RV (00:03): You are about to meet someone that I admire dearly. Michael Mogul is someone who I think is the epitome of someone who is doing the things that we teach personal brands to do. Except he’s not a client of ours, . He has done this all on his own. He has an amazing business with his wife, and they’re an incredible couple. I would be remiss if, if I didn’t share that I was introduced to Michael by one of my dear friends and one of a brand builders group client the late John Ruhlin, who is one of our sweet friends who, who passed away tragically recently. And John was such a giver, and he was always introducing me to people. And every time I got a message from John Ruhlin, it was like, man, I knew, I knew I needed to, to, to, to connect with somebody because if John was, was making that recommendation, there was a reason why. RV (00:56): And Michael has been amazing. Let me give you a little bit of his formal bio. So he’s the founder and CEO of Crisp, which is the number one law firm growth company in America. So they advise law firms on how to grow their practice and do another number of things related to, you know, improving operational efficiency, increasing profits, marketing, sales, the whole thing. They, they curate a huge event many different events, but a, a, a huge event. And he is also the author of a book called The Game Changing Attorney, which is one of Amazon’s bestselling books in the legal category. He hosts the Game Changing Attorney podcast which again, is one of the top podcasts in his niche of legal market leaders. The, the, the conference they put on is called the Crisp Game Changer Summit. RV (01:46): It’s huge conference. They’ve had many of the biggest speakers in the world and they help thousands of attorneys that are from solo and small firms to large practices just to differentiate themselves and, and earn millions in revenue. And in the process of that, the Michael’s company, Chris, has become very, very well respected. One of the fastest growing companies in Atlanta, twice, has been on the Inc 5,000 in the top 10%. And he’s just a, a student of personal development and, and personal growth. And I just want you to hear the story of how somebody has built a massive business serving one very specific niche. And so here to tell us that story is Michael Mogul. Michael, welcome to the show, man. Thank you for having me. So tell us a little bit about how, how you got, so, first of all, did I say anything in inaccurate in what I just said? That, that, that was a mouthful of me trying to just recapture, but that, that, that’s it, right? Like you guys serve the, the just lawyers exclusively in a very, very deep way. You curate events just for them. You write books just for them. You create podcasts just for them, right? That’s right. And, and as you were saying it, I, I felt like you were talking about MM (02:58): Somebody, somebody else. So it’s a, it was amazing, right? Like the, you hear all these accolades and you know, it, it’s, it’s kinda like the feeling that I had when I released, you know, our first book and, you know, the day before. I wasn’t a bestselling author, but the day after I was. And it’s just, it’s amazing how, how life changes. RV (03:13): Yeah. Yeah. So give us a sense of the size of your business to whatever e extent you’re comfortable. The, the number of customers you see, the, the size of your, your employees, your, your, the size of your events, just like whatever, yeah. Whatever analytics or empirical stuff you can give us to give us a, I wanna, I want people to understand a sense of the scope of what you’ve been able to build, serving a, you know, a a very specific audience. MM (03:39): Yeah. Yeah. So at this point, we work with about a thousand law firms across the country. Okay. And then roughly, because we also work with I’d say probably close to about 2000 law firm team members. We have, you know, this point, I’d say probably between 120, you know, 120 to 130 employees, right? That are full-time in the company. We are high eight figures. We’ve gotten a nine figure valuation for the business. And the business is entirely bootstrapped, started with $500 to my name, no investors, no loans, no partners, you know, no funding. Nothing like that. RV (04:07): That’s incredible. And, and this is one of the first points I want to make for people who are listening. I’ve been saying a lot that too many people are chasing the, the width of their reach, that they’re forgetting about the depth of their impact. And everybody’s chasing millions of followers, millions of followers, millions of followers. You’ve got a business that’s valued at nine figures with 1000 customers. That’s it. One, one thou not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, not millions. 1000 customers, nine figures, for those of you mathematicians, that’s a hundred million dollars plus valuation from a thousand customers. Michael, that’s extraordinary. And I think that that represents the future of how monetization will be done for, for, for personal brands. So tell us about how you started it. ’cause I, you, I know when you and I talked before, you were like, yep, no investors and no partners. So, so how the heck did you start it? Because clearly if you didn’t have investors and a bunch of money, you must have started, you must have started fairly small, right? MM (05:17): Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, as, as as small as small gets. So I am a first generation immigrant. So my, my, my family and I, we immigrated here. They were, you know, refugees coming over from Eastern Europe. We came here, I was four years old and you know, this was in 1990. And at the time, you know, my, my parents, you know, being immigrant parents, my career path was either doctor or lawyer. And when I went to college, I actually went pre-med at, took the mcat, got into medical school, decided that that was not for me. I spent, you know, hundreds of hours shadowing doctors, but I was always very entrepreneurial in nature. Like, I had a, you know, a web design company when I was 16 years old. And, you know, there’s always like these entrepreneurial ventures. So at the time, you know, where, you know, when I finished college and, you know, I got into medical school, I put in for a deferral just essentially to say, well, I’m not sure I wanna go yet, but I wanna take a year to just kind of find out. MM (06:05): This was in 2008. For those that remember this was, you know, not a great time in the economy. So I go from, you know, seemingly about to go to medical school, to washing dishes at a dive bar. Nice. It’s called Taco Mac. And yeah, it was like the American dream. You can imagine how, you know, how proud my parents were at this point. And essentially I went from there to washing lab equipment at the CDC, so the Centers to Disease Control. And while I was there, I had an opportunity to do some of the web design and web development. But really I was trying to figure out like, what do I wanna do with my life? And how do I want to, you know, spend my time? Like, what, what skills do I have? I knew I didn’t wanna go to medical school, so, you know, I just, I started doing all sorts of stuff. MM (06:43): Like, I would try to use the time productively to develop skills, whether it was in understanding like money, or whether it was understanding marketing. And I bought a camera. ’cause I just figured this would be like a lifetime hobby to learn, like, just to, just to take pictures. Wow. And every day I had the goal of just like taking one great photo and it was like, you know, like taking photos of flowers and plants and, you know, that sort of thing. But for me, my hobbies, you know, tend to turn into businesses. So the, you know, getting the camera turned into a photography business. And this was originally in like, in the hospitality space, so like bars and restaurants and concerts. Okay. Photography became, you know, video. And we had a a company in Atlanta where we were just doing photography and video and, and nightclub promotions and just working with like Live Nation when there were concerts that came into town. MM (07:26): And eventually I started doing that full time. After I’d say four to five years, I started to realize that I think I’m sitting at the wrong table. Meaning that, you know, I’m, I’m going all in on this, but half of our clients go outta business every year. ’cause The bars and restaurants turn it over, and then when it rains outside that, you know, that affects our business. So who would be a better fit client? And at the time it was our corporate clients. So things like the W hotels, red Bull, Verizon, Coca-Cola. So that’s really how CRISP started. It was the pivot from, you know, one industry to focusing more on, on corporate clients. But at the same time, we had no focus, like, meaning that we would work, you know, doing videos for anyone. I mean, when I started the business, even originally in 2012, I had $500 to my name. MM (08:06): So it’s like, how do we get clients and customers? And I just went down my list of contacts on my phone and I messaged everyone. I was saying, does anyone know anyone who needs a video? Right. And, and we were doing, I mean, it didn’t matter if we would do like a bar mitzvah or a soccer tournament or, you know, you’re just, you know, filming a dental practice, you know, whatever it was, there was just no focus whatsoever at the time. It was just, how do I get business? It was just me. And I will say that one of the biggest, you know, kind of pivots in the business that that led to a lot of exponential growth was when we started working with lawyers and law firms. So at the time we were doing videos for everyone, brands, different types of professional services, like just all sorts of different industries and businesses. It was just, it was about selling video to everyone, which was not, you know, not a great way to scale. And then, RV (08:48): Yeah, so you, you’re doing like, you’re, you’re, you’re selling to everyone, but you’re a generalist and so you’re just like, yeah, getting low dollar things like here and there. When, when you, when you decided to go on law firms. ’cause ’cause Yeah, here’s the ironic fear that all of our clients have when we, when we tell them like, Hey, pick, pick one and, and serve one audience very deep is they think that that will be limiting. They go, well, if I only serve this one audience, I’m gonna be saying no to all of these other people, and that that’s gonna make my business smaller and less revenue and less profitable. It’s like the, the idea of focusing on a, on a more specific, they, they confuse that being specific means being smaller. But it was not, it’s not that, it was not that way for you. MM (09:43): Absolutely not. And in fact, I even learned this lesson from many of the lawyers we worked with. So at the time, I mean, this happened by accident. I’m not a lawyer, nobody on our team is a lawyer. And we had a a fan, a phenomenal attorney come to us that essentially she, you know, she was working hard, but she couldn’t compete with the big advertisers, whether it was on tv, radio, billboard. She didn’t have the resources to compete. And we ended up producing a number of videos for her, like really that highlighted her area of expertise, what set her apart. Those videos went on social media and her business exploded. And then that led to her referring another lawyer that she knew and then another lawyer. And at the time, I didn’t know anything about the legal industry. As I started to learn more, I saw a super saturated, very competitive, commoditized space that consumers have a difficult time differentiating one lawyer from another lawyer. MM (10:29): And then I saw that, okay, well if they’re producing these great videos that tell their story, this becomes in, in a way a competitive edge, right? Especially for, you know, most law firms which can’t compete on TV and radio and other traditional forms of advertising. I also found, and this is kind of where that niche focus starts to come in, is that the law firms that came to us that were these full service firms that were doing personal injury and criminal defense and family law and so on, they were really struggling to bring in cases versus the ones that were honed in on one practice area. But the ones that were doing the best were honed in on one practice area, but then they found a deep niche, like a personal injury lawyer that focused exclusively on trucking accidents or motorcycle accident cases, right? The ones that had that, you know, that deep niche, they were able to be very focused in their marketing messaging and also were able to stand out and differentiate versus saying, Hey, we help all injured people, or we help not just injured people, but we also help those going through divorces. MM (11:20): And we also help those that need like, you know, business litigation, right? Because you’re just so broad. So I think that’s where, you know, that that started. And then for me, when we made that pivot fully and exclusively to working with lawyers and law firms, it’s just, I candidly saw that we were making a much greater impact. And I liked helping small business as opposed to some of these larger corporations where, you know, they had to spend the money, right? They, they had the budget, it was a lot of like decision makers, but helping another entrepreneur was much more rewarding. And we were helping them solve a challenge that we ourselves were solving in the process of how do you differentiate and stand out in a very crowded space where consumers have a hard time towing one apart from another. RV (11:56): Yeah. And I, the the other thing that’s amazing about this, right, is somebody listening might be like, oh, well that’s good. Michael figured out his niche and he’s crushed the law space. So now I can’t get into the law space. And I go, no, you’ve reached a thousand, you have a thousand attorneys. How many attorneys are there in the us? Do you have any idea? MM (12:19): Oh yeah, there’s about 1.3 million RV (12:21): . So 1.3 million, which means not only is there plenty of room for you to build a nine figure business, like you could have thousands of people who just served lawyers in, in a really deep way and people, but we think somehow that like, it’s gonna be limiting by limiting our, the, the, the, the, the audience we’re gonna lose. But it’s, it’s totally the opposite. And that’s really powerful, the example you used of your clients doing the same thing. So you’re saying that even your clients that succeed, they’re the, the ones who are really doing well, they become really known for one specific thing. We call that like breaking through shehan wall on one thing, not advertising, just like we do all your legal needs. MM (13:10): Absolutely. And in fact, I was speaking with a, with an attorney recently. So she focuses on allergen law and apparently there’s only three lawyers. She focuses RV (13:16): On what? Allergy MM (13:17): Allergy law, right? So like if you, let’s say the types of cases would be if you go to a restaurant and you have a child who’s allergic to peanut butter and you tell the restaurant, Hey, you know, make sure no peanut butter, but then they put, put it on there anyway. And they have, you know, this massive allergic reaction they have to go to the hospital that is allergy law. And she said that she’s one of three that focuses on allergen law across the country. Like meaning that there’s just, there’s only three of them. It’s not, it’s not a super well-known practice area. There’s not a ton that do it. But she’s become kind of the go-to expert in this space because she writes books on allergy law, she’s now working with the FDA in terms of advising them. She works with several nonprofits and, and it’s such a, you know, you can find like the more narrow the focus we find, the more successful they are generally and the more known they are for that specific area. MM (14:02): Like, it is much, much easier, I think to grow a successful law firm. Probably a successful business as well, if you’re very clear on, and, and as you know, Roy, I mean like, you know who you’re for and who you’re not for down to the marketing messaging down to being able to differentiate and stand out and resonate. So I find that the more and more you niche down, I mean, I guess the common thought is that, oh, there’s gonna be less available. You know, like total addressable market, right? It’s like, oh, there’s gonna be less people, but you don’t need to win. You know, you don’t need to boil the ocean essentially. RV (14:29): Mm-Hmm, . Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Again, you got a thousand customers, I think. So, so you started as a video production company. Effectively. Now when, when I, when I think of narrowing your niche, you know, people use that term generally, but I think of it as even more specific to not just who you’re serving, but what you’re doing for them. And so I think that’s another really strategic decision that needs to be made, is not just who are you going after, who are you helping? Like what audience are serving, but what are you providing to them, right? So you go like these thousand lawyers, you started by providing video production. It’s then a, the next question becomes, okay, when do I, when do I, and what else do I offer? Like, you know, do I do their financial accounting? Do I do their janitorial services? Do I, do I service their cafeteria? Like, you, you could do all of those things. Talk me through, so you clearly you started with video production and then you expanded to other offerings when and what and how and why and when did you choose to expand the offerings? MM (15:39): Yeah, so when we started out, you know, started the company in 2012 video, then started working with lawyers, I believe around like 20 13, 20 14. But really the, so the expansion started where, you know, video was great, you know, to help somebody differentiate and stand out from the competition. It was great content. But then the next thing we heard was that, okay, I’ve got this great video, but how do I get it out there? Like, how, you know, how do I actually get the phone to ring and how do I get, you know, get known? Which is really where the marketing started of us placing the content on social media for our firms. So that was the marketing piece. And then we realized, you know, several years in that, okay, you can have great content and you can be, you know, promoting and amplifying that content, but then what happens when someone reaches out to you? MM (16:18): And that’s where all, like, everything beneath the iceberg of do you have a good business? Do you have the right people in place? You know, is the operation strong? Like is the culture, right? Like all those elements that sometimes you can have great marketing, but if you’re already working 80 hours a week, getting more calls, getting more leads, getting more cases doesn’t, you know, really materially improve your life. ’cause You’re already working 80 hours a week. So that’s where we went from video to marketing to coaching. And we soon saw that, you know, when we were doing workshops and coaching our firms on the leadership side of really growing a successful business, you know, in, in, you know, in their field. Now it’s like, okay, you can work with the firm owner. But then we started to get their team members on board because the team members were, that’s where all the true leverage came in for them. MM (16:57): So we started the team member workshops and we added, you know, onsite trainings. We come out to their office and then we even recently added recruiting to where we were first coaching on here’s how you can source and find these candidates. ’cause Hiring was one of the biggest challenges for many of our firms. And then we say, you know what, here’s the, we’re gonna show you how to do it and teach you how to do it. And then there’s the option of, we’ll do it for you. But what, where this all came from, I guess coming back to the, the reason for this evolution of the ecosystem was in the fact that we, we said from day one, we’re an law firm growth company. And one of the things that I didn’t love is that I hear a lot of businesses say they are an, you know, an x, y, z growth company, but what does that really mean? MM (17:32): Right? And can you really help solve a true business growth problem if you’re focusing really on only on one area? Like if we were only producing the content, if we were only doing the marketing, right? And I really viewed this as being a holistic solution of having like kind of a go-to shop that helps you understanding that you need to have all these elements and all these pieces, pieces to truly achieve these growth goals. Like if a firm comes to us and they’re at a million in revenue and they say they wanna get to 10 million in revenue, okay, is video gonna take them from one to 10 million? Probably not, not on its own at least, right? RV (18:00): It’s gonna help, yeah. Not just as an independent item that doesn’t, it has to exist inside of a ecosystem of, of like Strat, like strategic offerings or I guess operational elements. MM (18:11): Exactly. I mean, we just found that you’ve gotta get your messaging right. You’ve gotta get the positioning right. You gotta have the right content. You have to make sure that you’re promoting and amplifying the content in the form of marketing so people hear about you. And then once that call comes in that you’re providing, you know, you’re living up to your marketing, you’re providing great service, you’ve got a strong leadership team, like there’s operations in place in terms of processes and systems and procedures and so on. And now you can really start to grow and scale a great business. So all those elements and those expansions, the ecosystem came back to, if we say we’re gonna be a law firm growth company, then, you know, we really wanna make sure that we’re integrated and helping our firms solve this problem, you know, from, from beginning to end. RV (18:45): Mm-Hmm, . So just to make sure I’m hearing this right, you started producing the content, then you started placing the content, then you started making sure that content was effective in an overall marketing strategy, then that created leads. So then you had to teach the sales strategy of closing the leads, and then you had to do operations to fulfill those leads. And then you moved into leadership and culture to develop the team who was fulfilling on all of those things. And then you moved into recruiting to help them find the people. And at all the different levels we could show you how to do it, teach you how to do it, and then do it for you. And effectively you have become vertically integrated for one very narrow audience for of only a thousand people. MM (19:30): Yeah. You know, it’s funny, it sounds so obvious when you say it, but every time we made one of these expansions in the ecosystem, people looked at me like I had horns on my head and they’re like, what are you doing? Like the, the big shift when we went from video to, to coaching, like, I mean, we had team members that, you know, who looked at me and said, you know, I don’t understand the vision. We had a lot of people in the legal industry that were saying like, what is Chris doing? Chris is a video company. What are they doing getting into coaching? You know, that sort of thing over the years. But as you’ve described it, and this is the way that I saw it as well, was like, this is the natural progression, right. Of fulfilling the next need. RV (20:01): Yeah. So there’s, the reason it’s, it feels simple to me is also ’cause we’ve done it wrong for a long time, and then we, as we figured it out for ourselves, then we started coaching clients to do it. And, and right, that’s one of the reasons why brand builders group only works with personal brands. Like if a company calls us and says, Hey, can you teach us something about brand strategy? It’s like, well, yeah, a lot of our strategies apply to companies, but we don’t work with any company. Zero. We work only and exclusively and solely with a an individual single person of helping that person become more well known. But then we vertically integrate that component. And as we’ve done that, and we’ve coached other people to do that, there’s like two, two of the biggest philosophies that, that we’ve realized. And, and you model this too, Michael, is the greatest form of marketing in the world is a changed life. RV (20:56): When you change the life of your customer, they will go tell other people and your customer force will become your sales force. And the story you just told us was exactly that, right? It started with like, one lawyer has a great experience, they give you referrals from a, the second thing that has really emerged for us in terms of monetization strategy is that really the key to making more money is to serve a more narrow audience in a deeper way. So it’s going, how can I serve? Instead of going, how can I reach more audience? It’s like, how can I serve the audience I have in a deeper way? That’s the fastest path to monetization, right? That’s not how you become famous, it’s how you become rich. It serve a more narrow niche in a deeper way. And it, the progression you described was just like so perfectly spot on because you’re just going, oh, well I solved that problem and now a new problem emerges, and so I’ll solve that problem for them. And now a new problem emerges. And it just seems like that’s been your, your whole progression, and this has happened freaking fast. You’re not even 10 years. So you’ve gone from zero to a hundred million dollar valuation in less than 10 years. MM (22:09): Yeah. Oh yeah. RV (22:11): That’s epic. I mean, just, just think about, okay, so for anybody listening right now, I just want you to think about where you were in your life 10 years ago, right? And, and for some of you that might seem, oh, I’m very close to what you’re doing now some of you, it might seem like a lifetime away, but if you were starting on zero this moment, and I said, look, 10 years from now, you could have a hundred million dollars business. Most people would go no way. That’s freaking impossible. It’s not impossible. It’s not only not impossible, it’s likely if you follow the strategies and you serve a community and you focus on transforming their life and you focus on serving them in a deeper way. And I just, I just love, I just love you. This, you’re just a perfect example, real life story of this. RV (22:58): So starting 10 years ago, what would you tell yourself? Like what do you wish you knew then that you know now? Because you clearly had an instinct for this. I mean, you know, like even though I’m saying you’re such a great model, this we’ve only just met you, like so you figured this out all on your own. Is there some things that if somebody was listening right now thinking about, okay, I want to be be where you are in 10 years, what, what are the things, what are the, what are like the three biggest things that you would tell them that you wish you would’ve known? MM (23:34): Yeah. Well, so I think the first thing, you know, as I’ve been thinking about this a lot is just that really determining whether you have the stomach for this, right? Meaning of just entrepreneurship in general. I try to actually do my best to dissuade people from doing this stuff. And if, and if they still wanna do it at the end, then I’m like, okay, that’s it. You, you have, you have what it takes, right? Meaning that it’s going to be a very difficult journey. It’s gonna be a difficult path. It’s gonna probably involve a lot of pain, but it’s absolutely worth it, you know, if you, if you stick it out. So that’s probably one of just being clear on like, okay, you know, is this something I’m wi willing to dedicate my life to go all in 24 7? I mean, I I will say like, I, I didn’t do it on my own, right? I, I had a lot of help. You know, my wife, she came from a management consulting background, you know, when she came into the business, I was very strong on, you know, on the sales and marketing front. But she laid the operational groundwork, which, which really enabled us to scale, right? And that’s probably one, but number two, I wish. So RV (24:29): Just on, so just on that real quick though, I’m so glad you said this because there’s so much so many people are enamored right now with being an entrepreneur and like, start a side hustle and make millions and fly a private jet, and like all the pictures on social media, the glamorous of like, be your own boss. Like, oh yeah, you don’t need to work nine to five. Like, your boss is an idiot. Like start your own thing. And it’s like, you don’t, there’s not, there’s no one’s telling the true story, which is like, you late nights and stress and like, you’re leveraging the house and you have cash flow, like, you know, worries. So I’m, I’m, I’m glad that you, I’m glad that you bring that up ’cause no one, MM (25:07): Yeah, well, I mean, up until about four years ago it was seven days a week, you know, 24 7, 365. Like my wife and I, we would come into the office Saturday and Sunday. I mean, you know, it, it wasn’t until like our kids were born and, you know, we had more of the, you know, the leadership team in place and, you know, we’d start to really build a foundation. But up until that point, especially the first five years, it was ramen noodles. It was, you know, wasn’t really taking a salary. And if I was, maybe it was like $25,000 a year. Mm-Hmm. this didn’t get, you know, Instagram worthy maybe until about three or four years ago. Right? But, but that foundation was necessary in those early years and, and, and we were constantly reinvesting back into the business. We weren’t, we weren’t taking money out or anything like that. So I, I just, I think it’s understanding that, yes, looking back it’s absolutely worth it, but it was, you know, a 10 plus year overnight success. RV (25:53): So, so it’s like five to six years of intensity though. I mean, like real straight up. Like you’re not, you know, flying a private jet and living on a yacht. And, and, and it, it’s, it’s like, and, and you say it’s worth it, but it’s like, I think people need to hear to go, you gotta be prepared for, for five years. You’re saying, in your case, five years of, of very intense pain. Pretty much MM (26:22): At least. Yeah, I mean at, at least for sure. You know, and, and, and again, everybody has their own path. You know, I, I think we were very, very ambitious in terms of our goals. We wanted to move at a very fast pace. We wanted to, you know, to see a lot of progress year over year for, you know, depending on someone’s lifestyle. I’ll say that what, what made it easier for us at least, was in, in me early on, is that I really didn’t have much to lose. Like, I, I wasn’t coming from, you know, a, a job where I was making good income. You know, I wasn’t driving a nice car, you know, the, the home that we lived in was a, you know, $107,000, you know, town home that we bought as a foreclosure, right? Like they just, you, you start, I didn’t have to give up a Mercedes and, you know, and I didn’t have to give up any type of lavish lifestyle. So that made it a little bit easier, especially in the, you know, in the early days. But, and then I think the other part of it is that only RV (27:08): Easier, only easier in the sense that you didn’t have to go backwards. And a lot of people Yeah. Not, not only are very, very many, not very many people are willing to endure the five years, but even fewer people are willing to go backwards from where they are for correct. Four or five years. Especially if they’ve already put in, you know, five or 10 or 20 years to get where they are. And it’d be like, I’m gonna go backwards and, and it’s gonna be even worse. So that’s, yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s powerful to know. What was the second thing? MM (27:39): Yeah, so I guess I was thinking about the, the two because I got, I got a good one. That’s the third one. But you know, the the second I, I look back and I wish I would’ve documented more, right? Oh, so in, in, in, in a number of ways. So one is I wish I would’ve taken more photos and I wish I would’ve taken more videos. ’cause You know, I I think back to, you know, some of these experiences and stories which, which have become, you know, such, you know, amazing learning lessons and have made it their, you know, their way into presentations and when we speak at our summits and so on. And, you know, I wasn’t really proud of what we had early on, so maybe that’s why I wasn’t taking photos. ’cause It wasn’t a lavish office and we didn’t have a huge team and, you know, it just didn’t look that impressive. MM (28:13): But I wish I did that. And then the other side of the documentation is just, just the systems and processes, right? It’s much easier to do that when you’re small than when you get big and there’s more complexity and things start to break down. And you, and you wish you, you had, here’s kind of the step-by-step process on how to do this. Or if somebody leaves, you know, being able to, you know, to train up and bring in another person. So I, you know, I would say that start documenting things, you know, both in terms of capturing those moments, but also in terms of processes early on, it makes it much easier to scale later. Mm-Hmm RV (28:42): Mm-Hmm. Yep. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a good one. I mean, I think it’s, when you look at scaling a business, it’s people, processes and product. I mean, it’s like you have to have a great product. You gotta have processes documented and great people and processes is the one I think people don’t talk about, which ironically is the most controllable. Sometimes it’s hard to create a good product. Sometimes it’s hard to recruit and retain good people, but like, documenting your processes, like all of us are a hundred percent in control of it. And nobody ever does it because it’s like, I don’t, it is mostly just ’cause it’s like I don’t have time to document it. And then it’s like, man, you pay the price big time for that later on. Absolutely. I love that. What’s the third one? MM (29:21): Yeah, so this is a big one, and I see this with a lot of our clients and our firms. And if I had to say like, what is the difference, the biggest difference between a six figure firm and a seven figure firm and an eight figure firm and a nine figure firm, it is the same thing across the board. And it really just comes down to perhaps the level of courage and the willingness to write the check and the willingness to invest. So, meaning that it’s one of the things that I think led to a lot of our, you know, our growth was that we just, it was being courageous. So I, I’ll give you an example. Back in, you know, in 2017, you know, we were, you know, still a very, very small company in the legal space. There were companies that had been around for 20 years and 30 years that were these great like, marketing agencies and consulting companies and so on. MM (30:00): And it’s like, and we were unknown, and I wanted to get attention, I wanted to get our name out there somehow. And we thought, okay, so similarly, like our clients were having a great experience with us. And we felt that, okay, well our clients probably know people like them. So people that are very similar in growth minded and entrepreneurial in nature. So what if we did some sort of referral program where they could refer other people to us? And I saw what these other referral programs were in our industry. It was like they were giving away like, you know, an iPad or an Amazon gift card. And I was like, well, that’s not crazy enough. So I had got this idea in my head, and once that started, never left was what if we gave a car away, like to our clients? And at the time it was like, well, what if we gave away a Tesla? MM (30:39): And this was in two, you know, in 2017. So people ask me, they’re like, well, how did you give away a Tesla? Well, I had like $80,000 to my name. The Tesla model s at the time was $77,000. I went to the Tesla dealership, I wrote them a check, and they gave me one. Right? So it’s, you know, wow. And, and, and I thought this would be brilliant, right? Like, I thought if we did this, it would get a ton of attention. Clients would start referring other clients to us, you know, because every time they’re referred, they would get a chance to win this Tesla. And as soon as we announced it, 30 days went by, we didn’t get a single referral. Hmm. Like nobody cared at all. And I, and my eyes started twitching because every day I drive up into the office and I parked it in front of the office and I was just thinking like, have I made one of the most massive mistakes ever? MM (31:21): Right? Like, of just pouring the savings into a car, . And what I realized early on was just that this was so crazy that people just didn’t believe us. Like they didn’t believe that we were giving a car away actually, to a client. So then we started creating content around like, just showing off the car and like showing off, you know, when we went to the dealership and just really showcasing that yes, this was real. And, and this started to pick up. We ended up giving the car away at a legal conference that April. And it was, you know, it was a huge hit. It got a ton of attention. ’cause Again, we were going up against Amazon gift cards and iPads. So a car was a big deal. And, you know, so it was so successful. We, we did it again, you know, the following year with a Tesla model X and Ro you fast forward to now. MM (31:59): So this first one was in 2017, let’s see, we’re now in 2020, you know, four, so roughly what, seven years. And we have now given away, I believe 18 cars over the past seven years to our clients. And you know, in this year we, we will be giving away a cyber truck. But we’ve done everything from like Teslas to a Ferrari, to a Rolls Royce, to a gwa. And you know, I, I got our, our fair share of criticism when people say, well, you know, they give cars away or whatever, and, you know, I have to do that. And honestly, we wanted to make working with us an exciting experience, right? Just because legal traditionally is not known for a very engaging, you know, thing. Like, you know, when lawyers are coming to workshops or, you know, even just in general, the industry as a whole is very traditional. MM (32:41): Not a whole lot of innovation, not a whole lot of change. And we wanted to create this engaged community of people that were, you know, entrepreneurial, that were committed, that were wanting to really grow their firms. And we wanted to make it exciting to be a part of that. So if you, you know, if just by growing your firm, you can, you know, potentially win a, you know, a, a Tesla cyber truck or a Ferrari or something. Okay, that’s exciting. That’s not the primary reason to do it, but you gotta do something to stand out and differentiate. And we didn’t have the resources to compete against these massive companies. So that was I think the, the lesson here is just that you gotta be courageous. You gotta be willing to, to, you know, to make those investments and place those bets. And, and I find that those that play on defense of like, not, you know, trying not to lose, that’s a very, very difficult place to be in business. MM (33:24): And instead we went on the offense. And even when it didn’t work, at first it’s like, okay, well let’s figure it out, right? And let’s, you know, let’s adjust, let’s iterate, let’s adapt. And, and now it’s, it’s become, in some respects, one of the things that we’re known for. But, you know, that’s how we went from one car to over 18 cars. And that’s how eventually, you know, we had a weird experience at the, at the conference where we gave away a car. Like we, we didn’t control the experience ’cause it was another conference and it was like right after Super Bowl Sunday, it was gonna be this big announcement, but only seven people showed up. And when we called the name of the winner at this other legal conference, they weren’t even there, right? Like they were at home. And then I called ’em, he didn’t answer the phone. So it was at that moment that I said, never again are we gonna give away our grand prize at another conference? Which led us to starting our own. And then that went to, that’s RV (34:06): Why that was the catalyst for starting your own conference. MM (34:08): That was the catalyst. And then we ended up creating the largest legal conference in the entire legal industry that has 5,000 people attending it. And that, that was the one catalyst. RV (34:16): Oh my gosh, this is so, so crazy. So, so just real quick, they get, for every client they refer, they get their name and a drawing to win a car. And as simple as that. Exactly. MM (34:27): Yeah. Oh my gosh, that’s, RV (34:29): That’s so cool. Okay, so I wanna hear about the conference. Yeah, because the conference is a whole nother business. I mean, th that’s really gonna stick with me just in general, Michael, about just, it’s the courage to invest, right? Like you’re, you’re investing in coaching, you’re investing in team, you’re investing in technology. You’re clearly you, you had to hire staff to be able to start offering all of these other things you’re putting on, you know, doing this raffle with the car. And then one of the biggest investments y’all make is this conference that you do every year. And I’d like to hear about that because that is a, that’s a really exciting thing, but a scary thing. So, and it’s almost like a separate business. I mean, how many people came to the first conference? Where did you do it? And then how have you continued to courageously invest beyond that? Yeah, MM (35:23): So if, if you’ve ever been to a legal conference or any type of, I guess, professional services conference, they’re not known for their excitement. Like, meaning, usually what happens is it’s at, you know, in a dimming lit room, everybody’s on their laptops, on their phones, maybe there’s a speaker on stage, but no one’s paying attention. And generally the reason people go is it’s either at a destination like a, like a Vegas or Miami and you know, they’re gonna get, get drunk in network, right? But, but the conference is kind of like a, you know, a sidebar to what, what is actually taking place. And I’d go to enough of these, ’cause you know, I was speaking at, at the time, like 15 to 20 of these a year and I was like, you know what? I think we can do better, but I’m one of these people that’s like, okay, well if you think that, you know, prove it. MM (36:02): And you know, so when we did our first conference, my target was 200 people. I was like, if we could just get 200 people there. The first event that we did was in in 2018. And, but we ended up getting 500. But the approach that we took is I looked at other industries and I’d look at like Salesforce, like Dreamforce conference, and I saw what, you know, Tony Robbins was doing. And I was like, what if we did something that had, you know, great production in av, we got a DJ and then we got like great speakers from other industries. So like at our first conference we had like David Goggin speak and Chris Voss, and this was right before David Goggins, you know, his book even came out and before David was known and you know, and we had so many non-legal speakers ’cause you could see a lot of the legal speakers at other conferences, but I wanted ours to stand out. MM (36:44): So the first one we had, you know, 500 people attend that one. And it was either gonna go where people walked in and they’re like, what the hell is this? And walk right out. Or it was gonna be a huge hit. It was gonna be one or the other. ’cause It was just so different from any other type of legal conference. And people loved it. I mean it’s, it was unheard of at the time, at least with legal conferences, they have a full room at 7:00 PM when you’re, when your speakers speaking on, I think it was like a Thursday or Friday night, like usually conferences start to clear out like at least legal ones at like two or 3:00 PM And we had the full room, David Goggins was speaking seven o’clock, like not, you know, not a single person on their phones, not a single person on their laptops. MM (37:18): Like it was a truly engaging event. And then we continued to do them, you know, year after years they grew bigger. And in 2022 we ended up doing what I think is, I believe it’s the first legal conference in a football stadium. So we did it at Mercedes-Benz Stadium where the Falcons play, where they had the Super Bowl here in Atlanta. And we had 5,000 lawyers at that one. So we kinda went from 500 to the first one to 5,000 at the one in 2022. And now we’ve made the the events even more exclusive. So they’re, they’re now private events by invitation only. The one this year is, you know, is 3000 people, but you know, the production values continue to increase the quality of the speakers and the quality of the contents continue to improve. And it was really about creating a, a conference that was about not the practice of law, right? MM (38:00): ‘Cause We’re not teaching lawyers how to practice law. Like they’ve gotta come in with that. But more so the business side of law, and especially at the time in 2018, most legal conferences were focusing on trial skills and not how do you grow your law firm? You know, like how do you hire the right people? What about culture? What about marketing and brand and those topics? And there’s a lot of just, most law firms were really struggling to grow their business. So I felt that there was a need for this and now they’re more common. But you know, as they started to catch up, as we start to see other, you know, businesses and law conferences, they still, and I still don’t understand why maybe they’ll hear it on this podcast. Maybe they’ll, you know, they’ll do it different in which case out root for them. But they still don’t go all in in terms of like the production value and the quality and the experience. And it’s just, it’s, it’s almost like, you know, they see the business of all topic, but the, but the experience is what I really think is a differentiator. Is, RV (38:49): Is, but those, okay, so, so on the one hand you’re like, yeah, experience, make it awesome, make it engaging. On the other hand you go, it’s fricking expensive. I mean, oh yeah. You’re, you’re having, you know, production crews and setups and tear downs and av and like, these speakers are not cheap, right? Like, how do you, how do you justify the cost of putting on these events and do you, like, do you lose money on them and you’re okay with it ’cause you sell the other stuff? Do you try to break even? Do you make a little, do you make a lot? Like what’s your, you know, mindset there around how you’re investing into these? Because it’s also and is a ton of time. I mean, you don’t just get 500 people to show up at an event without spending a lot of time like talking about it. MM (39:34): So I don’t know if I’ve shared this publicly before, but I will, I will tell you. So as an example, and this is also why I think this could only happen in a founder led business. So meaning that if, if I had to make this decision by committee, the answer would be hell no. Every single time. So as an example, that conference in 2022 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, that was an $8 million conference. Like meaning that between, between the venue rental, the av, the food and beverage, the speakers all, and it was $8 million before anybody walked through the door. And in, as you know, in the event space, there’s no payment plans. These, these people want their money up front. So, and that is terrifying. But I’ll, I’ll tell you how I justify it. And, and also we don’t do sponsors, we don’t do exhibitors like that. MM (40:15): It is cut, you know, in some ways unheard of in, you know, in the legal industry because pretty much every conference you go to, there’s the massive exhibit hall, there’s the person who sponsors the wifi, there’s the person who sponsors the cups there. We don’t do that because again, we feel that those detract from the experience and we want it to be really honed in and focusing on like what is going to be most valuable to people. So them having to walk through an exhibit hall of one person pitching them legal funding, another one pitching them, you know, pay-per-click another per person pitching ’em something else we feel could hurt the experience even though we’ve been offered continuously. I mean, it’d be easy to monetize that because people would want to have a presence there. Totally. But the, the way that I justify it is that, you know, it’s kind of interesting in our model that I really believe that we have to walk our talk. MM (40:57): So in the sense that if we position ourselves as a law firm growth company, that helps other law firms grow and we’re saying, Hey, you’ve gotta make investments and you’ve gotta take risks. I believe that we have to lead by example. So doing something, you know, crazy like that is, is is a form of doing that. So it’s, it’s this kind of this idea that when people, you know, see someone do something, it means more than when someone tells you something. Right? And then just like seeing is believing, like, you know, we’re at this event I remember at Mercedes-Benz and we’re telling ’em to think big and I remember sharing with the team, I’m like, this wouldn’t work if we were at a tiny venue of like a, you know, like a, a holiday inn Yeah. Telling ’em to think big, right? Just, you know, it wouldn’t align. MM (41:33): I, so I will say that, you know, we have, we’ve invested tremendous amount of resources in the events. Some I I would say are really just brand drivers. Like, meaning that, you know, that event in 2022 we didn’t lose money on it, it was still profitable. So we, we generally see like people that come to the event, many that are not clients become clients or join the ecosystem or even existing clients, it’s, you know, in some ways it’s like a re-engagement event where they may, you know, choose to add on additional aspects of our ecosystem to their existing programs. So there is that component to it. But our first focus is how do we make this as valuable as possible to someone. The majority of people that attend the event don’t invest in anything, right? Like probably 80% or more. But it’s such a strong brand driver. Like I knew when we did that Mercedes-Benz event that it was just as important about the people who weren’t there as the ones that actually were there. And when you, when you see or hear someone who’s did you know, a legal conference in a football stadium, like you can hate my guts. Like you can absolutely, you could dislike me personally. You could not be a fan of Chris. That’s okay. But you gotta respect filling that room, RV (42:33): Uhhuh. So when you say, you said it’s just as important about who is not at the event as who is at the event and you’re just basically saying like the statement it makes to the rest of the industry. Yeah, MM (42:45): I mean you could say you’re, you’re a growth company or you’re a great marketing company and that’s one thing. But then if you get 5,000 people to fly out to Atlanta and show up in a room, I mean seeing is believing, right? Mm-Hmm , it’s like the proof is there. And I just find that, you know, a lot of times we can talk about, you know, culture and the importance of it all day long from stage, but what really makes the difference is the interactions people have with our team. Like, they’ll be able to tell, like I can say we have a great culture, but that doesn’t mean anything if they have a poor experience with a team member or they don’t see somebody that’s aligned or engaged or excited. So I think just being able to have those tangible interactions is the proof. RV (43:19): So you went from 520 18 to like 5,000. So was it like a steady increase? MM (43:26): Yeah, so we went from 500, the first one I believe we had a thousand at the next one. And the highest we went before that Mercedes-Benz event, I believe was 2000. And, and by the way, that I do not recommend a 5,000 person event. Like I don’t know if we’ll ever do that again. To some extent it was probably hubris and ego where like, I think the biggest legal conference at that point, we were already that at 2000 and most legal conferences, like big ones may have seven to 800 people. So I figured, okay, well let’s just do 5,000. Basically going from zero to 2000 was one thing. Going from two to five was an exponential, like just challenge of, of just ’cause ’cause at that point, y you, you know, we realized that there’s all the people that attend legal conferences and we were already capturing them. MM (44:09): We had the database, they had attended some of our events and maybe they attended other ones. But then after you get, you know, there’s a core audience that goes to legal conferences overall, like from one to the next and so on. But then, you know, once you, once you hit all of them, now you gotta reach people that have never been to a legal conference. Now you’ve gotta reach people that have, maybe have never even thought about the business of law and, and, you know, and where are they? Right? Some of them aren’t even consuming the, the same content. They’re not in the same places. They’re, you know, they’re very, very different audiences. And we had, you know, a huge delta to make up from like 2000 to 5,000 of getting people that have never been to anything like this. RV (44:41): Yeah. Yeah. It is fascinating stuff. This is so been so cool, Michael. I, I, I just, I just love it so much and it’s inspiring on so many levels and just shows you how it, this is a very, you know, real, it’s, it’s a very practical reality that’s available. If you do the things and you put in the work and you serve your audience in a deeper way, where do you want people to go? If, if they, if they are curious, I know you’ve got your book on Amazon that they can check out if they want to connect with you, where should we, where should they head? MM (45:12): Yeah, so the book is called The Game Changing Attorney. It’s on Amazon. There’s a podcast by the same name. If they’re interested in learning more about me, I’ve got actually a personal brand website, Michael mogul.com. Come on. Yes, sir. Or they can go to the crisp website, which is just crisp.co. And learn about that stuff. But I really appreciate this. RV (45:29): And Mogul is M-O-G-I-L-L, Michael mogul.com. Michael, thanks for this insight. And, you know, thanks for being courageous with your risks, man. I love, I love what you’re up to, and we want to, we want to encourage you and we’re learning from you. And we wish you all the best, my friend. MM (45:49): Thank you.