Small Business Legal – David Sparks advises and starts businesses

Greetings folks, and welcome to the Small business show at businessshow.co episode number 39 for Wednesday, November 4, 2015 here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean, coming to you from Lafayette, California.

How goes it, Shannon?

It's good. You know, I usually don't like talk about the weather, but since we actually got some rain, I feel compelled to mention that it's actually wet on the ground here what's kind of drying up, but it got some snow up in the mountains as well. So all good stuff for California.

Good. Well, and along those same lines, we have Southern California represented on the show today. David Sparks, welcome to the business Small Business Show.

Thank you, Dave, for having me on. I'm kind of excited. I'm a little disappointed. I realized episode 39, I should have waited three more and then I could have been 42. But. Yes, but that's okay. And we did get rain in Southern California too, Shannon, which.

That's great.

We didn't even know what that stuff was. This water was falling out of the sky and it was all, what the heck is this?

Yeah, that's great. It's great.

I think it'll be okay. You guys will suffer through it. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, we've done it before. We'll do it. No worries. It'll be fine.

So, David, you and I have been friends and podcasting colleagues on the Mac side for a very long time, but why don't you tell us. But you do something else as your profession and I think it all sort of comes together and we're going to talk about that here today. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what that is?

Yeah, I'm. In addition to being a nerd, I'm a lawyer and I've been practicing law now 22 years. I'm a business lawyer, represent a lot of small to medium sized companies and kind of deal with their problems. I tell people I'm. You guys see the Godfather?

Yeah.

I'm like De Niro, but my clients are not, you know, they're not as. No, not De Niro.

Yeah.

You're the consigliere.

Yeah, yeah. What's that actor's name? I have a whole shtick and I just blew it already. But anyway, I'm that guy and. But my clients don't like take horses heads off. Instead they like design software and you know, do may open restaurants and do things like that. Yeah, but, but it's fun. You know, I'm, I'm A business lawyer. I help out people and. And I've been doing it for a long time. At the same time, I was living this double life as a nerd. And in February of this year, I stuck it to the man and left my firm and went out on my own.

Stuck it to the man.

Stuck it to the man. So you were this fir. You were with this firm. I believe if I just remember from our kind of casual conversations, you were with this firm for quite a while before you to. To strike out on your own. Is that right?

Yeah, from the inception, basically.

Were you a part.

Were you a partner in that firm?

Sort of. Not really, but. Not really, but sort of. It's, you know, the law firms don't. Yeah, exactly. But the. I. Well, I guess there's kind of a funny middle story in there. I got out of law school. I was a. I worked with a federal judge. So I had. I had some good chops, good grades, you know, and I had some good opportunities. And I chose to go with a small firm because I always figured I would never fit into a big company. And about halfway through my career with the firm, I just left. I had a brief stint at a large firm where I had a case that went really well against a large firm. They offered me a whole bunch of money to go work for them. And I got there, and I worked there for like two weeks and said, this is not for me, and went back to my old firm.

So you were right.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not wired for the politics of a big office, but either way. So I've been with. I was largely with a small firm for most of my career, and now.

I'm out on my own, an even smaller firm. Right.

Yeah.

This is just you now, right?

Yeah. And it's totally. I'm using all my nerd powers for my benefit. You know, I've got a lot of stuff. I've got, you know, I've got people helping me in remote ways. You know, it's not like the traditional thing where you go get an office and two or three secretaries and all that other stuff. I don't. I don't do any of that stuff.

So. Yeah, let's dig into that. Are you using, you know, like, elance style offshore labor and that, that kind of thing?

Well, what I'm. My biggest. I would. My joke is my biggest secretary is Hazel, which is an app on the Mac that, like, auto files and does a lot of my work for me. Text expander. I mean, the usual gamut of things. But I also have, I use Ruby Receptionist, which is out of Portland. They're like Seal Team 6 for phone answering companies.

Okay.

And so I've got a phone number. If you call, a very nice, perky person answers the phone and says it sparks law and ask you what you need and connects to my cell phone. I've got a temporary. Yeah, I've got, you know, they've got the shared space offices now. You do where you don't have a physi. You know, you've got a, you've basically got an address. If I want, I can, yeah, yeah, I can rent an office, I can rent a conference room for them. But most of my, my clients are small businesses and I do this thing where I call riding the circuit, you know, once every two or three weeks I get in my car and drive over Southern California and meet with clients at their offices. And they love it. You know, it's like a lawyer that does house calls. And I like it because I learn more about their problems and what's going on. I was at a construction client, kind of funny story a couple weeks ago, and I went to get a glass of water in their little cafeteria and there was a Playboy calendar hanging on the wall. I'm like, that shouldn't be there in 2015. So I tore it off the wall. I go into the CEO's office and I throw it in his trash can. And he says, what'd you do that for? I said, I just saved you a lawsuit. Shut up. You know, that's good. That's good. I like that.

Yeah. Yeah. You really are like the lady that does house calls. Yeah.

Yeah. So I go around to my clients so I don't meet them too often at my office. And I work from my home probably three days a week. And I love it. I just love it. Every bit of it.

That's awesome. Yeah. And I mean, you said you use the regular gamut of tools, but you use the regular gamut of tools that your, you know, Mac geek brethren use. Not that you're, you're, you know, law practicing brethren use. Necessary.

Oh yeah. They have no clue. It's like my old firm, it was like sending out bills was like a two day process. And with my practice, I get my bills out in like a couple hours. And then even like when I create, I don't know how you know this audience, how much your audience on this show cares about geeky stuff, but when I a PDF appears on my computer with a bill and a client name, the computer automatically names it Puts it in the appropriate file and opens up an email, a personalized email to the client with me giving it to them along with the credit card payment instruction. I mean, all this stuff just happens and it just cuts so much time off. At some point I'm going to. Dave, get into. And Shannon, I'm going to get into an executive assistant. I think that's in my future, but I'm still just figuring out what parts of this world I would want to offload.

Right, right.

And it sounds like that, you know, that grasp that you had of technology and support systems, you know, whether it's automated or on the Mac or otherwise, certainly must have assisted you in making that decision of. Of kind of stepping out, you know, stepping out the door on. Onto your. Your own.

Is that right? Yeah. Then that's a whole nother conversation. I want to come back to that because it was really hard for me to leave. But the. I speak every year at the American Bar Association. They have what they call the tech show. I call it ground zero for legal nerds. All the lawyers that are kind of techie go to the show in Chicago. And I've been on the faculty for many years. And as a result, I'm friends with a lot of the guys at the American Bar association who write the books about different things. So when I decided to make the move, I was corresponding with a friend of mine who wrote the book about going solo. That's what attorneys call when you go out on your own. And he says the two reasons people fail is, number one, they don't have any personality to kind of get clients. They're just good at researching in the back room and not good at working with clients. He says you'll have no problem with that. And he says the other big reason people fail is because they just don't get their arms around the administrative end. And he said, you're such a nerd. That'll be easy for you. And he was right. It took longer than I wanted it to, but I did get everything sorted out eventually.

Well, it is important to kind of mention that in addition, or as a part of your sort of Mac nerdery world, you've written several books teaching people how to do a lot of the things that you're now doing in your own business, specifically being paperless and all of that stuff. Right.

You know, my paperless book got used at NASA, I'm told. So I'm thinking, well, I could probably use that system to run my law practice too.

There you go. Nice.

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, exactly. But it's been really fun. I mean, but to get back to Shannon's question, man, was it hard for me to leave? I, you know, it's, I had depression era parents and they, they were very conservative and I'm conservative fiscally, you know, and so they, they said, you know, you get a good job and you hold onto that job until, you know, they pry it out of your cold, dead hands, you know, and, and in their generation, that made a lot of sense. And, you know, just the idea, I've got a kid in college and the idea of saying, okay, I've got a good paying job that has benefits, I'm just going to tell them I'm leaving. You know, my parents, they actually, in hindsight, I think if they were around, they would have been all for it. But that programming in me made it really difficult to, to do that. And it took kind of like, you know, a couple big events at the office to make me say, you know what, I need to rethink all of this.

Yep. Well, good on you for doing it. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of people see those warning signs and I mean, they can be anything. They can be completely internal as well. And I don't. And we don't need to get into whichever way it went with you. But, you know, trusting your gut, like, wow, this just isn't for me. Even if everything's going swimmingly to the outside world, you gotta, you know, if, if that fire burns in you, you gotta go with it.

Yeah, well, it wasn't like I got along with people I worked with. I still get along with them and I still do do some work with them, frankly. But the, but the thing is, you know, when you're in a firm, you're subject to the needs of the firm. And I was kind of the guy that got put into cases that were having trouble or whatever, and they fire me out of a cannon and let me go deal with it. But in addition to being a lawyer, I also had this side thing, which is really not just a little side thing. It's like a big part of my life. Writing these books and producing the podcasts and doing the things I do, and it was getting where those things were crashing into each other. And I just had to make some tough choices. And I looked at the amount of clients that were what I would consider my own, and I said, you know, if I took them with me, I'm not going to make as much money as I make at the firm. But I'd make some money and I'd have more time to do the other stuff. And it's not that I wanted to stop being a lawyer at all. I mean, that's one of the ways people talking about this. Well, you just wanted to stop being a lawyer. No, I love being a lawyer. I'm still a lawyer. I probably still spend most of my time being a lawyer, but I just wanted to have more control over who I worked with and hopefully have the ability to decide when I want to say, okay, I'm going to take a couple weeks off and focus on a book now. And now I have that. So it's really great.

That's awesome. Yeah.

And, you know, we've been recently talking on the show about, you know, having some kind of safety net or some kind of things, which, you know, there's different schools and thoughts and that. But it sounds like, you know, what you did was kind of. You created your safety net first as you went along. So, you know, I think that's a really important thing to get across to folks. And you took. You said you took some time off and everything, but I can imagine you've got, you know, many late nights or early mornings or whenever, doing all this extra, if you will, extra work to grow your own business, your own brand.

Yeah, well, I mean, really, I've grown it over something like 10 years. And, you know, when I started doing the Max Sparky stuff, I said, well, I'm just going to spend 15 minutes a day on this. And quickly it became more. Because I love it. And I made a lot of great friends like Dave, and it became a big passion and part of my life. But it also, I developed it to a point where I was making some income on it. I have books for sale. I guess one of the things I could tell you about. I don't know if you guys are interested in this. I got sick right after I left and I got some kidney stones. I mean, who the heck gets kidney stones, you know, And. But they're. If you ever had them, you're miserable. I mean, it is. It is just terrible. One of my clients had. Had four babies and she had kidney stones. And I called her, I said, yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't get the contract. You're going to talk about this kidney stone that's been driving me nuts. She says, oh, I had kidney stones and four babies, and I would rather have another baby than another kidney stone.

Yeah.

Ouch. And it's just. I've heard that. Yeah, it's terrible. It's Terrible. But one of the things is you're out on your own now, and you get sick in a way that for a month, you're really not going to get much work done, and you've just got your clients to go with you, and you don't want their first lesson to them to be that, oh, yeah, when my lawyer goes out on his own and he gets sick, my work doesn't get done, you know, because that's not the message you want to send. So I was working my butt off, you know, one. When not, you know, very ill, to kind of keep up with it, but I was just barely keeping up. And. And I didn't make much money then, but I did have residual income coming in from the books. And, you know, I'm not, like, getting Hawaii money from the books, but it's. It's enough to help, you know, carry the family. So if you have a couple rough patches, that was. That was something I totally didn't anticipate and was hugely helpful.

Yeah, that's huge. I mean, multiple revenue streams. We talk about that all the time as well. And that's just, you know, I'm sure as. At the time, as you were setting those things up, maybe they didn't, you know, appear that someday you'd be looking back on that, going, yeah, look at. I've got this series of books, and it's going to come through for me. But I really commend you for developing that over time. That's just a huge positive.

You almost developed it. I don't want to say by accident because I. That's completely incorrect. It was intentional. Right. But, you know, perhaps without realizing it, you know, your passions drove you to create these multiple income streams. And, you know, I really feel like that's one of the signs of a true entrepreneur. There's a lot of people that go into business for themselves for a lot of reasons, but the entrepreneurs, to me are the people that, without even thinking about it, just automatically need to have several income streams, you know, in various ways.

Yeah, well. Or just. They just have. I mean, I've always said that my problem is I have too many interests. There's so much I want to do.

Right.

I can't even stop, you know, the. I started working from home, and I used to be a professional saxophonist. So I was getting out and playing my circle of fifths. I'm like, what am I doing? I don't have time for all this stuff. But it is funny because I. I always feel like I think at some level, I Knew I wanted to do this for a long time, but it was terrified to even admit to myself that I was considering it. And I was building up this other stuff with the. Max Sparky with kind of like my subconscious had a separate plan. Does that make sense? I mean, it's like you're fooling yourself. And, and what happened was at the, at the firm, I just. They had me on a really big case, and I took care of the case. Everything went well. But when I stepped back and looked at the, like, the four months leading up, I had given all my time to that, and everything else was going to heck. And I'm like, you know, I want to have control of this in the future. And, you know, I always feel like that the books I write and some of the stuff I do, Max Sparky, some of the best stuff I've ever done in my life, of everything I've done, and some of the stuff I'm most proud of. So why wouldn't I try and create a circumstance where I could have a little bit more time to do some more of that?

Yeah, for sure.

Logically, it makes sense, but. But it's terrifying, like you said. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah.

One, in college, I got to pay for health care. I got, you know, I mean, all this stuff. And, and, and, and it happened, though, and I was able to do it, and, and it worked out great. I mean, not only did the. The clients I thought would come with me came with me, and they've kept me busy. I got this huge number. I've probably, you know, doubled my expected legal revenue because I've picked up a bunch of clients from the community. I mean, from the Mac community, and people. There's. There's a lot of software developers said, oh, I heard you went on your own. I need you to write a contract for me, or whatever. And. And I had no idea that was going to happen.

Well, you. You should have. I mean, in retrospect, that should have been a big part. I. I thought that that was a big part of your plan, even.

No, I had no expectations of it.

Awesome.

You know, and it was probably shortsightedness that I didn't. But who says I'm good at this stuff? But there was a funny accident, right? Yeah. I mean, there was a. There was a podcast. I wish I had saved it, but I didn't because I was too busy to think about. But somebody in Australia, some marketing guy, did a podcast years ago, and I guess it was like two years ago, and someone sent me a link to it. And that was a whole show on me. And these two marketing guys had. Had written up, did this podcast and they. They went back and they want. They wanted to talk about building a personal brand. And they went back and looked at when I started Max Sparky and when I started doing the speaking gigs and when the books started releasing and just I did some Macworld speaking and they went and put together this line. They said, well, see, this is a good example of how you make a plan to build this personal brand. And they said, you could see every time he got to one step, then he went to the next. And I wrote the guys an email. I said, you guys make me sound way smarter than I actually am because I've been faking this whole thing. I just do what seems natural whenever I get to there, but I have nothing written down and no plan. Plan at all. And anyway, but it worked.

I mean, and that's. That's the thing is. Yeah. You're doing what just seems like the next thing to do and, you know, it makes sense.

Well, it sounds like that's your next book, man, is. Is how to. How to build your personal brand.

Oh, yeah, right.

For sure.

Well, you. You. I mean, you know how to do it. You just aren't necessarily aware of the nuances of it, so.

Yeah, exactly.

Yep.

Just work hard, that's all.

Well, and I think that, as, you know, to your point earlier, you want to do so many different things, and sometimes I find myself in that position too, where you're just like, okay, I don't know if I really want to do this, but how much time do I have? And this kind of thing? And then you look at it, and then later you realize, wow, if I hadn't done that, look where, you know, I wouldn't be where I am today.

Yeah. Yeah.

And from the outside, it looks awesome. And that's what everybody sees. They don't see that. You know, it's like before you're going onto a speaking gig or an engagement engagement, you know, you're butterflies and nervous and everything else, and you walk out and do it, and everybody's like, man, you're just such a natural.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, that's great.

Well, I mean, it's. It's the. That's the whole hindsight thing. Right. Paths only make sense looking backwards.

Yeah.

In that sense. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's been a. It's been a great ride for me the last, you know, six or seven months as I've gotten this thing off to the ground and I'm finally starting to kind of get my arms around what's happening and, you know, starting to make some better decisions about some of the pieces of it.

That's good. You know, I was listening to. We haven't really talked about your podcast very much, but your podcast, especially the one on, you know, when you went out on your own. And what I really picked up on was your, you seem very passionate about the flexibility that it gives you in your life. You know, you told a story about being able to work early and then go out and have these fancy donuts, you know, with your daughter and that kind of thing. And yeah, that is just. That's awesome. And, you know, speak to that a little bit more about the, the power of that flexibility.

Well, I mean, my kids are real important to me and that, that was one of the, I think the shackles keeping me at the safe job was. I always, you know, I want to take care of my family and I want to be a good provider. But I also felt like, and this is no fault of the people I was working with, but just, you know, being in the firm and being in the situation where I didn't hold as much control over my schedule and time, it was, it was bringing me down and I could tell I was coming home, you know, and it wasn't the example I wanted to set for my kids. So one of the reasons, just like when you hear people say, well, getting divorced makes more sense because you don't want the kids to grow up in a house where they think, you know, this is a normal relationship. I didn't want my kids thinking, that's kind of a normal feeling you should have about your work. And so I decided that was one of the things that weighed into me deciding to leave. But I always, because I was so busy with the firm, it was very difficult for me to get away for little bits of time. And that has totally changed with the new order. Granted, that might mean I work late into the night or on a weekend or something, but whenever I want during the week to get away, I can. I mean, I got a text message from my 19 year old. She's a sophomore in college, and the college she goes to is relatively local. So she's going to be in town this afternoon and she says, hey, you want to go to Starbucks with me? And because there's a local Starbucks where they've got this big table and we sit there and I do legal work and she does homework for a couple hours and we talk and she just wanted me to do that with her. I mean, when your 19 year old wants you to do something, you just do it, you know, and, and, you know, I don't know. If she wanted me to go buy crack with her, I'd probably go buy it with her because it'd be something to do with her. Right. But the. But she wants me to go study with her. And, and the.

You Californians and your crazy laws. I'm not sure about this.

You know what I mean? It's just like the fact that we have anything we can do and talk about when she's at that age is great. So. And, and that's an option that I have now that I did not have before.

It's priceless, man.

It really is. Yeah, it's. Well, I told my wife, I said, you know, I have to get this right, because if I don't, I'm unhirable now. I don't think I could go back to work where I had to go to somebody's meeting when I didn't want to.

Welcome to the club, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Patently unhappy, unemployable. That's what you should have called this podcast, Shannon.

Yeah, that is good. I like that. I like that.

And, and by the way, my wife was like one of my biggest cheerleaders in all this. I mean, and I think that is something that you need. I mean, if she had been resistant to me leaving, it would have been really hard for me to leave. But her attitude was, you know, because I was looking at, like, I said, oh, healthcare. You know, it's going to be like, you know, fifteen hundred dollars a month for our family to buy health care. And she's like, eff it, I'll go get a job if I have to. Don't worry about it. You know, just, you know, and that gives you a lot of freedom.

We should have spouses on the show sometime and talk about that angle of, you know, how you support. Because we always talk about it, how critically important it is to have a support structure in place. And that would be a fascinating show.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great, that's a great idea, Shannon.

I'm writing it down.

Good. All right. Good.

Yeah. So many people I know, though, their spouses are the ones who said, I've been telling him or her to do it for years, you know. Yeah, but. But you know, we care, especially the people who are primary caregivers in their family or, you know, breadwinners, I guess. Yeah, there is, you know, you are conscious of that and, you know, that, look, if I used to be, you know, when you're in college, if you screw up, the only person that pays a price is you. But, you know, once you've got kids and a spouse, if you screw up, they all pay the price. And that, that's not a, that's not an easy thing to, to accommodate change.

No.

I think that's what keeps so many people from taking the leap.

Right.

And Jason Snell, my friend Jason, who. Former editor of Macworld. And he's also out on his own. You guys should talk to him. But he was telling me at one point that when he bought his house, I don't know the exact context, but somebody at the office said, oh, one of the managers said, oh, that's great. Now we have you. They said something to him like that as an employer.

I've thought that before.

Yeah, it's.

I mean, not. I, I'm not. It's not one of those thoughts that, that I'm like, proud of and, you know, Machiavellian about, but it's like, oh, hey, they bought a car. Yeah, yeah, they're in. You know, they feel comfortable here. They're not going anywhere. You know, it is a sign now, saying to somebody, we've got our hooks into you. That's not that cool. But it, it is a sign, right, that. Okay, they're gonna stick around. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. So I'm curious. We love stories here, and you've actually shared quite a few. Any favorite work or business related story that you've got that you can share with us?

The outcry of support from clients and friends was just humbling when I did it. I mean, I don't have any specific story, but there's a million little ones of people saying, oh, I'm so happy for you and I really want to help you out and you've been great and you've taken, you know, you've taken care of me in some really hard times and I'll be there for you. And it just, you know, it's one of those things. You spend a career as a lawyer. I mean, your job is, in my opinion, to help people. I mean, people come to you with really hard problems and you try and solve them for them and, and you don't really think about getting much back from them because it's a service. You know, you're paid to do a service, but when people come to you and tell you how much you've meant and how much they want to support you, that, boy, that is really heartwarming.

That's awesome. That's a good thing.

And I think that speaks to how you set yourself up in a very sincere way to be a part of the community, whether it's the legal aspect or the Mac community. That seems to have given you a lot. And that's. I would encourage anyone, whatever industry you're in or business or passion you have that you want to pursue is become some kind of support structure, get involved in that community.

Yeah. I always told people who, on the nerd side, they say, I want to get involved with this stuff like you have. And what do you suggest I do? And my first advice is give away a lot of stuff. Create a website that has good shareable content and don't charge people for it. Just share a lot of good stuff and at some point people will appreciate what you've done. And if you occasionally put a thing out there, they'll buy it. You know, I know some people buy my books that don't read them because they like me and they like the stuff I do and, and that's fine if that's what you want to do, but hopefully you read it too. You know, it's.

They are good books. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. But the. It's really. I think that's, that's the key to it all. And I don't know, it's like the other thing that I thought was really cool about this for me was because I have just this ridiculously low overhead because you. I've kind of nerded out the law business. I don't have to. Lawyers are always known for billing like crazy. When I first started being trained as a lawyer, senior lawyer told me, well, if you're thinking about a case while you're in the shower, you should bill for it. I know that's creepy. Let's put that part aside. But just the whole mentality of the legal industry is so much about where can I bill time? Because a lawyer makes money by giving their time. And if you give your time away, you don't get paid at all. So you got to figure out some way around that. But now that I'm out on my own, I'm able to explore with different models. Like, I do a lot of this stuff with some of my software clients. I do these flat fee things where I say, okay, you need me to do this, it'll be X dollars. And then you don't have to worry about time when we get on the phone to talk to each other. You don't have to look at your Watch. And that's kind of unique in my business, but going out on my own gave me the option to do that.

Yeah, well, and you can, and you get to experiment and. Yeah, yeah. And five years from now, you might be in a whole different. You're going to have a whole different structure or maybe you won't. Maybe this one works perfectly for, you know, for you and your clients. And that's great. Yep.

But it's been nice being able to have more of a collaborative relationship because I, I've always felt that the, the billable hour feels like, you know, I'm going to be a lawyer here for a minute. But it feels like an inherent, almost conflict of interest. It's like, and I know there are lawyers out there that do that. They'll, if there's an easy way or a hard way to do something, they'll elect the hard way because they make more money on the hard way and they make less money on the easy way. And it's just always just really stuck in my craw when you see clients that have those experiences, because it hurts me and the whole profession. But, you know, in my little way, in this little practice of mine, I'm able to, you know, stick it to the man another way.

That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome.

That's very cool. I think that, you know, that must be the entrepreneurial part of you that like that flat rate tech thing because, you know, I love that too. And you always seem to be looking for how do I service the customer, that they're going to be happily, you know, at the outcome and be like pleasantly surprised instead of bitterly disappointed, you know.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

We always say here, Sorry, Shannon, to interrupt.

Oh, no, that's fine.

We always say here that every business is the customer service business. Now the problem is a lot of business owners don't necessarily realize that. And I think probably, perhaps doubly true for attorneys, especially attorneys kind of in the trenches that aren't running their own, their own show. You know, you just taught Bill, Bill, Bill. Whereas you were thoughtful about it, but in a good way for your business. Right. You, you said, wait a minute, I know that my customers are going to be, you know, these are software developers, probably not, you know, the top, you know, 10th of 1% that are making millions. So they're going to be watching every penny. If they can know when they walk in the door what this, whatever they need is going to cost them. Awesome. You know that, I mean, that's, that's, that's Customer service right there is what that is.

And sometimes I lose money on those deals and sometimes I make it, but overall, it generally works. And if it doesn't, that's my fault because I priced it wrong.

Correct. Yeah. You can tweak your pricing down the road. That's right. Yep.

And you don't know, you know, those things that maybe you do that, oh, I didn't make much money or I lost money on that. You just don't know how it comes back to you in other ways later. Sure. You know, a referral or this or that. And it's just, you know, I'm a firm believer in the, you know, kind of generating goodwill, karma, if you will. And I think that's one of the secret sauces of running your business, is not always chasing the last penny.

Yeah, exactly. In fact, one of the best bits of advice going back to my, you know, my brain trust at the American Bar association was I talked to the marketing guy when I started to net my website. And so if I'm marketing, I should get my website right. It's sparksesq.com is my loss. I. And he told me, well, go look at websites, lawyer websites, and see what you like and what you hate. And what I like, or actually what I hate about almost all lawyer websites is they all say the same nonsense. It's like they're all copies of the same thing. They all have generally the same design. They all say, we're results oriented, blah, blah, blah, whatever, and it's all just garbage in. And so I decided, what if I wrote my website from the first person? So I wrote a website for a law practice that I tell my story of who I am, what kind of lawyer I am, what I'm good at, what I'm not good at. And one of the marketing guys says, you should write the website not only to attract clients, but to repel the kinds of clients you don't like. And I'm like, oh, that's a great idea. Because, like, one of the things about me is I'm not Rambo litigator. I mean, I routinely manage cases very efficiently, and there's a bunch of lawyers out there that pride themselves on making everything expensive, and they think that's some kind of big feather in their cap. And in my experience, those lawyers really don't actually know how to try cases. I'm probably generalizing, but that's kind of my feeling. So I don't want the client that's going to say, I want you to sue them into oblivion and you know, that's just not, yeah, that's not, that's not your thing. That doesn't, I know what they're going to say at the end of the case and they're going to be very unhappy with the amount of money they spent versus what they got. And I just don't want to be part of that. And, and I said, what a great idea to write your website, not only to attract clients, but to repel clients you don't want. And I said, and, and it's worked because largely the people who come and find me are people who buy into my, my philosophy about how to take care of your, your legal needs.

Yeah, that's great. I can remember being kind of a hot headed young business person, you know, a long, long time ago and going to my attorney at the time and saying, oh, we got to go after these guys. Look what they did, look how we're injured, yada, yada, yada. And I was so shocked to hear, you know, let me tell you how that's going to work out. This is what it's going to, this is what it's going to cost, and there's no guarantee it's going to be this. And you're going to be miserable. You're going to take your eye off your business and it's going to hurt your business in other ways. And I, now, I look, I'm like, God, that was brilliant. And I still have the same attorney. Maybe that's one of the reasons why.

That'S probably why you have them. And then he probably told you, and at the end, after you spend 50, $100,000 on lawyers and I get you a judgment, the other side's going to declare bankruptcy and you're not going to get any money.

Yeah.

Collection is, you know, three quarters of the battle.

Right.

I guess, you know.

Oh, so you shared, you shared some advice with me, Shannon, years ago when I've only really had to sue people twice, which was, which was good. And they both worked out swimmingly. But that notwithstanding, you said, be careful, man, lawsuits are like spiders. They get into every aspect of your life. And I thought, oh man, it's so true.

Well, I also, my standard statement is a lawsuit is like a bonfire of 100 bills. And, and that's literally what it is. And so, so make sure if you're, and sometimes it's worth it.

Yep.

I mean, I, I, litigation, I was in trial about eight months ago. The, the, and sometimes it's worth it. But make sure that if you're going to Have a bonfire of hundred dollar bills. There's a pile of $1,000 bills at the other end.

Yep.

Yeah, very, very good point.

Yeah, you got to have a plan all the way through. And I think you're, you're to your point, collections needs to be a part of that plan from the day you file that suit. Because if it's not, what's the point?

And it's a huge distraction. And yeah, it's a huge distraction.

Right.

I, I just had a, I mean war stories. I just had a client call me and they, he had someone basically steal his name on the Internet. You know, they had created a website with my client's business name and done some very tricky things with Google, which I'll tell you someday offline. It was pretty crazy what they did, but client was ready to, you know, go, you know, jihad style litigation. And I'm like okay, well what do you really want out of this? Because as I, as I look at these people, their fly by night, you know, I can get you a million dollar judgment but they're probably not going to have it and it's going to cost a lot. And he says well what I really want is them to stop. And I said well that's, that's realistic and something I may be able to do for you a lot faster than with a two year lawsuit. And I was able to, I got a hold of and their lawyer and let explain to them what we were going to do to them if they didn't fix it. And within a week the whole thing was wrapped up. And then had lunch with the client recently, says, you know, the way you handled that is, was, you know, so much better than what I wanted you to do, you know. Yeah, it cost me a lot of money. I told him it cost me a lot of money. I could have got rich off you, but you know, I just wanted to take care of him, you know.

Did he buy you lunch at least?

Oh yeah, of course.

That's good. Perfect.

Well, you're on. You know, you're these, these small businesses we always talk about again, you know, building your board of advisors, you know, your board of directors, if you will. And certainly it sounds like that is a role that you're comfortable playing and that is a real asset to, to your clients.

Yeah, there's a famous quotation, it's attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but I don't know if he's the one who actually said at first, but he said half of a lawyer's job is to tell his client when he's being a damn fool. And I. I want to, like, etch that in, like, platinum and hang it in my office. It gets me in trouble, too. I. I mean, just, you know, spiting, cutting off my nose. You know, the. I've lost clients because of giving advice like that in the past. They're like, well, you're not aggressive enough. I wanted you to go after that person. I didn't want to write a letter to them and get it. You know, they. They wanted a lawsuit. And I'm like, well, that's okay if you want to do that. I just don't think you're going to be happy at the end, because all the reasons, and we've talked about this stuff already on the show, and sometimes they leave me and they go somewhere else and they find some big firm that'll do it, and God knows how much money they spend on it. And sometimes they leave me and they come back and they're like, wow, everything you said came true.

Yeah, that's great.

My attorney said to me once, I was ranting, I think I'm sure we were in the middle of one of these two lawsuits that we did. I said, man, they're just being unreasonable. And he said, well, yeah. He says, you know, I make my living off of unreasonable people being unreasonable to each other.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, yeah. Yep, that's right.

That's great.

But you don't. But you picked. You picked the better path, right?

At least not a personality.

It's a personality thing, right?

Yeah, exactly. And most of the work I do is not litigation. I've done plenty of it. But the. These days, I'd say, like, 70% of my business is just helping people get deals done and write them up and take care of their general business stuff, which is much easier. I feel it's much more productive.

Well, yeah, I honestly didn't realize that that's what your specialty was. And I should have. I mean, we. I'm not going to unearth the story, but you and I actually ran into each other kind of tangentially. I don't know, half a decade ago or something. We were. I don't know, there was some money that needed to flow, and it wasn't flowing. And I was asking questions, and they said, our attorney's working on it, and accidentally forwarded me one of. One of your emails. Was like, that's interesting. Okay. I know that guy. It's gonna get done. And sure enough, it did. You know, it was all fine. But, yeah, Now, I mean, as we're doing this you might get a. I might have, I might have some work for you. So this is good.

Let me know. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

Very good. Geek community clients are the best in the world. I mean, they, they're just the best. I mean, I, I, I love these new clients I've got. In fact, I like a lot of them better than some of the older clients I've had because they just, they're so straightforward. They just want answers and they want their problem solved and they want to save money, and that's all stuff I can do.

That's awesome.

It's great.

Yeah. But so anyway, I've been doing that, plus getting sick, plus trying to build the Max Sparky stuff. And the big disappointment I've had with this last eight months is between getting sick and getting the law practice off the ground, I have not had as much time to get the books written and that stuff done as I wanted. I mean, the old story, be careful what you wish for. I'm thinking I'm gonna get all this extra time, and of course, I don't have any extra time right now.

Of course not.

But I'm starting to get a handle on it. I feel like I just have my fingertips on the tail of the tiger and I'm starting to rein it in. And it's like, even yesterday I spent two hours writing on my next book and it felt really good. And I'm thinking, okay, I can start making this work. Getting, getting sick really, you know, threw everything into kind of a tailspin.

It does. It forces you to prioritize, though. I mean, even, you know, I broke my, my hand or my wrist earlier this fall, and it, you know, it slowed me down because there's things I couldn't do. But it, it, it totally, you know, got me, like, it made me realize what I was doing that was totally irrelevant because I didn't do it anymore. It's like, I'm just not going to pick that back up again. I, that I don't need that in my life. It doesn't help me get, you know, further along.

So, yeah, yeah, I'm dealing with the, the Max Sparky. I have a, I use SaneBox to filter my email, and it's the only way to go. I have this feedback folder, and there's like 700 unread emails in it, and it's, it weighs on me because I'm, I wrote a book about email. Come on. And, but, you know, just, I got behind on it when I got into the illness, and, you Know, dealing with email just became that, that category of email at least just went low on the priority. And I was just telling my podcast partner Katie, I think I'm just going to have to just like archive like, like 500 of them and just call it a day.

I mean I, when I had, when I, when my hand was broken, I had to deal with that, right. Because we get email in for macgeekab and I didn't want to stop doing the show, but typing was uncomfortable so I created a text expander snippet it, where I could open up an email that I wanted to reply to and just, and it, it said, you're not going to get a well written email from me. I, you know, but I'm, I'm basically going to, you know, list you some things that are going to help you answer your question. And I apologize that it's going to be chicken scratch, but I got to, you know, I want to do this for you. And.

Yeah.

And so, you know, got through it, helped me prep shows.

So you went through each one of them and ran off that, that snippet?

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, what we get maybe similar to what you get is tech questions. And that's what we use to pre show. Right. I mean that's our content. So it was important for me not just because I wanted to reply to everyone, but also I wanted to have content for a show. So I had to do this, you know, it was a priority. So that's how I did it. Yeah. And it worked out fine. No, everybody was like, wow, thanks. You know, no problem. So it's cool. Hey, I know you, you, you're relatively new in the, you know, self employed legal business, but you've been doing this for a while. If you could go back either just eight months to when you started doing this, or even further and share a piece of advice with your younger self that, you know, now what would, what might that be?

One of the mistakes I made was overconfidence in the ability to get up and running. And which is funny because as a lawyer, all I've done for 22 years is give advice to new businesses on things they need to do. But just getting the infrastructure set up, the billing system set up, how am I going to deal with sending a letter and who am I going to use for my court services, to file documents in the court or to record documents for a client, all that stuff just took way longer than I thought it would. And I guess that would be true across whatever type of business you're setting up. Don't underestimate the amount of time it takes to do the infrastructure right now. I add the word right there because it's important. Because now that I've been at it six or seven months, that extra time I spent at the beginning to get those things done right is paying off in spades. Because now a lot of this stuff just happens for me. And I'm honestly, part of me wants to hire an executive assistant, and part of me is wondering what I would use them for because I've got so much of it automated now.

Yeah, good advice. And you're right, it's true for any business. Absolutely. Absolutely.

The other thing I would say is, and maybe this is unfair because I had the side income, so it was really not that hard for me. But, you know, I wish I had done this earlier in hindsight. And I just don't know. For whatever reason, I felt like I couldn't. I was afraid, you know, maybe I hadn't built up the side business enough or whatever. And I guess everything happens for a reason. But, you know, don't wait too long. I mean, I was 47 years old when I started this. I should have done it 10 years ago.

Yeah, yeah. But you need to get to that point. Even if, you know it's what you want to do. You have to have that drive. Right. Because you're not punching a clock every day. You're not showing up and having someone else tell you what you're supposed to do today. Right. It's totally up to you. And if you don't have the drive to break yourself out of that. That, you know, comfortable routine, then you're gonna. Your chances of success are less. I'm not gonna say you're gonna fail. You might get out on your own and realize, holy crap, I've got, you know, bills I gotta hustle. And then suddenly the drive, you know, manifests itself. But, yeah, you need to have some of that. Yeah.

Yeah. And I've never experienced that. I. I know some people who go solo run into that where they're like, well, I don't have a clock, you know, to check into every day. And they just find that they goof off all the time and that. Just the opposite. I mean, I was saying yes to everything that walked in the door. I mean, like I said, when you got a kid in college and you got a family to feed, you are scared poopless that you're not going to be able to get whatever it is that they need.

That's right.

Yeah. That's self motivation right there.

Right there.

Yep.

For sure.

This has been awesome, David. Thank you so much for joining us. Anything else that we didn't cover that you want to share before we say, say thanks and see you next time?

I am. I am really just. I'm having a great time and if you're out there and you're thinking about it and you think you can make it work, you owe it to yourself to try and. And thank you guys for bringing this podcast. I really like it. I've been. I've been. What do you call it? I've been, you know, buzzing through all your old shows.

That's awesome. That's great. Yeah, we. We like doing it. Hey, David, where can. Where can people find you?

For the nerd side of my life, go to maxsparky.com and that's got my email and my podcast and my books and everything else I do. And for the legal side, you can find me@sparksesq.com awesome.

David, thank you so much for coming. This has been a real pleasure, man. It's actually always a pleasure getting to chat with you.

Yeah. I miss you, Dave. I don't get to see you anymore.

I know.

Down Mac world. That's it.

Somebody should do something about that.

Dave, There's.

That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, I know. There's. There's plans in the works, believe it or not. All right. You know, because I can't. You know, I don't. Free time is not something that I understand, so I get it. Yeah, we all have that problem. We all do. Yeah. It's a good thing.

But yeah. Thanks again for David. Excellent stuff. I've. I've learned a lot and I know our listeners really find some valuable stuff here.

Excellent. Thank you, guys.

Folks, you can find us@businessshow.co feedbackusinessshow co and also our Facebook page where you can leave us comments. We'd love to hear from you. If you pass us anything that you want to get sent to David, we can do that too. But of course you can find him@maxparkey.com thanks so much and we will see you next week.

Take care of.