#314: How To Take Care of Business and Be A Lawyer w/ Joshua Sheridan
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
attorneys people podcast business shit alimony talking sarah silverman pete holmes big permanent alimony worked sabermetrics small medium enterprise law world months lifeline friends
SPEAKERS
Speaker 2 (50%), Law (48%), Speaker 3 (2%)
Law Smith
0:02
sweat equity podcasts and streaming show the number one comedy podcast in the world. Fred and Patrick entrepreneurial place with real talk. We're 20 joints that small that's gonna be included every time now. small medium enterprise, just like the last 30 episodes. I know I was hoping it would go away. We're the winner of the 2020s best small medium enterprise business advisory podcast in the United States. Listen to us on iTunes Apple podcast. Spotify is episode of sweat equity with our guest Josh Sheridan, real cerebral thinking attorney of the barely legal podcast has nothing to do with legal anymore. whistling music sounds like it's about 18 year old girls get naked but it's not. It's a pun. No barely legal podcasts, get it? He's barely legal. This episode's sponsored by ExpressVPN try Express vpn.com forward slash swet get your three months free off an annual plan of virtual private network, a cloud computer in the sky don't get trapped by big data by by all these social media advertising companies martec 5000 all that stuff ExpressVPN helps you camouflage that code. Get a different IP from any other country. There's like 40 other countries on there try expressvpn.com forward slash sweat gets you three months free. anonymize your web searching don't get tracked by big data or people like us because we know what to do. Try Express vpn.com forward slash sweat three months free off an annual plan. Let's get a twist in my sweat equity sweat equity, sweat equity. sweat equity. Woody and also on on on brand. A huge thunderclap just went by, you know lightning capital of the world for people that don't don't know that that's that's our cool identity. You know, your city doesn't have an identity when that's your identity. So you're that yourself? Yeah, like, Look, we don't have a Space Needle. We have the longest unbroken sidewalk in the world. That's pretty cool. That's not cool. rollerblade backwards all the way on Yes. backwards. Okay, guys. That's a challenge. There's
2
Speaker 2
2:50
a lot of Yeah, there's a lot of I mean, between that and like I grew up in St. Pete and so like, who's on the jack Kerouac had his house over there and Jim Morrison went to St. Pete II and Angela Bassett. Angela Bassett, Bobby Joe, Long Island Island, as we have Aileen wuornos through that and one of my one of my good friends was the attorney for both bark Bobby jilong and Aileen wuornos who are two of the biggest serial killers on the on the bench, so
Law Smith
3:20
Wow, yeah. What Delmon young Elijah Dukes I'm grasping at straws. What? So we we met a while back through your cousin, a my one of my best friends from college, Katie, and right next door, we used to share a wall for a townhome and call in Ross park in Melbourne. And then I'd see her roommate cake or I'd see her roommate and Ronnie brown talking. Like 3am and I'm like, oh man, he's he's plowing Katie's friend roommate. She couldn't get Cadillac. Yeah. Well, I know. He may have been hit the other roommate. But we met a while back. You're a funny dude. I remember talking to ya. And then I think you were working for a firm now you have your own correct.
2
Speaker 2
4:13
I've never worked for another firm. The only other place I've worked is I was a prosecutor over in Pinellas County for three years. And so when I left there, I went out on my own and I at various points had different partnerships. But after I left to stay on my own shingle and haven't looked back,
Law Smith
4:31
so tell us about that entrepreneurial, because that is a I find the law, the small law firm kind of fascinating in the fact that most attorneys sometimes can't grasp with the business side of everything. Did you go solo first, and then gone partnership.
2
Speaker 2
4:53
I did and I had no business doing it. There's no good argument for what I did. There was no real No intention behind it, it was kind of a blind leap. And I even did it the same, then a few months of getting married and moving out of the house that I was in, so I kind of just and I mean, it's it's not been easy, but if you've got the fortitude to just kind of not quit. At some point, when you look back, you can see progress was made, even if it doesn't feel like you're making it at the time. So,
Law Smith
5:29
yeah, that's that. I mean, that's what they say about Pete Holmes says about stand up. It's like in same thing with entrepreneurship, it's, it's like when you first start doing stand up, you have to be have little delusions of grandeur, because you're terrible. But you're like, I'm getting better. I'm getting better, right? These open mic crowds are. Same thing. It's the same thing when you're doing when you take that leap of faith. To do your own thing, you have to kind of know you have to be confident what your skills are, or at least like in yourself. Well, it's
2
Speaker 2
6:02
funny, you mentioned Pete Holmes, I have two comedians that I have taken life advice from not directly but actually hearing them on podcasts. And you're gonna laugh at the two of them. One is Sarah Silverman, which no problem there, but the other one was Louie ck. And obviously,
Law Smith
6:22
he's my favorite. Well, he
2
Speaker 2
6:23
took his he took a different path, but he's everything. But yeah, well, he would talk about you don't have to be amazing. You just have to be better than, you know, the lower half of the next guy's in line and just kind of keep at it. And after a period of time, kind of the people who don't hang in there fall off. And that's where your longevity comes. I think he said it much more eloquently than that. But it was something along those lines. And then a Sarah Silverman said you we look at our future through a pinprick, you know, we only see a very small percentage of what what the future holds for us. So don't get too, up or down based on what you can see, because there's so many more surprises out there for you. So I mean, I would have never guessed in 2005, when I left the state that I would have 13 people here that I'd have seven attorneys that we would be taking cases all throughout the state. And I mean, it's a it's a modest achievement in the world of attorneys, but it's definitely a big leap from where I was 16 years ago.
Law Smith
7:23
Yeah, and that look, there's no better like, when I am we started talking dming each other because I saw your posts talking about, you know, this growth you're having with your law firm. And I was like, that's great. That's, that's always a good thing. It's good that you're sharing that stuff. And and kind of proud of it. And there's no better like, appreciation day, when you get to like the certain levels. Like I think you hired a few attorneys in one fell swoop. Were How did COVID affect your firm? How did you get out
2
Speaker 2
7:57
of a curse on the show? Or is it clean? You serious? Dude? Yeah, yeah. All right. So it scared the shit out of me originally, like, I didn't know what was happening. And you know, all, you know, the accountants and financial planners, were talking to us about the payroll protection, and you got to do this. And if you're gonna have these slow months, and, you know, I don't, I don't say this with joy, but it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that COVID increased the volume of family law cases out there. So either between people having to spend all day every day in their house with each other, or maybe families who were living in two different states not wanting to send their children on a plane to another state, because the COVID um, there were all these new issues and family law that hadn't been foreseen before, or hadn't come up before. So luckily, our phone was ringing off the hook. Obviously, I don't want people to have acrimony in their in their family life. But from a service provider perspective, COVID was one of the best things that ever happened to us on a business level.
Law Smith
9:09
So you had tried that? I mean, look, I got I technically was divorced in the COVID era. Eric's going through it. And, you know, most of the glitter didn't help. But, yeah, you know, my mine was a dark comedy because I moved in with my ex, because I was in a high rise in downtown to watch the kids when we were like, well, this is the smarter move. And then I found myself getting yelled at for like, not washing the dishes or something. I'm like, What am I doing here? Like, right? I don't need to be here. I can. I don't care about them going in hallways. I already put masks on him, you know? And so No comment. Yeah. Look, it's over now. I mean, but no baby, but it's one of those things where it was like that. That is like I was put in that position of a lot of friends. I know. That we're going through pre separation because they they hadn't spend that much time around each other is
2
Speaker 2
10:12
yet another yet another Louie ck ism as he said no good marriages end in divorce. So I think there were a lot of people who were on the precipice of doing it and that just kind of sped things up for them. So there was that and you know and then rick scott now to San us they're they're always playing with getting rid of permanent alimony, which when that happens, there's going to be another floodgate opening of people coming back in to try and get their alimony terminated or at least made finite. What do you mean? Like an example like
Law Smith
10:45
I didn't like for the rest of your life, you get alimony like, people will get alimony into perpetuity, like just forever.
2
Speaker 2
10:53
If you're married for 17 years in Florida, depending on some other factors. under the statute, the court can order permanent periodic alimony, which is spousal maintenance for the rest of the life of the receiving spouse, or the paying spouse depending on whether or not there's a life insurance policy. But one of the problems that was happening, a lot of people are getting married pretty young. So they get married at 19 or 20. And they're married for 17 years, at 37 being saddled with a permanent alimony payment, you have the potential for paying alimony twice as long as you were married. And so that's not necessarily equitable, either. Because a 37 year old spouse can probably still go out, build a career and make some money and to be supported for the rest of their life. You know, in those situations can be an issue so they keep sending bills up to try and get rid of permanent alimony. But it always gets kind of stuck. One of the big things is whether or not people who are receiving it now are grandfathered in or not whether or not you can go back and retro actively do away with it. Because I mean, if you look at it, let's say there's an 82 year old spouse receiving alimony. You cut that payment off now What's she gonna do? What's that, deadbeat? Well, yeah, get a job. Right? See?
Law Smith
12:07
Walmart greeter. Come on, right. Yeah. You know that? I'm thinking about it. We're both 3737. So you nailed the example right in our head. But my my thing was like, my attorney who was a client of mine when I had my agency, and I helped him kind of build out the practice area of doing Family Law. He had been doing it a little bit but not really marketing it. He was trying to get collaborative divorce going kind of stuff. And was doing mine and I think it bummed him out so much that I don't think he does family line more. How do you how do you deal with the emotional part of it? Because it's, are you just a stone Stone Cold like, right Country for Old Men with with a fucking cattle prod shooter?
2
Speaker 2
13:02
Well, I maxed out the allowable Prozac dosage. I can take Oh, okay. All right. Drugs. Yeah, there's that I see a therapist every week. And she's been awesome. I'm probably 60 to 70 pounds overweight. You know, I had a bad habit of finishing off a bottle of wine all last year that I stopped doing it that drinks. I know. I know. It goes through stages Ohio with it. Yeah, so yeah, just bury it deep down in unhealthy ways. But I mean, the podcast helps music helps. I'm playing with my kids helps. You know, and I've really started to enjoy the business side of it more I'm really trying with bringing on all these people trying to, I've got this I've got this whole theory about money balling a law firm and breaking it down into now you've got, yeah, almost kind of, you know, they had those pictures that you look at on the wall, and they're all the dots and then all of a sudden, it's a sailboat or whatever. Or Russell Crowe and a beautiful mind all the numbers floating around like, I've started to really try and break down the practice of it and say, you know, how many cases does it take to hit this number? What's the average amount of fees generated on a case? What are the parts of the case that generate the most fees? How many how many cases do I need per attorney? How many paralegals Do I need per attorney? What's my ad spend based on this amount of revenue? I think I'm getting a job. Easy. Yeah. Were these red pants? sabermetrics? Right? Yeah. So there's that and then there's the dino Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Hmm. So that was, that was before the housing market took a shit but his whole thing was passive income. Based on rental houses and properties and making and and much the same way billable staff, our rental properties for attorneys, every any billable person that I hire should be a profit generator for me and not cost. Correct. So I'm enjoying that part of this more and wanting to more and more, turn my attention to that and create the funnel, optimize the funnel, and then have the people on hand to be able to handle it. Because I consider myself a trial attorney, I enjoy being in trial, but I'm not a not a book attorney. I'm not an academic, like, I can't rattle off case law, I can go in and, you know, make a persuasive argument. But I always joke that I hate case law because it usually goes against whatever I'm trying to convince the court of. So I think there's better people to be the practitioners for my clients. And let me kind of get the business running the way it needs to.
Law Smith
15:53
Well, I mean, look, the speech I used to give all my small law firm clients was like, you're busy, you're the business person first. You're the lawyer second, and a lot of them couldn't handle that. I was like, This is why you hired me. So I tell you this, because no one else is going to tell you that it's not just the lawyers do. Oh, yeah,
2
Speaker 2
16:10
it's every every professional service industry is like that. But my wife's family are all orthodontist and dentist and they're, they they're lucky that number one, they're not saturated to the degree that attorneys are. And number two, the fees that they can charge for their services and with hygienists and everything else again, this Kiyosaki thing of staff that you're making profits off of. But yeah, no attorneys are awful business people. And I'm only after doing this 20 years starting to finally kind of understand just the peripheral edges of it. But I think law schools do the biggest disservice to law students because they what they teach them and so
3
Speaker 3
16:51
they're not all those graduate schools are the same way you get like a day where somebody comes in in a suit and tries to explain it to you MBA
Law Smith
16:58
is not going to do it for you either. Really, honestly. I mean, you just have to bless you, like grew up in a family that ran a business or you just have some weird talent for it or a voracious reader or consumer of Neil Patel. And who's the other guy that is always doing NDB? Or what's the guy? Gary Vee like, bro? Bro? You need to know. Yeah, I mean, some of that's kind of Charlotte and Carpetbaggers. We try to do the anti of that, because
2
Speaker 2
17:30
Well, sure, but most attorneys can't get out of their own way. They're so worried about their hearing tomorrow, or they're so worried about their trial next month, that they never take an hour to look at, you know, how much am I spending? How much am I making? And is what I'm spending in line with what I'm making, you know, it's
Law Smith
17:47
the E myth. That's that's the thing of not getting here. You get the entrepreneur that gets in their own way. You always have to calibrate yourself know what you don't know, know where you need to work on stuff and figure out eventually, like, do I need to cut bait on me trying to figure this out? Or do I need to outsource? bring someone in, bring someone full time in to help me with this. That's the part where I think a lot of attorneys don't really assess really well. They're very good about doing it for other people, but not for themselves. Well,
3
Speaker 3
18:18
most of the time, the smartest people in the room are close to you know, so like it's hard to like take that step back and understand they're not business minded.
2
Speaker 2
18:29
Yeah, I mean, yeah, because 30s have the biggest chips on their shoulders have the biggest egos. I mean, I don't like attorneys. I don't like judges. I will I will. I you know, I don't hang out with attorneys. I pretty much dislike almost every judge that I'm in front of. And I think from a personality perspective. It's I like it.
Law Smith
18:49
I like attorneys because they got opinions. They don't I mean, like, even if they don't believe in them. That's why I hang out with a lot of them. I don't know I find it you like that about somebody? Yeah, I argue for fun. No, but I like some I don't like it. I don't like people that limp into life. And so like a lot of people that are like why do you even think about that? I'm like, I don't know like, you don't have any nothing? no opinion on on how big daddy Donnie T is the best president we've ever had. You know, I'm just I don't know just say you come across like a dick. If you're going to take I know what your site I'll take the app and look talk about and look, I get called out for being a dick because I have that contrary or in logic that a lot of attorneys have that I'll you'll see kind of both sides of an argument at the same time. And just because you might have ADHD and bored or just because you're like I've been thinking about this theory. Let me let me throw this out at you. Almost all the time. All my attorney friends will at least throw something back. They'll at least play a game of mental tennis with you but I feel like there's a generation of punk punk rocker kind of style. Attorneys like like Josh here that that are not Like a big deal, don't love they don't get a boner out of the reverence of, of it all, like, you don't want the leather couch with, you know, the dark wood. And you know,
3
Speaker 3
20:13
I'm just saying that if you have an opinion, that's fine if it is the opposite. I'm saying if you're just bringing up the opposite just to be, you know, to have a conversation. That's
Law Smith
20:23
Yeah, that's a normal being a dick. Right? That's what I'm saying. That's annoying. That's like, shit you do when you're Middle School in high school? For sure.
2
Speaker 2
20:30
Yeah, well, I think I think what it means to be an attorney has changed over the last 30 or 40 years. I mean, I think be like what you're talking about where it was this hallowed, you know, achievement, and it came with a lot of deference and respect. But you know, I say all the time, if they let me be an attorney, I've got zero respect for anybody else, you know, I was able to do it, then you shouldn't be too proud about it. So yeah. Wow. Weird backhanded compliment. Well, I just I I just, you know, I i've always I always joke, I can't tell if I'm the dumbest. Or the smartest person in the room at any given time. I never seem to be in harmony with the rest of the room. And I don't know if it's because I'm operating beneath or above or whatever. So
Law Smith
21:15
you really, do you really rank yourself? Like?
2
Speaker 2
21:18
Do you really hence the Prozac? Oh, god, yes. Really? Awesome. Yeah, I wish I
Law Smith
21:23
rank each other. or Asian walks in the room. They're like, are they Vietnamese? They're lower than that kind of, I worry about it a lot. I don't know why. How are you ranking up this conversation between the three of us? Yeah, what's the power rankings? Yeah,
2
Speaker 2
21:35
let's hear your December doing it. I know, you're thinking about a distant fifth behind you, too. Okay. Well,
Law Smith
21:41
I think your humility may probably makes you a lot better if you can kind of hone that with the business side of everything go in, a lot of people try to go I need to, like, I need some advanced kind of whatever. I think the more I think about entrepreneurship, like where you're at, and where I failed, is like, I didn't calibrate myself. I let my own shit get in the way, personally, and like, I didn't really I chased after bad, you know, bad clients that I shouldn't have. I should have just stuck to the script. I knew that worked kind of thing. You're specifically talking about yourself? Well, for that scenario. Yeah. And well, I
2
Speaker 2
22:22
mean, but you're also you're also not at the end of your book yet.
Law Smith
22:25
No, I know. And interesting. You brought up the Sarah Silverman thing, because that's kind of how I think about it right now. Like, right now. I'm a corporate man, I'm working. I'm an intrapreneur, all that stuff. And I'm, I'm satisfied with it. I'm content with it right now. I think there's right now there's nothing? Well, there's growth within that the company I'm with to do a lot of stuff. And it's pretty much what I was doing before. My thing was, you know, was it my ego that wouldn't let it go? Or was it my ego that I didn't push hard enough to make it run when I knew I could have? There's a lot of things I'm going to question. And there's a lot of stuff I look at now, going forward where I go, Okay, I have to learn something from that whole experience. Right? I because I never want to get back to where I was.
3
Speaker 3
23:17
Do you still really question that you actually think about that? Like, did I do this? Right? Really?
Law Smith
23:23
Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't have like, I don't have a I can't fail kind of thing. But I do have like, I could have handled this a lot of different ways. Sure. So no improvement. All right. Yeah. Because I was I want the symptom to be, or I want the the effect to be have those thoughts. Now, like, why do we learn history? So we never repeat it?
2
Speaker 2
23:49
Yeah, well, my my problem, and what I worked on a lot with a therapist and with the Prozac helped me with was, I would never be able to put that down, I would always carry that. And in the aggregate, as you start to think about not even actual failures, failures, but perceived failures, you know, as you build stack those up, and you can't put any of them down, it becomes this cross that you're carrying with you that if you don't figure out a way to deal with it can crush you. So creating space in my bandwidth to just be okay with things and say, you know, I don't have to be the best at everything. I don't have to win at everything. every choice I make doesn't have to be the most prudent one. So I've, you know, I lost my dad in 2018. And I lost my mom in 2019. And that's really where my anxiety and kind of depression came to a head. And then that that got me from the therapy to the medicine. And, you know, I have no background in comedy, but I'm a huge comedy fan. I probably listen to everyone and Mark Marin's podcast. That was the reason I started my podcast and why the template is very much the same. As his and I remember so much in the early days in talking to comedians who were afraid of taking medicine because they were worried it was going to dole their edge, or they were going to lose their sense of humors somehow that they were going to be less less than Yeah. And so I worried about that with myself. You know, I appreciate my sense of humor, I appreciate my Outlook, I appreciate my kind of, you mentioned an anti establishment way. And I was worried that I would become a zombie or a robot. And it didn't happen just over time. All of a sudden, I noticed when I woke up, I didn't feel like the weight of the world was on my chest. And all these, you know, post post ops that I would did on decisions that I made went away, I was like, fuck it, the new day.
Law Smith
25:44
Yeah, let's perfections the enemy of good and don't kick the shit out of yourself. There are two things I was thinking about throughout this whole interview.
2
Speaker 2
25:52
And also I it's funny, I know shit about sports, but I use tons of sports analogies professionally. And so you know, the the concept of leaving it all on the field. If I felt like I put in a full day's work, I busted my ass, I did everything I could do that day, then it's a lot easier for me to take whatever the result is whether or not it was a win or a loss, you know, I did everything I could do. And it went the way that it went.
Law Smith
26:16
Right. So right on the business side. And we're going to wrap up pretty soon. So I'll throw it out there. I'm going to go do your podcast tomorrow. But we can probably help you with that, that Moneyball stuff, the real book you probably need to get to is the extra 2%. About the Tampa Bay Rays, where they say, use Moneyball. So use the sabermetrics but managerial experience counts to it's going to help your bottom line. We're, you know, you have a path for every employee you hired, right? Because you're going to lose them. And if you have turnover, you're not going to be successful. If you need an extra 2% of your competition. That's how Wall Street does it. And so, but cost rate versus bill rate stuff, we can nerd out about all that stuff? in person. Yeah. Or under podcast. Thank you. Give me your dollar per hour. Give me this. Give me the hours.
2
Speaker 2
27:14
I want. I want I've got a whole list of questions for you to buy that have nothing to do that. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. But but that exhibits I have expert witnesses. It's gonna
Law Smith
27:24
Oh, man sabotage? Well, I've already had an intervention. So you know, I already know how to get out of that. But, um, we ask everybody the first time on the pod. You know, if you could travel back in time, to your third, what? What advice would you give your 13 year old self? You get it, Bill and Ted, telephone booth. And you can go to your 13 year old self
2
Speaker 2
27:53
grab it sounded makes but probably just probably just be okay. You know, don't take don't take it also seriously. You know, I was I was a pretty heavy hearted kid. You know, my parents were alcoholics and great, great people. But, you know, I was aware at a very young age of their demons that they were struggling with. And I think it made me worry a lot about them and made me worry a lot about myself that made me worry a lot about my future. And so I think that set me up to be an anxious person for the greater part of my life. And I think if you try and do the right thing, and just give it your all that, I mean, you can't control that tragedy. You know, there's, there's a lot of amazing people in the surf side buildings in Miami that smash but you know, by and large, everything's gonna be okay, on a broad enough spectrum. So, just don't don't fret too much.
Law Smith
28:51
Yeah, I mean, that that kind of environment will set you up to be very anxious for sure. Well, sounds like you're still working on that a little bit every day, but man,
2
Speaker 2
29:01
I can't I can't I wish I got points from Prozac because I that was a life changer for me. I, I will show that. I mean, I know it's not the same thing for every person. But that that was a turning a corner for me. I felt like limitless like once all that anxiety and depression went away. It kind of opened up my vision to see the whole field and kind of instead of worrying about all this shit, focus on you know, what, what was in front of me?
Law Smith
29:29
Yeah, it's radio noise. You got it. Got it. Yeah, it's it's a, it's like when you rub your eyes and see those speckles everywhere, just kind of all the time. That's not a good No, I was gonna say, Aaron's gonna probably try to talk you into doing some DMT or something to really expand your mind. get
2
Speaker 2
29:46
you out. It sounds like you were talking. I did the whole meditation thing that uh, that a stern bush. So that was that was interesting. This is a little different. No, I know. But I just made i'm not i'm not beyond other horizons.
Law Smith
30:05
Yeah, I Alaska. It's something I'll do later down the line Not right now but it's it's on the list once the kids are out of the house. Yeah. Not for me. But it'll help me be a better dad hopefully. Right. Oh, man, appreciate you coming on and yeah, barely legal podcast on Spotify podcast.
2
Speaker 2
30:30
Thank you so much for having me on. It was an honor. Thanks, man. All right, you guys. I'll see you tomorrow.
