What is the Future of Law Practice | Dave Zumpano

[00:00:00] Speaker A: See, I built a self managing law firm. Those are terms that Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach, always used. But I hadn't built a self growing law firm because it had gone up and down within this framework but never really grew. It made me a good amount of money every year and I filled one pocket and it was a great entrepreneurial experience. But now my commitment was to come back and grow a company that wasn't dependent on any one person, including me. [00:00:28] Speaker B: Our guest today is the founder of the Estate Planning Law stud Center in 1995 and Medicaid Practice Systems in 2001. He then transformed that into Lawyers with Purpose in 2012. Shortly thereafter, he spearheaded one of the first cloud based law practice management systems with document integration, a true innovator in his field. Then in 2021, he launched Aterna Legal, a digital, easy to use client focused platform to digitize how lawyers communicate with clients in the modern world. Welcome to the show, Dave Zapano. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Thank you. Good to be here as always, Richard. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Now you've had a fascinating career, an in depth career in the legal field. And what I really appreciate about you, Dave, is how you look at everything in the eyes of business. You know, a lot of law professionals that I've met and I know they're very focused and very good at the law. And then there's people like you who are good at that, but also really good at building a business. [00:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I always say I'm an entrepreneur that happens to practice law. That's my entrepreneurialism. It's around that. [00:01:36] Speaker B: So I love it. It's great. Now before we were able to hit the record button, we were talking briefly about, you know, one of the major time frames in your in law practice that created. To say a hiccup sounds like would be an understatement. And it goes back to that 2008 financial crisis that even today, you know, people watching this, you know, it's so far into the past that there's a lot of people who have those memories and then there's younger people watching this that they just remember stories that their parents were telling. So what was that experience like from your vantage point, trying to run your business? [00:02:09] Speaker A: Well, you know what's funny about it is like people have forgotten about it. I haven't. It's like, it's, it's in me. Like everything I do, that's always in the back of my mind. If I see a dip in my lead generation or if I see a dip in my. Yes rate, higher rate, I'm wondering, okay, is this A person problem or is it is there? Because, you know, people don't realize this, but what happened in the economy, what is now known as the Great Recession, there were signs of it, we all saw, but it wasn't called anything and we didn't really know it was a recession, right. So that's the biggest thing I learned was there's stuff in front of you, you're looking at numbers and we're always trying to analyze numbers, but sometimes you can. It's based on things that are happening. There's an undercurrent. And that really was what I call the two by four to the forehead. You know, just a quick summary around that. And I think, you know, going back to the entrepreneurialism, I was fortunate enough I grew up in a, an entrepreneurial home. So my mother and father owned a family business that my mother, believe it or not, took over from her father. Now my mom, I buried in 2020 at 95. So you think about a woman who in the 1930s and 40s, father had a problem and they sent her out to work to go call on a customer. And the customer called my grandfather and said, don't you ever send a woman to do a man's job? So, so that same woman that experienced that after she retired and into her 80s, she was selling things on ebay, she. So imagine that's the household I grew up in. My mom was really the entrepreneur. My dad, he was sales. Everybody loved my dad, you know, oh, Johnny, Johnny, you know, and, and, and I didn't realize that I got my PhD growing up, right? And I'm the youngest of 10 kids and six of us were entrepreneurs. So it's interesting. But, but when that, when the, when the Great Recession happened, there was no entrepreneurial skills involved. It happened and bam. So I'll tell you what physically happened. My practice, I started in 95 and I had a really, really successful practice. And it was growing very successfully. But the problem was I didn't have the big fat gray haired guy in the corner that I can go and ask questions, right? Because my parents were in the food business. They didn't run law firms. None of my brothers were lawyers. I had Dr. Brothers, engineer brothers, but I had no one to go to. And so I just kind of faked it till I made it right? And then I joined a national legal organization. And when I joined that national legal organization of attorneys all over the country, this is the late 90s, they had this cool thing called a listserv where you could type a question and hundreds of people would respond to you. I mean, this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, when I started attending those events, what happened was people started saying, what are you doing? Why are you having so much success? And as a result, I started sharing that, and I became known as the founder of the Medicaid practice industry because no attorneys were doing Medicaid planning, and I was doing it locally and having great success. But they said it wasn't that for poor people. And I said, no, it's about really an element of asset protection. Why do I give you this background? Because by the time 2008 came, that national legal organization said to me, said, you got to teach our members how to do what you're doing. So I started this thing called MPS in 2001, and by 2012, we became lawyers with purpose. Well, in 2009, right in the middle of all this, all this growth, my law firm was driving everything. What I was doing in my law firm was what I was using to teach the people that joined my national legal organization, called at the time mps Medicaid practice systems. Well, my law practice. You ready for this? Grew to five lawyers. We were kicking butt. We had made gold. So I created an incentive compensation program. We had made gold 39 months in a row. And the problem with that. So I'm going to give you a little lesson. I learned from that. When the recession hit, it was like, weird. It was like, oh, what happened? This is the first month we haven't hit goal. How'd that happen? Blah, blah, blah. Oh, it must be something simple. Let's go look at everything. And then the second month happened, and we were taking on massive losses, like in a matter of a month, because remember, I'm an estate planning attorney. So when the recession hit, nobody was thinking they had any money. Stock market dropped 40%. Nobody thought they had money. They weren't worried about protecting their estate. Right. So we're the first guy they stopped calling. [00:07:05] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:05] Speaker A: And that's really like, the first lesson was there are outside forces that affect business that we have no control over them. And it's as simple as an election. And, you know, we know we have the recent election that just happened. Whatever side of the fence you're on with that, it has a real impact. As a business owner, you have to pay attention to those outside impacts. So in any event, over the course of late 2008 and 2009, I remember our bonus system was such that it paid every month part, and then we accumulated an end of year bonus and the end of year Bonuses for employees were literally two months worth of pay. I mean, they were just. People were loving it. We wiped out the entire balance of the Bonus account before November 1st of that year. And it just. From September and October, it was like, boom. We went from this to just boom. It was, it was, it was turmoil. But what happened following really is ultimately, I'm sure you're going to have questions around this, but what are the greatest lessons and the challenges? Well, we were at 21 people and my office was buzzing like you would see people in the hallway. Hi, how are you? In about an eight month period, we went from 21 people down to nine. [00:08:31] Speaker B: Wow. [00:08:33] Speaker A: And we went from five attorneys down to three. And the hardest part was those two other attorneys who we had to let go. I had taught them everything I knew because we were building this machine and they all had their part in it and they now have become my greatest competitors. So again, does that mean I wouldn't do it again? Absolutely not. Because there's no such thing as competition in the world of abundance. But really, if that doesn't shock someone to say, oh my gosh, you're waking up, you're 39 months in a row of making gold every single month. People killing the fatted calf, growing literally monthly, probably adding employees every month to just a complete break. Just like somebody screeched the brakes and you're like. And then you don't even know why. Like you don't know even what happened. And there you have it. This thing we later know as the Great Recession. Yeah, so that was my, that was my setback. There was no question about it. But survival is the difference, right? It's not about the setback, it's how you get through it. From breakdowns come breakthroughs. I was always taught well. [00:09:44] Speaker B: And that would have impacted the other component of your business, where you were teaching your business systems and practices to other people in the country. Because now that successful model isn't as successful given the current economic climate. So it would have been a double whammy to some degree. [00:09:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Interestingly, during that period of time and during COVID while the law firm business went down, the national one tended to go up. Why? It was a place where like minded people in the same business could talk and share the challenges they were facing and come through it with new ideas. So as recently as Covid, like when, when Covid hit again, all the law firms shut down. I remember in New York, everything had to be shut down. And I applied for a waiver. And they say, why should we Give you a lawyer, the waiver. And I'm like, I'm not a regular lawyer. I'm an estate planning lawyer. I've got to get in, I've got to get health care proxies to these people are getting sick. Powers of attorneys, all these things that are, you know, you got people that are being affected by this virus that are owning businesses and things of that nature. And so they actually I was, I, I think I may have been the first attorney in the state of New York that was granted an exception to be allowed to stay open. But what I found was community, right? What community are you part of that helps you? Because what created this to begin with was I didn't have the big fat gray haired guy in the corner. Now I laugh, I'm the big fat gray haired guy in the corner, right? But, but I didn't have anyone to talk to. So this national organization I joined that had this thing called a cool thing called the listserv where you can communicate with people, actually had the inverse because people went to that to find solutions because they're all going. No one knew who to turn to. So it gave us a platform where we were able to talk to lawyers all over the country dealing with the challenges. And what was really cool was as one of us found a solution, even if it's a small solution, we shared it. And then those come back and say, yeah, that worked for me too. So I think that's another takeaway. That was what I would call an unanticipated byproduct because of the two companies I had, was that the ability to adapt will really depend on the size and expertise of your community or communities you hang in. Right. I'm not talking about your local community where you live and have dinner. Yes, that's a community. And that's important too, because there's a part of that being out at community events from the law firm perspective, but there's this whole other national legal community we had that were all in the same business as me, that we were able to strategize and identify what are you doing and what's working. [00:12:26] Speaker B: Well, the fact that you could even be a part of that community, I mean that it existed, obviously, is a huge, huge benefit. But more importantly, you took advantage of it. You know, you, you maybe looked at it differently. That may have been happening for other members of that community, but I think your perspective was, wow, here's where I'm going to get all the intellectual shortcuts I need to be able to move the dial in the business and get back up and running. So a very, very powerful, powerful circumstance. It's incredible that you were able to recover from that, Dave. Now when we come back after these message, we're going to unpack a little bit more of that story and there's another doozy that I think we're going to get into as soon as we have these messages from our commercial break. [00:13:04] Speaker C: There's certain moments in our life where we know that things are going to change. That happened to me in August of 2009. My life completely and totally changed forever for the better. I learned about this incredible concept called the infinite banking concept. Becoming your own banker. It was created by R. Nelson Nash. Nelson became my friend and my mentor. I loved him dearly. I now have the blessed life of being able to teach his incredible message, his incredible concept to the people I love to serve. You can learn all about it by registering for a free [email protected] Go ahead, take the initiative. Start your learning journey now. [00:13:51] Speaker B: Now, we all know that economies go in cycles and often businesses have their own cycles. Now you just shared an incredible story about how the global financial crisis impacted your business, Dave. We're going to talk a little bit more about the recovery of that, but there's a few more things along the way. We've had a couple things that have happened since then. You mentioned Covid earlier and you know, you're in the thick of something now that's really happening at present. So want to unpack that a little bit for our listeners. I think it's going to be really beneficial. So walk us through the recovery process. How did you start to see things pick up again after the recession? [00:14:24] Speaker A: Well, so the recession, if you remember it was a long one. Again, there's a lot of people that don't remember it or they were young and they really weren't experiencing it from a business perspective. But my law firm came back gradually. It was very slow. But that three attorney, you know, and it was me and I really wasn't actively involved. So we had gone down to two attorneys really doing the day to day stuff from five and I started to focus more on the national organization while doing my minimum I have to do to maintain my responsibilities at the law firm. And as that grew, I started to meet different people and believe it or not, I took on partners in the national organization. Now what's wild about that is that's what really led to the conversion of Medicaid practice systems to lawyers with purpose was I took on Two partners. And so we said, well, let's rebrand it, because we're not just doing Medicaid anymore. We're doing this whole thing called estate planning. And each one had a different niche in the estate planning market. Well, what's the next glitch? All that's going great. The national company's growing. My. My law firm's growing again. And then my partners and I come to a point where we see the future differently. Now, interestingly, my partners were not entrepreneurs. They were technicians. What do I mean by that? If you've ever read the Myth, right by Michael Gerber, you understand those. There's those fm. Now, again, they would. They would probably disagree with me. But what I mean by that is the vision that I had, me being the visionary more. The vision I had as of growing was more dependency on technology, less dependency on people. In fact, people don't believe this, but we had a goal in my companies. Not my law firm so much, but my national legal organization. This was a goal in 2019. Are you ready to have our employees be virtual and remote? In fact, I'm going to say this. This was a funny story. In 18 and 19, we got onto this really cool thing called Zoom, and we used to have our company meetings in Zoom. Well, the problem was some people were in the main office, and the ones that were on Zoom, they just started saying it was really hard to listen to everybody in the main office. So we ended up changing our meeting. So everybody did it from their offices on Zoom, right? Now, isn't that funny? I could not get clients to come on Zoom, right? So talk about entrepreneurs being ahead of the curve. So we're all working Zoom. We're like, this is great. Great way to communicate. We couldn't translate that down well. Little thing called Covid that would come a year later would change all that. But let's go back. So now I start to see differently from my partners, because my partners really were talented. But what they wanted to do is build the company on their talent. And I said, listen, the best talent you have, you're worth way more to the company by replacing your. So here's another lesson than you are by doing what you do. And in my law firm, this used to scare the heck out of people. I say, look, you got to replace yourself. Oh, no, no. Then you don't need me. I'm like, no, no, no. What you don't understand. The skill of replacing yourself is a much more valuable skill that I'm willing to play for than the skill of doing what you do, doing what you do is a commodity. We can find someone else to do what you do. But getting someone that knows how to replace themselves at what they do. Now there's a higher level skill. [00:17:48] Speaker B: Well, my partner, you can duplicate that effort multiple times. [00:17:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Going back to the E myth pie maker, Right. And so my partners were very talented. My one partner agreed with me and she has gone on and done a lot of that stuff and we're still very friendly. The other partner, though, really saw her skills as essential and universal. And I said, well, the challenge I have is you only have so much bandwidth and then if you go down, everything goes down. How are we going to fix this? So we fix it by agreeing to separate. So that was my next step back. Right. Which was taking this company that was just me, that had brought on partners and that had gone for five years and went successfully now to reshift again and rebuild this company alone. Right. So now I have to rely on key employees as opposed to partners, which is a different level game. But here's the beauty of this, this journey and wait till you get to the current day. You're not going to believe it, but the key to this journ journey is each time you go back, you're not starting over because you're going in from a whole different view. You know, the view I went back in after I bought my partners out was the same skills I used in the beginning, but I had such a different perspective because of how much I'd grown and learned from having those partnerships. So I'm always a guy, the guy I always look. I've probably lost millions and millions of dollars in my lifetime. That's not what you're measured on. You're measured on what you make. Right? You're gonna fail at times. Things are gonna fail. That's okay as long as the wins out see you know, outnumber the failures. And that's really what it is. It's about going forward. But what I loved and you know, when we get to the modern day story, the view is so different. So even though I was going back in, starting over kind of in 2017, now I come back in and I take my company over. And I'm talking about, I went to a company event and I had seven different key people ask to have breakfast or lunch with me. And all seven of them told me they had their resumes out. And I'm like, oh, boy. So this is now after I lost my partners and I brought in a leadership team to take the company to the next level. I still stayed engaged, but it wasn't working. But I sensed something was wrong. But again, at that event where I had all my employees from both companies there, a lot of private meetings were requested. And so I made a single commitment to him. I'll never forget this. I said to him, I said, listen, I said, do me a favor. Do you trust me? And they said, yes. I said, and you know, this is key about relationships. I said, all right, I'm going to ask you to take your resume off the market, okay? And I said to all six of these key people, because they're people I originally brought in. And they. They were great people. I mean, they had my culture. They had everything. And so I said, I'm going to. I'm going to make you a promise. I said, I don't want to tell you any stories. I'm not going to say anything. I just want you to watch. I said, but you got to give me three months. Just hang in there and watch. Pay attention to what you see and what you hear. I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to make you fancy promises. I said, just trust me. Give me time. And they did. And over the next three months, my CMO was the first one to go. My COO was the second one to go, and the final one that went kicking and screaming was the CEO Again. I never liked the titles. I think with titles, people get entitlement with titles, and so we don't have big, fancy titles in our companies. But here's what happened. I went back in and took the company over. It was the spring of 2018, and I had to rebuild the whole company. But the good news was I had my key people. Their skill level wasn't. But again, I didn't know. It took me being out to look from the outside in a while to see what the challenges were. And I had great people at the lower levels, but they didn't have the level of skill that the C level had. And so there was this gap between the C level that came in and the operating level, we'll call it, you know, the people running the businesses. So I committed to come back in and take the company back over. And in three years, I re. I reinvigorated, reinvented the company and build it to the best it had ever been, to the point where, you know, at the time, I was. Well, figure four years ago, I was Covid hit right in the middle of it, right then. Covid hits, and we're like, okay, that's Going to really dampen things. But it didn't, as I said, because the COVID crushed the law firm. But that community naturally kind of came forward. But so, 2020. So that's going to be five years ago now. Can you believe it? I was looking at all of it, and I was at the peak, and I said, well, let me look into selling. I was 55 years old. I'm like, well, it's a time to sell. And so I went and started doing that look, and there were some real promising things. The guy who did my business valuation said, I have a lot of people for interest. They're waiting to talk to you. And I'm like, well, I'm not sure I want to sell yet. This other thing, a turner came up, and it was like, okay, I can really go back at the market with this whole new thing, bring it to a whole another level game. But I'm like, you know what? I don't want to do that. I want to bring in a new leadership team to do that. And you're starting to get. Do you ever. What was that movie? Groundhog's Day. [00:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah, you keep waking up, right? But these are Groundhog years. Like, years go by, and I find myself in that same place again. Okay, is it time to bring in leadership? And I had promised my leadership team at the time that I would not leave unless they asked me to. And they were part of the person who replaced me. My leadership team said, it's time. It's time to bring in someone else. And so rather than selling the company at that point in time, which was very tempting, I opted to do a national search to bring in a new CEO and for that CEO to. To build their own leadership team again. Again, 2020, I continued to run the company. We did a search. The new. The new CEO kind of stepped on. January of 21, you know, right in the midst of COVID And by the fall of 21, there was, like, a transition plan for six to nine months. By the fall of 21, I had handed the keys over, and the company had really reached heights that it had never reached before. And again, I'm excited now a turn has come on, and I've got this great partner in the UK who's got a tremendous history with technology. I've got a tremendous history and experience in law, especially in the state planning industry. And we said, let's build this next level of what the practice of law looks like. And there we go. Groundhog Day number three. Right? And so I step back and. And when I step back, I watch. And now I'm. There's a new buzzword, it's a new term. I'm considered to be what they called. I was no longer CEO. I wasn't visionary. I was this term called investor. Right. That was the, that was the fancy word they used. And so my meetings went down to one a month. It went down to high level. And, and then the story continued and, and over the next three years, deja vu. [00:25:44] Speaker C: Check out this great book, Cash Follows the Leader. It's all about uninterrupted daily growth. With high cash value life insurance, we unpack what people need to know about how you can grow and store and warehouse your wealth in a totally different way than what we've been trained to do. Go ahead and download a free copy by going to coachcanfield.com/cash follows and get a copy right to your inbox right now. [00:26:13] Speaker A: It was crazy. It's like I was a prisoner because I was an investor. So I couldn't go into the day to day, I couldn't disrupt. All the key employees had shifted loyalties now to the new CEO. Obviously having been there a couple years. And the new CEO was incredibly talented, really had the ability to bring in people, engage them. The challenge was they, they never learned the business. And in fairness, it's law. Lawyers are very difficult people intellectually. They're in the top 2% of the country. I never attribute myself as being that smart because I, I treat myself as an entrepreneur first. That happened to go into practice of law, believe it or not. I'm also a CPA by trade. I went and I worked for Pricewaterhouse in my early days. And so that's been a, you know, a big part of. Right. Understanding business. But yeah, and then that journey went down again and I saw that things were unraveling because not from a lack of talent, a lot of talented people, but again, it was the CEO made some key decisions on strategic people and her leadership team that were ineffective decisions. I think she had a high level of trust in one in particular who became the Croatian who she thought was a miracle maker. And I kept from the outside challenging all the metrics I was looking at. And the answer always was, oh, no, no, no, this guy's brain, he's going to figure it all out. Well, what he figured out was how to tank it all and bring it back to ground zero. And so the evaluation that I had in 2020, when I had to step back in again to take over the company in 2024, had gone down 90%. [00:27:58] Speaker B: Wow. What, what was, I mean, obviously you saw, you know, these monthly meetings, you started to see some of the trends in the metrics and that's how you were able to kind of understand that things weren't going the right direction. Being that your role was different, how were you able to maneuver in to, to, to reposition yourself to take over, to rebuild the company? [00:28:20] Speaker A: Well, here's how. And I didn't even have to fire a single person. There's an old saying, coach them up or coach them out. Right. And so what happened was as the investor, my ability to control things is really limited to my direction to the CEO. And so my direction to the CEO became very clear. I need financial statements that say X, I need dollar amounts that you know, because the company had always run itself, it already, it always had a profit. Now it needed investment for the first time ever. I shouldn't say first time ever. I should say it's the first time probably in 20 years. So I said, well I'm an investor, I need to know what I'm investing in. And so what I started doing is asking tougher questions. And eventually she came to see that that key position that she had trusted someone wasn't performing because I said I need the metrics in this key area. And when she was looking at those metrics, she saw they weren't what she had promised they were going to be. And I just merely went back to her and said no, look, when we met three months ago, you said this was going to happen. Well, this is what actually happened. So help me understand why I would be investing in that. So that's a painful part because you have to sit by and watch them continue to fail, but you have to coach them to help them see it. Long story short, without belligerent that let me tell you another funny story. This is important because it goes Back to in 2023, she was running both my law firm and my national organization. I said look, it's time to shift leadership away. You can't do both. So I required her to have a new leader of my law firm by fourth quarter 23. You can't make this stuff up. So she was over committed. So I said let's create a, if you're EOS friendly, a rock. So we created a third quarter rock that said who could possibly take over the law firm? So we did national searches with member firms that maybe would want to come in and run my firm or other things. And in the end, you ready for this? We also made the decision that I would go back in and run my law firm because for me, I wasn't running my natural company. I had been out of the day to day business crank. It was fun for me. I went back into my law firm and here's the beautiful part. You ready for this, Richard? You can't make this up. It was almost 25 years to the day that I started that whole thing that other lawyers came to me for. And I wanted to find out. There's so much that changed. Does what I originally built this company on still work? So on October 1st of 2023, I went back into my law firm, never knowing I was going to be coming back into my national legal organization. But what I learned in their first three months of running company, I came back to the firm and I made him three promises. And I said, the first promise is I want to make sure that every day when you come to work, you love coming to work. Because I still love coming to work every day and I want every one of you. The second promise I made them was I wanted to create a law firm that never, none of them ever had to leave, that they could retire at this law firm. And the third promise I made them was that I would not leave this law firm again until it was self growing. See, I built a self managing law firm. Those are terms that Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach, always used. But I hadn't built a self growing law firm because it had gone up and down within this framework, but never really grew. It made me a good amount of money every year and I filled one pocket and it was a great entrepreneurial experience. But now my commitment was to come back and grow a company that wasn't dependent on any one person, including me. And I got a taste. It's going back into my law firm. There's two things I learned. One was all of the strategies and techniques that I built in 99 and 2000 and 2001 still work exceptionally well. The old handshake is still the best way to generate a lead bar none. What I learned though was the technology applications has just exponentially sped everything up. So the skills that we learned in 90s and the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s are still critical skills to have. In fact, that's what I'm learning as I'm rebuilding my business, teaching my younger people those skills, those skills from the 90s, those skills from the early 2000s, the old handshake, the importance of relationship, okay, that's what made those people take their resumes off the market. It wasn't because I promised them money. I didn't promise the, promise them anything. All I promised them was that I would come back and I would fix it and to trust me. And they trusted me and those relationships that I had in my law firm. Right. Going back to them, they trusted me. That will never change in human dynamics. And but technology now, the ability to do this, to do this over zoom. The ability to connect with people through email campaigns and through websites and through. Wow. Right. The power of exponential of traditional. So that really was my lesson that I was learning at the end of 23 and into 24. I didn't come in at mid 24. My CEO asked me to come in to take over sales because she had fired that person she relied on and to take over finance because the c. The financial, the CFO could no longer commit to the time that they were committing. So I came in in those two areas and that's where I began my rebuild. Right. The most, two most important parts of your business, your financial. Right. And your sales. And so that started the journey back and there we go, we have it and we're on the upswing again. And so it's crazy. Like my law firm hit heights in the 12 months now, it's 15 months since I've been there that it had never seen in the history of the firm again, old habits, old skills. But applying them to new technologies and new events, happening wow again. I've been talking a lot but it's a big story to chunk in the little pieces. But a lot of things happen. But look at the energy, right? [00:34:41] Speaker B: Oh yeah. [00:34:42] Speaker A: The energy is clear and coming back in way easier. It's way easier because of you. Ready for this term I'm going to use and it's a term I'm not going to use. Lightning. Maybe we'll come back after the next break and talk about that thing called wisdom. What is the wisdom of entrepreneurship? I think that's the biggest takeaway as I sit in my seat now is it's a lot easier because of what you learn along the journey. [00:35:10] Speaker B: Do you think Dave, that 25 year old Dave would have been able to listen and understand the lessons that you could tell him today? [00:35:21] Speaker A: No. And I gotta tell you, that's the greatest beauty, Richard is the soon to be 60 year old Dave still feels 25 inside. So that's what's key number one. If you're not enjoying what you're doing, you got to do something else. I love waking up every day and coming to work. But what I love now is not the thing that we do. It's developing the people. When I come in now as CEO, I made a declaration to every employee. I said I'm not leaving again. I'm here until you guys sell the company to yourself through an esop or we sell the company through an outsider that you guys bring in. But I'm not going anywhere anymore because I don't need to because I have the team and the culture. But what happens is the wisdom to teach these 30 something year olds because that's who my leadership team, they're all in their 30s. Two hit 40 in the last six months. Okay. And I got a couple of those in their 50s, right, early 50s. They're gems too. But it's different because no, the 25 year old Dave, even the 45 year old Dave, even the 50 year old Dave wouldn't have been able to do what the 60 year old Dave can do. Because that thing called wisdom, which is you just said it. You said the word listen. So there's two powerful things. 90% of what I do now is listen and ask powerful questions. I very little speak. My people, they actually laugh and get frustrated now. They say, Dave, what should I do? And I'm like, I don't know, what should you do? Pause, silence. And then you begin this journey of coaching. The greatest thing, why I love getting up every morning. I had one today, my one to ones with my leaders. Seeing the growth, seeing the aha's and the light bulbs in these 40 year olds like wow, I never saw this before. They don't know it. It's the secrets of what we used to do all the time. They're really good at the new part, but they don't have that old part. But you can't tell someone it. You can't say you need to do this. They've got to experience it themselves. And the only way that happens is by you changing your interaction with them. It's got to become an interaction of coaching and listening and not thinking you have the answers. Because I'm going to tell you the biggest surprise is the stuff they come up with is still better than what I was thinking. So that's what the wisdom does. Wisdom takes your knowledge but get you out of the mindset that you have the answers but instead get you to ask the right questions of people that have a different scope of knowledge that gets answers that you could never have anticipated. And boy, you want to talk about exciting and why I'm getting younger each day is because I'm able to Bring those light bulbs in my own mind as I'm bringing in a nurse. It's a double whammy. It's beautiful. It's incredible. [00:38:38] Speaker B: I absolutely love that. Dave. That's fantastic. We're going to talk more about those learning moments and we're going to talk more about the new technology you've been working on that you're changing the game on yet again after these messages. [00:38:52] Speaker C: What is this incredible thing called the Colby A Index I keep hearing about? I'm a certified Colby consultant and I can't wait for you to discover what you your natural instincts are. It works incredible for teams, for business owners in families with our kids. The more you can develop and understand your knowledge of how you go and get things done in the world and how that happens with the people around you, everything can get so much better. Take the initiative. Learn more about how this might show up in your life. As a certified coach, I'm happy to sit with with you and help you understand the depth of your own superpowers. Get the process started by downloading my free [email protected] 2025 what is in store. [00:39:43] Speaker B: For the legal industry? We are here with Dave talking about his incredible journey being being an innovator, really his entire career in the law business and being back into his practice reinvigorated by both the youth and the ideas of people extrapolating and pulling those golden nuggets out of their brains. I'm excited to hear a little bit about a Turner and how that's helping people and the genesis of that idea. But I'm also really curious to explore what you see happening as we go forward into a brighter future around the legal industry specifically. [00:40:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Boy, this has been a ride. When I met Guy Riemann, my partner in Aterna, he was here was a guy who his whole entrepreneurial experience, I think you did a show with him recently as well, has been in the technology industry. Right. And so he ultimately sold his company to Disney, which ultimately became Disney plus. Now his technology team built what we now know as Disney plus. So here is a guy who was innovative with technology as I was with law. But I got to be honest with you, I'm pretty incompetent when it comes to technology. And I say that admittedly, right. But I'm not incompetent to how it works. Right. I'm incompetent how to use it sometimes, but I'm not incompetent of how to identify its impact. So that's really what we created a turnout Right. So when I was looking at my law practice, I realized all these people were going to Legal Zoom and all this stuff. Remember, I'm not just a lawyer. I don't do litigation. I do estate planning, asset protection, and long term care planning. How to keep people in their home as they age. Right. How to avoid nursing home. How to make sure the government doesn't know you don't lose all your money in the nursing home. How to make sure that you get the best care you want. How to make sure you get to stay home. Wills, healthcare practice, power of attorneys, trust, revocable trust, irrevocable trust. This is the world I live in. And so when I looked at this, I'm like, well, wait a minute, there's all this craziness where the law practice can't be owned by a non lawyer. Now, just for the first time, three years ago in Arizona, they said for the first time ever, a law firm could be owned by a non lawyer. Now that opens the gates. That's like, that's, that's the tipping point. It just hit three, four years later, we still don't have movement on that. Maybe one other state has, and five other states have it in. You know, they've been talking about it. But once that hits, game over. The practice is gone, right? What we know about the practice of law will be gone. Not bad. Okay, this is not a shoot across the bow to go, you know, whimper and whine. This is a shot across the bow to, to engage and prepare. And that's really where attorney came from. Because what I said was, you know, people are getting smarter. They're getting more technologically advanced. How do I know this? Because the guy who was using Zoom, who couldn't get his clients to use it, soon grandma, age 86, is talking to grandkids over Zoom. So now everybody's getting a little more accustomed to this technology and what it does. So I said, well, the way we interact with our clients has to change. So not going to promote turn here. But what it is, why it's different than the legal Zooms of the world and the will and trust.com of the world is those are things all about the document, okay? But those are all the computer programs somewhere, somewhere else. And oh, by the way, if you want an attorney, we'll connect you with one attorney was based the exact opposite. It's saying, listen, there are people, right, in our local communities that come to our law firm or don't come to our law firm because they're intimidated by lawyers or they Want something simple? How do we engage them in that mechanism? So really what the ATERNA platform did is it took law practices. We don't market to the clients, we market to the law firms. And say, wouldn't you like a technology that when you interact with consumers to hire you, they can hire you one of three ways. They can do the traditional way, they come in, knock on your door, sit at your desk and hire you, Come into their next meeting, hire you, print the paper out. That's your traditional way. The second way they can hire you is what we call the virtual way. Okay, let's do our first meeting by zoom. You don't need to come into the office. We're going to save you a trip. Now, Dave has a practice in central New York, but he can offer that practice throughout the entire state of New York now because I don't have to be in the same location. So that's what we call virtual application of what we do in our practices. But there was a third one that nobody understood and that's the digital one. So now with. You can actually come to my law firm and hire me as a lawyer and actually generate, do everything to get your legal documents, have the interaction with me you would have had if you come into my office. But it's all done technologically and you never physically meet me. So you. But here's the beauty of this. You can switch between them as you go through the process. So if you want to start in the office, we can then move you to digital and then move you to virtual and then back to traditional. And you decide as you go through the process. I think this is the future of the practice of law. Because people, the idea of going into a traditional law firm, well, my 60 year olds and plus are okay with it, their kids aren't. And their kids are the ones stepping in the sandwich generation, the one where now they're taking care of mom and dad and trying to take care of the kids are getting their college age. Right? That's what we call that sandwich generation. Well, now they don't have the time to come into my office, nor do they have the time to sit there and listen to a lawyer babble. They just want to go online, get the cliff notes and understand what's next. And that's really where Eterna is evolving into. Because originally, I think when a Turner made his first run, it was trying to compete with the legal. No, it's not intended to do that. Eterna is the future law practice. Okay, now you said what is going to be changing in the law. I'm going to say two words and they're going to mean something to everybody. And you're going to understand the words I say. But our understanding of them is where the block happens. The first word is AI. We all know. I don't care if you're living in bodunk in the mountains of Colorado. Everyone understands the impact of AI because if you have one of these and you can just go on that phone and put in a search and get an answer instantaneously. Welcome to the world of AI Right. There's. It's a game changer. We now have computers designing computers. Quantum computing is. I mean, the world doesn't understand this, but there's rooms of computers that have to be stored in negative 200 degrees Fahrenheit for them to operate because they, they're, they're moving so fast. Right. [00:46:50] Speaker B: It's going to be great for Canada. They're going to get a lot of data. [00:46:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Canada is going to become the home of all these quantum computing. But AI is number one. Okay? So that's the first thing that's going to change the practice of law. But when nobody's talking about yet, and I see it, and it's really the next evolution is this other little thing called blockchain. See Blockchain. And again, I'm not the technical guy. I struggled with Richard getting prepped for this to get on right technological. Okay. Do we have the right microphone on? But I understand blockchain and how it works and what blockchain is. It's a digital way to authenticate. Now when you think about that. Right. Think about a will. Do you know, still to this day, there's nowhere where you could do a will digitally. You can't. It still has to be signed in ink with two witnesses. Right. Every state. The law hasn't caught up the technology. But technology's coming with a baseball bat and it's going to start smashing it to bits and pieces. And AI is the first bat that struck. Now the good news is the law has adapted the AI and they're. And again, I don't mean to be cynical. The legal profession is tolerating it. Well, they don't understand. You're not tolerating it. It's about to crush you. Okay. It's about to make irrelevant the traditional role of the attorney. Now here's what AI will never do. It'll never change the handshake. Remember I said it went back into my law firm. People still need human interaction. The jury's out. But what they're starting to find in study after study after study is the generation coming up now. The suicide rate is higher than any generation before it. Their ability to succeed is lower than any generation before it. Because they've all been isolated. They've been isolated behind a cell phone, behind a computer. They've been locked down by this thing called Covid. But one thing none of us can change is the human condition. So if you want to go out and do some research, go start doing research on the human condition, our need to interact, embrace, physically touch other people. What I call the handshake. Now, blockchain is a way to take those things that are unique to lawyers and what we learn in the law, the human processing, and build a way to authenticate it in digital technology that becomes critical because to have, for example, you're now able to buy art. When you buy art on the Internet, that's through blockchain. That's the technology behind it that knows you own this thing. When you hear about bitcoin, bitcoin happens through blockchain, right? It's this authentication process that knows this series of numbers is controlled by the person that has access to this series of numbers that gets you access, right? If anyone that knows, if they have bitcoin, they know they don't own anything. All they own is a password to something, right? And if you lose that password and that's not documented, that's a problem, right? That's the world we're heading into. Richard is blockchain and AI and human. So this human piece, you're going to find it, come back. I found it when I went back into my law practice in 2023. I'm 15 months in, I'm having a blast. Because the greatest success is coming from when we integrate these advanced technologies with the good old fashioned handshake. Now, how do you do a handshake technologically? How do you get that personal relationship technologically? How does blockchain fit into that? How does AI fit into that? I think that's what's coming. And the challenges around it are going to be. I don't mean to freak people out is how are you going to know that this is really me talking to you? Because technology's to the point where they can put an avatar of me, they can get my voice, they could even get my thinking. And that thinking might even react to Richard's question, right? That's scary to think about it, but it's already here, folks. I'm not saying it to scare You I'm saying because it's already here. But it's not about the danger that creates. It's how do we have the benefits overtake the dangers so that there's good and bad in everything. The trick is you always got to use it more for good than for bad. Right. This whole conversation is there's also the. [00:51:26] Speaker B: Opportunity that it creates. The opportunity that it creates is the capacity for an increased desire for one to one human connection. And so I, I think and from being a strategic coach and I, I really do believe AI is going to going to have a lot of monstrous changes. But one of the impacts I, I believe we'll see is that it'll increase the desire for deeper human connection because a lot of the quote unquote work can be done by something, something else, not a someone else. And it's going to free up a little bit of time and what are people going to want to do at that time? They want to go and meet with other people. So I think we're going to see an increase of people wanting to get back to that one on one connection. [00:52:03] Speaker A: As a testament that Richard, I can attest that that's already happened in my company when I've come back in. 100% of my time is in human interaction. None of my time is spent in computer interaction. I don't do a single programming. I'm interacting with people and say well what would give you the greatest freedom? What would allow you more time to do what you're unique at, which G coach would call your unique ability, what my father would call your God given talents. Right. There's something each one of us have innately that's different than someone else and that comes through interaction of people. And the beautiful part is there's a whole nother thing underneath all this, Richard, and that is I read an article and it said industrialized countries of the world average 7 working people per retiree. Most of the industrialized countries of the world, Japan is the worst, they're at 2.8. But hang on us is a 3.9. Now why that's critical, 3.9. There's nobody coming behind this, Richard. We're not having kids. I'm the youngest. My mother had 11 kids in 12 years. I had three. My kids are having less if any. There's nobody coming up behind us. We have to get technology to take over all those things that we relied on humans to do because there's no humans coming to do it. But that will bond and create. And I'm telling you in my practice. I think you've just got onto something. The future practice. 90% of my time is interacting with my leaders and developing them through human interaction and communication. And that's because. And I'm coaching them into delegating the rest to technology, and that's what they're doing. Every quarter is a new goal, or in EOS terms, a new rock. What can we delegate to technology this quarter? [00:53:54] Speaker B: Amazing. Love it. Dave, this was fantastic. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Thank you for taking the time to be here and the utilization of great technology that allowed this to happen. And for those of you watching, make sure you stay tuned for next week's episode as we continue to unpack the incredible journeys of the entrepreneurs who are shaping tomorrow.