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I don't hunt deer. I hunt money.
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>> You own one of the biggest, if not the biggest, law firm in the country.
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We've seen your face on the billboard for Morgan & Morgan.
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And if you just want to say Morgan, that'd be great, too. My big vision was this.
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What if Google was a law firm? What would it look like?
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You just became a lawyer to fund your Harney ambitions.
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And that's pretty badass to >> I built an attraction called Alcatraz East, and it just prints money.
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>> [laughter] >> I've got apartment complexes.
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I've got shopping centers that prints money, too.
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>> He's basically like half Walt Disney, >> half shark.
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>> Where my competition gets beat by me is 95% of them are [ __ ] I'm not hunting cockroaches. I'm hunting big game.
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>> I got goosebumps, John. I love that answer. That was incredible.
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So, um first of all, welcome to the pod. You know, uh we're on.
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And um I I'm from the South.
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Uh I'm from Missouri and Tennessee.
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I lived in Tennessee for a while.
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And I've been trying to convey to Shawn this idea that I call capital men.
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And I was like, "Shawn Shawn's from uh San Francisco.
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He's lived in China, Australia.
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He's been all over the place, but he's never been to the South or the Midwest."
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And I was like, "Shawn, there's these guys that I'm friends with, and I kind of know them through my dad's friends or through uncles, whatever.
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They're these kind of Southern guys.
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They have this draw, and so because of that because you're from California, people like you might dismiss them, but they print money, and they sort of I don't know how to explain it, but they just kind of follow the process, and they just do thing to thing to thing, and they don't overthink stuff, and they're just ballers.
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And you are a good example of that.
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I'm hearing how you talk, and I'm like, "You are exactly what I'm talking about, these capital men, these guys who just get into stuff, and it's like a it's like an onion.
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They just have layers of stuff that you don't even know about."
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And so for this podcast, maybe we can ask you about like the I think you have like 10 or something different we can like ask you about each one because everyone knows you as as the law firm guy, but that might not be the most interesting thing about you.
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Well, believe it or not, I tell this to my wife all the time, the thing that I'm most proud of in all my businesses has been WonderWorks, the upside down house.
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Back in the '90s, my kids were little, we'd go to the science center, and it was just you know, they were [ __ ] They were terrible.
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And the kids were wanting to leave before they got there.
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And I had a business where I put on fairs around America, and in one of our one of our vendors had this huge tent, and everything in it was interactive, interactive, touching, feeling before before interactivity was a thing.
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And I said, "You know, if we built a science center that was interactive, that's what a science center should be, where you're touching, feeling, doing the and then parents would enjoy as much as kids."
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So, I went out around America.
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As a matter of fact, I went to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and I found like four things in the Exploratorium.
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I found in the Exploratorium in San Francisco, I found a bubble room where you make these bubbles, and I'm like, "Okay, that's something."
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I found another thing called uh Recollections.
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And so I went around the the country looking for interactive things from science centers.
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But I felt like the building had to be great, and this guy comes up to me who'd been with Ripley's, and he had a rendering of a building turned upside down.
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He goes, "This is what you should do.
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You should turn it upside down."
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And I'm like, "Well, how do you do that?" He starts to tell me.
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I go, "Well, hell, if I could do that, I would do that."
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And so the so I built the first one in Orlando. It's called WonderWorks.
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If you Google WonderWorks, It's this right here. >> There it is. And >> This is amazing. I've never seen this.
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Is this um near Disney World?
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One of mine is my a one the one in Orlando is very close to Disney World and very close to Universal.
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So, is the inside of the building upside down?
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Well, you go in and you walk in you walk in and you're standing on the ceiling. Yeah.
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So, you walk through the trusses, and now you're standing on the ceiling.
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And the storyline is that once upon a time in the Bermuda Triangle, the greatest scientists in the world were working on the greatest experiments in the world to better mankind.
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They were trying to build their own hurricane. It got out of control.
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It the the place was located in Bermuda Triangle, lips lifts it out of the air, spins it, and it crashes down in Orlando, Pigeon Forge, Branson, Missouri.
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And so then you go in, and now you're on So, you look up, and you know, there's the stairs, and now you got to Now, how are you going to visit it?
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So, you go through an inversion tunnel where we turn you upside down so that when you exit the inversion tunnel, you will be defying gravity and walking upside down, and then you go from gallery to gallery to gallery to gallery.
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And uh that prints money, too.
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That that Those thing I have zero debt, and uh I'll do like 33 million in EBITDA this year. Uh that's amazing.
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You dropped in a the kind of a bit of gold that you just kind of skipped over, which was before that you had a a national fair.
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Well, we put on fairs around America.
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We we weren't we didn't own the rides. We were the operator.
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In other words, uh Brevard County Fair, Pennsylvania State Fair, Long Island Fair, Nassau County Fair, where we just set it up, we'd promote it, and then the ride people would come in, and we were just It it didn't make a lot of money, but you know, back in those days, listen, I remember the first time me and a guy took a piece of land and flipped it and made 60 grand. We split 60 grand.
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We went on a 2-week bender celebrating our $30,000 profit.
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You you know, those first those first profits were like, "Holy shit."
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And it was like a side hustle.
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I mean, I was a lawyer, but I just made an extra 30 getting a piece of land rezoned and flipping it to the developer, so. All right.
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So, John has tons of side hustles, upside down buildings, crime museums, chocolate factories. He's a machine.
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But here's the thing, every single one started with him spotting an opportunity others missed.
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My old company, The Hustle, built a database with hundreds of ideas like this.
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Some are weird like John's. Some are dead simple.
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If you liked what you just heard, go check out the side hustle ideas database.
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Scan the QR code or click the link in the description.
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Now, let's get back to the show.
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San Francisco inspired me.
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I went there once with my wife.
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We wanted to go see Alcatraz. We go to Alcatraz.
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Alcatraz is We get there thinking we're going to walk right in.
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They go, "There's no tickets available."
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I said, "We'll be here a couple more days. When can we go?"
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They go, "There's no tickets.
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Tickets sold out for the next 2 weeks."
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I'm like, the And so the way you the way you always solve that problem is you pull out two $100 bills to the ticket taker, and you say, "Are you sure you don't have two extra tickets back there?
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This This is not for the tickets. This is for you."
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So, I got to go through Alcatraz.
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And when I went through it, I thought I had this epiphany.
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You know, have you have these epiphanies.
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And my epiphany is America is fascinated with crime and punishment like nothing else.
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TV shows, movies, books, Netflix, all of it.
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And I was in the attraction business anyway.
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I said, "You know, what about an attraction dedicated to the history of crime and punishment?"
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And so I built an attraction uh that's in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, called Alcatraz East.
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And it's I built it It looks like a 1800 prison, and it's the history of crime and punishment, and it just prints money.
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>> [laughter] >> How How big is that business?
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It It makes 5 million bucks a year net net. >> In in profits.
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It's >> And how much did it take cost to build it initially?
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It's an interesting thing cuz, you know, I got a speech called Failure Can Be Your Friend.
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And what happened is I first built it in Washington, D. C.
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cuz I thought, you know, the his you know, I called it the National Museum of Crime and Punishment.
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And it didn't didn't do very well.
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It And the reason it didn't do very well, in my opinion, is there's a lot of free stuff in D. C.
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to begin with, but more importantly, they wouldn't let me do anything with the facade.
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So, I was just in a building, you know, across from the National Portrait Gallery. I was doing okay.
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I was limping along, but paying rent and paying just a little bit, but the landlord came in and said, "You know, you're not doing the numbers per the lease, and we're going to call the lease on you."
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I'm like, "But I'm paying my rent. Why would you do this?"
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They go, "We're we're we're doing it."
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So, I moved everything and built the structure in Pigeon Forge.
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I moved a lot of the stuff.
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So, some of the stuff I'd had I bet the whole thing from what I had to build and what I took, I think the whole thing probably cost 13 million bucks, 14 million bucks.
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But like the at the end of the attraction, I have four things that are just you just can't believe it when you get there. One, Ted Bundy's VW.
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Two, Bonnie and Clyde's death car from the movie.
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Three, OJ's Bronco and four John Dillinger's sedan.
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And I just bought JonBenét's bicycle and the Murdaugh's golf cart.
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And let me tell you, America's fascination with crime is such that people are in this thing for three and a half, four hours.
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And it's an easy business to run because it's it's static, you know, it's not there's not a lot of interactive.
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I'm looking at your website right now.
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I've I've I've been here, I believe.
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I'm a huge crime fan and so when you were waiting to name what you were going to name, I was like, you're going to forget OJ's car. This is awesome.
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And you made a big bet cuz after you do the thing in DC, I think the normal entrepreneur sort of starts to doubt the concept, doubt the viability, you know, you're you're It didn't go well right away and yet you you double down in the face of that.
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Is it just blind faith, conviction or you're just a stubborn guy?
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That's It's not that I'm stubborn.
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It's like you know, you hear everybody give these speeches about failure is your friend.
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Failure can be the best thing that ever happens to you.
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But yet when we lose, we never go near it again.
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We say that, you know, it sounds good in a speech, but what happened is I had had some investors from WonderWorks invested in this deal. So I had investors.
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I sent out My wife kept saying this is the this is great. It's great.
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You just got to build it in a place where there's people, more people.
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And so I sent a letter to all my investors saying, look, I'm going to move it from here to there and you'll be part of it and everything was, you know, and not one person took me up on it. Not one person.
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They all said, you know, you know, we we're taking our loss.
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And then I my wife I said, what do you think?
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She goes, let's do it ourselves.
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And, you know, and so the my new money was like $8 million new money.
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And I got it back in a year and a half.
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Were you How big was the law firm or like what was your financial situation?
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My financial situation was not bad, but you know, I mean, my financial situation got The older I get, the better it got, you know, because I've was one of these guys that always was pushing my profits into new things.
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And uh it was good, but but I I I did have 8 million bucks. That's amazing.
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So what's crazy about your story is you're this guy, you own one of the biggest, if not the the biggest law firm in the country, right?
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We've seen your face on the billboards from Morgan and Morgan.
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Before that, you've done all these other things.
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So you were talking about WonderWorks, maybe your favorite business that you're the you're most proud of, which was a amusement business.
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And maybe some of the inspiration from that came from you working at Disney when you were younger.
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And so like I guess where does the story start for you?
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Does it start when you're like a little kid? Does it start at Disney?
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Where does the entrepreneurial bug start?
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I think the story started for me probably the same way the story started for you, too.
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Except you're too young for this to happen.
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There are people that are born with a entrepreneurial seed. A seed. It just happens.
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Now for my generation, you can spot those people because they were paperboys or papergirls.
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And a paper route was a mfer because a paper route, you're 10, 11 years old, but it's every single day. It's rain, sleet, snow.
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If you miss one, you got to go back.
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You got to collect your money.
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And I'll bet you two guys, if you went back to your 10 or 11 years old, I don't know if there were paper routes when you all were younger, but you were probably doing something hustling money.
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You two were probably coding or, you know, selling stuff on eBay.
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Selling stuff on eBay, whatever.
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You know, in in my school, I always sold candy.
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I always I used to wear army pants with all the pockets and I'd have watermelon sticks and bubble gum and not chocolate cuz that melted and I would sell candy at school and make like 10 bucks a day.
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By the way, John, you know the evidence for what you're saying? What?
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Buffett had a paper route plus, you know, sold magazines, gum and Coke.
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Jeff Bezos had a paper route.
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Sam Walton from Walmart had a paper route.
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Walt Disney, Peter Drucker, there's like an insane roster of people that did exactly what you're saying. Oprah. Oprah had a paper route. That's badass.
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And so the reason I know all these people because I've written a new book that's being edited right now called Life is Luck.
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And the thesis of my book is we wake up, we're born, but we're born lucky.
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You know, we're born in America, first of all.
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Warren Buffett calls it, you know, winning the ovarian lottery.
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Just being born in America.
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And then you make a thousand left turns and a thousand right turns and a thousand U-turns and then you end up here. And one different turn.
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But part of my thesis is the paperboy, the papergirl, these people that were born with that genetic seed of entrepreneurism. And you can't be taught.
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It's just It's just in you.
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And it's it's such an advantage in life because And it's really nothing we did. We were born with it.
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Nobody wants Rich people do never want to be told that they were lucky.
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They want to tell us all, I worked my ass off.
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I deserve every single penny I got.
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And they are like 100% wrong about that because one different turn. I mean, Buffett.
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Buffett's company is basically five stocks.
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If you take When Charlie Munger died, I read a thing about him yesterday the other day in the wall.
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You take five stocks away from Berkshire, it's not Berkshire. Yeah.
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>> [clears throat] >> It's like Amex, Coca-Cola, Apple and Right. Exactly.
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But but but But we see him as a great investor and and his his greatness has really been his patience and his understanding of of index funds instead of, you know, money managers and time.
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And and power of compounding interest.
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I believe what you're saying.
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I I believe luck to be true.
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I think that most people when they get successful, I actually think that they attribute a fair bit to luck because they realize like Like for example, when I sold my company, the CEO got into a really bad accident like two weeks after the deal closed and I'm like, I mean, if that would have happened two weeks prior, that could have changed everything.
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So there is a luck component.
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But you have I I I have some research here and and I think you have like 10 or 12 things that have worked out really well for you.
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And so there is some like there's a lot of good decision-making that that you have on your side.
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Were you always doing these little hustles?
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Like did Morgan and Morgan start as a hustle and turn into a real thing or were you trying to build something big from the get-go?
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Well, I was not trying to build something big from the get-go.
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I mean, look, when I first got out of law school, if somebody told me they'd pay me a hundred grand and tie to Cola, I would have been, you know, give me the pen.
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I mean, I wasn't even thinking like this.
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You know, I I got into this business cuz my brother got hurt when I was in college and it kind of, you know, he was became a quadriplegic from from an accident.
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And so I was in the middle of all that and our family was relatively poor.
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And when you're poor, you're helpless, hopeless, powerless.
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And then you're watching your brother be, you know, pushed back by the the big companies.
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And I became enraged about the way he was treated and and so when I went to law school, I knew what I was going to do when I went to law school.
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I knew exactly what I was going to do.
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I was going to come back and do this work.
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I was I had a lot of job offers other places, but this is all I wanted to do and this is all I've ever done.
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But I didn't There's no way I could have dreamed this because it's too big to dream to It's too big to even dream this.
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Well, it's interesting because I would say personal injury lawyers, I think have a pretty bad perception in the public.
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I think it's, you know, ambulance chasers.
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It's seen as sort of a sleazy thing.
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I think that would probably I think that's fair as like mass perception, but the when you think about what you were actually saying and what you did, right?
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Like, you know, your brother has this tragic accident on the job, becomes a quadriplegic.
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You didn't And and you know, insurance companies and the and and large corporations, they're, you know, they're not trying to pay out, you know, fair compensation or huge settlements to to to folks that that were that needed it.
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And you're in in a way like, you know, you're basically helping somebody who needs the most help, who tends to have the least power or resources to fight against those who have a lot of power resources.
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And in many ways, that's a very noble thing, but it has the opposite perception.
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Is that Is that how you see it or, you know, what's going on?
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Yeah, it's it's look, it's it's like this.
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When I got out of law school, almost when I got out, you weren't even allowed to advertise.
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You know, and personal injury lawyers were, like you said, ambulance chasers.
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That was what they were called.
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Everybody wants to look down on somebody.
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So lawyers who have had a bad reputation themselves anyway, you know, kill all the lawyers.
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All of a sudden they found somebody to look down on and that was the personal injury lawyer, the ambulance chaser.
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I'm not an ambulance chaser.
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And then all of a sudden you have the advertising lawyers, which was another group to look down on the people the personal injury lawyers. Well, I don't advertise. I'm above that. I'm down, you know.
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And so what happened was when I got out of law school, I would have been the last person you would have ever I was straight and narrow.
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I was the, you know, the president of everything at the university.
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I had all these job offers.
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But I didn't take them because I I did have a desire to do what I'm doing.
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When I got out, I started going around to people who did advertise, who were kind of shady.
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And they gave me their business.
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And I took their bad cases.
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I took their tough cases.
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But I got inside the belly of the beast and I saw the future.
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And you know, a lot of times you get to see the future.
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You know, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, they saw the future.
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But if they were born today, that future wouldn't be there for them.
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That was their luck when they were born because if they were born today, Microsoft is already something else.
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And so I saw it and I sat down with my wife and I said, "Look, this goes against everything I ever thought I'd be.
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But this train is leaving the station."
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And that train being advertising for your services.
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>> Yes, advertising for my services.
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And to get cases because when I was doing it when I was starting out other lawyers would refer you business and you were paying them a 50% referral fee.
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So if your if your fee was $100, you had to give your referring lawyer $50.
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Well, that's hurts margins.
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And and all of a sudden you're seeing a different way.
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Now, it was still iffy when I did it because it it hadn't really hadn't become mainstreamed at all.
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So but it but it was something I was so embarrassed about it.
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I didn't even do the commercials myself.
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I had a friend who was very handsome.
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And I said, "Vance, I want you to be my face." And he did it.
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And then the bar came in and said, "Well, you can't have spokespeople.
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You got to do it yourself."
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So I had to take my my fat face and go on TV. There there I was. Look, I don't know, man.
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You look pretty good to me.
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Yeah, you look you look sharp.
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But I didn't like the way I looked.
22:22
So So were people not advertising cuz they were literally just too proud for it or was it was it a gray area legally of if you could or couldn't?
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>> gray legally, but it was it was taboo. It was just not done.
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People who could, who had wouldn't because they didn't want to be shunned at the country club.
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People that would didn't have the money to do it.
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How I got to do it was I went to the bank and borrowed a 100 grand.
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And went down, did the commercials.
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You know, when I think back later, you know, and and by the way, my credit was so good that this TV station would only run my ads if I paid in advance because they you know, that's how good that my credit was.
23:10
So you're saying the order of operations was you graduated as a lawyer, you know what you want to do as a practice.
23:14
You saw that there were some kind of lawyers at the bottom of the of the social barrel there that were advertising.
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You didn't advertise yourself.
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At first you just went and took their cases to like they would catch the fish, you would cook the fish.
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You would go and actually do the case.
23:29
And you said I said you know, you're you said you're in the belly of the beast and you saw oh, this is the future.
23:33
These guys are getting a lot of cases.
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This is how lawyers are going to get business.
23:37
And you decided to do it.
23:37
What What was it that let you kind of like go against that kind of the country club mindset?
23:47
Like you know, I I heard this quote from Larry Ellison he said one time that they were saying how successful he was and he goes, "Yeah, I had all of the necessary disadvantages you would need to be successful."
23:57
Like kind of like I had this chip on my shoulder.
23:59
No, I wasn't the best student.
24:00
No, I wasn't the best at this.
24:02
No, I had everything I needed to be successful. That's it. That's what I needed.
24:05
What was it that you needed to to kind of break out from the way that other lawyers are doing things?
24:11
Well, I've always been, you know, aggressive. And I'm a networker.
24:19
But I didn't want to do it this way because but paying that 50% how I looked at it was this.
24:26
They were throwing me their trash.
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I felt like I was up in a dumpster eating a half-eaten Whopper that had been thrown up in the dumpster. But guess what? It tasted okay.
24:36
You know, the I was I was living.
24:40
But I would rather have just had a fresh Whopper right through the drive-thru window instead of having to climb into the to the dumpster.
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And that was my decision.
24:49
Do I just keep because I knew it was going to happen and I knew first to market was always an advantage.
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And if I could get in there early enough, you know, and become Kleenex instead of, you know, tissue, I had a better chance.
25:07
And my wife was a securities lawyer. She's very smart. I'm not.
25:09
I'm I'm the part of the 50% of the law school class that enabled there to be a top 50%.
25:19
>> [laughter] >> Without me, there's no them.
25:22
My wife was in the top 2%. The foundation.
25:26
You call it the foundation. Yes.
25:30
And so the thing that happened to Tim, it was one of these things where, you know, we're very close.
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And he's in this terrible situation and Disney is really treating him terrible.
25:43
And the more that we'd fight, the more they would just crush him.
25:45
[snorts] And when you're watching somebody you love that much get manhandled that way, you just there's a rage that that came inside of me.
26:00
And so I always knew what I was going to do.
26:02
I mean, I was offered a job with this guy Mark Hulsey.
26:04
He wanted me to come to his firm and I told him I said, "You know, this is what I want to do."
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And he helped me get my first job out of law school.
26:13
And so the good thing about what I've done and the good thing for people and and that are listening to this is when you wake up and work is not work, you you you're a lot better at it.
26:28
So I woke up every day going this, you know, I'm going to take care of the Tims of the world.
26:34
So it was never work for me and I wanted to go and get >> [clears throat] >> my pound of flesh from these people who had bullied us when we were helpless, hopeless, and powerless.
26:48
And so as time's gone on, it's to me it's very noble of what we do.
26:56
Because the people we represent didn't do anything wrong.
27:02
But they had things taken from them.
27:04
They had their health taken.
27:04
They had their ability to walk taken. They had loss of income. They had things taken.
27:12
And what we do is we get give them back as much as we can or compensate them as much as we can for what was taken from them.
27:24
And so, you know, I like the business.
27:28
I listen, I liked Robin Hood when I was a kid.
27:30
I always I always liked the Robin Hood story, you know.
27:34
And so the people I'm going against, you know, look, the tobacco industry.
27:38
I've had many many trials against them.
27:40
What do they do for a living?
27:42
They are in the business of premeditated murder.
27:47
They know what they're doing.
27:47
They're going to kill us.
27:49
They're going to kill a bunch of us this year and they know it.
27:52
And the reason they know it in their internal documents, they call it they call new smokers replacement smokers.
27:59
They laced the cigarettes with additives to to hook us.
28:02
They gave it to the kids.
28:04
They gave it to the service people.
28:06
They're in the business of premeditated murder.
28:11
And so I don't feel bad at all when that's my enemy.
28:15
I don't feel bad at all when I'm trying to get compensation for people who got hooked and addicted by very evil company.
28:22
And by the way, today those same companies now own our food companies. Yeah, that's crazy.
28:31
And processed food is the new tobacco.
28:34
In terms of um so in a little bit we want to ask about all your businesses because you've you've had so much stuff.
28:40
But just to add to to give us some context in into the timeline, when you start advertising, do you remember like the next 10 years of business?
28:49
Like how big did your business grow? It was it was gradual.
28:51
But the way I always looked at it is I had a number of what I thought a case was worth and then I had the number of cases that that I would sign up and I would divide the the number, the average fee into the cases and as long as that equaled out where I could break even, I kept pouring more money into it.
29:12
So if a case was if I if a case was worth $4,000 and I was spending uh you know, for $4,000 and I was spending $80,000, I had to if I got 20 cases, that was break even.
29:32
And if I got double that, then that was profit.
29:34
So that's kind of how I did it in a very simplistic way.
29:36
And I felt like as long as I'm breaking even, I'm building the brand.
29:43
And building the brand was very important, too.
29:46
When you say building the brand like what's the John Morgan school of brand?
29:50
If you were going to school us in how you think about brand, what what do you think about?
29:53
First of all, I wanted it to be something that's memorable.
29:55
I wanted So, when I first did it, when I first got into it, I was there weren't even computers.
30:01
I didn't have a computer. I didn't have a URL.
30:03
The first time I really understood what a URL was, I was at a Yankees game with some lawyers in New York and they all had these devices in their hands called blackberries.
30:16
And I'm like, what are those?
30:16
You know, it was like what what is this?
30:20
And they're all there Oh my and they're just thumbing through it the whole game and I'm like, what are you doing?
30:25
They're We're getting cases.
30:28
So, I went back to home and said, I got to get a blackberry.
30:33
And then I got the blackberry, I said, I got to get a URL.
30:37
And then so so the beginning of it the beginning of the brand was the URL.
30:40
And so, I wanted my URL to be my mission statement and my branding statement.
30:44
The two things I came up with in my mind was justice for all and for the people. Those are the two URLs.
30:57
And I ultimately went with for the people because I was worried that people couldn't spell justice all the time.
31:04
>> [laughter] >> But I knew that we could all spell for the people.
31:09
And so, when I built my brand, it was I wanted my brand to be my mission statement and my URL.
31:17
I wanted all to be one thing.
31:19
So, I never had to say something twice.
31:21
I could just say it once.
31:21
So, a lot of the ads then, you know, visit, you know, call Morgan & Morgan for the people. com.
31:30
All right, so I can say it all just like that.
31:34
And so, but building the brand was very very important.
31:40
Who did you take inspiration from on building a like a iconic memorable brand?
31:45
Who did you think was doing it well?
31:47
Well, the people that I admire in my life is Walt Disney.
31:50
I worked I did magic at Walt Disney World.
31:52
And so, every time I'd walk out of the magic store, I'd see Walt Disney holding Mickey's hand on Main Street and they had dream it do it.
32:05
And so, that was kind of in my mind. It was P. T.
32:07
Barnum, Disney, those type of people.
32:12
So, I like the promotion.
32:13
Like when I was building WonderWorks, uh I knew that the building itself you you've heard the slogan sell the sizzle, not the steak.
32:27
Well, there's a lot to that.
32:27
So, when I was building WonderWorks, I was thinking sell the sizzle, not the steak.
32:34
People will pay just to get behind the curtain like they did with P. T. Barnum.
32:39
They'll get they'll pay to get behind the curtain just to see the human pin cushion.
32:45
How many active companies do you have right now?
32:50
You know, I got so many K-1s that uh I've I've built I've got shopping centers that I'm that I've built and I've got apartment complexes that I built and are under construction.
33:03
So, I I got that whole part of my life.
33:08
I've got the attraction businesses that I have.
33:12
I started building Marriott hotels about 20 years ago.
33:15
I've had a I had a billboard company that I sold to Lamar for a lot of money.
33:21
I had an ad agency for lawyers called Practice Made Perfect that I sold and made and did well.
33:25
The new thing I've got going right now is you know the uh the guy you know who Guy Fieri is. He's a California guy. Yeah.
33:33
So, Dave & Buster's kind of have has it all to themselves.
33:39
And so, we built our very first what we call Downtown Flavortown in Pigeon Forge.
33:45
And it's basically Dave & Buster's meets Guy Fieri.
33:51
And um we built the we opened up the first one about a year or so ago.
33:57
And we're building the second one right now in Pigeon Forge. Oh, in Myrtle Beach.
34:01
This fascinates me because so many people come on this podcast and their message is you just got to focus.
34:08
You got to you know, don't get distracted.
34:09
Don't chase the shiny objects.
34:10
You just got to do one thing and let it compound for a long time.
34:12
But you kind of seem to have done both, right?
34:16
Your firm has compounded.
34:16
I think you guys do like 2 billion in revenue now.
34:20
This is like a huge firm.
34:22
But you've had all these other entrepreneurial side quests.
34:24
So, I guess like kind of square that circle for me. Are you are you focused? Are you unfocused?
34:29
How do you how do you think about that?
34:30
Here's how I think about that.
34:32
Those people that tell you to focus, they're also doing a lot of this.
34:40
Hunting, [snorts] fishing, golfing. All three off.
34:49
You know, now nothing wrong with off, but there's nothing about business except maybe a little golf.
34:56
You can do a little bit there.
34:58
But hunting to me makes no sense.
35:00
You know, you know, killing an animal right up on an animal makes no sense.
35:07
Venison, I can I can taste the fur. I don't want to eat it. So, I don't hunt. So, I got that.
35:12
Fishing, I don't understand.
35:15
I don't understand catch and release.
35:18
Let's go out and have a good time. Let's catch a fish.
35:20
Let's rip its mouth open.
35:22
Let's tear its eye out and let's throw it back in the water. I don't understand that.
35:30
And golf, look, it's a great hobby, but I'd rather shoot pool, you know, for an hour than golf for So, all that focus that these people that these people are focusing on, I don't have that distraction. I don't hunt deer. I hunt money. And and I like it.
35:51
So, instead of collecting stamps, some people collect stamps as a hobby.
35:58
I collect artifacts for Alcatraz East. I could I hunt.
36:05
>> You're You're a big fan of presidential note cards, you know, presidential flash cards.
36:09
You just like collecting those bills. >> Yes.
36:10
Yes, and clipping coupons. So, I am very focused.
36:14
I'm just not hunting, golfing, or fishing.
36:17
If you take all that and listen, I watch sports on TV, but there's people that that are more interested in than, you know, in Lane Kiffin's uh new job than they are their own job.
36:34
Well, I don't have those distractions to my focus.
36:40
>> [laughter] >> Can I Can I ask you uh about each one of these businesses that I researched?
36:45
And I want to brag a little bit about you.
36:46
And also, you can tell me if it's true or not. >> Okay.
36:50
Um So, listen to this, Sean.
36:51
So, tell me if this is true.
36:54
Okay, so we have Morgan & Morgan.
36:55
That's a huge successful thing.
36:57
You talked a lot about that.
36:57
But you also have a company called Litify, which I think you sold.
37:01
So, Litify is a tech company for lawyers.
37:03
And I believe you sold around 60% of the company.
37:06
You still own 40% at a $600 million valuation. Is that true? >> That's right.
37:13
Do you Do you have a method where like you do the vision and somebody you hire a CEO early on?
37:17
Like what What makes the system work?
37:21
For that, the a guy joined me who was, you know, this guy was one of the smartest guys, a young guy, and he could do anything.
37:27
And it was like I could just tell him I I called it magic carpets.
37:33
I would say, can you do this? Yeah, I can do this. Can you do that? Can you do this? Can you do that? Yes.
37:42
When I first brought him in, my vision and I've written a book called you can't I've written two books.
37:47
One called you can't teach hungry.
37:52
One called you can't teach vision.
37:55
My big vision for the law was this.
38:00
What if Google was a law firm? What would it look like?
38:06
That was a thing that just hit me and I just kept going over and over and over in my mind.
38:11
Now, the problem for a guy like me is you know, terrible in math, terrible in science, you know, the idea of coding, you know, I you know, no idea. But I had that vision.
38:25
What if Google was a law firm?
38:25
And then I decided that I was going to build what I called the Google law firm.
38:35
But I didn't have the So, I'd been close with Obama's team and I was talking to the Obama people, the guys who ran the cave in Chicago, guy named Teddy Galloway, and there was another guy named Elon Kriegel, and I'm talking to all of them about the Google law firm.
38:50
And when I would talk to them, they're they're just blank face.
38:51
Like, what what do you mean the Google law firm?
38:53
So, I found this guy and he got it.
38:58
And the first thing I said to him was, you know, everything we're going to do, we're going to ask what Google do.
39:03
And here's what Google would do if it was a law firm.
39:06
Google would be everywhere for everybody.
39:10
And Google wouldn't want some cases, they'd want all the cases.
39:12
And if they didn't handle the cases in house, they would refer them out.
39:17
They would partner with a firm like Uber.
39:21
So, so I I was inspired by Google and Uber.
39:25
So, I wanted to build the Google law firm.
39:29
I'd keep a lot of cases, but I'd refer a whole bunch more out.
39:34
Well, so then So, I say to the guy, I He says, what do you want the most?
39:38
I said, I want transparency and automation.
39:44
Now, we had a software called Client Profiles. It was was pretty good.
39:49
But, he kept saying, "It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough.
39:53
We have to build our own software."
39:58
And And that's the last thing I wanted to do because it's just too big.
40:03
And I'm like, "That's not what we do."
40:04
But, he finally convinced me we got to build it.
40:09
And I had James such trust in him.
40:11
I was like, "Well, let's go ahead."
40:12
And so, we built Litify for us internally.
40:17
And we put And we put it on Salesforce.
40:20
We We We We layered it on Salesforce.
40:22
Nobody'd ever done that before.
40:22
So, all of a sudden we got all these engineers.
40:26
We got this, you know, we got a staff of thousands of engineers.
40:28
Salesforce was interested in us because they hadn't been in the legal space before.
40:35
And we can change things with with we can we can do whatever we want.
40:39
So, so we started Litify.
40:41
And um part of the deal, if you want to be like So, I refer a bunch of cases out to lawyers across America.
40:51
But, like with the Bloomies, if people want to get my referrals, they got to be on Litify cuz that's how we talk to each other.
40:57
So, a case comes in that I'm going to refer out to Des Moines.
40:59
You know, the case comes in.
41:01
I got a partner who's on Litify. I refer the case to him.
41:04
He's got, you know, 12 hours to accept it or decline it.
41:09
If he declines it, it comes back.
41:12
It goes to a second person. Comes back. Goes to a third person.
41:14
And then And then there's then it's So, it started as something internal for us.
41:23
But, it's But, then it became, you know, so good that everybody wanted it.
41:27
So, we started selling it.
41:29
What was How much did you invest in it?
41:31
And what was the time to exit?
41:32
Well, other people invested in it with us.
41:35
Uh Fortress put some money in. I was on a bank board.
41:38
I was on the bank board called Esquire Bank, which was a It was a bank for lawyers. It trades on Nasdaq. I sat on the board.
41:48
Tiger Capital put in some money.
41:51
I would say from beginning to exit 6 7 years.
41:55
And look, I didn't really want to exit, but, you know, it was time because, like you said, the focus I needed to focus on the Google law firm. I already had this.
42:11
And I still have a lot of input with the Bessemer.
42:13
And I sold it to somebody who I thought would be good.
42:15
I sold it to Bessemer, and they're very good at this.
42:20
And so, um yeah, about 6 or 7 years. Okay, that's amazing.
42:24
By the way, it it seems like there's a flywheel between these businesses.
42:27
So, you said we built kind of for ourselves, and then you used your position and leverage in the market where, "Hey, if I'm referring you to a case, you got to be using our platform for this to work well."
42:36
To to get more customers.
42:40
The second business I think Sam's going to bring up is like this ad agency you created.
42:43
>> The ad agency was Here's how the ad agency was.
42:46
I called it Practice Made Perfect.
42:47
So, what my idea was is I was going to go out across America and say, "If you want to do what I'm doing, I'll write your ads. I'll place your ads.
42:56
I'll I'll And And when big cases happen, when mass torts happen, you can put them in and then refer them to me."
43:01
So, I built this company called Mass Tort or Practice Made Perfect.
43:06
Had all these lawyers across America. I was charging 15%. So, I made money.
43:15
You know, I was making I was probably making, you know, 8 or 9 million bucks a year just running that business.
43:18
But, more importantly, all those lawyers started referring me, you know, when Vioxx would happen or when you you know, mass torts would happen, they would send me their cases as well.
43:30
So, I I built this I I thought of it like like Global Crossing where I'm laying all this fiber optic across America.
43:38
But, my fiber optic were these law firms across America that I would make money being the ad agency, but I'd make the big money with the cases they would send.
43:51
>> was that its own entity?
43:51
And you're saying it was doing 8 million in income? Yes. That's incredible.
43:54
What's Where's it at now?
43:56
I sold it because here's why I had to sell it.
43:59
As I started to expand across America with all these lawyers, they were all good friends of mine at by the end, but I kept They were They were like, you know, I had a guy up in Indiana.
44:08
He's like, "John, you know, you you're you're infringing on my territory." I'm like, "How?"
44:14
Cuz my deal with these with my clients was this.
44:16
You don't have to sign a contract with me.
44:17
You can fire me anytime you want.
44:19
And I'll never compete with you.
44:23
I'll never compete with you.
44:23
And it was just a handshake.
44:28
Well, they were like calling saying, "Well, John, you know, I saw one of your billboards."
44:31
I'm like, "Well, where did you see it?"
44:32
He's like, "Well, I saw I was driving to Louisville."
44:34
I go, "Were you in Kentucky or Indiana?"
44:35
Well, I was in I was in Kentucky, but I was driving I was like, "Hey, man, you're in Indianapolis. I I'm in Louisville."
44:41
So, I started getting I was infringing on my clients. Right.
44:47
And it just became untenable.
44:51
I I was at a crossroads, and I either had to not grow the Google law firm or keep this other business.
44:59
So, I sold Practice Made Perfect.
45:02
I I don't know what's going to happen to it.
45:04
I'm very worried about it because when they bought it from me, the person that came in to run it, they called the person they put in there the uh the resident entrepreneur or something like that.
45:19
They had some name for the the guy who's going to run them.
45:21
I know, just give me the money and go do what you want.
45:25
How much did you sell it for? Uh like 18.
45:28
Okay, so that's 18 million. All right.
45:31
Now, listen to this, Sean. Is this true?
45:34
So, do you still own this?
45:36
And And tell me the story about it.
45:36
You had a trade show called Mass Torts Made Perfect.
45:40
And it's a twice-a-year trade show for for lawyers.
45:43
So, you're you're you're basically owned like the networking of law firms. Is that right?
45:49
It's called Mass Torts Made Perfect.
45:49
And we put two times a year people would come to learn about the latest mass torts.
45:55
It was a play on my uh Practice Made Perfect.
46:02
I had Practice Made Perfect for my clients and Mass Torts Made Perfect for all the lawyers in America.
46:10
And I stayed with that for a long time.
46:13
And uh at a certain point, it was me and two other firms.
46:16
It was when Johnny Cochran was alive, he was part of it.
46:21
And I was helping Johnny Cochran map out his national strategy, which also helped me learn about going national.
46:29
And then another law firm.
46:29
And But, at a certain point, back to your focus.
46:34
You You are right about focus.
46:36
I mean, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both say focus, focus, focus.
46:42
At a certain point, Mass Torts Made Perfect was not helping me grow my business.
46:48
And so, I sold I I I let them have Mass Torts Made Perfect.
46:55
I kept Practice Made Perfect.
46:58
And we And then I went and spent way more time on the Google law firm.
47:01
Well, how big was the trade show business?
47:03
It was big, but it wasn't that profitable.
47:07
What the The trade show itself made money, but not a lot of money.
47:11
Practice Practice Made Perfect, the ad agency, was really supplementing that.
47:16
But, what we were really looking for were cases.
47:18
We were really looking for people to say, "Hey, you know, we're going to send you our cases."
47:25
So, the trade show itself never made money.
47:27
It was the cases that we got.
47:29
Where do you see opportunity today that, you know, a a younger, more free John Morgan would actually be able to go and pursue?
47:36
What would you go chase down?
47:39
If I was young, I would probably be because of AI and because I'm not good at that stuff, I would probably be looking toward the service industries.
47:54
For John Morgan, you know, plumbing, uh electrical, air conditioning.
48:01
I think that that's where a person like me could thrive cuz I'm I'm good at scaling.
48:09
I'm good at building teams.
48:09
I'm I'm good at sharing the profits.
48:16
And so, I think that that I think I might be in something like that.
48:20
But, the business I really enjoy the most is the entertainment business.
48:28
And I don't I just The great thing about the entertainment business, whether it's the Downtown Flavortown or WonderWorks or Alcatraz East, is you're not fighting.
48:39
Can you Can you Okay, so Sean and I are, I guess, sort of in the entertainment business because we have this podcast.
48:45
But, you know, I love the idea of owning um an upside-down museum. That sounds amazing. It sounds fun.
48:51
It sounds like it's good for the world.
48:52
Like it it's like a it's wholesome. It sounds fantastic.
48:54
It seems cool to touch the things you're working on.
48:57
Can you teach us how to get into that business and how to operate, run, spot an opportunity, or what a winning formula looks like?
49:06
Well, winning formula looks like you got to go back to the basics, always.
49:11
Location, location, location.
49:14
Look, my Orlando store does the best.
49:18
And then Pigeon Forge does the second best.
49:21
And then Myrtle Beach does pretty good.
49:23
And then But, Branson does less than Myrtle Beach.
49:26
It's all about where your locations are.
49:28
If you don't have a great location for this for this type of business, look, Six Flags is having trouble in America right now because there's just not enough people to go to Six Flags.
49:42
I like these one-offs where location-based attractions where it's at the corner of Main and Main.
49:53
You've got a lot of people coming with, you know, and when people come with money, they're they're they're coming to spend money.
49:59
When the people come to Orlando, they're coming to spend money.
50:05
And so that's what I would That's what I would focus on.
50:07
It would be would be, you know, the the cities itself.
50:11
And is the business model just $30 tickets or $50 tickets or >> they're not. It's like $26 tickets. Yeah.
50:17
And the value, the reason I think I'm really doing well is the value is incredible cuz there's probably four or five things inside of each attraction that if you just went out and paid for it on the street, like I've got these virtual roller coasters.
50:32
In malls, they go for $20 a ride, you know, 3 minutes, 20 bucks.
50:35
With me, you can just keep going and going and going.
50:40
Ropes course, 15, 20 bucks a ride.
50:40
With me, go, you know, laser tag, 15, 20 bucks.
50:46
There's probably five items inside of a WonderWorks that would cost 100 bucks by each by themselves.
50:54
But here, a family of four comes in for 100 bucks.
51:01
And they leave, you know, with a huge grin on themselves, sweating from all the activities, and the value is incredible.
51:10
The thing I love about the business is there's really no fighting.
51:16
Like in in my law business, you know, I'm competing to get the cases and I'm fighting the insurance company that I'm fighting the defense lawyers and everything's a fight.
51:26
The only thing that's a fight here is when somebody comes and says, "I didn't like it. I want my money back."
51:33
And we basically look at the ticket and go, "How long was How long were they there?"
51:37
If they were there for an hour or less, here's your money back.
51:39
When they come and ask for their money back and they were there for 3 hours, we're like, "Get the [ __ ] out of here."
51:48
>> [laughter] >> Is there like a winning strategy?
51:53
Like, okay, the story of an upside-down house that got tossed out of the Bermuda Triangle, that's kind of cool.
52:00
Crime and Punishment's cool.
52:00
What other winning story formulas do you like?
52:05
Well, I have one that I'm going to that I'm looking to build right now and it's called Santa's Chocolate Factory.
52:09
So imagine this is Santa's Chocolate Factory. Nice. Okay.
52:20
And the thing in the middle So envision Here Here's the Here's where this came from.
52:24
Here's where this idea came from.
52:27
So I'm at a Disney one day and I'm sitting at Ghirardelli's.
52:32
And Ghirardelli's is a ice cream chocolate store.
52:33
Right next store was a Christmas store at Disney Village.
52:38
I'm sitting there and then I go into the Christmas store.
52:40
Christmas is, you know, a year-round business in certain places.
52:44
So then I thought, "What could I build that would be phenomenal?"
52:48
So I thought, "Well, Willy Wonka, you got to pay IP for Willy Wonka, but you don't have to pay IP for for Santa Claus."
52:58
So I said, "What about Santa's Chocolate Factory? Santa's living there. This is Santa's house.
53:06
There's a big chocolate factory. There's ice cream.
53:08
This the booths are made out of sleighs.
53:10
Then you got all the merchandise you're going to sell.
53:12
You got Santa Claus there in, you know, in his workshop.
53:18
You got pictures being taken.
53:20
You got elves working there.
53:23
And so my idea is to build this complex of Santa's Chocolate Factory where Santa is and and on the hour every hour at midnight, every hour turns into midnight. The clock turns. Dong dong dong dong.
53:38
The lights go down and all of a sudden the store comes alive. The train starts moving. The bears are moving.
53:45
It's Christmas time on the hour, kind of a a Bellagio moment where people come. It's snowing outside.
53:55
And so that's the next thing that I'm going to do. I love it.
54:01
Have you seen Enchant Enchant Christmas?
54:04
Have you seen this business? Yep.
54:06
But here Think about this what I'm thinking about with this.
54:07
Because the inside's going to be so phenomenal, I'm thinking about doing something that's never been done ever in the history of the world, charging money to come into a retail store. A dollar to come in.
54:23
Now, I don't know if it'll work.
54:23
If it doesn't work, I'll quit charging the dollar.
54:26
But I think I can build something inside so spectacular that people will want to get in there to see the clock strike 12.
54:35
The clock strikes 12, all of a sudden the everybody's up on the counters like Johnny Rockets.
54:43
They're all saying, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."
54:47
There's this 5-minute interlude every hour.
54:53
And I think people will pay to come in and see it.
54:54
So that's my next thing that I'm working on right now.
54:59
Sam, isn't it crazy that he's basically like half Walt Disney, shark, half lawyer shark, you know, Better Call Saul meets Jeff Bezos.
55:07
It's like one of the one of the wildest combinations. That's pretty amazing.
55:12
It's I mean, you've been in the It's It's It's kind of funny.
55:15
There's like a joke here of like you just became a lawyer to fund your carny ambitions.
55:21
And that's pretty badass, to be honest, because, you know, being a lawyer's cool and I'm totally on board with helping the little guy.
55:26
But there's something special about particularly in a world of AI, you know, this is a common theme that Shawn and I have talked about.
55:30
In a world of AI and more digital, it's pretty cool to be out of the house and and screen-free experiences.
55:35
And so I actually find your attraction business almost probably more interesting than your huge law firm. >> I told you.
55:43
I'm I'm, you know, my wife doesn't understand it when I tell her I'm I'm more proud of my attraction business than the law business just because it's so unlikely.
55:54
And what do you think And so that business is 30 What do you think that Do you own the whole thing? Uh I'm almost.
55:58
I had some limited partners.
56:00
Over time, I've bought a lot of them out, but yeah. So what's that worth? 8 X. Quarter billion, yeah.
56:09
What are you doing with malls?
56:11
Are you doing something interesting with malls?
56:14
So what I'm doing with malls is this.
56:16
Everybody's tearing malls down because malls are no good.
56:19
So up in Myrtle Beach, I'm was going to I'm going to build this the I'm building this new uh Downtown Flavortown with Guy Fieri.
56:31
So there was a a There was a mall that was just on its last legs.
56:36
There's an outparcel that has a Bass Pro that kicks ass. So that's that's golden.
56:43
But the mall, what I really wanted out of the mall was I wanted the JCPenney's location.
56:48
It's the the location's fantastic. The mall's just no good.
56:54
I wanted the JCPenney's location to build Downtown Flavortown.
57:00
But then I got stuck with the mall, but I bought the mall I bought it all for an incredibly low price.
57:06
So now the question's going to be, do you level the mall or what do you do?
57:11
What I've decided to do is to do something that's never really been done like this.
57:18
For your viewers, I'm going to Now, you guys seem you'll know the answer to this.
57:22
Are you all familiar with the concept of first principle thinking? Okay?
57:29
Yeah, Elon has popularized this this term.
57:32
And Aristotle taught Elon the term.
57:35
So But so you take these assumptions and you deconstruct them.
57:39
So right now the assumption is if you buy a mall, you tear it down cuz there's nothing you can do with it.
57:47
So I've decided to do some first principle I do a lot of first principle thinking in my businesses.
57:54
So I've decided, "What about What if I take this older mall and with new technology and LED and illusions and all that, what if I take this mall and I don't tear it down?
58:06
I just repurpose it, but I make it a gallery.
58:12
I make the whole mall illusions."
58:16
That that, you know, like when you're at the Venetian and you see those that the the the you're on the water and there's so many things to do with LED.
58:26
So I'm going to take this mall and I'm going to repurpose it and I'm going to call it the gallery.
58:36
And it's going to be a It's going to be the mall is going to be a museum.
58:42
You're going to go to the mall just like you're going to go to Santa's Chocolate Factory.
58:45
You're going to go just to see the inside of the mall.
58:47
You're going to go to see all this and that.
58:50
I'm going to have a zip line from one end to another.
58:54
I'll have my ropes courses in the middle.
58:57
I've got so many cool things.
58:59
So when you go to this mall, most malls are now just torn down.
59:04
That's just That's what you do.
59:07
I'm going to take Elon's first principle thinking and I'm not going to tear the mall down.
59:11
I'm going to make the mall the attraction.
59:16
You're fascinating and your wife, your children, and some of your close co-workers, what would they say it's like working with you?
59:24
Well, I think they would say that uh that I have strong feelings, you know, if if I feel like something is you know, is I don't want to say my way or the highway cuz I I I I do a lot with consensus but once I form my consensus then I execute.
59:42
I mean I'll spend a lot of time going around the horn but once I figure out what it's going to be I execute.
59:54
Uh I would say you know procrastination maybe what they would say I might put off a little bit but I don't see it that way cuz I'm I feel like I'm like even on this mall I'm still thinking of what I'm going to put in it.
1:00:09
I mean over the weekend I was looking at these buildings where they have painted illusions on these different buildings and so you pull up to a building and it looks like it's a you know it looks like it's something but it's not it's an illusion.
1:00:21
So like this weekend I was looking at all these different things.
1:00:26
So it's not really procrastination in my mind. It's thinking. It's thinking. >> Planning. Yeah.
1:00:32
So >> it seems like you probably meet a lot or talk to a lot of entrepreneurs.
1:00:39
If I said to you man so many entrepreneurs just don't get it.
1:00:44
What is it that they don't get that you've that you get?
1:00:47
Well first of all it's I have a game that I play when I drive down roads I'll see a new business coming in and I'll the game is this is it going to make it or not?
1:01:00
So I'll see I'll see an old Burger King being turned into some you know health food store.
1:01:10
And you look over you go is that going to make it or not?
1:01:13
And it's usually you know if they're repurposing an old Burger King they're probably not going to make it.
1:01:19
What I think they make the mistake they want to do it so badly that they try to put a round peg in a square you know it just doesn't work.
1:01:28
They want to do it so badly that they forget location location location location.
1:01:36
So would you summarize that into just planning in advance or just like or basically like if you nail one thing everything else is taken care of? Yeah.
1:01:45
And and I also believe bullets before bombs.
1:01:48
You got to really test things a little bit.
1:01:50
A lot of people try to you know build two at once or three at once.
1:01:54
You got to build that first one that first pilot and really get it down.
1:02:00
And and that's how I do the law firms.
1:02:02
Before I really go big in a city I come in spend some money with ads hire a few lawyers the bullets and then when I feel like catching on then I bring the bombs.
1:02:16
And when other people try to compete with you with cuz you know if I drive I I was in Vegas and in Vegas every single billboard is a personal injury lawyer. It's like insane.
1:02:24
I don't know why I don't know why that is in Vegas but there was a lot of competition.
1:02:30
And when I think about what you did I guess my shortcut answer of like why did he win?
1:02:35
Why did you become the largest law firm and then everybody else is you know playing for second place.
1:02:41
My answer is you were early you were first you know not maybe not the first mover but you were very early and then once you figured out the secret meaning like business is about exploiting secrets in a way.
1:02:51
You you figured something out before everybody else is before it's consensus.
1:02:54
So you figured out hey we can advertise effectively and we can basically like pour money into the ads and get get people get cases out of it.
1:03:05
You were way more aggressive with that that even if other people were advertising they weren't as aggressive with the advertising meaning either putting money and effort into the creative or just reinvesting capital to build the national brand.
1:03:18
And so that I guess that's what I would say is the the thing.
1:03:22
What am I Is that right or what am I missing something that was important in why you won and and everybody else didn't?
1:03:29
Okay you're missing yes you're missing a very big piece.
1:03:31
I think one of you said I don't know if you'd heard me say but one of you was talking about fishing and and I've got a a in my business I call it you know first of all you got to fish first and fish fast.
1:03:45
So there's two sides of my business.
1:03:47
There's catching fish and to catch fish you got to fish first and fish fast and then there's cooking fish. The value of the case.
1:03:59
Where my competition gets beat by me is most of them 95% of them are [ __ ] lawyers.
1:04:10
They're terrible at what they do.
1:04:10
They couldn't try case many of them if they wanted to.
1:04:16
So they have to take the last best offer.
1:04:22
You'll see people bragging hey we settled this case for a million dollars.
1:04:25
Yeah well the case was worth 10 million dollars.
1:04:29
But the problem for them is they couldn't do it.
1:04:32
They didn't know how to do it.
1:04:34
What I did when I was going through all this I started to really look at where does my money come?
1:04:40
20% 20% of my cases are 80% of my money.
1:04:45
But here's where my money really comes.
1:04:48
It comes the Friday before trial.
1:04:52
So they've said no no no no no no no no no no no.
1:04:55
That was Friday before trial.
1:04:58
The Friday before trial a lot of times they'll say okay here it is.
1:05:03
The next time the money comes is during right after jury selection.
1:05:05
We pick a jury they're like we don't like that jury we pay us then.
1:05:08
The third time our money comes is during the trial.
1:05:11
They might say here's the money.
1:05:13
And then the fourth comes is the verdict. I get gigantic verdicts. Gigantic verdicts.
1:05:20
Where they're getting where they're talking about 500,000 I'm I'm I'm getting I got a verdict in your city San Francisco against Google a couple of weeks ago for 500 million dollars.
1:05:35
And so you you know I'm not hunting cockroaches I'm hunting big game.
1:05:39
I'm not I'm not happy just to get a little bit of money.
1:05:45
I want to get exactly what it's worth.
1:05:47
So where my margins where I have separated myself from all of them is results and reputation.
1:05:55
And then the other thing they don't do there's a concept in my law called bad faith.
1:05:59
If there's a million dollars in coverage and they don't pay it they're in bad faith perhaps.
1:06:05
When they come to offer me the million it's too late.
1:06:10
Now most lawyers because they need the money they take the million. I say you. I go get the verdict.
1:06:17
I go get the verdict for 10 million.
1:06:20
You know I got a one a representative state senator this year.
1:06:25
They were offering us nothing nothing.
1:06:26
They finally offered us a million the day of trial was a death case.
1:06:30
I said you know FU and we got a 100 million.
1:06:35
And so where the disconnect is they're not real lawyers. So what have I done?
1:06:42
I've got a stable of race horses that get big verdicts.
1:06:46
I got people who that's all they do.
1:06:49
They just go around the country.
1:06:50
They go from here to here to here to here to here to here.
1:06:52
They don't even live in the cities.
1:06:53
They just parachute in and I call it the Walter Payton rule.
1:06:58
When Walter Payton played for the Bears he got the ball 50 times a game.
1:07:05
When it was fourth and goal he always got it.
1:07:06
So I've got my Walter Paytons.
1:07:06
I got my Walter Paytons who I parachute in and they get these big verdicts.
1:07:13
So my differentiator between me and my competition is most of them are not real lawyers.
1:07:22
They're marketing people who take the last best offer.
1:07:27
They're and their margins are terrible.
1:07:29
Now on the mar the cases I refer out the Google law firm my margins on those cases my margins in my business about 30 35% but my margins on my referrals is 85 90%.
1:07:46
And that business getting bigger and bigger and bigger as my national footprint gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
1:07:50
So I got two sides of the business.
1:07:52
I got the stuff I do internally but then I got the cases I refer out and when I refer them out to my Uber drivers it's not a Uber driver it's Mario Andretti that I'm referring these these customers to. I got goosebumps John. I love that answer. That was incredible.
1:08:11
That should be your next infomercial. That was incredible. John's a cowboy.
1:08:13
I mean you got this cowboy energy which we love.
1:08:17
We love cow we know we have a joke we call ourselves manifest cowboys cuz we like dream up stuff and make it happen.
1:08:22
Cuz we're hoping other people start to call us that and we we get to stop saying it ourselves. That'd be great.
1:08:26
When you nickname yourself it's not as cool but I think you actually are the manifest cowboy.
1:08:29
Law firms can't really be held by non-lawyers right?
1:08:31
So do you own the I guess it's a partnership but do you own a huge chunk of this firm yourself?
1:08:37
No there's no investors right? No.
1:08:39
I got it's mainly me and my family but I do have a lot of partners in it because I believe that look when I look at this firm or all my businesses I always envision like I'm building a circus and I want to build the greatest show on the earth.
1:08:55
When you see some of these circuses in in shopping centers you know that they got an elephant with one tusk and a drunk clown and a seal that's caught and it's a [ __ ] circus.
1:09:07
The circus I'm building is the greatest show on earth.
1:09:13
Why do people go to the circus?
1:09:13
They go there for two reasons.
1:09:15
One they want to see the lions and the tigers eat the man.
1:09:18
They want that's why they want to that's why they go.
1:09:20
They want to see him and then they want to see the great Wallenda fall off to his death.
1:09:24
That's why they're at the circus.
1:09:27
That's why they go to NASCAR.
1:09:29
They're hoping that somebody is going to die. How do you not die?
1:09:37
Well, with the animals, you feed them and you love them.
1:09:39
I've got a lot of partners who make a lot of money because they got a piece of this deal.
1:09:46
The second way is you focus.
1:09:46
You're up there on that high wire and you got to pay attention.
1:09:51
You got to get from here to there.
1:09:55
So, in building this firm, I got three rules.
1:09:57
Love them, feed them, focus.
1:10:02
And then you can build the greatest show on Earth. You're very successful.
1:10:06
You've You've won so many times in life.
1:10:07
Has there ever been a point where the um the businesses or the firm almost went under because you said that you're a pretty risk risk on person.
1:10:15
Has um have you almost had to pay the consequences because of that?
1:10:21
I don't know about pay the consequences, but I've been Look, I sent a guy up to Atlanta.
1:10:25
When I opened up Atlanta, I sent the wrong guy up there.
1:10:27
By the time I got him out, we were $14 million in the hole.
1:10:31
It It just kept, you know, ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- And uh he was a disaster.
1:10:38
But, you know, now he's gone and my team they mean Atlanta makes a you know, prince money.
1:10:45
So, that was Atlanta was tough.
1:10:45
I've had a couple of cities that didn't do as well as I hoped like Memphis.
1:10:50
So, yeah, I've had I've had some, you know, I've had some things not do well.
1:10:54
I had a uh I built a small amusement park called Magical Midway that I ended up selling, lost a million bucks.
1:11:02
But, that doesn't bother me because nobody bats a thousand.
1:11:07
I mean, if you bat if you bat 300, you're in the Hall of Fame.
1:11:13
You know, all you got to do is get on base one out of three times and you're in the Hall of Fame.
1:11:16
Like we talked about earlier, Warren Buffett has five big stocks.
1:11:20
You take those stocks away, he's not Warren Buffett anymore.
1:11:23
And he's the one He's the first person who tells you that.
1:11:28
That That's why I love him so much.
1:11:29
That's why I have so much Berkshire Hathaway stock.
1:11:33
I mean, he he He's my guy.
1:11:35
You've been doing a lot of media.
1:11:35
I saw you on this Jubilee thing and I hadn't known of who you were before that.
1:11:38
And I was like, what the hell?
1:11:39
Why would you want to do that?
1:11:41
You came off You came off pretty good.
1:11:43
You came off pretty good.
1:11:44
You've done a really good job of judoing like a bunch of these like uh gotcha moments.
1:11:48
Um so, that's been pretty cool.
1:11:50
What are you going to do?
1:11:51
You going to try to run for office one day? I mean, what's going on?
1:11:53
Why are you Why do you care about being uh Why do you care about being out there? Fish. I want fish. I want to catch fish.
1:12:01
And uh you know, I do these things called John and 60s.
1:12:04
But, look, it in my I have been had some success running for office.
1:12:10
Look, I don't know about that.
1:12:11
But, but in Florida, with my brother, the brother I told you about that got hurt, he he he needed marijuana desperately to help his situation.
1:12:21
I ran a constitutional amendment twice in Florida to legalize medical marijuana.
1:12:27
I spent tens of millions of dollars to to pass it.
1:12:32
And then later, when you when you have when you make money, I believe that we have an obligation, a civic obligation, a moral obligation to give back.
1:12:42
One of the things that has One of the things that I believe that where the country's headed the wrong direction and you're starting to hear about it is affordability.
1:12:52
It's all because people aren't paid enough money.
1:12:55
That's That's the affordability problem.
1:12:58
The The minimum wage in America is $8 an hour.
1:13:02
So, what I did with my own money here in Florida is I ran a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
1:13:12
And everybody told me again, you know, you're you're you're you're Nobody That's never going to happen. Well, it did happen.
1:13:20
And so, I raised the minimum wage in Florida to fifth from $8 to $15 an hour.
1:13:26
So, because of those constitutional amendments, I became almost like a politician in this state.
1:13:33
And everybody's like, you We want him to run for governor.
1:13:35
We want you to run for governor.
1:13:36
When I go to the When I would go to the White House, they would take me to the side and show me polling about my poll numbers.
1:13:45
So, you think about it, but then you got to think about the job itself.
1:13:50
I mean, I would have trouble with the job itself.
1:13:53
I live in Maui, you know, 5 months out of the year, which I love I love it out there.
1:13:57
And I'm 69, so I don't know.
1:14:00
But, really what I'm doing is in this day and time, it's just being out there.
1:14:06
And if somebody sees me and they're and they're favorably disposed by the Jubilee or I was just on this thing this weekend that printed called the Business Insider.
1:14:19
Yeah, that was a good interview. I saw that. >> So, I just did that.
1:14:20
So, my thought is it's kind of back to that, you know, why bother?
1:14:26
You know, this, you know, some people are going to see this and some people are not going to like me, but some people are.
1:14:34
And look, you can become president with if 51% of the people like you.
1:14:36
You can get rich as hell if you 51% of the people use you.
1:14:42
So, I look at these things as new age marketing where people get to see me.
1:14:49
You know, with my ads, I look like I'm, you know, working at a funeral home, you know, with what I'm selling.
1:14:57
So, by doing these things, they're like, you know, that guy actually has a personality.
1:15:01
He's not a, you know, a gravedigger.
1:15:06
But, we want to make sure there's enough people watching before I'm going to >> [laughter] >> going to do it. So, like and subscribe. Leave a comment. Yes.
1:15:14
Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click Well, this has been awesome, man.
1:15:18
I appreciate you coming on.
1:15:19
Uh shout out your new book.
1:15:21
It's being edited right now.
1:15:23
It's called Life is Luck, The Paperboy. You're the best. That's it. That's the pod.