Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #304: Mike Nardella with Nardella & Nardella, PLLC
What if your toughest job became your greatest teacher? Mike Nardella transformed the grueling experience of door-to-door book sales into the foundation for a thriving commercial law practice.
Mike opens up about his unexpected path to law, having originally planned to become a professor of Ancient Greek and Latin until a conversation with his grandfather changed everything: "Michael, listen, you go dig up all the bones you want when you're in your 40s and you've already made your money." That pragmatic advice led Mike to law school and ultimately to founding Nardella Law, a 20-attorney firm specializing in commercial litigation and bankruptcy throughout Florida.
The heart of our conversation explores how those punishing summers selling educational books door-to-door created an unshakable work ethic. Working 12-14 hour days facing constant rejection, Mike learned that success doesn't require natural talent or charm—just relentless persistence. "You don't have to be good. You don't have to have a silver tongue. You don't even have to know what the hell it is you're doing. You just got to work."
This philosophy serves him well in his practice, where he helps businesses overcome catastrophic problems. Mike shares a particularly rewarding case where his firm saved a family plumbing business with 65 employees from certain failure, restructuring their operations and successfully litigating against bad actors who had threatened their survival.
We also delve into Mike's approach to building a multi-generational law firm by mentoring young associates fresh out of law school, and his compelling advice for professional success: rather than trying to be in the top 1% of one skill (nearly impossible), focus on being in the top 25% of three complementary skills—creating a unique and powerful professional combination.
Whether you're building a business or navigating career transitions, Mike's journey demonstrates how embracing difficult experiences and focusing on consistent effort rather than innate talent creates the foundation for lasting success.
For more information visit https://nardellalaw.com/ or call (407) 966-2680.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolf.
Speaker 2:Well, hello, hello, friends, family, wonderful community and great universe. We are back for another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast podcast. So I met our guest today way back when, when we were just naive, careless college students skirting by life, waiting what was ahead in our futures. And now, here we are, middle-aged men, trying to navigate the absurdity which life and we have arrived. Welcome everyone, yes, let's go. I'm here with Mike nardella, the man, the myth, the legend from way back when on the book field. Mr nardella, so good to see you, my brother good to see you too, wolf man.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on yes, of course it's been too long and I'm really glad that we're doing this, because a lot has happened over the last what has been 20, 20 plus years, 20 almost 25 years yeah, wow, time flies and now you are um running nardella law up there, um, so I want to. I want to dig in and learn all about what you're doing. So why don't't we start there? Tell our listeners a little bit about Nardella Law.
Speaker 3:Sure. So first thing I'll say, though, is that every day, I'm still grateful that I'm not doing door-to-door sales anymore, so whatever job I have, no matter how hard it is, it's not door-to-door sales. And so, yeah, as hard as being a lawyer and running a law firm can be, it's still nothing compared to that trauma but, uh, yeah, as you know, yeah, so, um, I have a law firm, uh, nardella and nardella plc, and uh, we, uh, we.
Speaker 3:I started it, um with my dad who was retiring about 10 years ago Actually it'll be 10 years in June and we specialize in commercial litigation and commercial bankruptcy, so mostly like business or complex disputes with respect to businesses or debt in both state and federal courts. So that's kind of our main niche and we got about 20 lawyers now and we do work all throughout the state of Florida.
Speaker 2:So when we were selling books back in college, I don't ever recall us talking about our aspirations and what we were looking to do later on in life, do you? No, not really.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I even had any back then recall us talking about our aspirations and what we were looking to do later on in life, do you?
Speaker 2:no, not really I. I don't know if I even had any back then now. Were you always, I mean, obviously your father was in law. Did you have that on your mind from when you were young, that you wanted to get into law? Because I don't again. I went to undergrad at UF and I don't recall ever having a conversation about going to law school afterwards. I'm assuming, again, I went to undergrad at UF and I don't recall ever having a conversation about going to law school afterwards. I'm assuming you were pre-law, so that was the plan right?
Speaker 3:No, never the plan. My always plan coming out of high school was to get a degree in classics, ancient Greek and Latin.
Speaker 2:That's right, it's all starting to come back together. We have talked about this type of stuff before, yeah, so I was going to be an ancient Greek and Latin professor, and that was what that was my aspiration, I guess you could say, and it wasn't until really the end of senior year of college.
Speaker 3:That kind of hit me, especially as I was seeing I think I was like talking to my grandpa and I was like you know, was like he was asking me what am I going to do when I get a doctorate in ancient Greek? He asked me about other people I knew who had already gotten doctorates in ancient Greek. He was like what are they doing? What are they up to? One's managing a pizza hut. He's like he's this old Italian. He's like Michael, listen, you go, dig up all the bones you want when you're in your 40s and you've already made your money.
Speaker 3:Okay, you know kind of hit me.
Speaker 3:I was like you know, if I want to live wherever I want, like have a house and a family, uh, I really can't do this doctorate thing. And then it's a little more esoteric or whatever, but like I recognize that in the field of classics to get ahead you had to find these tiny little issues and like research them forever, and I just realized that would be way too boring. So I, uh, I didn't apply to law school until late spring of my senior year and so I got in, but then I didn't get to start until january at uf. So I had, I took six months off, at which time I did door-to-door sales for roofs.
Speaker 2:So did you really?
Speaker 3:yeah, I went to well. I did the first summer I did in um in mississippi selling books, and then, when the summer ended, after charlie and all the hurricanes hit, I did door-to-door roof sales until december and then I started law school in January 2005 or whatever it was.
Speaker 2:So you really picked up from the door-to-door books and moved on. Yeah, I just couldn't have a now to really kind of contextualize the experience that we went back through back then. But there's so many things that we draw from that experience today and it really made me realize that I could do anything if I just work my ass off. It's that simple, like put everything else aside.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be charming.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter if you just went out and pounded the payment and worked incessantly nonstop Like eventually successful. Yeah, you don't have to be good.
Speaker 3:You don't have to be good. You don't have to have a silver tongue, you don't even have to know what the hell it is you're doing. You just got to work. Yeah, that's a good lesson.
Speaker 2:It was a good lesson, put your head down and get to it. Yeah, I want to go back more, because the purpose of this show really is to interview business owners and learn more about what they do, why they do what they do, and we kind of skirted the issue. Commercial law litigation I mean, most people hear that and snooze alert, right, it doesn't seem like a glamorous place to act in. But I know that you have, I'm sure, handled some interesting cases. Tell our listeners some anecdotal stories about some, if you're able to. I don't know if you're able to share this stuff, but some interesting cases that you've worked, or surely there must be something in there that will be interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I mean we do a lot and some of it is dry. I mean it's it's, but what's interesting is that it's it's dry to a third party observer, but it's never dry to our clients, right, like this is almost always their livelihood that is on the line, right, and so for them it's everything. It's the business they've been working their whole life to build, it's the savings they've been saving and they've invested and now they're looking like they're going to lose. And so, even though a lot of the technical aspects of it might appear boring and would be to, you know, someone from the outside, it's never boring for us because of the human element, right, like, our clients are really usually suffering in some sense. It's either they're not getting paid when they should be paid or they're not paying when they should be paying or something to that nature, and it's catastrophic. And so, you know, my most rewarding aspect of the job for me is, personally, is on the Chapter 11 side, where we'll take a business like I'll talk about one of our clients, anecdotally, has this great family run plumbing business and, you know, doing really well, and then takes a couple of jobs out of town that they get, you know, hometown on.
Speaker 3:Suddenly, the whole business with 65 employees is all at risk and it's about to be shut down. We swoop in and we file a chapter 11 and we restructure the entire business and we cut out a lot of the bad contracts. We litigate with the bad players now in our hometown right here in Florida. We beat all of them, we get our clients repaid, we work things out with the bonding company and the company is still doing great to this day.
Speaker 3:I was probably eight years ago. I was one of my big ones that I took when I first started the firm, maybe nine years ago now, right, and the company's going gangbusters. So those are just just. That's just just an idea of what we do. Right, like businesses that have what I would call like a non-systemic problem, but still a very big, probably fatal problem, is something we can come in and help and it's very rewarding when it works, and it works a lot and the system is really a good system for the most part and there's good judges, and so that that to me is is is what makes the job the most fun.
Speaker 2:But look at that, you turned out to be a doctor after all. You are a doctor of the legal arts. Alleviate alleviating client suffering.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Company surgeon. Yeah, we get in there, we cut out the cancer and we sew you back up and we give you a clean bill of health and send you on your way.
Speaker 2:So I know a lot of civil litigation firms. There's a lot of boutique type firms and there's a lot of firms that deal with broad spectrum ranges of cases. Clearly, from the story you just gave, you do a lot of bankruptcy stuff. Do you do a lot of bankruptcy stuff? Do you have like a niche or an ideal client profile? Do you have a specific type of case that you typically do? Do you do more bankruptcy work than you do other stuff, or is it really just the full spectrum of anything like civil litigation?
Speaker 3:So you know, I had a mentor when I got out of law school that did both commercial litigation and Chapter 11. And he encouraged me to do both because he said they're counter cyclical, right. He says when the economy is doing really well there's going to be a lot of litigation, and when the economy is doing really poorly, the litigation goes down with the bankruptcy work goes up. So this is how you hedge your life, and so I kind of dove into that. And so at any time with the firm we kind of switch between 60, 40 and one or the other, depending on the economy. And you know I enjoy the commercial litigation too. I don't enjoy it as much personally.
Speaker 3:Some of my other lawyers here are, you know, more into the battle, I guess you would say I find myself being a little bit more of like a strategy or deal maker, which is why I think in bankruptcy I enjoy it a little bit more. But I also enjoy, like the intellectual challenge of figuring out complex problems, and that's kind of where our firm has niched out. So, to answer your question, the normal client we get is either a high net worth or higher net worth individual or a medium sized business that has a very complex problem where they need lawyers that are going to be energetic and highly competent, but also not the $900 an hour that you're going to go get at the large national law firm right an hour that you're going to go get at the large national law firm right. And so where we fit our niche in is the lawyers here are the same quality as those lawyers that you'll find at a national law firm.
Speaker 3:But since we're a small firm, our overhead rate is very small. We can have our rates lower. And then one of the reasons we end up doing a lot of work in South Florida is that because our rates are Orlando based, there's even more competitive, and so people from South Florida will seek us out to come do their bankruptcy or litigation work down there, because for them it's arbitrage right. They're getting an Orlando rate lawyer as far as the hourly rate, but the quality is the same, and so many of the hearings are happening remotely. That the you know extra cost of us traveling down there when we have to is pretty low. Get on the bright line, do work. So at the end of the day it works out for us and for the client, and that's just kind of where our value proposition is.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:Good stuff I had. I had something on the tip of my tongue that I was going to say value proposition is Good stuff I had. I had something on the tip of my tongue that I was gonna say and it completely escaped me. So I'm gonna move on and we're gonna get back to it, because this is what always happens I move on and then it comes right back into my head.
Speaker 3:Some things never change.
Speaker 2:Yes, why was I like that before?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh, man, doomed at arrival. My friend, what can we do? Okay, so so family we we've spoken a handful of times, not enough, and I know we really haven't gotten into this too much tell me, tell me about I know you, you, I know you have kids, right?
Speaker 3:yeah three kids today nine, six and three, uh, antoinette, henry and katherine, uh, so I've got my own little fripple town going nine, six and three, and is that it?
Speaker 2:you're done? Yeah, three, three is enough, cause I know I have two and, if I'm being honest, it's probably two too many.
Speaker 1:I got married old and you know I'm happy Three.
Speaker 3:Three is good, it's a good number, it's good and chaotic.
Speaker 2:So nine, six and three, and then what's the? What's the genders through? Good number, it's good and chaotic. So nine, six and three, and then what's it? What's the genders through ages? Who's the? Is the oldest one? A girl, boy, girl, boy, girl. So, boy, girl. Okay, nine, six, three. The reason I asked that is because my kid, I have emma, who's just turned 13, jeez, and then connor, who's turning 11, and it's it really A lot of times I saw them that were down here. You know, yeah, little tiny ones, little ankle biters, but it's interesting to see the dynamic that's developing between them. Emma love her to death. She's again 13, entering those formidable teen years Again 13, entering those formidable teen years. But I'm starting to see as Connor matures a little bit and gets a little bit older, they're starting to bond a little bit more than they did before.
Speaker 2:She separated away from them. They were good before and then they kind of separated because of the age and now they're kind of coming closer back together and they're both. Connor will be starting middle school next year with her fingers crossed, hopefully. Uh, everything works out. Works out well there oh, that's sweet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my nine year old treats the six and three year old with like the best I can say is like a noblesse oblige, where she will kind of begrudgingly let them sleep in her room or play with her toys, like she's. She's uh very aristocratic about it. I guess you could say almost a little aloof, but like kind um, but it's, it's, it's, it's a great dynamic, um, you know, they're just it's so much fun and she uh my nine-year-old right now is obsessed with greek mythology, so I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.
Speaker 2:Father like daughter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's reading these reference books A to Z's of Greek mythology.
Speaker 2:I'm like it's just so she's nine and she's reading books on Greek mythology.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she got into it through Percy Jackson, I guess, that series. She loved it and so just sent her on this trip reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, like the graphic novel versions. But I mean, she's just, it's cool, it's fun to see that happen to your kids. I can assure you, though, that my second and third kid will have no interest in these things, so at least I got one.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was going to say that to get my daughter to read a book on Greek, on anything, let alone Greek mythology, I think you'd have to pay her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's going to be my son and my third. They're just not interested. You can already tell it's not the same what?
Speaker 2:what do you guys like to do for fun when you're not working like? What does family time look like for you guys?
Speaker 3:yeah. So you know, we got a lot of springs around us and so we got kayaks. We go out to the springs a lot. We go out on the rock springs, run on the king's landing. Um love to get the kids outside on the bikes um kings landing.
Speaker 2:Would it be in game of thrones?
Speaker 3:yeah, exactly that's what I think they named it. I think george rr martin named it after this, because it's been king's landing since I was a little kid um yeah and uh. So it's a little uh. Just this little estuary in the rock springs run where you can put in kayaks and paddle boards and whatever. The water is just crystal clear, perfectly clean. It's really probably the prettiest place in Florida.
Speaker 2:Can you believe I've never been to a spring like that before. That's crazy Ever. Yeah, you should. You should come up. It's not for a lack of like. I'd love to go, I just haven't had the opportunity to present itself. I don't know that there are many down here in south florida not as many.
Speaker 3:No, because it's not same, not the same water table. But you got the. You know we got caves in central florida. They go down do some spelunking I've never done it, but that's what's feeding the whole system. But if you google image like emerald cut king's landing, I mean, you'll see some pictures that will kind of blow you away with how pretty they are. So, yeah, come on up, man, we'll, uh, I'll, take you to see, uh, what florida still got left let's, let's make it happen.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's go. Let's go back, hop in the time machine. I want to go back to the book field, because there's a lot of this experience that has escaped my memory, and there's only bits of pieces.
Speaker 3:That's what you do with trauma. You suppress it, so you want to drag it back up. Is that what we want to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to pull it back up. I want to dive in and explore a little bit about our experience with the Southwestern Company, because I have had I told you, I've had two other book people, book people, book men on the podcast, most recently Leighton Campbell. I know, you know the name because we sold with his sister right, didn't we? Or? She was like a year ahead of us.
Speaker 3:Maybe I think we did. Yeah, yeah, but he was kind of a rock star, right.
Speaker 2:He was, and he recently released a book called your Happiness Equation. So I had him on to talk about the book he's doing really well. He actually lives right here in the community. I don't know. That's awesome. It certainly lives within five, 10 miles from me. We're practically neighbors down here. And then the other guy I met, nick Sproul. He also sold books probably about 10 years after we did. I never heard of him, yeah, and he ended up with Southwestern in one of their spinoff companies, southwestern Real Estate. So he's the managing broker here in the, I guess, in the Florida offices for Southwestern real estate. And yeah, he was a rock star in the book thing. So I actually saw on Instagram he posted a video talking about real estate and I commented on it and I was like, hey, you got to come on the podcast. And I can't remember when I learned that he was a bookman, but as soon as I found that out, obviously we had something in common. So when we started we were in Michigan our first summer, right, port Huron with.
Speaker 2:Uncle Bob.
Speaker 3:With Uncle Bob. Yeah, when I think you found Uncle Bob knocking door to door right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how crazy is that? The, the way we, we, we would basically get uprooted from from. We were in UF South Florida, uf in Florida, and then we, we drove to. I think I mean the reason they did that, let's be honest, was to take you as far away from your environment as possible, to make it difficult for you to return.
Speaker 3:It was like we had done that job, like in our own own town, you wouldn't have done it straight home.
Speaker 2:You would have gone out to work and then you would have been back at the bar in gainesville the next night. It wouldn't like the only way it works is when they take you away as far as possible. It's like a hostage situation. Yeah, makes you think twice before you get in the car and drive home. You actually have to go. Do I really want to want to leave?
Speaker 2:right and then, and then you go and you knock on doors to find a place to live, which every time I've told somebody that they're like. Really, how do you do like, but you wouldn't, you wouldn't make it. There's a lot of people out there, empty nesters, people that are lonely, whatever it is, they're happy to take on some college kids.
Speaker 3:Two years in a row, I found a place to live. No problem, Was it no problem?
Speaker 2:I think it took us a day.
Speaker 3:It took us a day to find Uncle Bob. It took us a day for me to find my family in West Virginia and the third summer I had a place lined up because the guy was a former bookman and actually offered to take book kids. Oh perfect.
Speaker 2:See book man and like actually offered to take book kids perfect see easy what adversity you didn't experience.
Speaker 3:Any adversity felt scary when you look back like it's actually pretty easy. You know, and I think you and jared shared the bedroom and I was down in this musty couch in uncle bob's basement next to the laundry machine, and the basement was huge but there was only this tiny little spot where I could sleep on the couch because 80 of it was the world's biggest train set. You remember that Uncle Bob had this huge train set. He would go down there and he'd move all his little Civil War pieces or whatever the hell they were, and I was just down there sleeping every night.
Speaker 2:I totally remember. I don't know why I remember now that you say it, but I don't remember getting into it. I don't know why I remember now that you say it, but I don't remember getting into it. I don't remember going down in his basement and playing engineer with his choo-choo set.
Speaker 3:It was my domain. I was in order to get some privacy and not share a room like you guys. I had to go in the windowless, musty basement, but it was worth it.
Speaker 2:And then Chris came in later. Did he come in later in the summer? And he ended up, I think he slept on the couch.
Speaker 2:He slept on the couch yeah there's no room for him and you don't want to take him in your bed. Well, their couch was I mean my couch down there. That was, it would have been. There's not enough room for me. When you, when you hear, when you, when, then that name comes to you, chris, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? I want to see if it's the same as me. Oh, there's one thing that comes to mind one saying one phrase that comes to mind when I think of is invader invader.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think of this bob evan. Bob evans, good as fuck, man loves, loved him some. Bob evans. If you hear that, chris, I don't remember your last name, if you're listening out there, I love bob, shout out I know you, love you, loved you some, bob evans. If you hear that, chris I don't remember your last name, if you're listening out there, I love bob, shout out, I know you, love you, loved you some bob evans, but I just remember because you didn't have a car.
Speaker 2:Right, I did not have a car and so I would walk off every morning which actually is a blessing in disguise in that business. Just like where they take you away from your home and transport you to thousands of miles away, not having a car. Like just the same thing. You drop me off in the morning. I got nowhere to go.
Speaker 3:Like I got nowhere to go but walking I mean, just imagine every day an 18 year old would drop you off who? Who clearly had no freaking clue what he was doing, and then you would have to trust me to come get you. I'm not even sure I had a cell phone like I don't think I did.
Speaker 2:I don't think, so I don't think I had a cell phone, Like I don't think I did. Did you have cell phones back then? I don't think so.
Speaker 3:I don't think I brought a cell phone that summer because I remember calling my parents from a pay phone, a number of times.
Speaker 2:Definitely no cell phones.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so, yeah, I would drop you off and then I'd be like, okay, I'll pick you up at like 9 o'clock at night at this spot and I would pull every day, six days a week, and I'd pull up and you'd be sitting there with your back against the pole or wherever you were, and it was like either you were as glum as shit or you were super pumped because of whatever. But what a just weird thing. It seems so absurd.
Speaker 2:I don't know If you drop me out now with a bag of books, like don't know if I can make.
Speaker 3:I'd probably make it like a couple of hours and then I'd be like, oh man, my back hurts, I need to go lay down I was so hot too, and then I remember dropping you off at like alganac, like these just weird towns in the middle off the river, right across from canada, and just just being like all right, man, I'll see you in eight, nine, ten hours.
Speaker 2:You know, you're actually getting me a little bit excited to want to go out and knock on some doors. I think when we're done here I'm going to go go find some businesses and drop in and drop in and tell them all about my marketing services.
Speaker 3:It sounds better in your mind, trust me and tell them all about my marketing services. It sounds better in your mind, trust me. I mean it was like for years we used to joke about having book mares right, where you'd wake up in the middle of the night in college and you'd be like you'd have a dream, you're selling books. You'd wake up and you'd be like, thank God, I'm not out selling books.
Speaker 2:You just talking about the dreaming and books, just hit me with like a deep trauma of because you know, working 12 hours or what is it? 12, 14 hours a day? We did, yeah, it's just some ungodly.
Speaker 2:So you would basically eight to nine, get up in the morning, take a cold shower, go eat and then jump around and do some crazy executive exercises, make a fool of yourself to get the blood flowing and then just go hit it. And then you get home, you do your numbers and it would be like 10, 10, 30. And I would literally lay down in bed, close my eyes, pass out immediately, have nightmares about getting doors slammed in my face and then, like instantly, your eyes would open again. It would be like five in the morning and I got to get up and do it like six days a week. It was just insanity, dude.
Speaker 3:It was insanity. It really was. That was how it was for me too. I would like curl up on that musty couch and it was gone. I was right up after having seven or eight hours of nightmares about the constant rejection that I received every single day, but it didn't feel like seven or eight hours, it felt like.
Speaker 2:it felt like seven or eight hours of nightmares condensed into like two seconds, because that's the amount of time it felt like you slept for.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it was. I mean, I have to say, looking back right, so good for me. I was a soft, wimpy kid in that in a sense, right, I had never, you know, I had done like high school wrestling and hard things, but I had never sort of experienced like that kind of emotionally hard thing and I would never do it again. But I'm so grateful I did because my gosh like you just. But I'm so grateful I did Cause my gosh like you just, I don't know it's whatever doesn't kill you. It makes you stronger, I guess, and um, it really it really was good for me and I guess I came back for two more summers after that, so I must've liked it.
Speaker 2:You know, it's absolutely I agree. I agree a hundred percent, and it definitely gave me the mentality that I could do anything I wanted to do if I just worked hard enough at it, which is 100% true. I will say this, though this is interesting, even after having done that and gone door to door we're out there. It was really a numbers game. You're out there just kind of trying to see as many people as you can, and then you're inevitably going to land upon some people that are interested in what we're doing with the books, and then you know you pick up momentum from that. People sign up and then they give you referrals and things like that. But it really was. What were we selling? It was $300 for a couple for handbooks, or 200 bucks whatever or everything we offer was like $2,000.
Speaker 2:It was. You know it costs money. But yeah, and then you, you sold the Fripple Town CDs for like 30 bucks, whatever it was, but it wasn't like a huge ticket item, it was something that was doable for people. Fast forward to about three, three and a half years ago, when I had my my, my life shift and I got into marketing and it was, it's a sales type, I'm a publisher but I I basically businesses and I'm selling marketing services. Yeah, and I had it in my mind from doing the books that, oh, easy peasy, right, I went door to door, I hustled I could sell anything to anybody.
Speaker 2:Keeping in mind that this is 20 years ago and I really hadn't been in any kind of real sales type environment for my entire adult life, I just had this internalized idea of going door to door and selling these two $300 handbooks. So I went into this new endeavor, thinking it would be easy. And, man, did I get a rude awakening Because I'm no longer selling a couple hundred dollars. You know, I'm selling contracts for thousands, tens of, in many cases, tens of thousands of dollars. I'm showing a business a, you know, a multi-year contract for, you know, uh, a branding play that's going to cost 30, 40, 50, 000, whatever it is right. And man and I went into it ill-prepared, right, I went through the training.
Speaker 3:I didn't, I just thought I had, I just thought I could wing it well, I mean, let's think about we're in college, like how many of our customers, looking back, bought from us just because we were earnest looking college kids and they were trying to help us they were trying to help yes, 75, you know like well, I mean they were like interested in the books, but really they were like, oh, who's this nice young college kid with a big smile coming to my door, let me sit down, listen to him.
Speaker 3:And you know, so it gives you this kind of like false sense of confidence too, because you get a lot of success in sales and you think you're a good salesman but you're not really selling anything that other than yourself, right, and so I could see that, and so I could see that. I mean, I think you know, selling a $40,000, $50,000, you know business package is a lot harder than a $29.99 Triple Town CD.
Speaker 2:So well it had in college. It had the. Obviously it meant something, but it was. It just had a different character of experience back then Because we were in college, we didn't need the money really, we were just out there. We were out there hustling, we were trying to get experience. Had we gone home it wouldn't have been the end of the world. But when you get into adult life and you have bills to pay and you have responsibilities and expenses, it's a different character of experience. Going out and trying to hustle because now the pressure is really on and it's hard to perform in a sales type job when that type of pressure is on, because you can't come across as being desperate. It's that pushes people away. You have to come across like you don't give a fuck.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have to have a buying atmosphere, as they told us, and it's a lot easier to have a buying atmosphere when you're 19 and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:And you're carefree and it doesn't.
Speaker 3:yeah, you're in college, you got a place to go back to, yeah, when you're 35 and you got two or three kids and a wife and a mortgage and everything and whatever happened in crisis. But I think, but the rejection still hurts the same right. But I think, you know, the rejection still hurts the same right. And so, even at 19, even though the stakes were low in theory, the rejection hurt. It still hurt. And so I had to learn how to manage that hurt and go to the next house with a smile.
Speaker 3:And I think, when the stakes got bigger later in life, you know, when I left the big firm, I started my own shop and I had no clients, I had to start from scratch. I had the same attitude you had. I was like I'll just start knocking on doors. And you know, plenty of doors still got slammed in my face.
Speaker 3:But I was so used already to like processing the rejection, compartmentalizing it, realizing it's a numbers game, you know. So what I did when I got out and I started the shop is I decided like every day I was going to take somebody to lunch who I thought could refer me business. I was just gonna go to lunch with somebody every day and pay for it. And that's what I did. And you know, five lunches a week, four of them probably never going to send me a case, but one would, and it's just you know. So I took that same attitude and it turned out that it, you know, it's still the same magic. I mean, you just have to accept the numbers game, you have to control your emotions, you have to see things for what they really are and you have to commit all the way into it regardless of how it feels, you know.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, the stakes are higher, is harder, but all that means is those lessons you learn like 25% of selling books. You now have to learn like 75% of the math to master these lessons right now. Now you've got to create that buying atmosphere, but you got to do it in a way where it's even harder to create it. But it's gross. And I think if I hadn't had the selling books where I had to learn how to create it, where the stakes were lower, it would have been really hard for me to do it in my thirties, when the stakes were a lot higher. But having had that foundation of practice, I was able to kind of level it up. It seems like you have too. It's interesting when you look back. Things get harder, you get better. It's like the waters get rougher but you just have to be a stronger swimmer.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. What is on the horizon? What looking ahead? What's something that you're excited about, either personally or professionally? What does the future hold for Mr Fripple Town?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it's easier professionally to talk about in a sense. So you know, one of the things that we've kind of changed the firm over, you know, far as like a like a management model for me, it's been focusing on hiring and training young Associates and so, um, you know, we've got, uh, you know, four really young lawyers. I've got, uh, another one starting in August, just graduating from Vanderbilt. I got two summer associates who will be graduating next August, one from UF and one from FAMU and we've really just poured into mentoring and training these young lawyers.
Speaker 3:It's been kind of invigorating, it's brought great energy to the firm and so the future that I'm seeing is I'm already seeing some of the older, younger ones achieve this. They're really coming into their powers and their abilities as a lawyer and it's fun to see. And it is the future right and it's cool that I can kind of see what's coming. And as they mature even more, they're going to God willing, god willing right they take over the firm one day. So it's been fun to kind of create a system that has the succession planning sort of built into it and to watch it happen, to watch their growth, watch them deal with rejection you know I mean, every time you go to court, 50% of the lawyers are losing Right, and so you just got to learn to live with it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You got to get up and you got to smile and you got to go fight the next case, and so a lot of those same lessons. It's just really meaningful to watch them grow and you know, especially since you know I'm getting these kids out of law school they're 26, 27, but you'd be shocked, I I mean, compared to even where we were um, they really haven't, um, experienced the world, you know, in responsibility, yet. So they're really getting their first taste of responsibility here, which is kind of shocking a 26, 27 year old.
Speaker 2:but that's just the kind of way it is with this generation, um, so I'll just kind of leaned into that and I'm just really looking forward to seeing, like, how it continues to morph and surprise me it must be awesome to come full circle and start bringing people, bringing younger people in, to start start that mentoring role and really educating and really giving back what you, the experience that you've learned over the years and how, how to how. That reinforces your knowledge and just makes you even more a more effective weapon of litigation in the future yeah, I love it and it's.
Speaker 3:And I'll tell you, I mean having the young people. Even though they don't have the experience, they bring an energy that helps they have um, they got the drive, baby drive and they have.
Speaker 3:They have new ideas and they they have a clean slate. They don't come with all the biases I already have picked up over, you know, 18 years of practicing law and so, um, you know, I feel like a lot of firms are really missing out by just kind of, uh, abandoning the training of the youth and not having them around. I mean, it's kind of like law firms in a lot of ways have turned into like what the villages is as a neighborhood, right, it's like just all old people you know, and it's just not natural like you're supposed to have all spectrum around, you know, um, otherwise people don't have a place and they, you know, it just doesn't. To me at least, it feels unnatural. I've tried to create a firm culture that has older lawyers in their 70s, younger lawyers who just started in their 20s and everything in between.
Speaker 2:The full spectrum experience over at Nordella Law.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Love it. It's good spectrum experience over at Nordella Law. Exactly Love it. Okay, so before we wrap this up, I want you to give one piece of wisdom. Advice could be personal, professional, maybe you're speaking to young lawyers out there One nugget that you want to leave folks with Go.
Speaker 3:Sure. So I was just talking about this with my associates the other day and, uh, this is I. Just, this is a shameless steal from, uh, scott adams, the dilbert guy, right, who, who wrote this thing about, like, how to find success, and he said that, um, there's two ways to do it in his mind. One is to be like, the best at one thing, like Michael Jordan. Right, you are the best at one thing, that's a ticket to success. But also extremely hard and rare, right? Very few people are in the top 99th percentile at something. And so what he says more common way to find success is to be in the top 25th percentile in three things. Oh, that's really interesting. So I'm telling this to my associates. I'm like guys, it's not enough to be a top 25% lawyer, because a quarter of the lawyers are just as good as you are. Right, it's hard to get there, it's worth it and you should be.
Speaker 3:If you're going to work here at my firm, you're going to be a top 25% lawyer, or you're getting out right, but that's not enough to have the career you want. You need to add another skill to that that you're not just good at, but that you're really good at right. And so if you want to take it to the next level, take that skill and then add top 25th percentile in sales. Add top 25th percentile in networking. Add top 25th percentile in management, organizational development. Add someone who's top 20, you know be top 25th percentile in creating systems right. Whatever it is, you know what are you really good at. That's more than just your one occupational skill that you can add these other top 25th percentile skills, package them together and now you're talking about you know a stronger base to build your career on, cause there's plenty of really good anything lawyers, plumbers, you know marketers, whatever but can you be really good at it and really good at some other things, so that the combination of those parts become something rare?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a snowball effect and once you add these other skills and master them as well, it's just compounds and it's going to get you a lot farther.
Speaker 3:100 it's a lot easier to do than to be in the top 99th percentile of anything.
Speaker 2:Right it's just that's almost impossible yeah, that's practical, practical wisdom, practical advice that makes perfect sense. Thank you, sharon. Good stuff, all right. Well, look, we we'll leave it at that. I know you got lawyering to do. I got some marketing to do. I'm glad we did this.
Speaker 1:This was fun.
Speaker 2:Hope everyone enjoyed. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We will catch you next time. Everyone, take care, have a wonderful day and we'll see you soon. Thanks, wolfman. See you, man.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to GNPCooperCitycom. That's GNPCooperCitycom, or call 954-231-3170.