask you about how you do that. There's a lot of techniques in finding those people, but I want to ask you about this principle. It's it's called and it's it's the way I look at it is being able to run faster, essentially, but the principles called the experience curve is by Bruce Henderson. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it says cost decrease with accumulated experience. And it doesn't mean just cost cost. I mean, you're talking about overall time cost, you're talking about space cost, everything. You can do essentially you can do a lot more with less people. So I want to get your thoughts on that principle because I find it to be a very interesting principle, but I also find it very true because you hear about, oh, you know, an A player can do three times what a C player can do. I firmly believe with that, but I want to get your thoughts on it. Yeah, I think that's a hundred percent accurate. We just can't afford to employ only a players. And so I actually think it's more like the NFL salary cap, like you got to kind of find a mix of A and A's and B's and C's to make appropriate labor margins. I mean, if I if this was a nonprofit, then probably we'd go hunting all A players. I think having A's or accounts is is what matters. You don't need an A player who's a backup receptionist. You don't need an A player who's a marketing assistant. You need an A player who's the marketing manager or the intake manager or the managing attorney or your, you know, your top salesperson, that kind of thing. And then you hope to potentially grow C's or B's into A's maybe. And so it's one of those things where as law firm owners, we just can't have everything that we want because there's financial considerations that reject that or resist that. But I think it's a hundred percent true. Every time we have paid more for higher quality labor, you know, team members. Are you tired of the marketing guessing game? 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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. We're able to produce 50% at least more in that seat. I just can't afford to have all eight players. So you said something, it really struck me so I got to fall up on this. Do you think you can grow a C or a B into an A? I think you can grow a C to a B. I think A's are A's in the first week or never. Yeah, I think it's something in them. That's why when we hire, it's not for your experience, it's for the person. We focus on that part of it and we don't focus on the actual experience part of it. Okay, so then I think we're in agreement. I do think you can grow a C and a B just because a lot of it's based on experience. You could have some A qualities just like if you think of using the NFL maybe like a Madden reference. Maybe you have a very mediocre overall rating but your speed is massive. If you can flex the right skill set with it and B, you can fabricate an A for what counts but not for the overall quality. They're probably still going to complain about PTO policies, they're probably going to show up late every once in a while and all that kind of stuff but you may get some A extension of effort in smaller areas. Yeah, they're human A's are still human so they're going to have the human element too. How big do you think the gap is between A and B? I feel like the gap between B and C is not that great but I wonder what your thoughts are between A and B. I would say, I mean it's pretty sizable. It's pretty massive and I think that's why you get 50 to 100% more in production. 100%. Yeah. And some of it I think is generational. I think how you're raised prior work experience. We started asking people what they did in high school for work and really reflecting a lot off of that. If you didn't work in high school, you're not working at my firm. It's a very poor indicator of effort and like we just had somebody leave and then their dad call us. I was like, we're probably in the wrong market right? Yeah. This type of talent. I was like, yep. So I've heard a lot of stories about, it's not happened to us, I don't think. I've heard a lot of stories about parents showing up to job interviews which never would have been on my mind. No, we haven't had that yet but this was just a couple of months ago. We had to let somebody go for performance issues and their dad call us like that night. I'm not going to say the pandemic word because this will go on YouTube and apparently they will limit your reach if you mention it, but so you said that you will not hire anybody that doesn't work in high school. Is that right? Okay. But I wonder about the people, whenever they could have come back, what about those people that didn't work? What are your thoughts on that? I'm going to get unemployment and look at this cow. Exactly. Probably the exact same outcome, right? And I think it's that hard workers work hard. And it's not necessarily that they've got to have the most perfect academic pedigree. Probably one of our hardest working paralegals and highest producing, probably paralegals didn't go to college. You just killed it, has always killed it and just puts on a ton of effort. And so, you know, I don't know if there's any one factor, but you see signs, right? You see, obviously resumes are just paper, but you see signs of what people are capable of or what their experience means. And that's like, you know, I waited tables from the day I could work. Like bus tables, waited tables, bartended. And to this day, it's been the most valued work experience I've ever had because it showed me, it ingrained in me emotional intelligence and like the ability to communicate with people. Good days, bad days, you know, they're yelling at you for something that's not your fault. You got to put on a good face and still be, you know, charming and all this kind of stuff. And that's life. Like that is a life skill that everybody should learn. And when you don't work in those foundational years, it kind of, I guess, forms the foundation the wrong way. Yeah. I agree with that. Can I haven't been wrong on that yet? We'll just put it that way. I don't doubt it. You had a lot of wins. So it's like, if there was a theme song for this, for you, it'd be all I do was win. So it'd be great. I was thinking about that earlier. Because I just don't, I just don't megaphone my failures. Yeah. Well, okay. So let's jump into that a little bit because I, there is this like syndrome going on where you go on the internet and everyone, oh, they're making so much money. And now it's just from, from maximum lawyer, that's not true. Like we, we see behind the curtain a lot of times and what people see out on, on Facebook is not what it is in the real world. So talk a little bit about some of your struggles because that's something we haven't really got into. All right. And I've been, you know, pumping you up quite a bit. And I'm going to get it. I'm going to get into the office expansion stuff too. Yeah. So we'll get back to the wedding stuff. But tell, tell me a little bit about some of the failures and how you overcome those. And so that way it doesn't set you back. Probably the, the, the, the failure that will always kind of stick with me is I recruited an attorney to join our team to do probate and she brought an HOA collections practice with her. So I used to own an HOA collections firm and talk about a distraction, like, and this was during the shutdown. We had just signed a four year lease on a new office and in the next month, everything shut down. So this was, this was February, March of 2020. Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. Sign the lease in February occupied in March. And then two weeks later, we had shut down orders and, you know, obviously HOA collections is for closure work. So that's court based. And so that was suspended and all this kind of stuff. And I found myself spending almost half my week cutting checks and, you know, I was in the old one on the, on the checkbook and stuff like that. And I could have instead been using that time to further grow my existing business. And it ended up being bad hires, bad people. She in the middle of the night over Thanksgiving break raided the files, basically stole the business. And you know, we started the lawyer and up a little bit and posturing and then it's just like, you know what, this is, this is actually for the better, but it was a big time suck. It was a big money suck. It was not profitable. It burned a lot of, it burned some bridges. It was probably the first and most significant distraction that had negative ramifications. But it was a look, it was a scar, right? It's a scar that came with a lesson. We were going to go into a life insurance and then abandon that. We tried out different office spaces. It didn't work. I mean, it's, it's like batting. I mean, you're not going to hit them all. It's like pitching. You're not going to hit them all. So. But a lot of them worked. So it's positive. I think, I think that's a good message because it, you're, you're, I mean, you're not going to hit a thousand. You're right. You're just not going to. You're, you're going to have a lot of failures. Yeah. You're going to make a lot of mistakes. It's just, it's part of learning too. Yeah. And so there's this, oh, I can't remember the guy's name, but I talk about quite a bit. There's this video though that I watched where it's this guy talking about and he's like in construction or something, but how, you know, when he was the earlier on in his career of his company or in the, in the life span of his company, he always complained about payroll. Right. And then eventually, you know, his payroll was like a hundred thousand a month and like two hundred thousand a month. And then they realized like, those are the problems you want. Like those are the ones you, like you want to embrace those problems. You want those, you want those failures because that's what's going to make you better and that's going to, what's going to, it's going to drive you to success in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing is this is a big bundle and you, you get it all and you have to take all of it. So my second command, Maggie, who was my first hire, she's growing from a part-time legal assistant to direct reparations. She's, you know, always been with us. She said the other day, it just, it seemed like everything was going wrong. Copier went out. We had a power surge that fried the copier and obviously we do paperwork. Lots of paperwork. Right. And so we had signing, she had to run to one of the other offices to scan all the stuff so we also had people out in PTO. It seemed like it was literally the perfect storm of calamity. She got back and like visibly upset and, and she goes, but we get to do this. And I was like, you're damn right we get to do this. Like because it's all part of it because if you don't take that, you can't have everything else. They don't, they don't come separate. And so every one of these little smacks kicks in the chest, they're a blessing. I mean, you have to be grateful for them. And they also keep you grounded. They keep you humble. It's like it can't all work. It can't always be perfect every single day. And we're showing that every week without a doubt. We just had somebody resign and it was, it was initially one of these like, I think every time it happens, somebody puts a notice, they found another job. They get another opportunity, whatever. There's always this like, Oh crap, because we're not perfectly redundant. You have to go figure something out in the next two weeks, right? But then it's always this opportunity to be like, okay, so now we get to hire fresh for that seed. What would we do different this time? How can we reframe it without having to retrain somebody from the ground up? Or how can we change the org chart to absorb this better next time? So it's always some sort of opportunity to learn or improve or do it better the next time, but it still sucks. You're still kicking the chest, you know? But this is now, we're in our, we're in our 60 year, it'll be six years in October. And so it's not like it's the first time we have a low attrition, but it still happens. So it is what it is. It's just natural part of a business, but it's right. So tell me about your COO, you, that was your first hire you said? Yeah. All right. It's, it's, it's quite rare to have your, your first hire to then later become your COO. It's just extremely rare. Yeah. Tell me about that. Like that's, that's, that's, that's rare. Yeah. So Maggie came, it's been just over five years now, was to stay at home on for a long time, prior to that, worked in like HR and recruiting and stuff like that. And joined us, I hired two people, like read at the same time, one client facing one production facing with your both part time. This was like six months in. So it's like April of 2019. And they both wanted part time so they could have like flexible hours. And so the, the second hire, really the first hire is Maggie joined like two weeks after. We literally just like a month later just figured out she was mood lighting for somebody else while she was on our, our time clock. But Maggie then went full time later was a client relations person was ops, like operations manager and now director of ops, but along the way, she's done like finance and HR training through the ALA. She got her sperm, sperm certification. Like she does a lot of the things that I'm not good at or wouldn't be good at to allow me to focus just on the stuff that I am good at. And so she does all of the HR, all of the, you know, not just hiring, but like the structuring of the entire HR framework. So like job descriptions, org chart, hired plans, all this kind of stuff helps us with finance, all the operations, like she's constantly going through an updating train, you'll and all these different things. And then manages the non-authorney production side. So I think she's very unique. I don't know that many people can get away with that, especially at our size. But we, there's a, there's a book called second in command and in that book, they talk about all the different CEO, COO partnership types. And we're the other half where I do half the things really well and she does the other half really well and together we're like, you know, one unit and she's just been my writer die. She's been there. I love that. That's, that's great. Excellent stuff. All right. So I want to get into, because I want to make sure I have time for this, tell me about the expansion. You, you, I think you're at five. You're at four offices or what do you, you're at four. Okay. So tell me, tell me about that. Yeah. So we started day one with two offices, but they were office shares. So, so the firm is Kerry state planning were based or headquartered in Kerry, North Carolina. So we have offices in Kerry, Raleigh, Wake Forest and Chapel Hill, we just opened Chapel Hill in November. They're all within like a 45 minute radius of each other, but it's the, it's basically a triangle area of North Carolina stronghold. And the whole point has been to extend access and reach locally, like to different areas. For instance, nobody's driving from Chapel Hill to Raleigh for an estate planner. That's a little bit, I guess that's probably about 45 minutes from Kerry. So the goal for us was really always to be accessible in two ways, accessible in the way that we talk and the way that we educate clients and so that they understand things and that planning itself can be accessible, but then also in proximity. And so we'll eventually like our, our 10 year goal is to have eight offices and be statewide. Like we're in Charlotte right now, we're going to have a Charlotte office, it's just a matter of time. All right. So, and this is what I wanted to get into. This is what I want to talk about it because you've got the, the four offices in the triangle. Okay. And so I've got, I mean, I've got the little map up from Raleigh to Durham, it's 23 miles. Durham to Chapel Hill, eight miles, Chapel Hill to Raleigh, another, it's 25 miles. Charlotte office makes sense to me, explain to me the feasibility of having four offices in that triangle, which is called the triangle, which I think is cool. But explain to me the feasibility, especially whenever, like, and I know that PIs different from a statement because we, I mean, we sign up most of our clients over the phone. I probably met four clients in person that's a, you know, over the last two years that, you know, for a sign up or whatever, but we have for other reasons. But I guess explain the feasibility whenever you can do so much of this online of needing four offices in that, in that space. Yeah. So North Carolina adopted some online notary rules during the shutdown and they've since expired. So we will always have an in-person component to, to doing the actual signing meeting. And so my goal, you familiar with Edward Jones investments? I am. Yeah. Obviously they're in St. Louis, right? The, the telegram, they were based on the telegram system. So, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So Edward Jones is, is sort of a proliferation of offices throughout the United States, right? They're investment services. They're brokers, right? It's not the model that I'm aiming at, but their presence model is what I'm aiming at. We're trying to create a fiduciary family office version of Edward Jones. And so if you know more about how Edward Jones works, they centralize all of their investment in operations in the St. Louis office and they have some smaller regional offices. But the only thing that exists at the local level is the relationship and the actual meetings. And so that's effectively what we're trying to do with Chapel Hill and Wake Forest, our Raleigh office is actually our private office. There is some estate planning that that's done there, but it's not the primary point. Why is that? Well, our probate team is very male sensitive, very, very high volume male, so they kind of needed a base. And at the time, our carry office, we were still on a four year lease based on a five person headcount. And we were at one, no, 30 by the time we left that office. And so we needed to open another office during the penalty of the lease to extend our capacity and our footprint in terms of, you know, butts and seats at desks. And so the court is also in Raleigh in terms of Wake County. And so it made sense to kind of centralize that, you know, near the court, if we were going to run down here, it's since gone E file. So that's less, less important, but that's merely just where we have enough space for people. And that's also closest to where all they live, all of them live. And so it's a closer commute. And we usually do hybrids. So, you know, a couple of them are in each day. But Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Wilmington, we're looking at Clayton, we're looking at West Carey, looking at Greenville, Charlotte, Asheville, a lot of different areas would be like three people operations, an attorney, a client relations person, and an admin. And it's because we need three people to sign a state plan. Have you thought about doing some of them with like a scanning center? Because we have all of our mail go to a scanning center and have you ever thought about something like that? Yeah. Raleigh basically is our scanning center. I mean, it's not... We don't outsource. Yeah, we outsource it. Yeah. Not yet. I mean, right now we just have a college student come in from NC State. That works too. You know, four days a week, a couple hours a day, and just process. Probably faster that way too. Not too bad. So... Alright, so tell me a little bit about airport advertising. There comes a point where digital direct response marketing stops returning dividends, I guess. It becomes a little bit of a ceiling in anybody's growth. And that's usually at around 3 million. And so once you get past 3 million, you have to start leaning hard around to branding exercises to amplify the effectiveness of all other digital campaigns. And referral campaigns, you know, basically branding makes everything else work better. It's not supposed to generate leads, you know, in and of itself. And so we used 2023 and the early part of this year to just kind of R&D, some different branding exercises. And Rdu is actually one that's stuck. I mean, it's a very high-performing ad, but so if you fly into Raleigh, Rdu International Airport, and pick up a bag, you'll see versions of our ads on the baggage claim, you know, screens. This is actually something Beck had found the, I've got a picture of that. It's pretty cool. It's got your face on it. Yeah. Yeah. All of the branding exercises do have my face, unless they're word-only. But we also sponsored the local soccer teams, NC Courage is the NWSL Women's Pro Team in Keri and then the NCFC men's team. But those are just LED banner ads. Yeah. And I want to ask you something. So, this is a good segue into the next thing I want to ask you about. Seth Godin talked about this in the last couple years about a lot of law firms going, shifting more to, like we're talking about service industry professionals, accountants, doctors, lawyers, things, that kind of thing. Shifting more to a smaller business model, that's the more effective marketing because of social media, so it was like a character, right? So your face was on that picture in the airport marketing. I'm assuming it's on a lot of it. We had a guest on the podcast, Steve Merr, he's the, I think he's the COO of Sweet James and they're a PI firm and I've been hearing rooms of this for a decade, I guess, about consolidation, about essentially you're going to have, and this is what Steve's position is, is that you're going to see over the next decade a huge consolidation where, kind of like the doctors and the hospitals, what happened with them, where you've got these mega firms and then solos. And I wonder what your thoughts were on that because he said, he flat out said on the podcast that like there won't be any in between. And I wonder what your thoughts on that? I think it may be a natural market consequence of just marketing factors outside of anybody's intentionality. So in digital marketing, there's the ability to bully pretty easily by outspending. And so I think that that actually kind of rings true. It makes a lot of sense because the middle market is going to be the people who are potentially capable at competing in the digital space through PPCs and Facebook and things like that. But if all it would take is Morgan and Morgan or just somebody with a big wallet to just bully everybody down and make their ads unaffordable, then what's left are it's the back-end marketing. It's the referrals from clients, it's the referral partners, centers of influence and those sort of things because those cold channels aren't performing anymore. And then you end up having either, like you said, consolidations to make their own, you know, behemoth of a firm to fatten their wallet to be able to compete or lifestyle practices and effectively. You're kind of, I don't know where I want to go with that. That's the thing is I'm 37 and that's that aggressive patience is I'm not going anywhere. And so we can kind of sit on the sidelines a little bit and see how the market shapes up. But I'd be interested to see what happens with estate planning. We've talked about doing some roll-ups, expansion by acquisition. We've also just had a lot of success in organic expansion, just coming into a market and not taking it over but becoming very competitive right away. Yeah, I wonder if with, out in, was it Arizona and Utah where they've brought the barriers down? Yeah, they were bringing private money, non-attorney money. I wonder if that'll help us compete against the Morgan Morgan's of the world and do flood a market. They're doing that in St. Louis now. And luckily we got a big girl there, Brian and Croupe and that's been trying to fight them off. But I mean, Morgan and Morgan, they're going to just outspend them and it's going to be effective. I think you're right. I've never thought of it as bullying, but that's what they do. But I do wonder, do you think that if you bring the barriers down, it's going to help the firms fight back against that? Because you're going to private money then and it's going to be able to come in. I think one of the hallmarks of private equity is patience through capital. And so if you look at just your garden variety startups that get private money injections, it's to allow them to continue to be unprofitable by injecting private cash into it to sustain and spend and hire and those sort of things. And I don't think that would be any different with law firms. I think it'll be interesting to see where regulation comes in in that regard and what the states end up doing nationwide. A lot of the private equity isn't going to have its beak wedded by two states. They might wait for some more movement. But I don't know. I live in the state that sued LegalZoom. So I mean, in terms of like barriers to entry, they're about as bold as they get here. Not to say I'm going to just rest on my laurels on that, but I think it's going to be a minute for some of these, especially the southern states. Sure. But I think that's exactly, I think the risk to a Morgan Morgan is private equity money. That does have patience. It's fabricated patience. You don't have to worry about profitability because we're always going to back you up. But that's what it would take, I think, to battle the natural war chest that is a multi-state PI firm. Yeah. So tell me what's the difference between plan well and in curious state planning? Yeah. Our branding will, I think, make this clear is, you know, curious state planning is planning not paperwork. Plan well is paperwork not planning. Okay. It's meant to be a middle zone between doing yourself and the traditional model that really truncates the experience to make it very streamlined and very low touch. Still attorney driven and still state specific. A lot of the, I guess, downside of doing it yourself is a lack of understanding of what these tools do. Whether they are sufficient for someone's needs, they just kind of blindly rely on things. And so we're able to inject the meaningful aspects that are missing from DIY and still very much keep the fees low. And so it's meant to be that middle ground, still attorney led, but very much more budget-friendly. I think this is an interesting idea. So essentially, let me make sure I've got this right. Maybe you may not be doing this, but someone calls your office, care state planning, right? And they're like, yeah, I don't want to spend that money. Do you then refer them over to plan well? Okay. So let's say that they get into plan well, like, I don't want to do this. Is there a mechanism inside of plan well that says, hey, take me back over to care, you stay planning it. How does that work? So, and that's exactly what happens is all intake starts on the care state planning side and we have a five person intake team. And they're all very well educated and experienced with handling that conversation and it starts with a fee screen. Like, obviously, we build in value proposition, differentiating factors where I would work with us with a top rate of state planning from the state, all this kind of stuff. But then we say, you know, our fees are between X and Y is your budget for planning somewhere in that range. And if they say, no, I was expecting, you know, something much lower, they would say, you know, it's probably not a great fit with care state planning, but we have another option. It's another firm that we're affiliated with. And it's very literally the same entity, just a different DBA. But the proposition is budget friendly for simplicity. And so when if they get to plan well and we realize that they actually want Medicaid planning or really, you know, complicated conditionals and stuff like that, it's then almost what I would call like a come to Jesus meeting, like your expectations, you got champagne taste for beer money, basically. And that referral back up does happen and it's usually going to be on the Medicaid side when someone's trying to do elder law. But we talk about, you know, care state planning is prime rib, plan wall's burgers, like, do you want cheese or not? That's your customization option. It's very, it's meant to be very simple. I like it. That's a great explanation. So the last thing I want to talk about is, and I assume based on your success, I know the answer to this question, I think. Do you have any haters? I'm sure I have plenty. There aren't that many that make themselves known, but a lot of people do. They never do. The ones that do are in my market. Yeah. What are your, I guess, what are your thoughts on haters? I personally love them. I think they're great. But what are your, I guess what are your thoughts? I don't even pay attention anymore because they don't impact my, my life one bit. And you know, I left them in the, in the rear view a long time ago. So any, you know, people say hate doesn't go down and only goes up. And so it's, it's a compliment. It is what it is. I mean, and that's the thing is, you know, their opinion of me doesn't impact my firm, my family, my finances roll off my back. So that is your advice to young lawyers or new law firm owners that when they get that taste of success and they encounter a hater, what is your advice to them? Because it's easy to get sucked into that. Yeah. Yeah. I think in many things, any sort of resistance in your day is a zoom out. Just look how far you've come. See where that person even fits in your life and I, and I bet it's probably nowhere. And see it for what it is. It's somebody who's either jealous or, you know, wishing that they had what you had or, or figured out the way, or figured out things the way that you have. Sometimes it's tactical, the way that you market. Sometimes it's strategic, the way that you expand and sometimes it's size. I mean, people are always going to find something to pick at. But that's the thing is I'm still going to go to bed. I'm still going to wake up with the same, same life, doesn't matter what everybody else thinks. Thanks, Paul. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye. 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