The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Adam Williams: From Lawyer to Entrepreneurial Success & Tax Strategy Expert
Join us on The Renegade Lawyers Podcast as we dive into the incredible journey of Adam Williams, a lawyer turned serial entrepreneur. Discover how Adam navigated the legal and business world to become an overnight success after a decade of hard work.
From starting a law firm to tackling the pandemic's challenges head-on, Adam's story is a masterclass in seizing opportunities and strategic growth. Tune in to learn valuable insights on entrepreneurship, work-life balance, and the power of a proactive mindset.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
I was raised with. If you want to make more money, work more hours. And where we really started to turn the corner and have a business that works for us is it became find ways to add more value and you'll make more money. So that was a big distinction for us, so that we could go and grow the team. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm taking my kids to Legoland in New York and, like I'm leaving tomorrow, I'm taking my kids to Legoland in New York.
Speaker 1:I remember the moment in 2017, my wife was pregnant. We took my son to Disney and I had two employees at the time and I got back and I'm like, oh my God, how did you guys do without me? Like what do you mean? It was like you never left. Like every line we were in at Disney, I was answering emails, I was taking phone calls. I wasn't on vacation, I was just working from Disneyland and scaling it to the point where we have now where, yeah, I'm going to be, you can only contact me if it's an emergency, and three people have that phone number between now and Friday.
Speaker 2:Hey there. I just want to take a quick break from today's podcast to tell you about an event that we're hosting August 1 and 2. I'm going to be hosting a small, intimate event for solo and small firm lawyers here in our offices in Fairfax, virginia. If you've never been to a great legal marketing event before, or even if you have, this is going to be the place for you to start. If you're running a small law firm and you're looking for ways to attract more clients without spending a lot more money, we're going to be diving deeper for those two days into all the little DIY things you can do, even if you have a small team. This is going to be perfect for a law firm that's doing between about $500,000 and a million dollars in top line revenue. If you're making more money than that, good for you. You're doing a lot of things right, but this event isn't for you.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you what this is not. This is not an event where, under the guise of a seminar, we're going to be selling you websites, pay-per-click ads or other digital marketing media. That's not our space in the market. This is where you're going to learn how to effectively use your next hour and your next dollar in growing your law firm. We'll be part lecture and part workshop. Dollar in growing your law firm We'll be part lecture and part workshop. There'll be some prep work to do before the event and some post-event follow-up so we can answer lingering questions and keep you motivated to building a better life for you and your family Together. Let's figure out why you're not making more money, getting better cases and converting more of your leads. Again, this is August 1 and 2 in our offices in Fairfax, virginia, and if you want to be on the early list of people who are getting up-to-date information, just shoot me an email at ben at greatlegalmarketingcom. That's ben at greatlegalmarketingcom and I'll make sure you're one of the first to know.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, this is Ben. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast where each episode, as you know, because you listen to this a lot I get to interview people inside or outside of legal who are making a ding in the world. Typically they are entrepreneurs. Today I've got an entrepreneur turned lawyer, turned entrepreneur, so this is going to be cool. Adam Williams says it took him 10 years to become an overnight success. He's a trained attorney by trade. As you'll see, as you'll listen to on this interview, he's got his hands on a bunch of different things, all very interesting and operating. Really. His life is operated out of Erie, Pennsylvania, and so we'll talk a little bit about what he's doing, sort of locally, geographically. We'll talk about his businesses. He's got a brand new book that made the bestseller list that we'll talk about, and it's all related to entrepreneurship. First, Adam and I both happen to be lawyers, as you know. That's secondary to living life big, which is really what we're here to talk about. Adam, welcome to the program and thanks for carving out some time.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to be here. You just made me sound super cool.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I asked you before we went live, like if I followed you around for two weeks, what would I see you doing? And your short answer was not work. And I think that's really important because I like to tell people. You know, if you follow me around and try to figure out what's work and what's play, it'd be hard to tell. It'd be hard to tell because fortunately, you know, I mean not every day is perfect, but fortunately, for the vast majority of my time I'm doing stuff that I like doing. I mean, I'm not doing a whole lot of things that I don't like doing, and I suspect that you have carved out that sort of, or you have created that sort of life for yourself Very intentionally, yeah, very intentional. So talk to me about entrepreneur turned lawyer turned entrepreneur, because that's a very interesting sequence. And again, we'll get into each of your business interests, I guess, and really your life interests.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my parents were entrepreneurs In fact, my grandparents were entrepreneurs and my parents really encouraged me to get a good education and go and get that Fortune 500 job where you work nine to five and you get the fat benefits and retire when you're 62. Because I think my dad didn't have that. He didn't have the business education. He was successful, but he always felt like there was a piece missing there. So I did that. I got my management degree, I went to law school, I got my MBA along with that and I started my career at a big four accounting firm in the tax department and I survived that job for 366 days. I had to stay a year to keep my signing bonus and then I moved back home to Erie and I clerked for a judge and I actually started my practice as a side hustle which is what a lot of my clients do and eventually turned it into, I think, when we were really humming along doing some of the tax credit work. I think we got up to about 25 employees and it was a very profitable business and I had to hustle a lot in the interim.
Speaker 1:I was just talking to a young lawyer right before you and I hopped on here that I'm giving him a case that I used to take everybody's table scraps. I did everything. I learned so much but I worked my tail off. And I was a good lawyer, but, man, I was struggling. I missed the events at my kids' preschool, even though it was right across the street from my office, and when I did make it to those events I was driving the biggest piece of crap car in the parking lot.
Speaker 1:And I learned over the last few years that my strength is in being an entrepreneur. I'm a good lawyer. I can do the work like a lot of lawyers can, but my impact is magnified when we serve more clients, and we're able to serve more clients when we grow the team and do the work for them. So I've sort of come full circle. I was self-employed in college. I ran my own house painting business. I worked in my parents' business. I think I became the least employable person on the face of the planet through that upbringing and now we're back sort of where we started, except now I've got more firepower and a bigger team and more experience that the new businesses that we're launching have much bigger potential, are growing much faster, because I've got the blood and sweat from the arena all over my face.
Speaker 2:When you say being an entrepreneur or be an entrepreneur, what is that for you? What are you describing in the terms, adam, either of how you think about the world or how you act upon ideas, because that's a you know, hey, I'm an entrepreneur, like a lot of self-employed people call themselves entrepreneurs and they're not really. For you, what is that? What do you describe? That is the distinction.
Speaker 1:I don't want to discredit anybody who is self-employed, who's found a way to do the work to pay their own bills right. There's nothing wrong with that. The reason I draw the distinction between being self-employed and owning a small business is because I didn't know the difference I was raised with. If you want to make more money, work more hours and where we really started to turn the corner and have a business that works for us is it became find ways to add more value and you'll make more money. So that was a big distinction for us, so that we could grow, go and grow the team, and like I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm taking my kids to Legoland in New York.
Speaker 1:I remember the moment in 2017, my wife was pregnant, we took my son to Disney and I had two employees at the time and I got back and I'm like oh my God, how did you guys do without me? I'm like what do you mean? It was like you never left. Like every line we were in at Disney, I was answering emails, I was taking phone calls. I wasn't on vacation, I was just working from Disneyland and scaling it to the point where you have now where, yeah, I'm going to be. You can only contact me if it's an emergency, and three people have that phone number between now and Friday. So that distinction of working for the business versus having a business that works for me.
Speaker 1:But I actually believe there is that third level of the true changing the rotation of the earth type of entrepreneur and in fact you and I were talking about this before we got started. I read every book there was on law practice management, but it was your book that stuck out to me as man. This guy's doing things differently and that impact where you can have you can change an industry or, for me, you can change a community I think is where true entrepreneurship comes in. At the core of any of those categories, what makes someone an entrepreneur, whether they own a business or they're self-employed or they have a job or whatever. At its core, entrepreneurship is about finding opportunities. That's it. Sometimes those opportunities look really nasty and really negative and are really going to do a lot of damage, and that's when most people will curl up in the fetal position. But an entrepreneur is going to kick the door down and say, all right, what can we do about this? I think that's the big distinction.
Speaker 2:I want to talk for a second about the changing the world, or changing the tilt or the rotation of the world, because that is another level and I think in part I've done that. It sounds like you were doing that as well. Sometimes that can come across as sounding arrogant, or let me just say it's a struggle that I had from a mindset perspective, like okay, I think we actually are changing the world, but gee, who am I to say that about myself? Did you ever run into that sort of mindset block, that step you take, or are you like? No, I saw it in my parents, I saw it in my grandparents and that was just a part of my Adam's DNA from the time I can remember.
Speaker 1:You know some people who know me will disagree with this statement, but I don't think I have an arrogance problem. I genuinely believe I have like a self-worth problem. So when I started I thought I was too small of a fish in too big of a pond. So even when we were in Pittsburgh right, it's a big city and I'm driving downtown and going up the skyscraper every single day and I had to leave there and move back to Erie where it took a while. But then I became a big fish by Erie standards and I could start growing that pond a little bit.
Speaker 1:So if you go here's what we're trying to do is I'm trying to lead by example here. So if you go out the front doors of my office and you had three blocks East, you get in the poorest zip code in the country. And if you look up the statistics for the businesses that get started in the high growth industries, we are ranked last in America. We are the least entrepreneurial city in America. Yet here I am growing a law firm based on helping small businesses and entrepreneurs and we're consistently ranked the fastest growing law firms. We're consistently well. Less consistently, but we just made the Inc Regionals list and we will be on the Inc 5000 list later this year, which only four or five companies in Erie have ever done, especially not law firms. So I think part of what I need to do is celebrate those wins. And it is really great to drive around our community and see the businesses that we start and grow and the things that they're doing. But with the way that we've grown, we now have clients in 41 states.
Speaker 1:So I was in Seattle a couple of years ago. I happened to stumble into this Irish pub and I thought you know, there was an Irish pub that we helped with their PPP loan early in the pandemic. I wonder, like, where they are? And I was literally 3000 miles from home. I was standing in my client's location. I had no idea. So, like that man that that feels good, right, like, is that changing the rotation of the earth? I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's an awfully big statement, but to be able to travel 3000 miles and say this is someone that we helped, that makes a big difference to me, individuals who have invested their blood, sweat, tears to create, run and survive COVID and its customers, and the beverage distributors who bring product to the store, to the pub, and the taxpayers who benefit from the taxes that the pub generates and pays.
Speaker 2:And that is changing the tilt of the world. First things we're doing is really getting these very smart lawyers who have good practices to realize that they're undervaluing themselves. They're undervaluing their services. We push them to raise rates or go after larger cases if it's contingent fee work. We push them to get rid of stuff that drains them or fees that just won't change their lives. And I just wonder, like what it is about many, at least the lawyers I run into who show up with this self-worth problem. Have you observed this and, if so, have you given any thought to why that is and what we can do? People thought to why that is and what we can do, you and me, today on this podcast, to help change the world that way with lawyers on self-worth.
Speaker 1:So there's part of this that is particular to lawyers and there's part of it that isn't. 90% of the business owners I know should be increasing their rates, should be raising their prices. 90% they're working way too hard, they're adding way too much value or, in fact, they're not doing a very good job and it's because they're not charging enough money, right, yeah, so, and this is true for so many business owners, especially small businesses Big corporations tend to get this, but the small guys you know the guy that I pay to do the weed whacking around my yard it's tough to get him to show up until I told him I will pay you more. I am naming my price, but I am first on your list. My snowplow guy is the same way. I'm his first stop because I'm willing to pay. He loves working for me because I pay him more. So just go raise the rates, do this for everybody.
Speaker 1:So that's true for a lot of business owners. Where it's really tough with lawyers is the billable hour. I mean, it ruins it for all of us. It sustains this blue collar, white collar mentality of if you want to make more money, work more hours. That's how we're taught versus do a better job and you can charge higher rates, or you can charge more or, god forbid, we start talking about flat fees. Right, that's such a foreign concept for lawyers.
Speaker 1:So we're trained to be risk averse, we're trained to spot issues. We're not trained to find opportunities, we're trained to avoid the loss as opposed to achieve the win. So I think there's pieces that are particular to lawyers, that they beat out of us over those three years of law school and the early years of practice and it becomes sort of this self-sustaining. Well, the partners teach the associates, and then they become partners and they teach the associates, and until someone breaks this, I want to say cycle of poverty and it almost is, sadly, but this cycle of this mindset, then yeah, it's going to perpetuate.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think that cycle of poverty is a bad descriptor. When you read the reports that have come out since 2016, I think you know the whole lawyer wellness thing right you find that many lawyers, particularly in small firms, struggle with their lives writ large, whether it's finances, whether it's relationships, whether it's stress levels, whether it's dealing with crappy clients. And you're right. It takes something like, maybe, my original book. It takes something like some of the work that you were doing and the lawyers who I know that you are helping to just see the possible when, through undergrad and through law school and through early years in the profession, no one is even suggesting that there is another lane full of possibility. I mean, it is all billable hours. I think law schools are designed to create widgets for big law and the billable hour is the dumbest thing ever, because the better you get, the more efficient you get. Like you don't get rewarded for that. And what does the client want? The client just wants their legal problem solved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, we get rewarded for that. And what does the client want? Client just wants their legal problem solved. We're rewarded for not knowing what to do and having to go and research it and figure it out.
Speaker 2:It's bizarre. It is absolutely bizarre. Well, talk to us, because you've alluded to now. Like you have your hands in different realms, including helping businesses 3,000 miles away, you know, away in the Northwest with some funding, covid funding, stuff. It seems like so long ago in some respects. So walk us through a little bit of your journey. Let me ask you a better question. When you went to law school, you got your JD MBA. I think you said at the same time what was your vision? If you can remember when you went to law school, where did you think getting the JD MBA was going to land you in your one to three years after you got the degrees?
Speaker 1:I've tried to block that from my memory. This is going to be a therapy session. I don't know. Man, I was on Law Review. I was going to do the big law thing. Very traditional. Nobody wanted to hire me and I and if I had to go back I probably couldn't put my finger on why. Part of it may be just my approach to things and you know, I'm not in that traditional mold. I when did you graduate? So that was the cool thing about the JD MBA. I graduated in December 2008. So you remember those times, yeah, yes, that's Brian, my son.
Speaker 1:Like graduated my classmates finished in June of 2008. Fortunately, because of the extra semester, I got an extra summer, so I got this internship, which turned into the job. But I actually had law firms tell me we don't want to hire you because of the JD MBA, because and you'll love this we don't know whether you want to be a lawyer or a business person Because, as you and I go, they're completely mutually exclusive, obviously. So, yeah, I think that was the plan is I was going to do the big law thing for a little while. I still have one friend that does it. He's a partner at a big law firm. He has sold his soul to them. He sleeps under his desk and he freaking loves it, and I'm sure his kids see him occasionally. But that was not for me. I'm glad I didn't end up landing a job like that, because who knows where I would be now?
Speaker 2:But you did shortly afterwards clerk for a judge, I think what was this local, yeah, trial court.
Speaker 1:We're talking like protection from abuse and child custody and really like the nitty. I love the lawyers that talk about being litigators. Until you've done family law or criminal defense, you don't litigate, you're shuffling papers around. So these are the people in the trenches. So, yeah, great Locally, great experience, good connections, great to see what lawyers do for a living. Some of those lawyers and that's what allowed me to go out and start my practice is I had a contract as like a part-time public defender helping some juvenile delinquents and, like I said, really used to hustle a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Did you have your hands in any of your businesses or any prior businesses around the time that you were getting out, you know, with the dual degree?
Speaker 1:So not really. I worked for my parents' business in undergrad, but not through law school and not coming out of school, because again, I was going to go do the big law thing or I was going to get the big fancy job.
Speaker 1:And starting at a big four accounting firm is nothing to sneeze at the size of those. I mean, when I started at KPMG, there were a hundred thousand professionals worldwide. I mean that dwarfs the largest law firm in the world. I think it was probably 2016. So a good seven or eight years in before I got involved in another business and I have to share some of these stories because these would be viewed as failures and I think if I don't share the failures as part of the journey, people get a complete misconception of what it was like. Sure so 2016,. This is back when presidential elections used to be fun. We created a board game called socialism. So it's like monopoly, except the game was over when everybody has the same amount of money and we launched this thing. We were on Fox news within a week of launching this board game.
Speaker 2:Now, who's the wait? You know what it was.
Speaker 1:It was some friends and clients who came to me as the business lawyer and said we want to do this, and I said I'm in, I want a piece, and they let me along for that. And I think part of it was they wanted me to be involved because they knew I had a passion for marketing and branding and doing the fun piece of it. So that was like a beautifully playable board game. The Vice Magazine sat down with the Democratic Socialists of America, like the LA chapter, and they played the game and wrote an article about it Because they got it. It was a joke, right, they understood. So that was 2016. In 2018, I spent $25,000 on cheese. A friend of mine and I started a food truck selling grilled cheese sandwiches. We ran that for a year and then sold it.
Speaker 2:I've never seen a grilled cheese sandwich food truck. It was, I mean that was Sound like a thing in Pennsylvania, yeah.
Speaker 1:We transformed the food truck industry in Erie. It was a great summer, but I mean we're talking 2018. We were charging 13 bucks for grilled cheese sandwiches, so we were you tilted the angle of the earth.
Speaker 2:That's it. That's it On our little community. Yeah, $13 grilled cheese sandwiches, oh they were so good.
Speaker 1:Those were the days. I feel like I still have shirts that smell like that truck. But I remember when I started that business I had a really successful client who told me Adam, you suffer as much brain damage starting a $60,000 business as you do a $6 million business. And that was great advice. I clearly had to learn it the hard way, so we sold the truck in 2019. And 2019 is where we really started to turn the corner in the law firm. It took us a couple of years, but we hit our first million in revenue. I think two years later, this year we should close a little over 5 million in revenue. And he was right. I didn't know what I didn't know at that point. I learned my lessons, had a lot of fun with it, but it turns out that I used to get so frustrated with the people that say the first million is the hardest. But there's a lot of truth to that. Once you get through the first seven-figure barrier, they stack up after that when you were crossing.
Speaker 2:If I can ask you, adam, when you were crossing the $1 million barrier in about 2019, what was the firm doing? What was the infrastructure, if you will, of the firm? What kind of cases were you?
Speaker 1:handling work. When I first started and took everything, our focus was always on helping small businesses and entrepreneurs, and back then we still had some residue of like some family law cases, but primarily we were doing small business and we had a pretty robust real estate practice that we've since wound down. But between those two things and the thing I liked about real estate is it was very like support staff driven, a lot of paralegal and legal assistant work, so the lawyers didn't have to be doing quite as much. So that was a good. That was a good practice. And then the business stuff on top of that so startups and contracts and employment disputes and mergers and acquisitions, so pretty broad menu of services. So I and I'm trying to think of the structure of the firm Well, how many people are there? Maybe 10 back then, roughly I'm trying to think it changed so rapidly during the pandemic for us, so it could have been fewer than 10.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about that because for a lot of firms, it didn't change rapidly during the pandemic. Talking about that because for a lot of firms, it didn't change rapidly during the pandemic. The only thing that changed for many firms was they had they were forced to work uh, not in their own offices, and many of them didn't have laptops and didn't even know how to do that. Um, but you're at a, you're at a different place. Now, if you're crossing through five million and a lot of things, I think opportunities uh came to you that you took advantage of sounds like in the pandemic.
Speaker 1:This is the part of the show where my heart rate raises and I start smashing things. So we were a little law firm that was helping small businesses and entrepreneurs and the governor comes out and says we're shutting down Friday and that night I got a little Caesar's pizza and a bottle of scotch and I stayed in my office and I mapped out the plan.
Speaker 3:And I texted my team and said we're going to do everything we can to keep this going.
Speaker 1:If we keep one thing in mind, we will survive this. And we were so small back then that I said my challenge to myself is I'm going to hire an additional person through this. I'm going to create one job, just to stick it to the man. That same day, the biggest law firm in town, where the most successful businesses go for advice on how to run their businesses, that firm laid off half their staff. They said sorry, we don't care enough about you, we don't care enough about our team, we're not creative enough to figure this out. We're going to lay half of you off. This is where I get so upset, because that's where people go for their advice.
Speaker 2:So one guy is drinking scotch and eating a pizza in his office late that night. The other firm is figuring out how to write email, dismissal letters and not hurt too many feelings and not get sued Exactly their contact and their EPLI carrier.
Speaker 1:So from that point we doubled that year. We doubled in size and the whole idea was, with all the change, with all the uncertainty, with all the and again we forget this now because it seems so distant but all of that stuff that was going on, businesses needed help and we were back then. It was the PPP loans and the EIDL loans and dealing with shutdown orders that we really gained. I used to joke because I drank a lot of coffee back then. It felt like I'm like this is what it feels like to be a thought leader, like people across the country are asking me about these new programs that didn't exist a month ago. So, yeah, that's where we really started turning the corner and that's what's put us in the position that we are today, because we've just continued to build and stack wins on top.
Speaker 2:So now I'm interested in the work ethic, because not only did the loans and the programs not exist, but obviously no knowledge about the programs and loans not exist. Knowledge about the programs and loans not exist, everything in changes. People like you and there were others learned, took advantage and built and while many like they had to hire people like you because they weren't going to learn and how to learn and manage and stuff. So what exactly did like when did the? The light go off? Did you said you stayed up at night. You're crafting the plan, but this is probably, if I'm remembering a little bit, before the PPC and the idle programs roll out. Obviously this is the beginning of the pandemic. So walk us through a little bit of both your mindset and then, exactly like you, sat down at a laptop and you're like I'm going to learn this whole thing, this program, what are the rules, what are the guardrails, and then I'm gonna take it and go market my services as an expert I felt.
Speaker 1:You know, what's funny is we started building some momentum on that stuff and it felt like I felt like I read those laws before the people who passed them. I had more of a thorough understanding and people loved that fact. So I would get shipments of coffee and coffee cups and energy drinks from people like yo man. Keep it going, and I think that's the key that we talked about earlier. The entrepreneurs find those opportunities and there was a heck of a lot of opportunity in that and for me.
Speaker 1:You said one of my favorite words work ethic. One thing I despise about self-employment is that it's always got to be that hustle and grind and hustle and grind. I think that's a horrible, miserable lifestyle, but I'm willing to do it for a short period of time. I'm willing to do it to build something. I'm willing to do it if there's an end in sight. I'm willing to do it if there's a goal that we have, and back then it was.
Speaker 1:We just started building so much momentum. I mean I still show screenshots of my calendar back then when I was doing half hour consults 10 to 20 of them a day, seven days a week, and every single one of them was paid 10 to 20 of them a day, seven days a week, and every single one of them was paid and I would just watch. I figured out how to do the Calendly scheduling and integrate it with Square to take credit cards, and I would just see these emails come in with these credit card payments and back then we had like a $40,000 week and back then that was so much money. I made $17.31 an hour as a law clerk, which was like 30 grand, and I just had a week where I made that much money. So that was fun and exciting and I was willing to work for it. Back then I didn't know what the end goal was, but I knew that we were building something. Can you go ahead and finish that thought and that's what we built.
Speaker 1:I mean that's, we didn't know where it was going to go. There was, I used to quote, I got my daughter is now she'll be seven in a couple of days but we used to watch the Frozen movies and there's a song from Frozen 2 that says I, you know, I'm lost and in the dark and I'm just going to do the next right thing. And that was like my theme song, like just do the next right thing, take the next step.
Speaker 2:Since then, adam, have there been other? Do you have other examples of holy crap idea opportunity? I have to do this learning and then launch.
Speaker 1:So again, we're stacking wins on top of that, we're layering on top of that. So when they created the PPP loans in the CARES Act so this was probably early April 2020, ppp loans in the CARES Act, so this was probably early April 2020. They also created back then the employee retention credit, but at the time you could only do one or the other. And I remember telling people back then hey, don't sleep on this credit. Like, yeah, the PPP loans, the money will be here now, but there's all these rules. And now we're dealing with people that didn't do forgiveness properly or took out loans in the wrong amount, even accidentally. There's fraud too, but there's plenty of negligence. But fast forward to March of 2021, and they changed that and suddenly you could do both. So that was another opportunity where I was now familiar with this credit and they changed the law so that you could do both of it.
Speaker 1:But I had established this expertise as the CARES Act guy that we went out and started. We got a core group of clients, that we did an alpha test and said we're going to go and file this thing and we had some success with it and we just continued to build from there and, knowing what I learned the first few years of my business, knowing what we learned early in the pandemic. We then took this thing and scaled it so much bigger and so much faster than anything we had built before, again based on the fact that most people were going to their accountants and their accountants were saying I'm not going to figure this out, or you're not going to qualify, or it's very black and white and you can't do it, and I'm not smart enough or energetic enough to go and figure this out.
Speaker 1:And then they'd come to us and I'd say no, we can help with this and in fact we're going to do a good enough like we'll write an opinion letter that covers you in case there's ever an audit and we'll do all the calculations. Thank God I'm married to a CPA and we built this system that really drew a line between the advice that most people were getting, which was you can't do this to. Then they come to us and we get them. Our average claim was in the six figures. So to go from you're not eligible to Adam's firm got you $100,000. It's really easy to build a referral network based on that, on those results. But that was the really big example for us of, I mean, that business. We blew up but now I know people in that industry and I see how much bigger I mean. We claimed, I think, 75 million in credits for our clients and I ran into a guy the other day that I know that he built it to 250 million. It's like, all right, there's something I can learn from this guy.
Speaker 2:Did you also have to go out and acquire technology expertise Like what was that In order to do that many cases? It couldn't just be you right and you had people. But I'm curious now about the technological challenges I suspect would have been there. You would have to go out and acquire things that other lawyers didn't have any need to acquire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that's interesting. I mean we have a spreadsheet my wife has made. A couple of spreadsheets in our business that have made us millions of dollars. Thankful for that. A couple of spreadsheets in our business that have made us millions of dollars Thankful for that.
Speaker 1:So we had to build a thing. As far as technology, you know, what's ironic is when you're dealing with the IRS you don't need to be super high tech, because every single ERC filing is done in the mail. You can't e-file those, so it's about as low tech as it is. We're still faxing the IRS, but we did scale a team. We had staff in Mexico and South Africa and then across the country. So, yeah, we built a system that other people could operate for us. But we got to version like 5.0 of that system in about two years, because we would build it and scale it and then things would break and we rebuild it and iterate and scale it.
Speaker 2:So we went through that learning curve much more quickly every single time and what was the learning for you, because I'm sure this was not as straight up every day is a huge, friggin success path right and as you're acquiring people in other countries and acquiring more and more referrals and more and more claims are coming across your desk. And now, looking back, what did I, adam, learn from that whole explosive?
Speaker 1:process. We had the benefit of that being a brand new program, so there was no precedent into how it should be done. Certainly, I've admitted to tax court and, like I said, have some tax experience from my prior job, but we were kind of starting with a clean slate on it. But, like anything else, I learned the value of hiring experts. So we went out and found a couple contract attorneys that had a lot of experience with the IRS and said, okay, teach us what we need to know. And in fact we made them a whole bunch of money because we said, hey, we're building this thing. You don't know anything about this thing because it's brand new, but you've got some background experience. So if you're willing to learn what we're building, we will keep you employed. And we had two attorneys in particular who ate that up and we made them a boatload of money because they were grinding out the work, they were working with the clients. They were really loving that and it helped us to build the system. So that was a big that's the learning.
Speaker 2:That's a learning right there is, it's gone and acquired talent. They don't need to be entrepreneurs like I am. They need to be grinders and enthusiastic and willing to go learn something new and leverage on their own experience.
Speaker 2:And I guess my message would be to folks who are listening to this is that the world is filled with people like that like like, who have no, maybe no desire to run their own gig, to take the entrepreneurial risk and journey, but give them something that they like doing, that they're really good at and that the market will pay for and they will run with it. And now? So then, the challenge is for all of us is to go and find these people. And today, what did COVID give us? Covid gave us a worldwide economy, an opportunity to work with people. It just didn't matter where they were anymore. In large part, wow.
Speaker 1:Okay. So let's dig one layer down deeper in that, because there's one more distinction that I think is important is you said they don't need to be these entrepreneurial people, and that's absolutely true. But when you get down I shouldn't say down to that level, but when you get to that level of the grinders, the people who love the work, like oh, there's 2.4 million words in the tax code, I can't wait to memorize all of them. God bless those people. But you still break them into two categories.
Speaker 1:One group of people do not want to go on the journey. They want to be very comfortable where they are. The other group of people do not want to go on the journey. They want to be very comfortable where they are. The other group of people want to be part of something growing and thriving and doing awesome, cool, experimental new things. So it's been very important for us to find that second group, the people that they may not be entrepreneurial but they're curious about the journey and they want to learn and they want to grow, versus the people who can tear apart the tax code and research and write a brief like nobody's business, but those people who aren't willing to make mistakes, those people who aren't willing to figure things out. Those are not our people in our business. So that was another valuable learning. Like, yeah, we got to hire the experts, we got to hire, but we also need people that are willing to deal with a certain level of uncertainty because we're building something new here.
Speaker 2:And what was your general methodology, Adam, for figuring out who's in which of those two baskets?
Speaker 1:Oh man, that's a whole podcast. Our recruiting process is in depth, it is intense, it is scary for some people, but we're very intentional about hiring around our core values and we make sure that you are the type of person who's willing to be curious and not judgmental and you're willing to figure things out and you're willing to find the truth and you're willing to grow, and we hire around that.
Speaker 2:So did this include like using screening tools? Like some of these personality profiles, we use the predictive index.
Speaker 1:But yeah, if you've used DISC or Colby or any of those other things, they're comparable. We like predictive index for what we do. But yeah, we do that. We do written quizzes. We do several rounds of interviews, depending on the position. We put some landmines out there for people to step on unknowingly. I of course mean that figuratively. I'm not physically hurting it, we get it. That's my one lawyer disclaimer for the entire show is, yeah, no physical harm to our applicants, but yeah, we're very intentional with our hiring.
Speaker 2:We need no disclaimers on the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, trust me, okay. So now we're recording this in June of 2024. You've got a new book, amazon bestseller. You and your wife have also started a tax consulting, tax planning practice, so let's talk about those two things. I'm always curious about people who write books. Obviously, you found me originally through a book when you're on the stairwell of the elliptical machine. Your book, the title is, I think, everything your Kids Want you to Learn About.
Speaker 1:Everything your Kids Wish you K you knew about owning a business, yep.
Speaker 2:There you go, all right. So impetus for that. And then the thought process of is this going to be worth my time somehow? I'm curious about that because the book is. You know, it's more complex than writing a blog post or putting up something on LinkedIn, obviously.
Speaker 1:So what's the reason behind it? So it's twofold. One is I just wanted to see if I even wanted to write a book. I knew if I enjoyed this it wouldn't be my last one, and I've now proven that this will not be my last one.
Speaker 1:But the real why behind it was I learned so much from my parents owning their business, so many valuable lessons. I've learned so many on my own. I've exceeded the level of success my parents had, although they weren't doing too bad, and I found my kids saying things around our house that were like so wise and so profound and, shockingly, probably came from me in a lot of instances. So an example I was in the kitchen the other day complaining about something in the business and my son, who's 13 and anybody who's dealt with a 13 year old boy knows what to expect but he goes dad, you can fix that, you just have to tweak it, you just have to adjust it. It's like holy crap, at 13 years old. Like he gets, he's empowered, he understands, like he controls his destiny. This is so great.
Speaker 1:So I found that I had an unfair advantage when I started my business because of what my parents taught me. My kids will have an even more unfair advantage and it's like why don't I share some more of this? Why don't I share some of these stories and lessons? Life's too short to make all the mistakes on your own, so let's get it down on paper. Here's where it's been really cool, obviously, like I've been blown away by the support by friends and clients and people that I haven't talked to in 20 years. I'm getting messages from people that are like dude, I bought the book, I love the book. I bought a copy for my kid Like we're now a lot of. My pride from the pandemic is kids saw what their parents did because we helped them and that, like I got to write a children's book. Now I think to really hit this home.
Speaker 1:But yeah.
Speaker 2:That's changing the tilt of the world. That's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly it that was the reason behind it.
Speaker 1:We did the push, we were number one in the self-employment category, which I thought was pretty cool, and continuing to sell some copies and do a little bit of a tour around it, and my hope and expectation and plan is this will turn into more speaking engagements for me, it turns into more coaching opportunities for me and work will come back to the law firm. The really fun thing is the more successful our clients become, especially the people that I work with on the business piece, not the legal piece the more money they make, the more they need tax strategy, so it becomes great lead generation for that business as well. So, yeah, that was the why behind, or the two whys.
Speaker 2:I was talking to someone just before I spoke to you and I was explaining to her that I have these realms of my life CrossFit, refereeing, great legal marketing, the law firm they're all interconnected in some way, right, each one drives a piece of the of something else in the wheel of the realms. So now let's talk about the tax planning, because I think you told me before we went live that most of your clients are lawyers and law firms. Probably much like most great legal marketing members is they start to become successful. They're making money. No one's ever taught them except their CPA who's like pay, pay. Here's the rules pay. No one's ever really taught them about planning and I'll tell you this, adam, you probably know this To the extent they have gone to look for whatever reason, strategies are not explained well and the risk averse lawyers are like I ain't never heard of that.
Speaker 1:Oh, risk averse lawyers and risk averse CPAs. Yeah Well, you and I are well aware of the broken pieces of the legal industry. There are broken pieces in the accounting industry that is actually detrimental to clients. Most accountants have built this market where their clients dump the shoebox full of receipts on them on February 15th. They make the last minute filing. Those accountants have their busy season and then they take the next month off because they deserve it, but they never do anything to plan for the next month off because they deserve it, but they never do anything to plan for the upcoming year. It's very reactive. So we we learn this the hard way. The worst is when an accountant fills out your taxes, says here's how much you still owe and then says congratulations. Like I, I have anger issues. I get it, but I can't tell you how many like accountant desks I've smashed at that moment Like there's got to be a better way. Well spoken like.
Speaker 2:Or let me just add one thing before you go on and write the check by 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, as if you've got the past, oh great.
Speaker 1:I was wondering what to do with this pile of money, and now I've got a solution for you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Thank you. So we flipped that industry on its head and it is now June 10th and for many of our clients it is getting to be too late in the year to implement some strategies. But we put some of these strategies in our own business and saved about a quarter of a million dollars on our taxes last year. In fact, our prior CPA gave us our receipts to pay our estimated taxes and I would have overpaid by a quarter of a million dollars. The irs would have been sitting on that cash. That was the best he could do.
Speaker 2:we have another client who this it's always good just to let the government have your money and use it for a year or two, like I'm a big proponent.
Speaker 1:I find that they really know what to do with it. You know like they can probably better deploy that money that I could. That.
Speaker 3:That's again sarcasm.
Speaker 1:So we flipped this on its head. We meet with our clients throughout the year but again we're stacking these layers of success. Our ERC clients whose accountant said, no, you can't get the employee retention credit, are now seeing that we're doing this. So we have another guy after his accountant told him he couldn't get the ERC and we got him the ERC, he came back to us for tax planning. He filed April 15th of this year, so he filed his 2023 taxes. We sit down and look at 2024 with him. We've saved him so far this year it's June 10th, it's less than two months since tax day. We've saved him 70 Rand already. $70,000 that goes back into this guy's pocket because his accountant is again too busy or too uncreative or too unmotivated or too uninspired to actually do something proactive to save their client's money. And this is most accountants, and I don't blame them. They're part of the industry, that is what it is, but they're very reactive and we're building a proactive business that's better for our clients and it's blowing up right now.
Speaker 2:And their goals are misaligned. I mean, their goals are to accurately and fairly make sure that you're in compliance, and your goal is to keep as much money legally as you can and deploy it in the way that you see fit for you and your family.
Speaker 1:We are advocates. We're not. This isn't about right and wrong. This isn't about right and wrong. This isn't about black and white.
Speaker 1:Again, the tax code's 2.4 million words, plus you tack on regulations and court opinions that interpret that stuff. I mean, you know how this stuff goes. Our lawyer friends know how this goes. You're telling me there's no gray area, and most answers I get from accountants are yes and no. You can't do this, you can do that. How about you give me the pros and cons, how about you give me the risks and then let me make an informed decision for myself on this? And what usually happens is it's like wait, I could have saved how much money if I did this. Hell yeah, I would take that risk. Like, let's go, I'll fight the IRS over that. Or sometimes it's less risks than people even imagine.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what was really eye-opening for us in building this business is we got into the financials of hundreds of law firms doing this prior work for them and realized there's a lot of opportunity here. There's more ways to help these people. So, yeah, we launched that business about a year ago. It's got three or four employees right now and every week is a record week because the same thing we get these raving fan clients who have now seen the light and we've taught them, we've preached our gospel of tax strategy and being proactive, that they go tell all their friends and we're like, we're sitting here with open arms and we had a call earlier today that we converted four clients in one call because they're and like, this is not a one-to-many selling event, this is not selling from the stage, this is just no, we were all kicking the door down to come and get these services. So, yeah, that's, it's been really.
Speaker 2:If a couple other questions. If you and I are having a discussion, you're back in the podcast three years from now like what do you think what will we be talking about? What do you think you will have done or tweak your life or your lifestyle?
Speaker 1:So, man, that's a great question. I am all about having the business to support the lifestyle and also the tax strategy to support the lifestyle. They go hand in hand. So one of the strategies we implemented last year that is not for everyone, it's only for the cool people is I went and bought an airplane and I can now fly my family really cool places really quickly and easily. And listen, flying out of Erie, pennsylvania, I can go one place, charlotte, and then I can connect wherever I want to. Right now I can take my family wherever I want, almost whenever I want, very quickly and easily, and my like, that's the lifestyle I want to be living. Are you the pilot?
Speaker 1:or you're hiring, I'm working on my pilot's license. But you can, pilots are actually terribly affordable, which is another dangerous. So yeah, we I've had to go to a couple. I'll save that story for another day, but that's awesome. Yeah, you got to interview your pilot because you're going to spend a lot of time sharing, you know, the radio on the headset, so you got to make sure it's somebody cool. But yeah, so I think for me this kind of undersells it, but I want a bigger, faster, cooler plane.
Speaker 1:Well, why do I want that? Well, because I want to go farther and I want to get there faster and I want to be able, ben, I want to be able to get on your stage in Phoenix and fly myself there, cause I think that would just be super cool. And I want my kids, I want my kids to be in the back of the plane. So we flew to Myrtle beach a couple months ago and we hit some turbulence and I'm up in the front with the pilot, my wife, son and daughter and puppy are in the back and we got the headsets on and we listened to Kenny Chesney on Sirius XM. It's the best flying music.
Speaker 1:And we hit this turbulence and my daughter, who is six at the time says, dad, the plane is dancing because he loves this song. And I'm like, oh my God, like to be able to share that, to have my business, to have my business grow to the point where my daughter can have that experience. Now the flip side is, if we do fly somewhere and it's like there's no first class available and she's economy, she's complaining about it even though her feet don't touch the ground. But I think giving my children that experience or let's go to a lesser extreme, I coach both my kids' soccer teams and like sharing those moments with them you can't beat that and if I didn't have the business to support it, I'd be missing out on all those opportunities, which is what I did for the first seven or eight years of my career.
Speaker 2:We could do a whole nother podcast too, on working with your spouse, oh man, and building things with your spouse, and I think that would be fun. Look, how can? This has been way too short. We'll have to do a part two, or have you come out in the Phoenix or something like that? We'll talk offline, but people want to give the name of the book again because obviously I think they can go to Amazon probably the best way to get connected with the book and then talk about the tax planning or whatever. I'll list every single social media account I have, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the book is everything your kids wish you knew about owning a business. If you look up Adam Williams or Adam J Williams, it's this blue and white cover with the three people on it Should show up on Amazon, no problem. I'm all over Facebook posting all the time. I am on Instagram and TikTok as Cars Coffee Capitalism. I have a website that is IamAdamWilliamscom, which directs to everything else. And then our tax strategy business is Pennywise Tax Strategies. In fact, now that I'm dumping all this out there, if you go to pennywisetax forward, slash save, we've got a checklist that you can print out. Take to your CPA to see if they're actually implementing any of these strategies or if they're ruining your life, which they probably are.
Speaker 1:So yeah all over the internet.
Speaker 2:This has been an enjoyable almost one hour, adam. We'll have to connect again because this is you're living a very cool life, but it's based upon certain mindsets, principles and then certain disciplines, which is what we're trying to do here at Renegade Lawyer Podcast and the Great Legal Marketing. All right, dude, I'll connect up to you. Hold on just for a second. Again, adam, thanks for your time.
Speaker 3:This is great, Thank you. If you like what you just heard on the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, you may be a perfect fit for the great legal marketing community. Law firm owners across the country are becoming heroes to their families and icons in their communities. They've gone renegade by rejecting the status quo of the legal profession so they can deliver high quality legal services coupled with top-notch customer service to clients who pay, stay and refer. Learn more at greatlegalmarketingcom. That's greatlegalmarketingcom.
