Why The Best Lawyers Keep Learning with Brian Glass

Brian Glass joins David for a wide-ranging conversation on law firm leadership, LinkedIn content strategy, legal marketing, and building a business that supports the life you want. Brian shares lessons learned from growing the Ben Glass Law Firm, creating educational systems powered by AI, and helping lawyers think differently about growth, mentorship, and success. The discussion also explores Great Legal Marketing, long-term disability law, family travel, and why sometimes the best business goal isn't growing faster- it's protecting what you've already built.

Here’s what we discuss in this episode:

📱 Building influence through consistent content creation

🚀 Why execution beats perfection every time

🎯 Using audience feedback to create better marketing

🤖 Leveraging AI to build smarter law firms

⚖️ Redefining success beyond revenue and growth goals

Learn more about Ben Glass Law: https://www.benglasslaw.com/

Great Legal Marketing: https://www.greatlegalmarketing.com/

Injured? Begin the process here: 

Scott Vicknair Injury Lawyers: https://www.scottvicknair.com/

Car Accident Lawyer: https://www.scottvicknair.com/new-orleans/car-accident-lawyer/ 

Truck Accident Lawyer: https://www.scottvicknair.com/new-orleans/truck-accident-lawyer/ 

Motorcycle Accident Lawyer: https://www.scottvicknair.com/new-orleans/motorcycle-accident-lawyer/ 

Probate, Succession and Estate Legal Needs?
Visit Scott Law Group – Estate Counsel: https://www.louisianasuccessionattorney.com/

More Resources

Subscribe to the Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@scottvicknairlaw?sub_confirmation=1

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Scott Vignaire, injury attorneys, we fight for the win.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Hey everybody, welcome to the Overall Podcast, brought to you by the Scott Wignair Law Firm. I'm your host, David Vignair, missing Brad Scott today, but very excited to have another member of the Glass family on the podcast. Brian Glass, a really great personal injury attorney up in Virginia at the Ben Glass Law Firm. Brian, welcome to the Overall Podcast. Thanks for being here today and chatting with us.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

David, it wasn't until um you read through that introduction that I'm like, I'm now I'm gonna be afraid. I'm gonna call you Scott the entire uh entire thing.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

I thought you were gonna say I'm living the everybody's little kids' dream growing up. It's like how do I get on the overall podcast with Scott Fickner? But hopefully you can stay away from the Scott. But if you say the Scott, you know it helps the marketing, so I'm all for it.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Well, but you know, it's it's like I get called Ben all the time, right? And so you get called Scott all the time.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

It's the same type of confusion.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

I've just let it I just started letting it roll off. Like, whatever. I client clients of mine who've been clients for nine months who've only ever talked to me, call me Ben.

unknown 1:08

Whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

I encourage you to like actively instigate it. In fact, I think there's some marketing ideas in there of like confusion between you and your dad that we could talk offline about. Now you got my brain moving in that uh arena. But um Brian, I know you obviously very well and have been knowing your dad, Brad, Scott, and I have for a long, long time, and uh think of him as uh obviously think so highly of him and your family and everything he's done in the legal space. But if you could just briefly, for the listeners who may not know a lot about you like we do, tell uh us a little bit about you, your law firm, and which I'll do in Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, so I have a car crash practice in Northern Virginia. We're based out of Fairfax, kind of go anywhere in the state, but um uh but primarily up in Northern Virginia. Um partners with my dad, he has a long-term uh disability appeals practice, it's a nationwide practice. We've got four lawyers now, maybe twenty team members, um, and then kind of on the side, he and I run a company called Great Legal Marketing, which teaches lawyers, uh owners of solo and small law firms how to run better businesses.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Amazing. And a really interesting tidbit about your dad's practice. I've been getting his like monthly or bi-monthly updates on his ERISA disability practice, and he's just doing some really neat and interesting stuff, especially making some law. I think y'all are in the Fourth Circuit up there, is that right? That's right. Making some really paramount federal appellate law and uh on really unique ERISA issues, which most lawyers run away from. And I I think I was trying to talk to your dad, like it's like if you're a lawyer anywhere in the United States and you have an ERISA long-term disability case is something y'all could help with, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Yeah, so we can do that as a federal practice, so we can go anywhere. Uh we filed more cases in the Eastern District of Virginia than like any other law firm combined over the last five years running. Um and they've been just doing great work. Um, in particular because Reliance Standard keeps screwing up claim files and failing to admit that they screw up claim files until a judge puts it in writing. So, you know, it it as part of what you do and I do, you know that oftentimes our best results are driven by recalcitant recalcitrant defendants, and and we have that thankfully in spades in that practice area.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

Yeah, it's funny too, because I have so many physician friends and um and and so many different people in my life who have really important long-term disability policies that they're probably like not even aware of until like, you know, the classic example is like the surgeon has a hand injury and they can't operate anymore. And then the so there somebody who's like, I don't know what long-term disability attorney is or what I may need it for. I'm like, well, if you're a surgeon and you lose your use of your hand, you're gonna start really caring about what long-term disability insurance is and see the realities of when a long-term disability insurance carrier starts messing around with your interim pay benefits, trying to deny claims, things of that nature, and that's something that you'll really become specialists in.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

It I mean, it's a lot like underinsured motorist coverage. Nobody knows that they don't have good coverage until they talk to one of us, right? So um yeah, it's i i if the world was filled with insurance agents who actually knew anything about what they were selling, yeah, everybody would be a lot happier, I think.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Yeah, and then I got accused on LinkedIn by somebody yesterday of being uh I think the way they explain what me and you do is that we um I think says something along the lines of we have we perform legal extortion upon insurance companies, and my only way of response was like, bless your heart. But in any event, that's where I wanted to go next. LinkedIn, you've become beside besides you and um besides you and your dad having a really great law firm up there in Virginia and active practice both in the injury space and in long-term disability, y'all have and Ben has run and now you run with him great legal marketing for many years. And so y'all have been thought leaders in the space of law firm marketing, law firm management, personal growth and development. Um you have also become very a very big thought leader on LinkedIn and write on LinkedIn a lot. Can you talk me through that journey about how you started writing on LinkedIn and how do you how often do you write and what is your inspiration for it? Like talk me through that.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

I am writing less these days because I feel like I've said a lot uh over and over again. Yeah. Um but you know, if I if I went back to maybe uh 2022 or 2023, I forget why, but I just kind of made this commitment to post on LinkedIn probably every uh once a day for 30 days to begin with, and it turned into a year. Um and then I and then I got some traction, and so I you know, you were in this dopamine cycle of you um you post something and it gets shared and gets commented on, so you do it again and again and again. And and really, David, I was just kind of talking to my younger self. Like I just tried to be the the voice uh of life advice, law firm advice, mentorship that I would have wanted to hear you know, maybe seven or ten years earlier because so many lawyers are in a position where you don't have somebody who you can ask those kinds of questions to or get that kind of advice from. And so that really is my inspiration. You know, half the things I post are things that have happened in the law firm that I'm kind of working my way through, sometimes it's therapy for myself to just write it out and then I then I hit post. Um, and then every once in a while it's bragging about a case result. Um but I find that to be kind of the least interesting uh things that people post on LinkedIn, so I really don't do that. I don't do like the super lawyers, humbled and honored whatever uh kind of posts. Um I just try to offer advice to myself seven or ten years ago.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

I do giggle at those. I'm humbled and honored to announce this recognition that I have been given. I'm like, well, let's just like forget the last part and just announce the recognition that you've been given. But I think I do think like that part of, you know, I've always liked that part of uh so I started writing on LinkedIn last year, like dedicated, like pre committed to doing it. And and when I started doing that, it was interesting because at the beginning it was like, who who cares what I have to say, right? And then I then it's a little bit of fear too, like, am I really gonna say these things that I'm strongly opinionated on? Some of them are a little bit more ruffle the feathers than others, I guess. And then you're kind of putting yourself out there totally when you throw that stuff out there. But I I I tried to like a little bit of what I write, like emulate that from you because I do think there's like there should be more lawyers out there talking about that stuff for people coming out of law school who don't have like that lawyer in the family who they trust and is really giving them good advice, and they should see more and more people in the space like trying to say, Hey, we've been doing this for 15, 20, however many, 10, however many years it is. Here's some learning lessons along the way that can help you avoid some of the pitfalls that I fell into. And I just think that's one of the pieces of your writing that probably has made you have you seen that been like one of the biggest niches? You have so many probably law students who are following you.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

I I have a handful of law. I do think you have to be out a couple of years to understand some of the advice.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

So one of the things that I say about mentorship is like don't come seeking mentorship when you're fresh out, because you have to go and make your own mistakes before you know enough about the questions to to even ask. You know, like how do I how would you explain to somebody who's never tried a case how you go and try a case?

SPEAKER_03 8:36

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Like, I don't even know where to start. Like go have some successes and have some failures and tell me what you did to achieve both of those, and I and I can help you guide toward more success and fewer failures in the future. Uh and so law students, not probably not as much, but young lawyers, I think, um and then you know, uh weirdly like young young people who are selling into the legal technology space, who I kind of met on the conference circle and you know, uh account um executives and and whatever, like those kinds of people tend to be the people who uh engage and share and and like and comment, and and if I can help them out, like great. Because the advice is always the same. You know, so many times I'll I'll post something and um and and I always you know usually we'll start with young lawyers, blah blah blah, or lawyers, blah blah blah, or law firm owners, blah blah blah. Yeah, the call out to that that category of people. Um and people will come into the comment section and say, well, it's no different for uh accountants, or it's no different for sales reps. I'm like, no shit, I'm just giving life advice, right? But I put I've put out the call out here. So really I'm just uh I think by and large I'm talking to um professionals probably who are ten years younger than me. Um most of what I know happens to be about lawyering, so that that tends to be the most. But I don't I don't I suspect I don't have a ton of young law firm follow your young law student followers. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

I think um it it you made me feel better about the fact that we're currently like a year and a half in, so now we're like every now and then, pretty much every every two or three weeks, we weave in an old post that we've modified and changed up a bit. And I'm like, I kind of feel bad that we're reposting it, but I mean after a couple of years, you only have so much shit you could say. I mean, I pretty much said everything I got to say at this point.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

I do you know, it's especially when I was getting towards the end of that year where I was posting consistently, I would wake up on a Tuesday and I've I don't know what I'm gonna say. So you I you just go back, and uh I don't know if you could do this on regular LinkedIn, but certainly LinkedIn Premium, you can go back and you can sort by your highest um uh performing posts in the last 365 days. And so oftentimes I would just take something out of that, rewrite it a little bit, throw it in a chat GPT, and ask it to rephrase it. Still as relevant as the last time you said it for somebody knew that it's ironically, like some sometimes it'll work exactly the same, and sometimes it'll just totally flop. So um, but yeah, this is and this is one of the things that you probably know about um from running a podcast, and and we know from running great legal marketing, like you can say the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, and it's always fresh and new to some audience. Or if you if you have an audience that maybe has heard you say the same thing over and over, like the advice just hits them in a different um way or at a different point in their career where they can finally internalize it. Ben would tell you that at our Great Legal Marketing Summit, he's given the same speech as a as a keynote or as an introductory uh 30 minutes for the last 20 years, right? And people always come up and say, Oh, I learned something new from that. He's like, it's been basically the same call to action for the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

Sometimes you need to hear it multiple times, though, if we're gonna be honest. I just speak for myself. I've heard your dad probably give that speech on his podcast and shows or on the stage a mix of 24 times, but sometimes the 22nd time just hit right. And I needed to hear it at that point in time. So it is interesting, you know. I don't know why even internally, sometimes I'm like, I feel like I keep repeating myself, but sometimes you do need to keep repeating yourself.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Well, you I think I think you're just blind to the advice it doesn't apply to you in the moment.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

You know, it's and this is back to like the discussion about insurance coverage, right? You can hear over and over that you need good underinsured motorist coverage, but uh most people won't go home and make that change in their policy despite the fact that they've you know heard it 15 times, or despite the fact they're on on my law firm newsletter list, right? Yeah, they see articles and still you come back seven years later as a repeat client, you still don't have better coverage. Like, I can't do anything for you, right? So people don't always hear everything that we say and they're not always listening. So um it's so you can say the same thing over and over and over again. It is uh fresh to a certain part of your audience.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Um let me ask you, Brian, how long have you been working um in great legal marketing now? Is it about five years for you, four or five years?

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Uh you know, in in like an informal capacity is probably about three years.

SPEAKER_03 13:05

Okay, so more than most lawyers, you see a lot of law firms, a lot of lawyers. What are some of the things that you notice or for any lawyers listening, younger lawyers, established lawyers, um, people working at law firms, whatever it is, any other type of business people? Because I think the sometimes lawyers, like I try to like get inspiration and tips from places outside of law and business and in other parts of the world, not really just looking at law because it's such a small little blip on the grand scheme of how successful people in businesses operate. But what are some of the common traits that you see from the good business operators and the good lawyers, the good trial lawyers and practitioners, um, and and the things that you see hold back the ones that are just struggling to be effective? Trial lawyers in practice andor have effective law practices that are managed well and efficient.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

I mean, it's totally cliche, but willingness to fail, right? Willingness to fail more than once is the thing that holds people back. Um lawyers will implement a marketing strategy uh and run at it two times and it and it doesn't generate any cases, and we decide, well, that doesn't work, right? Um if you talk to some of the best salespeople in the world, they're they're like, okay, if I if I do a dozen sales pitches and I sell twice, then what I know is I gotta get through the next ten no's to get another sale. And so you know, having that having that hit rate um is not necessarily about making everybody your client, but it's about getting enough repetitions in so that you get to the success uh every once in a while. So I think I think that being willing to try the same thing over and over again, uh, even if it's not immediately apparent what your success is, is a uh is a trait that is winning law firms and lawyers have. And um and kind of along that same line, it's like just the number of at bats that you get, uh the number of hands that you shake leads to a better uh better successful outcomes. So the willing to willingness to implement and the willingness to to kind of run fast at a project and get it uh done with, get it to the finish line and get it launched is some is a differentiator, right? So many people will go to a conference or go to an event or hear something on a podcast and say, Oh, I should do that, right? And it goes on the back burner and it never gets executed. Um and so the the speed with which you execute is uh often more important than uh than the quality because then at least it it gets you uh a failure at least gets you to you know the next iteration of the thing. So that's one. Um the other that that I'm kind of uh I'm sometimes better at than others is like finding space to step back from uh the doing and go, actually, like here's the thing that we're trying to accomplish. Right. So in our leadership meetings, we'll talk about um we'll talk about new marketing initiatives or new HR initiatives or new whatever. And and somebody in the room always has to say, like, what is it that we're we think this thing will do, right? If we put this marketing piece out into the world, we'll know it's successful if it does what.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

And I think um uh I think so many of us just want to do more and more and more and more and more, and we never are then selective on okay, like we gotta scale back those some of those projects so that we can do the one really well. And so it's it's kind of two different things, right? It's executing on a whole bunch of different things initially, um, but then figuring out what's actually working and and what you're trying to accomplish and cutting all of the things that maybe you tried uh that didn't work uh to make room for more spend or more activity on the things that are working for you.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, one um I've really been thinking um about the last couple months, Brian, and I think I'm guilty of it to a certain extent, and been trying to be self-critical from the standpoint of how do I get better at not doing this. You know, us lawyers with our egos and our uh low emotional intelligence levels sometimes, we you know, you hear, like, for example, if you're doing newsletters and I'm doing newsletters, and Tim Simmeroth, our friend, I was doing newsletters, and they say, Oh, Tim will say, I'm doing this and this and this, and I'm picking on Tim because I learned a really valuable nugget from Tim like eight or nine months ago, uh, which is like, okay, yeah, I'm doing all that, and then you just kind of zone it out. Well, when you're kind of curious, instead of just being like, for like I I'm already doing that. Well, number one, you might already be doing it, but like, do you really know how effective your organization is implementing it and how they're doing it and at what level they are? Number one, most of the time, no. And so, like, have you really dug into operations and ascertain whether or not you're doing it well? And number two, maybe that person, so like one thing I had learned from Tim is what he does with his newsletter is he uses a lot of his really well-performing LinkedIn posts, and he uses those as content in his newsletter. Seems like an easy and logical thing, but I'm so dumb I've been not doing that. And I'm like, Well, this is amazing. Thank you, Tim Simmeloth. And it was like a result of me just like thinking to listen and be curious, and then learning from him a very small little thing that saved us a lot of time, probably makes our newsletter a lot more interesting to people who read it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

It's funny because Tim got that from me. Well, thank you, Brian Glass. Tim was in our mastermind group, and he was trying he was trying to wrap his head around why are you on LinkedIn? What what are you getting out of being on LinkedIn so constantly? And what's the point of all this content? Like, are people calling you with Virginia car crash cases all the time? No. Like once every uh maybe once or twice a quarter, we'll get a referral for a Virginia car crash case.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Um, but I was using it, and I and I got this idea from Alex Ramosi, I think. I was using it as a testing ground for everything else, right? Yeah. So, okay, if if you take a week's worth of LinkedIn content and you take the top performing post, and that becomes a podcast episode, and then you take your month worth of content and the top performing post out of that gets repurposed into a newsletter article, right? Because this has given you now 30 days of feedback from an audience about what's important and what people don't give a shit about.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Right? And so now your newsletter gets better because you have all this testing and you've taken only the best performing piece and not the piece that like came to your mind when you sat down on Tuesday to write your newsletter article, um, but you actually have some market um data on what people find to be interesting.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

Yeah, I think it's just really smart. Thank you for passing that to Tim who passed it to me, and I falsely gave credit to him. Um I think I get it. What is new at the Ben Glass Law Firm? What are like maybe some cool new things y'all have implemented this year, Brian, that y'all are seeing a lot of success from? Or that you're just really enjoying, whether it be it could be from the client experience standpoint, it could be team building stuff, it could be case-related, any any like two or three things that are really new and fun that y'all are doing.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

So we finally got on the uh satellite Google Business Profile offices. We have two of those that we just opened up. Um, you know, Ben is having a field day with Claude. Um and so he has uh he has created inside of Claude like a uh we have a couple of young lawyers here, um, Virginia Civil How-to practice manuals, and we've taken our forms uh of complaints and discovery, and we've fed it all into that, and and and taken the local rules from uh the Virginia State rules and then the local rules of certain jurisdictions if it's it kind of creates a how-to um uh for the lawyers. It doesn't require necessarily us to be in on every one of those conversations. And then the other thing that we did, because we're on File Vine, is we uploaded that to a File Vine project that's like a model pleading project, and with their Lois AI product now uh somebody can go in and query the uh all of our information, all of our kind of proprietary how-to-do a case information inside that project and get an answer to a question faster than like coming and knocking on my door and asking what would you do in a case like this. So that's kind of cool. Um That's very cool. You know, he's we've continued to do uh on the long-term disability side all of these consultations with doctors across the country uh about uh going out on a disability policy, and so he's got this book of stories because all of those uh and this is kind of back to Claude, like all of the the consults are transcribed on Zoom, and then we have a protocol where we anonymize the doctor's name and the injury process sometimes, or you change the specialty, or you change. The location, and then all of that gets turned into a story that we can then go and tell in some other medium about you know a doctor that maybe had this kind of problem with this kind of insurance policy. And so we are we're thinking all the time about how can we use client stories in marketing and just put things out into the world that might find one other person who thinks that they have the one-of-one disease processing problem with an insurance company, and it turns out there's a lawyer out there in the world that's already solved that problem for somebody.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Amazing. That's really neat. And I also think it's just really cool how your dad, at least in that niche where he's writing that book and showing those case studies and how-tos, is able to also like deliver the message of what y'all can do to help people in that arena in like captive audiences when he goes to like a conference full of physicians, right? Like it's an audience who's highly interested in this topic, even though they don't right. Like if you educate them like this is what could happen, it's an audience who would really be receptive and it's kind of like it's a receptive audience who you can help expecting nothing in return, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Yes. Yeah. Um and let me tell you, you know, the that that target audience, so we talk in great legal marketing about defining who your avatar client is.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

And it's hard in personal injury, right? Like my avatar client is somebody with health insurance who's well insured, who got run over by a drunk FedEx driver and and is on life support, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Okay, there's not that many of them, right? Um and it's hard to market to a demographic or a psychographic of of people who were in car crashes last week. How do you it's like the whole universe could be your perfect client.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Um but in the in the long-term disability practice a couple of years ago, we uh it's a contingency fee practice, and so if we win an appeal for somebody, we're um we're getting a portion of their back benefits, and so the ideal client for us is somebody who makes a lot of money, right? Because there's a larger back benefit and there's a larger fee. And so we just started saying, maybe five years ago, that we are the LTD lawyers for doctors, lawyers, and C-suite executives. Like we probably had represented three doctors at the time, right? So we just started just started saying that.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

You were though. It was plural. It was plural, it was not a lot. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

It's like um it's like I can say that I'm a nation nationally recognized trial lawyer because I'm on a podcast from a guy in New Orleans, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:26

Well, I'm an international I own an international law firm because we have some team members in Mexico. You own an international law firm too.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

So so it was it was aspirational at the time that we started doing it, but we will do this year somewhere between fifty and seventy-five paid consultations with doctors who are considering making the you know the life-changing uh decision to leave their practice and go out on disability somewhere. So and and that you know it doesn't sound like a huge number, but it's um compared to what we were doing three years ago. It's a lot, and I guess you know we didn't even have that practice area.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

It's a lot, and y'all are doing it for the right reasons, and y'all are good people, and so it's like you need that's a need in the market, right? There's always going to be that need for that, and for doctors specifically, and so uh it's just really neat what y'all have done with that. Um so talk to me a little bit, Brian. Uh, for those of you who don't know much about great legal marketing, it's an entire marketing organization for law firms, lawyers, y'all run masterminds out of it. Y'all have classes on like we sent Whitney Miles has been up uh to y'all analog analog marketing boot camp. Whitney went up to that recently, our marketing director. Miles has been up there to some different boot camps y'all have had. So you'll do all these training courses, you have masterminds, this training, so you're running that with your dad, and you're also running this growing law firm, which is a successful firm in Virginia, and you got this huge family and you have a great travel schedule. Like, how are you how are you personally integrating the travel that you want to do and prioritizing that time with young kids and your family while you're juggling so many balls professionally?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

That's a great question. I don't know. I was just it's funny because um I was just complaining to my wife that I feel overbooked and overscheduled, and then like the the next day I booked another thing. So I'm I'm doing it begrudgingly, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

The road to saying no, is that the answer? What's that you're traveling the road to someday saying no? Is that the answer?

SPEAKER_02 26:28

I guess. I I did say no. I said no. I got invited to speak at a conference in Vegas in September, and and and uh I would have had to take the red eye back and then go up to a concert series that my wife and I are going to that weekend, so I did say no to that one.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Good for you.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Um yeah, finally, it's it's hard. It's really hard when you get invited to speak somewhere, you know, even if it's um pay your own way and buy your own hotel room. Like the ego, the try the trilogue ego that you mentioned earlier makes it really hard to turn that stuff down.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Um but in in terms of the the travel, like I just uh I feel like I'm in this window. My kids are 13, 11, and 8. Is that right? 13, 13, 11, and 7. He'll be eight in a month.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

Close enough.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

And um yeah, close enough. Uh and and we're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

You can take them to Europe, they can get over that.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

They where where they can do everything with us, yeah, and the 13-year-old still tolerates us. And you know, thankfully financially, we can do just about whatever we want. Um and I've got a great team here that supports um the building of the cases while I'm gone. And so it doesn't mean that I'm like I check out and I don't check email or anything. I'm still uh still available to everybody, but I don't have to be in court as often as I used to, and I don't have to, you know, be on the phone as much. So I'm able to do that. Um and we just David started building it in, and the good thing about being a law firm owner is you don't have to ask anybody for PTO.

SPEAKER_03 28:01

Yeah, that that is a good piece. I think the the great thing about it for for kids is like, you know, and I have the best parents in the world. I love them and have a wonderful relationship with them, but they're totally from the generation that was in survival mode and and did not really believe in travel and vacations, if that makes sense. And so, you know, traveling the world is to me like the best lesson, the best teaching, the best course. And so for kids who are able to like your kids have been, I know, over to Europe once or twice, uh you know, to be able to experience and see how big the world is, how many different people there are, get a glimpse of history and do all those things as a kid. I mean, I think they in some ways may learn more doing that than they do in the classroom. And so 100%.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

My my wife is um uh she's like, oh, they're they're missing a bunch of school. Like the the seventh grader has straight A's and one B. Okay. He's not missing whatever he's missing, we've made up for in historical tours in Portugal Portugal, Portugal or Italy. Like I'd rather give him this life experience than than bring that English grade up to an A. Um So that's that but that's the discussion that goes on in our house. Like, I because I'm getting pushback from my rule follower wife on on you know, he's missed so many days of school. And I go, Well, what's the negative effect? He doesn't seem bothered by it.

SPEAKER_03 29:28

Right, right. Um so your dad has been doing this for a while, and is it it seems to tell me he's phasing into the next stage of that was a face of disbelief that you'll believe it when you see it. But he's moving into this next phase of his life, and um you're very young, and you have a long future practicing and running the firm there. So um, what are some of the goals that you have for the firm long-term, next 10, 20 years, and how do you start to think through what um your goals are for for for the firm and what really motivates you and drives you? What is your kind of why is at this point in your career, Bron?

SPEAKER_02 30:05

It's it's funny because you know he gave me um today Tom Lefensky's book, The uh The Exit Blueprint, which is about selling your law firm. So I um so that's just an i ironic in the face of this question. I don't think 20 years down the line. You know, I have a car crash practice. And and were it not for cell phones and people that can't seem to keep their hands off their cell phones when they're driving, I think we would have far fewer crashes on the road. And I think we're probably gonna have that over the next 10 or 20 years as these self-driving cars get a little bit better. You know, I often say like if the AI uh investors and technicians put as much uh time and effort and energy into making cars not hit each other as they do into like turn this photo of me and my family into a Simpsons um uh piece of art, like we probably wouldn't have a practice area. And so I find it hard to think about 20 years down the road. I I would be very happy if five years from now I'm living the exact same life that I am right now. Uh our law firm does well. We've we've talked about uh every time we sit down at an EOS annual meeting, we're like, let's double the law firm. And I'm like, why do we want to do that? Everything's pretty good. This is back to that, like somebody in the room has to say, well, why why do we want to do it? Just because everybody else is doing it, like because everybody else wants to grow by 25% every year. Um and there was a there was a time, like we were a one million dollar law firm six years ago.

SPEAKER_03 31:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

And we've now we'll do a little bit over five this year.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

So there's a time where it was like, let's grow, grow, grow, grow. And now I'm like, I don't know, I'm pretty happy.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

So if we could just kind of sustain here, which is a funny place to be in from a growth perspective, because it's like, what's the next what's the challenge that's something other than I want to sign up 20% more cases or I want to do 20% more revenue? Like what what's the other kind of challenge to go through? And so for somebody um who has spent years uh and as a as a lo as a college student and then a law student and then a lawyer, like you always have these empirical objective goals that you're trying to hit, and now it's like let's just not screw it up. So that's that's been kind of a mental uh mental shift. We have this again that long-term disability practice area would save me if the car crashes went under, um and we'd figure out how do you grow and do more and more of that. But uh right now I'm just trying to enjoy the ride.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

I love it. Um I I'm kind of one of those people I don't really worry about the I mean as there's less crashes, it's great for everybody, but I always tell my team I'm like we're building a sustainable organization, so I could flip it around more and we could sell Christmas trees better than anybody else. So I'm not really so worried about what it is that we're doing so much as like the kind of organization that we have in the systems and processes and our focus on training and implementation and execution. And I just, you know, for me, um I I I I think that eventually the car crashes will probably go away, and probably not in my lifetime, but that'll be a good thing for society. I feel like at this point we should have figured out how to stop this, and I'm yeah, I I don't know about you, but I'm not too positive that Waymo has figured it out because I've been watching the studies on that stuff and I'm like, I'm not getting in that thing.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

So they are, yeah. I mean, they're not really in in Northern Virginia, so I haven't paid any attention to it. Yeah. Um I don't know, it'd be fun. Feels feels like it'd be fun once.

SPEAKER_03 33:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

I've never I've never been in one. Uh you know, in your Christmas tree comment, I don't know if my wife would tell you that my toxic trade is I think I could do absolutely anything. And here hearing you say we could take this organization and go be the best Christmas tree sellers, like you're speaking my language.

SPEAKER_03 33:46

I do think we could, but it's all about the right like what I learned from your like a lot of the lessons I learned from Ben is right person, right seat, communication, um, lay out the vision, let them see what you're trying to accomplish and do and build a good team. You know, a lot of that I think too is sport. Um but anywho. Well, thanks for being here. Um, for everybody, uh anybody looking for a Virginia uh car crash lawyer or uh any type of injury lawyer, um, look up Brian. They are on all the mediums. And if you have any type of disability claim anywhere across the country, they handle long-term disability claims. They would be somebody I would send it to because it's just not something we know how to do, and it's not really a practice area that it's in the best interest of the client. You should be dabbling in. Um, it's not something if you don't know it, you should be dabbling. You should have a specialist like them get involved. Brian, thanks so much for being here, uh, my friend. I will talk to you soon. It's great seeing you.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Thank you, David. You too.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

And thanks to all of you. It's been another interesting discussion, an episode of the Overrule Podcast, brought to you by the Scott Vignair Law Firm on behalf of Brad Scott, who is not here in Abstentia, and myself, David Vignair. Thank you all for watching andor listening. We can't wait to see you.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Scott Vignair, danger, tweet by far the win.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

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