Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
Inside a Coaching Call | To Leave My Firm or Stay?
You’re 20 years into your legal career… and something feels off. Do you stay where it’s safe — or finally bet on yourself?
In this episode of Life Beyond the Briefs, Brian sits down with a mystery guest — we’re calling him Mr. X — for a raw, unscripted coaching call. Mr. X is stuck between two paths: leave his firm and build something of his own, or join another practice with the promise of future equity.
But this conversation isn’t just about business. It’s about autonomy, mental health, and what it really means to take control of your future.
If you’ve ever asked yourself:
- Should I go out on my own?
- What if I make the wrong choice?
- Is it too late to design a life I actually want?
Then hit play. This one’s for you.
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs, the podcast for lawyers who are done playing by someone else's rules and ready to design a life they actually want to live. Today's episode a little different. I'm sitting down with a mystery guest We'll call him Mr X a seasoned attorney who's 20 years into practice and standing at the edge of a major career crossroads. He's got two paths One strike out and build the practice of his dreams. Two join an established firm and maybe inherit something big, or maybe get stuck in someone else's mess. We get into it all you know autonomy, risk, family, mental health and the million dollar question what do you really want out of your law career? So if you've ever felt like you've outgrown your firm or wondered if now is your time to make a move, you're going to love this one. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design and create practices that they actually enjoy showing up to on Monday. Today's show is going to be unique. I have an anonymous guest and we're going to do a quasi-coaching call here. My guest is a lawyer in Ohio who is of counsel at a firm right now. He changed the state. He's not actually in Ohio. He's exploring a couple of options, one of which is striking out entirely on his own. The other, which is joining an established practice which he will have a piece of. I'm going to be diving into how I would think about that and then how I go about coaching lawyers who are in this position, figuring out what's the next thing that I want to do with my life. So, mr X, welcome to the show. Thanks, man, pleasure to be here, yeah, so tell me a little bit about your practice right now.
Speaker 3:So I'm currently. I was in a firm for a long period of time. The firm dissolved for a variety of reasons and I didn't feel at the time I was ready to go out and start my own thing. So I found a firm that did somewhat similar type of work, where I came in essentially at a council level, like sort of in between, I guess, associate and partner non-equity. I get a piece of origination but it's clear to me that it's a place where I can hold and continue, but there's really no room for growth, there's not a lot of support for growth and you know, I'm kind of at the point in my life where I feel like now's the time I got to make that move, if I'm ever going to do it.
Speaker 2:And you're a little bit over 20 years into the practice. Yeah, and what's the practice area? So mostly criminal.
Speaker 3:I do a lot of DWI and also some union representation in administrative proceedings.
Speaker 2:And when you say there's not room for growth in the firm where you are right now, what would growth mean to you? What is it that you want to do that the current firm isn't supporting?
Speaker 3:I think the current firm has more work than it can handle. So it's really about treading water rather than looking to plan and grow the firm to continue to build. There's not an investment in me growing my practice. It's more about me servicing theirs. So in that sense I just don't see a long-term future.
Speaker 2:If you had a magic wand, what's the change that you would make in this firm to make it a long-term fit for you?
Speaker 3:I think to move with the volume that the firm's currently moving at, with the ability to get more volume, I think you would need to add probably two associates. Have a systemized intake process to take the intakes off the hands of the attorneys and add probably at least one more staff member maybe two, and the owner like zero willingness to do those things.
Speaker 3:I think, well, there's some willingness, but it's not a priority. The priority is, you know, getting out from under the giant pile of files that are on your desk and you know trying to add as time goes without having a real systemized approach to how to move forward.
Speaker 2:What's the size and the scope of the firm right now? Four attorneys.
Speaker 3:I don't know the revenue number.
Speaker 2:Four attorneys? How many staff?
Speaker 3:One assistant admin person and then another person who's part-time that does office manager stuff billing, bookkeeping and then, when the main admin isn't there, fills in and does some admin duties, so super upside down in terms of workload.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the whole firm is criminal at communion, or do they do something else? Also?
Speaker 3:Other practice areas too, some plaintiff's side, employment and some other civil litigation.
Speaker 2:But the main sustaining thing is is administrative work, um, and, and I guess the employment and one person, one and a half people answering the phones who aren't lawyers really one person mainly. Yeah, okay, I understand why you don't have time to go and generate your own business and move things down the pay scale a little bit, okay, so so tell me about the two opportunities that you have.
Speaker 3:So I have. One option would be just to go from the ground up. I've been fortunate in that when I firms after the firm I was at forever disappeared that I've been able to consistently generate business without really any marketing or anything, really just word of mouth. A lot of my clients came with me and referred me to other people and other attorneys for people. So one option would be to go out and build out my practice, trying to make it more efficient, more systemized, more intentional with how it builds. With that, I've spoken to a couple of firms that I found were in the area little, looking for part-time help. So my thought would be to work with them part-time just as to make sure that the lights are on, there's money coming in while I build, and then, with that equity with you know, kind of the novel counsel role, you know, just so there's money there.
Speaker 3:And then the other opportunity an attorney who's I guess you know is within say, 10, 12 years of wanting to really slow down, is looking to bring someone on to help with what they do and also then eventually take over the firm.
Speaker 3:And in my meetings with this person I expressed to them that it was important to me that if I were to do that.
Speaker 3:I don't want to come into a place where everyone's, you know, within 10-12 years of retirement and I'm farther away from that and then 10 years from now I'm left holding the bag and everybody's gone. So it's important to me that I be able to build out and expand either practice areas and personnel at that new place, and there seems to be an appetite for that. I've just learned over the course of 20 years that a lot of people are very willing to say, yeah, that sounds good, but to put the discipline in and the time in to really do it correctly, you know, it's you know, and you guys you know in reading your stuff, one of the things that I think you guys preach that really resonates is that there's never the right time and that there's always. It's always important to surround yourself with the right people. So finding people who are really willing to invest and make things work, I think, is important. So that's kind of my quandary there's two challenges at the existing firm.
Speaker 2:Number one is them keeping their word on expansion and new practice areas and building and hiring anybody who's not 10 or 12 years from retirement. Number two is you get to 10 or 12 years and they actually retire. Most lawyers actually have nothing to sell or to transfer and then they're surprised at 10 or 12 years that nobody wants to give them any money for the thing that doesn't have any value. And so if you're thinking about going into a practice that is established, it's really challenging to come up with what is the value and what's the thing that I'm going to transfer to them to make them want to retire or go out the door right. So for me, from everything you just said, I'm like what, what's the benefit of working with that firm tomorrow at all? Do they have a caseload to give you? Is it keeping?
Speaker 2:your finances streamlined like. What does that look like?
Speaker 3:well, the benefit is they would I would be on salary probably parallel to what I'm making now, um, and there is work that I, you know, know I think I think the way they view it is they feel like my skills and transfers are the type of work they do, which isn't completely dissimilar to what I've been doing, and so they look at me as someone who can come into that role and sort of integrate into their cases and sort of become a part of it, so that that the benefit would be that there's stability there in terms of financially, if the commitment's there to continue to build and there's the opportunity to grow. So it's sort of the best of both worlds. The question is, does that unicorn really exist or is it just everyone looking at it as this is ideally the best way to go but in practice it's not and it's hard to get?
Speaker 2:that answer without actually sitting there and seeing how people operate, so that's kind of my quandary it sounds like actually this would be a new practice area, sort of, but not really it would be.
Speaker 3:It would be kind of just flipping sides, so it's a lot of the stuff that I do now, but it would be on the other side of the table, so it wouldn't be something that would be much different. Plus, I'd be able to continue doing what I'm doing and bring all my stuff with me.
Speaker 2:You're talking about the. It's the other side of the union. Yeah, yeah, and so you would bring with you the dui and the criminal defense. Yes, and do they have an established dui and criminal defense practice right now? No, and, and they want you because why they want me, and so this was not a job that was advertised.
Speaker 3:We were kind of put together by another attorney that had spoken to us separately and knew what we were both looking for and thought would be a good fit.
Speaker 3:So it was a conversation that's been going on for about a month, month and a half and so they want me because they want someone in place that they can integrate in and, I think, eventually take over the firm when they're ready to slow down.
Speaker 3:I don't know that they ever really want to fully leave, but they want somebody in place that can manage when they're gone and they believe that, based on my prior work, that I can integrate into what they do and continue to build out From that. That would be, you know, one of the things we talked about was potentially because of their location it's in a more affluent area in the state and one of the things we talked about was maybe building out in the state practice or doing things like that and bringing in other, you know, and working on staffing that and things like that, so trying to find ways to expand. How big is that practice? Right now I think there's five attorneys full time and they have a couple of counsel that are basically per diem doing certain projects and then, staff wise, I want to say four staff people, um, but I don't know, 100, that number of staff, but it's around there.
Speaker 2:So a little bit more support. Um, do you have any estate planning background at all?
Speaker 3:not at all I've done, one will yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So that seems aspirational to me, this idea. Okay, maybe someday we'll start the estate planning practice, because they haven't done it, you haven't put any energy behind it yet, and they've been in existence for however long they've been in existence, so I wouldn't put a lot into that. And then to me, like cynically, it sounds like the benefit to having you is in 10, 12 years, years when I want to retire. I've got somebody who continues to pay me.
Speaker 3:Fair, yeah, but the deal would be that I would earn my equity through not necessarily me buying it out, but more through income through the um, income through the farm. You know what I mean. And it splits and things like that Um yeah, why do you? That's my concern as well, which is is again, but there's that you know am I left holding the bag in 10 years? You know what am I doing in terms of like what am I getting?
Speaker 3:You know, I mean obviously to me to me, the real issue was are they legitimately willing to hand me the keys and let me try to build out my half of what I want to do? I'm really willing to invest in that. And if there are, and then the next question is what do we do about conflicts between their work and my work? And you know when they need to cover something and I got something on my own, like what happens, and I've been in those situations a lot. And obviously, when it's not your name on the door, you know, you, you, you, you subjugate yourself.
Speaker 3:But I'm at a point where I don't want to feel, I don't want to be. I don't want to worry about getting that email at 7 30 in the morning like, hey, I need you to cover this. Or hey, you know, jump into this. Or you know I have something else't have to worry about getting that email at 7.30 in the morning like, hey, I need you to cover this. Or hey, jump into this. Or I have something else I have to do, so you need to do this, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So when you say you're only left holding the bag when everybody retires, is it real estate? Is it cost of making payroll? What does that mean making?
Speaker 3:payroll. What does that mean? Well, to me, what it means is, like you said, if the work that this person generates, if it's based on and their reputation, and then they step away, is that work still there or does that all disappear with them?
Speaker 2:And to me that's the question.
Speaker 2:Well, you've got 10 or 12 years to make that not a problem, right? I was just listening to my friend, ed Alexander, who you should listen to his Law Deals podcast because he talks a lot about taking practices over, but in his most recent episode, which is number 22. You're talking about this buyer's risk, right? You, we, as the acquiring lawyer or the acquiring business person, you have this fear that the work is going to dry up because you know the name person retires or leaves or whatever, whatever. But the reality is you have a 10 or 12 year runway and if you've got a history personally of keeping um clients happy and doing good work, then that risk actually is fairly low, right, because you have plenty of time to make relationships with those people, expand the relationships and all of that. So I don't think.
Speaker 2:I don't think holding the bag and realizing the fear of the revenue leaving is a problem. You've just got to align the interests where you're not paying a big lump sum, thinking that you're going to earn this fee on the back end. But you've actually and I would make sure that I talk to somebody like Ed or to John Hawkins about how do we structure the deal that makes sense for both of us and makes this lawyer, if this is the route that I want to go, makes this lawyer really interested in having his clients continue their relationship with me after that happens right. And so I don't. I'm not the best person to advise you on deal structure, except that you need to get some guidance from somebody that's done it before on how do you make the incentives for that person make sense, because I have a friend for whom it didn't make sense.
Speaker 2:Right, agreed to a purchase price, set a seller-funded you know revenue or payment stream, and then the seller went off on his boat, right. And it's a contingency-free practice which depends on bringing in new cases. So that's a challenge. What's the appeal of the equity?
Speaker 3:Well it's, I mean, you know, having autonomy right it's having autonomy right, it's full autonomy, being able to control what you want to control.
Speaker 2:So that's why I asked that question, because it's not actually equity that you care about, right, it's autonomy.
Speaker 3:No, I mean, if I cared about equity, I would have pushed at my old firm to get equity At that point. What I wanted was my name above the line, so people knew that I was respected at the firm and then I could sell it that way. But the choices I've made, you know, deciding whether to leave or not leave places is largely guided by autonomy. It's the one thing that you know. For better or worse, my anxiety wants me to be in a place where I'm comfortable, in the sense that I'm free to move and do what I need to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amazing, that's not anxiety, that's just life. But this is an important point for law firm owners and for young lawyers. Everybody says they want partnership. Everybody says they want equity. It's not true. What people actually want is name on the door and the ego boost that that gives us, or the authority boost when talking to new clients that my name is on the door and we want more money and we want the autonomy to. If that email comes in and says, can you cover something at 7.30 in the morning, you can say no, I'm playing golf today. So those really are the three things that we want.
Speaker 2:And people say they want partnership and they say they want equity. Actually, nobody, I think, really wants that, because with equity comes risk and comes debt. It's the obligation to make payroll and all of those things, and most people don't actually want that. So what I hear you saying is you want autonomy and you want to be able to control and to build what you want to build, right, right, exactly. And getting back, to be able to control and to build what you want to build Right, right, exactly.
Speaker 3:And getting back to what you just said, I think there is an intrinsic value in having your name on the door and it's not because of me and my ego, which I'm sure is part of it, but people outside the profession. They view you differently if your name's on the door. They view you differently if you're a partner. They think, once you made a partner, it's a huge deal.
Speaker 1:I remember my family reaching out to me, like why didn't you tell me you made a partner?
Speaker 3:I was like it wasn't a big deal. They just put my name. I didn't get any more money or anything. People just think it's this huge deal, but the perception game is a huge part that we do, so in that sense it's important.
Speaker 2:I think and it's client-facing also right If you sit down for a new client meeting, especially with an institutional client like a union, you are, I think, more likely to close the deal if it's your name on the firm than it is if you are not on the firm, regardless of whether you have equity or you're a partner or whatever your title is or not. Right, there is some gravitas that comes with having the name on the door. All right. So I think for you, you're going to go off and build whatever you want to build. The goal is to build what you want to build.
Speaker 2:Right is is the better vehicle to build what you want to build, in your own solo shop, to begin with, or with this other established firm that's promised you. We're going to support you and in 10 or 12 years you'll take it over and you have an existing infrastructure and you have an existing income stream in the form of a salary or a draw or what. So I mean, outside, looking in, you are going to have a far easier time building what you want to build in your solo firm. And now the question is have you quantified what your monthly spend is for your family and what you could generate tomorrow on a monthly basis if you went out on your own, you know, have I, have I gotten down to?
Speaker 3:like you know, the short answer is no. I don't have specific numbers. I have, you know, numbers in my head. The unfortunate thing about doing criminal on DWI is absent. Engaging lead generation companies or things like that. It's up and down. Right, we try to get four calls and two weeks we try to get no calls, and that's just the way it goes and obviously, if it didn't, that's what I would want to be able to do. I believe that I could replicate my salary now on originations without changing.
Speaker 3:I think I could approximate that the issue is the cost then and then things like that, and and being even right, because it's just inconsistent and that's why I was looking to try to take on additional part-time and then trying to find additional institutional type clients, because that way you know that the checks come in and you're not chasing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's what's your, what's your origination deal. Right now you're 40, all right, that's healthy yeah that's in addition to your salary, correct?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's really healthy. And so that goes to 100. Obviously, if you're working for yourself. But you have some calls, you have some overhead, but honestly, for a courtroom lawyer, it's probably fairly nominal, right? I mean, you could have a crappy office, small office space across from the courthouse. That probably wouldn't cost you that much. You get a suite in somebody else's office. You need a minimally viable website because people aren't finding you through organic anyway. But they want to know, like, do you exist? I got this guy's name I need. They're gonna look him up. So there's a cost to that, but it's not outrageous. And then you know you have sounds like a book of business of people that would refer you cases anyway past clients, family, friends, whatever and and that sound I mean you could. You could do the math if you would. And you look back in the last 18 months, how many cases did I generate? What were the fees had?
Speaker 3:I been on my own, what would the revenue have been? Yeah, I mean, look, I think, like I said, I think if you do that, averaging over the past say post-pandemic, right, so it was 22 to now.
Speaker 3:I mean, I've been close to without any real efforts of marketing or anything at all or going out and trying to find work, I've been able to approximate my base salary just in origination. Obviously, were I without my own, I would obviously have to do a lot more, be looking to do a lot more of the marketing and looking out and seeking out work from new sources and other places where I haven't had to do that for a variety of reasons but even if you didn't, you would be approximating the base salary, correct, yeah, but?
Speaker 2:but when you say approximating the base salary, you're earning more because you're also getting this 40 origination coming back to you yeah, okay yeah, okay, all right and so, but some of your time would be freed up because I imagine you're doing a bunch of stuff that is not actually income generating right now. And you would you would be doing stuff that's not income generating if you were the owner of your own law firm. But the question of, okay, what then? Could you? What could you have somebody at a lower rate of pay do? That would then free you up to do the networking and and find more work. And so of your, of your 40 hours I don't know 40, 50, 60, however many hours you're working right now, how many of their are revenue generating hours?
Speaker 3:I mean it's hard to quantify because it's it's most of my stuff's flat fee. So in terms of that, I'm tracking my time every day and I'm billing out 40 hours a week easy of billable time. That includes my floppy cases, but it's time spent doing stuff. So that equates to what? $2,000 a year, which is a lot. That's big firm associate stuff. I mean that's big firm, you know, associate stuff. You know so like why to go out, you know, and start from scratch, I think I would have the time to, you know, take the meetings and do those kinds of things and be more intentional about it. I think now you know it's more of you know you fit things in in where you can, but when you have the ability to say no or say yes.
Speaker 3:You can be a little more intentional and you'd be more excited.
Speaker 2:Right, you'd be more excited because it's the thing that you actually want to build. I mean, if, if I'm you, these guys have a 10 or 12 year runway right, and so even if you went out and you started your own thing and you decided in two years this isn't working, none, those guys have an eight to ten year runway right and is. Is there a reason to believe that if you turned around and you started your own firm and it, for whatever reason, in 24 months wasn't working, you couldn't find a job somewhere else where you're making about the same amount of money that you're making right now? Okay, yeah, right, right, that's. That's how I think about that. No, I.
Speaker 3:That makes sense. I just don't know that this opportunity would be there in two years. But I get it, you know. Look, I mean getting to you know. One of the things that I like about your podcast and your materials is that you guys really focus on, without saying it overtly is wellness right and that a lot of it is a turn around this. You know I have my own mental health challenges. One of the reasons that I've not jumped out in the past is because I don't know that I want to put the burden of owning my own thing being the sole plan winner for my family with you, the sole plan winner for my family with kids getting older, and put that much extra stress on me and how it's going to affect me both mentally and physically. That is the ever lurking thing in my mind and ideally you want to build it to a point where you have people looking, you don't have people working under you, that you're not experiencing that kind of stress. But I think it right. But I think what'd you say?
Speaker 3:it doesn't get better, right, that's what I'm saying, you know, and so that that's what I mean so like there's part of me that is happy to collect a paycheck is that I'm given the opportunity to do what I want to do the hard part is finding someone that's really willing to let you do what you want to do.
Speaker 3:And then the other option is like I said, going and finding you know a firm that's looking for either a counselor or some sort of part-time arrangement, so I know all my bills are being paid and then I can go create my own stuff, but there's always going to be that inherent um conflict between your work and my work. I mean, that's something that I think never goes away totally fair.
Speaker 2:And I'm I'm laughing because you know you're like oh, we'll build to a certain point. I don't know. Every year over year our monthly nut has swollen by 10%, you know. And it's like okay, I got to acquire two more cases a month this year than I did last year. And then we switched case management systems. That cost went up. I got a new SEO vendor. That cost went up. And I'm hiring two people in the LTD.
Speaker 2:So now you know, it's just a different set of problems.
Speaker 2:The thing is quantifying for yourself like what's the set of problems that I want to solve? And there's absolutely nothing wrong with going you know what, if I can solve client problems only and I have a good paycheck and I can help myself build or have the opportunity to build this firm into the thing and the place that I want to work amazing. And the question really is, how do you get certainty or assurances on the front end that these guys who have been operating their firm for a long period of time are actually going to let you do what you want to do? And if they don't, if you're three years in and you're not able to make the kinds of changes what you want to do and if they don't, if you're three years in and you're not able to make the kinds of changes that you want to be making, is that three years for you? Is it a lost opportunity or is it okay? You know what they made promises and now I can go out on my own. Like, how do you think about that?
Speaker 3:well, I'm just gonna say, like, flip around your fire scenario. You know, am I better off doing the three years now and then flip, and then, if it doesn't work, I can sit on my own at any point, or or do I do? I?
Speaker 1:you know, I mean, I agree I think.
Speaker 3:I think for me. What I'm trying to figure out is what you said. What are the assurances? I need to feel comfortable. How do I get those assurances?
Speaker 1:are they?
Speaker 3:at all enforceable. I mean in reality. I mean I'm not taking someone to court because they promised me they're going to do x and they don't do it.
Speaker 1:And then how does that?
Speaker 3:impact me in terms of getting up and going to work every day, right like if, if you resent where you're at. It just makes things very difficult to motivate yourself to do what you got to do. We all have so many. The one thing about you you know technology and everything it has not made our lives easier. In many senses it's just created extra burdens on us. Yep.
Speaker 2:How old are your kids?
Speaker 3:I have two in high school, one in elementary school, okay.
Speaker 2:All right, so a little bit older than me, so you have a windmill, you have no brain.
Speaker 3:yet See, I'm getting there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got some. If it grows out. I got a little bit of gray, yeah, so you have a window coming up where life gets. I don't know what your college deal is, but maybe a little bit less expensive for you or maybe grossly more expensive, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, you had that opportunity always to come back and do it. I think my advice to you, kind of as we, as we wrap up, would be to quantify two things. Like first thing I would do is I would look at the last year of my family's spending and I would quantify exactly what are we spending on a monthly basis, what are we spending it on and what do I need to make next year in order to make sure that the family doesn't feel it If I go out on my own and we have a hard couple of months, right, and what would our contingency plan be if a couple of things did go wrong? Is there other places we could either cut spending or cut savings or whatever?
Speaker 2:Quantifying that takes a lot of the fear out of it, because you might look at it and go you know we have a lot of extra space here or you might go. The margins are really thin and it's just not worth the risk at the time. But as long as it's in your head and not on paper, you don't actually know. And so I use a tool. It used to be called personal capital, it's called empower, now it's a it's automated spending tracker and I know fairly consistently where we spend money, what we're spending it on. So I would quantify that first. Second thing I would do is is write out three years from now, if everything worked out perfectly, what would my life look like? What would I be working on? Who would I be doing it with?
Speaker 3:no-transcript at coming up with tons of what I've said if I do this, I can do that. If I do this, I do that, and it's very difficult for me to pin down exactly where I want to be because I see so many optional routes, for lack of a better way to put it. You know what I mean. You read vivid vision.
Speaker 2:I have not. Okay. So that book, you should read it. It's by Cameron Herald, uh, and, and the idea of that book is not so much that you have to.
Speaker 2:You're going to be setting goals and I'm going to have 100 clients and we're going to do this. How are you going to feel? Right, what will look, feel and act like three years from now? And you can write separate ones. You can write one solo practice, you can write one. Here's the transformation.
Speaker 2:And actually, yeah, now that I'm saying this out loud, that's what I would do before I went and talked to these guys. Right, here's the transformation that I would like to see in this practice in three years. Here's what I would like it to look like. And here's the opportunity that I see and show that to them. Hey, does this jive with what you guys are trying to build or what you think you want to? Let me build, because I want to be open and honest with you that this is what I want to do with my life, and if it's not what you want to do with your life, that's totally cool. But I'm coming into agent, I want more control and and I just would like an open dialogue about is this thing that I want to build. Would you guys support that? And then I'll give you your answer on whether or not you built.
Speaker 2:But you don't the second important piece for that, because you don't have to have all the answers, you just have to cast a vision. You have to create the vision that's large enough that you can attract people that are interested in helping you build it right. So you don't have to have all the what ifs and barriers and all that. You just have to say here's what I want this thing to look like. Maybe we have an estate planning practice, maybe we don't. For me, like I know, definitely I can't have these conflicts. I can't have somebody saying at 7.30 in the morning, you got to go do this and you just write all of that into it and then present that and say, if I came over, would you guys support this or not? Right, and you'd be the first acquisition source, employee of council, equity, whatever to have done that for them, because most people have these kind of surface level conversations and then resent each other in five years because they didn't actually say what they wanted to do all right is that helpful?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense it really does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I'm a big believer in in doing that. I in college I don't remember what book it was we were reading a book somewhere and writing out like these are 10 things I want to do at some point in my career and I've actually hit several of them if I'm not intentionally putting them in.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so I agree with that and I think that's a good way to do it and I think it allows them.
Speaker 3:I think conversations you're looking to find employment can be very amorphous. I think if you can streamline it and say, anytime you have benchmarks and goals and things like that that are tangible, I think it's more real and, like you said, I think it focuses the conversation better. So that was very helpful. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:And it's not coincidental that you hit those things right. There's a universal power in writing those targeted goals down and looking at them on a regular basis, because what you focus your attention on the universe helps you receive. So my, my advice to quantify the risk, going forward and then write out what, what it is you actually are trying to build, because you use the word intentional at least five times during this call, and so I know that you're somebody for whom that is important.
Speaker 3:But if we don't actually write it down, then it's really hard to quantify what the intent is yeah, I feel like I'm at a stage in my life where I need to be intentional, and I need to. You know I I've been very reactive. I think I need to be much more proactive in determining my fate moving forward let's start now.
Speaker 2:Appreciate it, man. Thanks for your time absolutely.
