I once heard somebody say that only a fool learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. And I certainly found it to be true that crowdsourcing information, making friends with other lawyers of every stripe that run law firms of, of very different varieties, you know, is the best way for me to figure out how to not fail in launching and running my own law firm. It’s the friendships that I’ve made with these lawyers, the content that I’ve taken in particularly a lot of podcast content that has helped me over the course of the last five, six years, have some idea of what it takes to launch a, a law firm and to run it successfully. You know, as I said before, you know, I am setting records at making mistakes every day, and certainly what I don’t know is much greater than what I do know. But over the course of the last couple years, because I’ve aggregated and experimented with some of this information, while I’m not an expert on any of the subjects that we’re going to cover through this content, you know, I, I have, through the benefit of making friends with wise people and taking in this content, I’ve learned a little bit about what it takes to, to jump out of that big law firm practice and start your own firm. I want to make the point at the outset, though, that this entire series of content, it’s strategic, it’s about issue spotting. It is not at a tactical level, like it’s the tip of the iceberg. So for every point that you know is made, there are dozens of key points behind, you know, every idea. So, you know, hopefully, you know, these videos, which, you know, is, is what I’d hoped to find that didn’t exist, you know, 5, 6, 7 years ago when I first began my journey towards leaving the employee of others and, and starting my own firm and working for myself, like, hopefully this will be of some value to you. It’s certainly what I would’ve wanted several years ago when I was staring over the precipice. You know, and you know, you may find that this information gets dated very fast. I’m recording in 2023, and if I think back just a few years ago to the podcast that I could not stop listening to, upon re-listening over the last couple weeks, I’m shocked at how fast the content and the podcast that I loved became dated. So, you know, if you’re listening to this in a number of years from now, you might want to be particularly careful to make sure that you are looking in the right places and you’re making the right friends so that you can, you know, learn from the mistakes of others. This content could get dated quite fast, you know, and I think it’s also worth noting that, you know, not every lawyer in every law practice is going to really be benefited, I think, from what I’m going to talk about. Because, you know, 98% of it is aimed at, you know, business to business law practice, right? It’s lawyers that sell, you know, to institutional consumers of legal services, whether they’re general counsels of large companies or, you know, real estate developers. In the case of my clients, it’s not, you know, B2C, it’s not business to consumer. I’m not looking for, for the consumer clients. It’s not the people who walk down the street who are likely to be my clients. It’s, you know, more of selling to businesses. And so, you know, you want to be careful as you learn from the mistakes of others to look at the right kind of content, to understand, you know, how, you know, deep the hole goes. You know, again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. And then to make sure that, that what you’re hearing is coming from the mouth of somebody who, you know, has a practice similar to yours. You know, that’s not to say that the business to consumer law firms and the lawyers who run them don’t have important information to share with you. If you, you know, are thinking of leaping out of the big law practice to start your own firm, you know, nothing could be further from the truth. I was absolutely astounded. It. Maybe the one greatest revelation in the time since I left my old law practice was the enormous amount of brilliant content that is out there that is created by people who own and run smaller law firms. You know, I really didn’t know a whole lot about those kinds of lawyers and those kinds of firms because for the first 18 years of my practice, it was just working for this, these enormous law firm with hundreds and hundreds of lawyers. But the people who own small law firms, or at least the ones that I’ve been fortunate enough to associate myself with, they’re absolutely brilliant. They’re on the cutting edge. They’re, you know, nimble in ways that go beyond just the cliche of the smaller law firm can act, you know, more nimbly. And while I can’t take everything that I learned from them and directly apply it to my practice, because many of them are, you know, business to consumers, they’re selling to different kinds of clients. So much of what I’ve learned and so much of what I’ve been able to take in to learn from the mistakes of others, you know, and to try to get my arms around, you know, what are all the issues that I need to be thinking about, and then once I’ve identified them, how can I get some depth of knowledge around it? It’s not people who worked in, in large law firms that are creating this content. It’s the brilliant people that own some of these smaller law firms. You know, it’s ironic because you probably don’t know that these people exist, or, you know, if you know that they exist, they’re certainly not a part of your day-to-Day world, you know, which, you know, was my loss that I went so long in my career before I made some, some of these friends at, at, at some of the most forward thinking, some smaller law firms, you know, and, and they tend to be very different, right? A smaller firm tends to be very vertical structure and maybe there’s just a handful of partners. And then the organization is really designed to kind of help them serve their clients. Contrast that to your practice, which if it was anything like mine got a couple of hundred associates, a couple of hundred partners, and it’s a very horizontal structure, right? You got associates, junior partners, senior partners, and a small bit of management. So, you know, when you take in this content from, from all the people out there that have something to teach you about, and I think that a lot of the people who have things to teach you might be different people than you realize. You do have to sort of assess the perspective that you’re hearing them come at you from and to tweak it ever so slightly. You know, I take in, you know, tons and tons of content from the web, you know, I still am avid listener of podcasts that relate to starting law firms and managing law firms. So much of it comes from people, brilliant people whose practices are very different than mine, you know, was a few years ago and is today. But it’s all worthwhile for me. It’s just information that you have to filter in the right way to make sure that you’re able to make, you know, the best use of it. You know, whether it is, you know, a traditional, you know, B2C, smaller law firm practice, or you know, a, you know, practice that was more like mine, you know, B2B a little bit of a, of a bigger firm model. You know, neither one of ’em is better. You know, it’s like freshwater fish and saltwater fish neither’s better. But you need to know which one of them you are. So as you begin down this journey, you know, if you’re somebody that’s interested in what I’m saying, but your practice is different than mine, you know, which is a business to business practice where I’m selling to real estate developers, you know, institutional owners of property and you know, architects and engineers, people in the construction law space that are repeat consumers of legal services. If your practice is more, you know, B2C business to consumer, I’m not saying that what I’m going to talk about is of no value to, but just like I filter and I apply the many brilliant things that I hear from my friends who run smaller law firms and have practice is different than mine. You may also need to filter what I am going to talk about so that it is more applicable for your exact situation and your exact law of practice.