[00:00:18] Speaker A: Most firms survive. The best ones scale.
Welcome to the Managing Partners podcast, where law firm leaders learn to think, think bigger.
I'm Kevin. Daisy.
Let's jump in.
What's up, everyone? Welcome to another episode. Thanks so much for tuning in and I appreciate you listening to the show. Tuning into the show, we have a lot of listeners that, that tell me they listen quite often and I'm always trying to bring some good content. Today I have a really cool story and friend here. We got Joe Musso on the show. He's got really a interesting niche and I think it's really cool how it's how he's kind of created his own marketplace, if you will, and excited to talk about that. But Joe, welcome to the show.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Kevin. And I'm one of those listeners, I'm one of those fans of your, your podcast, so you can count me among the many, I'm sure.
Well, it's been very useful and helpful to me in my practice and kind of in the places that I've been along my journey. So I appreciate you.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: I appreciate that, man, very much.
Well, again, that's been cool talking with you and learning what you're doing and how it's unique. And obviously for me, we're always looking to help lawyers and understand their business better. But at the same time, you know, I like learning from my guest and, you know, I just like learning about business and how it's unique and how maybe I can help, you know, apply it into my own business or different situations. So it's just always cool to go, wait, what, what do you do and how do you do that?
[00:01:46] Speaker B: And, and I'm certainly unique. I mean, my work is pretty unique, although it's less unique than when I first started it. When I started it, I've been a nursing home abuse lawyer since 90 98.
So 1998. So it's been a while. It's been a minute, you know, and back then there was nobody doing it, you know, very few people. Right? There was a couple people around me. I learned. I got hired as a law clerk and at a law firm with about five personal injury law firm, about five people in it, and the owner who was summering in Jersey and I was in Jersey and, and he was wintering in Boca Raton, Florida comes up and he says they got this stuff going on in Florida because that's where the, the greatest percentage of elderly people were, where they're suing nursing homes for abuse of the elderly. And, you know, I think that's going to Be something that's. That goes on for a long time. He's definitely right about that condition that I learned it and I had to literally find now they're just giants of the game. Right. Like Ruben Crystal and Wilson McQ and, you know, this Levin. These people back then that were doing it that are now, they've got a whole generation of people underneath them that, that taught me how to do it. And so I've been a nursing home abuse attorney that entire time, which has been a crazy kind of ride.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Actually, a guest I've had on the show a while back was. It's it Klein, Klein Smith.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Sure. Curtis Klein Smith, of course. Yep. Of course.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Dawn. I had dawn on the show, actually.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Dawn's one of the best nursing home attorneys in America. I, I.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: I work on quite a bit.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Dawn, if you're listening. Yeah, yeah. Great. She was awesome guest, Great episode.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: To reach out and have her back on. But to be honest with me, not me. Is not a lawyer. Right. Hadn't heard much about some of these specialized nursing home outfits, really, until probably a handful of years ago when dawn came on the show. You know, they were talking about how they had really niched into it and really tried to go national with it as well. So I thought it was a really interesting move. Obviously, there's some bigger conglomerates and firms out there as well, but very specialized. Again, across all the clients that we have, some dabble in it. Some might have, you know, probably enough counsel or someone that they're leaning on if they do get one of the cases. Most of the time, don't have anyone in house that specializes or can handle or afford to have them just hanging out and, and waiting for some cases. So I wanted to kind of talk, you know, about that for one. Joe's in Virginia, I'm in Virginia. Go, Commanders.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Go, Commanders.
Amen.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Been fans our whole lives, right?
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Definitely. Absolutely. I was a little kid when I first started, but John Riggins, that's how long ago it was. Joe.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: I had. There's a. I just have a picture of my mom. Used to have a picture on the fridge probably till about 10 years ago, but it was like me and my Redskins pajamas. So, yeah, we've been fans since we were born, and we had a little.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Bit of a period of difficulty, like.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Most of my life, basically my entire kid's life. But now, you know, maybe we have a chance.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: So while we're recording this, it's preseason, but we'll see what happens? Everyone stand by.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: We're coming back for you. So. Well, Joe, I wanted to. So actually I met Joe because I have a client, personal injury client, and they do car accidents, General P.I. and they really connect me with Joe, saying, hey, we, we have this nursing home side of the practice that we're trying to build. And they introduced me to Joe and then I learned that, you know, Joe's on his own, really, and Joe is working with these other firms and he, he would be the one doing that for them.
And I was like, okay, that's very interesting. And so just tell me a little bit about, like, your structure, how you operate. I think it's super cool. And really how that can expand. I think there's a lot of opportunity there.
Thank you for tuning into the show today.
I have taken things to the next level and I've started the managing Partners Mastermind. We're a peer group of owners looking for connection, clarity and growth strategies. So if you're looking to grow your law firm and not do it alone, please consider joining the group. Bots are limited, so I ask for anyone to reach out to me directly through LinkedIn and with a set of a one on one call to make sure it's a fit.
Now back to the show.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I know he wouldn't have a problem me saying his name. Wayne Williams is your client that you're talking about. Wayne. Wayne owns Williams deloach. Wayne has been my friend since childhood. I met Wayne when I was 12 years old.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Sorry to hear that.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, we've been friends for a very long time. He was in my wedding, you know, I mean, he. We're very close and he has built a wonderful. Him and Jonathan DeLoach have built a wonderful law firm, basically concentrating on all personal injury. But, you know, he came across a couple of nursing home cases. In fact, one of them was a dear friend of his. And he sent it to me when I was working at another firm and I handled it kind of with him and he got intrigued by it. And so when I went out on my own in 20, 21, 22, he said, hey, look, you know, I'll come across these cases, I'll get these cases, and we want to do them the right way. And, you know, that's been my model since I went out on my own. So I've been the head of big nursing home departments, big nursing home litigation departments at giant firms, and then kind of, you know, went out on my own, started Musil Law Firm and found so many opportunities where people wanted to do the work, but just don't have the skill set. And it takes years and years to develop the skill set to do it. Because you're trying to learn, you know, medicine, geriatric medicine, and then you have to learn how a nursing home functions, how it gets paid, what the language is. It's the most regulated industry underneath nuclear power plants. So the regulations are, you know, even beyond trucking. And so it's just a very, you know, medically, legally and sort of the understanding of how it all works takes a long time to learn. So a lot of people are seeing the value of these cases and not just the fee value of the cases, which exists for sure, but the moral value of these cases. Right. I mean, the reality is there are more cases out there than there are lawyers competent to handle. And so the sad part of this work is that I turn down cases every week that I'd love to take. You know, I just don't have the time or the resources at this point to take on more. And this is kind of the stuff that dawn and Curtis over at Kleinsmith's office is doing. They're looking at it as a bigger model, more volume based model, but most of us have much more small practices. Or you're doing what I'm doing, which is I'm of counsel to various firms. Williams DeLoach is my primary one and I co counsel with other people who want, because they have one or two right. You're not going to hire someone, train them, learn it, and then prosecute that case within the statute of limitations. So you can come across a really good one. But if you don't know what you're doing, there's so many traps in it. And so what I think is kind of interesting about it and I think maybe the bigger lesson for, for folks, certainly if you have young lawyers listening. But even for older folks, there's something about doing a practice that's so difficult that people can't get into it easy. The bar to entry to my practice actually becomes a competitive advantage once you have gained the knowledge gap. And it does another thing, and this is what I think you saw with Kleinsmith's office for me, because that's kind of all I'm doing. Again, the firm I'm with, like Williams DeLoach does all sorts of stuff, but I'm very niche down. And as a result I'm building my case the exact same way. If you've ever learned like the lean law firm principles, I'm my favorite law firm management Book, you know, it talks about how if you have multiple niches inside of your firm, it's sort of like a factory that has to change out the factory, you know, the factory settings to make the other kinds of models. I don't. It's the same steps every time. The building is exactly the same. Prosecuting cases is different. Of course, every case is different. Different, you know, fact pattern is different. But the building of a nursing home case is exactly the same every way. So I gain all these little competitive advantages in the market. I gain the competitive advantage of. Everybody knows me as the nursing home guy, right? And so they come across a nursing home case and they go, where am I going to get a referral fee and know that it's not going to be malpractice on me or, or I'm not settling the case too cheap or I'm not selling it. You know, this guy's been doing it his whole life. He doesn't do anything else. And it's a, it's a win, win deal. So in the marketplace, niching down is helping me a lot, but also in the building of the case, I don't, I don't have to switch out a lot. Even if my firms do. I don't.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, systems, processes m super important. And yeah, if you niche, that makes it a lot easier to do that. If you're just a general practice or anyone that's got a pulse, you know, with a case, potentially, it just makes it difficult to grow, scale your firm for sure.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: But it's tempting. I'll tell you. It's hard because there's downsides to nursing home too. So when you're really niche down, the downsides are yours too. Right? So they take a long time, they're expensive. You're not. There's never a situation where I'm sending a demand letter and getting policy limits on it.
That never happens. Right. I have to litigate almost every single one of my cases. So. So it's got downsides too. And so you, you try. You're tempted with the idea of, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna offset my downsides by diversifying. But as soon as you do that, you lose. You can lose your marketing brand, your brand, or at least dilute it, and you then lose your systems and processes. You don't lose them, but you dilute them. And you have to now recycle time. And your throughput rates are being impacted by changing out your systems to accommodate for other practice areas that you didn't do. So some of the ways people I think have done that in my world to try to overcome it is find what they perceive to be tan tangents, natural tangents, elder law, for example, because it's same marketing world, but the practice areas are so different. So that's challenging.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I know for me, like if I talk to like a business owner or a startup or someone that's trying to go in the business for me every time and I have multiple companies and you know, I've always delayed mostly in the past, delayed niching and because you're like, well, you know, we're going to start this up, let's just got to make money and it's just got to be blah, blah. Every time I do that, I regret it every time. And time is lost to where you could have been building a brand and messaging and strengthening that. To say this is what we specialize in, your growth will be much faster. It might take a little while to get that momentum going, but once the momentum's going, that's where it really takes off. So if you niche and you're specialized and you have a clear message, people know who you are and what you do, then it will pay off bigger, in my, my experience.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: And what's kind of unique. Absolutely. And what's unique about it is. So you know where I saw this in another area with. I don't. I'm trying to think if I've ever heard an episode that you've had on this niche. But have you seen the niche that came out? God, I want to say it. I remember when it came out because it definitely I became a customer immediately. It was the niche of lean resolution lawyers. Right. So these were lawyers that all they did was handle everybody's liens. Their customers ended up becoming lawyers themselves. And they said, hey, we'll take all your Medicare and Medicaid and Tricare and, you know, your Medicare. Set aside issues like all the stuff you don't want to work on that drives you crazy, that makes you pull your hair out because you're not really good on the law. And the penalties are the government coming and seizing your fee and giving you a hard time. We'll take that mess, that hornet's nest. And those guys are like printing money now because it's not just niching down. Right. Because I could go and niche down into car accidents today and so many other people in Northern Virginia are niched down onto car accidents. You know, Williams alone can jump in the market and fight because they built a brand and that's what they do for me to do that, I'm going to have years of trying to get ahead, but when you choose a niche. And again, if I had young lawyers in front of me right now, I'd go look for the work that no one else wants to do, you know?
[00:13:45] Speaker A: And it's like, that's a good point.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: It seems like counterintuitive. Like, why would you want to do something super difficult, super hard, super complicated? Because nobody else wants to do is.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Right. I mean, and I've heard this, I've heard this many times. Boring work. The boring.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Companies that do boring stuff like insurance or just stuff that just. You're like, like they make tons of money. Like, people don't want to do it, don't want to handle it.
It's like if you sold Porta Potties or rented Porta Potties, no one wants to get into that. But outside of the legal.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Needed.
Outside of the legal field, outside of the legal genre, you see this now, the revival in, you know, the, the stripers who are like striping parking lots and power washers and like bored. They call them boring businesses. Right. But they're like, great, because AI is not replacing that 100.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah. It's gonna be a very long time before it could, if anything. So. Yeah. So I, I know Jason Lazarus. He's with Synergy. They do lean resolution. He was on the show not too long ago and I was, I was perplexed with his. I'm like, what do you do? And because I'm not a lawyer and you know, you explain to them what they didn't. So he is a lawyer, has a side practice still. He's actually in a mastermind group that I have, the managing partners. Mastermind and very intriguing. They've grown incredibly fast.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: I use them.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Yeah, well, there you go.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: For a nursing home abuse lawyer, having someone take your. Your lean problems is an enormous. It's win win all the way around. They're like their own contingency fee too. They're like, we only charge you what we save you. So you, like, you don't even have a risk. So you're just sitting there going, so this guy's going to take my work, save my client money. I'm not going to have to work on something. He knows ten times more than I do, and it doesn't even come out of my pocket. And it's just like, this is an easy. This is an easy sell. But it's because they chose to do something that no one wanted to do. That Work is hard, but they got good at it. That's all they're doing.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: When I had Jason, like, coming on the podcast, I had chatted with him, and he was at, like, 80 employees. And then I saw him, like, a few weeks later, and he was over a hundred. And I was like, holy. Like, that's 20 and, you know, huge a month.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: It was like.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: So, yeah, and they were like.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: They were like the first one. But they have competitors now, too. It's become something where other lawyers now are looking at it, going, hey, we could do this too. But it was really when they. They jumped out in front of that, and it was like everyone looked at them like, oh, what a terribly difficult practice. But that's why they're lucrative.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's for them, it's just marketing and getting in front of firms to know that it's a service that exists. So nice little plug for Jason there and.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. That's right.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: No, so niching. They chose something that no one wants to do. Nursing home. Hard, expensive, hard to staff for, because you might not have enough cases coming in to make sense of that. That's what Joe's done. He's taken that, and now he's got multiple firms that lever use him to fulfill that service. Or like, client Smith has just built the whole practice around it and kind of grown that and scaled it and trying to go national with it. So I kind of just lend my.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Head, I lend my brain out and my experience out to these other firms who would have to just send the case out. And they want to learn it or they want to be a part of it or. Or they refer to me, which is fine, too. You know what I mean? But they don't have to just cut it and go, I don't know what. I don't want to do this. I don't know what I'm doing here. You know, that kind of thing.
And so it's kind of win, win, because they're everywhere, unfortunately. The sad part of this is they're everywhere. And I've been doing it for 26 years, and every year there's more cases than the year before. We're getting older as a nation, and we're getting. We're living longer and we're living sicker in some ways. And so, you know, it's a tough situation. And then there's government funding to these nursing homes and big ownership and big. You know, that's a business too. Right. And so there you got the two kinds of owners of a nursing home. The ones that are trying to get right up to the level of staff that can meet everyone's needs without anyone just kind of hanging out doing nothing. Right. And they're getting right up against that line. And then the bad ones, dirty ones, that are intentionally staffing below that line to maximize their profit. Accidents and mistakes can happen in the first one and in the second one. It's inevitable. So, sure. It's just. Yeah.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: I have a grandma. Rough situation.
I have a grandma that's dementia. She's been nursing for probably six, seven years at this point.
Not the greatest place.
I mean, it's expensive, obviously.
Most of it's all. It's all covered, but it's.
I mean, I don't know how much it was for a month. It's like 70 grand a month. But the kind of care that she needs, you can't really stay anywhere at someone's house or home.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: No.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: 24, 7. So when I say I don't know what compare it to, but, you know, to me it seems like a place I would definitely not want to be.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: But yeah. So Joe's good person to have in your Rolodex for family people, you know, because the specialization that he has.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: I'm in this age now, Kevin. Right. And it's like crazy to me, but I have friends now on Facebook that, you know, have known. I've been a nursing home lawyer for a quarter of a century now. Right. And they were friends with me in high school. Like, like, you know, same. Same class as Wayne. Right. And they reach out to me and they're like, hey, I'm putting mom in a facility. And it's like, wow, you know, we're all getting old really quick. Or now, now people calling me about my practice area that are my age and it's sobering reality, not getting any hunger.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Well, in the meantime, so, you know, we. We do marketing for Wayne. We're going to be stepping up the nursing home cases that come your way, hopefully. So I'm excited about that. Yeah. Oh, you know, kind of back to. You were saying, you know, bar to entry too. You know, like in my business, marketing, super easy to enter. You don't have to know anything you're doing. You just, boom. I can start doing marketing for you or I can write blogs or make social content. So the bar is really low, but I would, you know, on the flip side is doing it well. And the results of it, I think, is it's probably the most challenging space to be. So while the bar's low and there's crap, tons of people in the space. The only thing we could do is be the best possibly at it. And, you know, we win at the end of the day because there's a lot of people that, that don't do well at it. So, like, in your case, you're absolute expert and you've, you've dug into that and continued to stay in that space. I think that's.
It's easy for people to want to stray over to something else or pick up a couple bucks over here and.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: And, oh, I get, I get the call. I get the call. I don't want to say it's every week because it's not. But I'd say once a month, maybe. Definitely once a quarter. Definitely once a quarter. I thought I could handle this. It seemed like a pretty open and shut case. I thought I could pull this off without any help. I didn't want to, you know, split the fee, whatever the story is, right. And now they're upside down. And, you know, look, these defense lawyers have niched down too, right? When I first started doing this work, you would get these either personal injury insurance lawyers or medical. At best, you'd get a medical malpractice defense of.
And they're used to winning, you know, nine out of 10 cases because juries love doctors and it's hard to hit on a med mal case. And so they would walk into these nursing home cases like, oh, you know, we'll throw something at you maybe, maybe we won't. We'll just beat you at trial. And then they started to realize that jurors understand these cases, leaving someone in their own feces long enough that it burns the skin off of them. And they end up having a hole in their backside that fills with their own feces, poisons their blood and kills them, which is about 70% of the cases I handle. Bed sore cases, pressure injury cases.
It doesn't.
You don't walk into a courtroom and say, I represent the nursing home. And you start with the white hat like you do with a doctor. And so, you know, it's. They're really good lawyers now. Have jumped on the defense too. And they're niching down too. They're just handling. Nursing home. Virginia has some of the best nursing home abuse defense attorneys, I think, in the country. And it's largely because they're niching down too. So it's super hard. And if you just kind of dabble in this, they'll eat you alive because they're not defending a Nursing home case on. We gave great care. They're defending the case on. You didn't file that right. Your expert report is incorrect. You don't have a proper foundation for that document. They're trying to get the lawyer to screw up, not defend their actions. And so they catch somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, man, and they are going to kill them. And so you've got these, these folks out there because everyone's got it on their website now. I mean everyone. It's nothing to add nursing home abuse landing page to your website now. I can do it for you now, right?
[00:22:28] Speaker A: I have seen it a lot more often recently in the last couple of years for sure.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I tell, I tell most clients. Ask a couple of simple questions of your lawyer about, you know, how often have they done this? Are you co counseling with someone who does this? I always tell them if you Google nursing home in my name, you can see me thinner with more hair, talking about nursing home stuff 20 years ago, right. Like my whole life has been this, you know, And I think that that's a really important thing to have. So I'm marketing to lawyers who have it on their website but don't know what they're doing. Before you make a huge mistake, you can call me and I'll get you through it. Right. And then I'm marketing, of course, to the families of these residents who don't want to let them get away with this. But what's really kind of interesting about the practice area too is that it's so unique in its challenging and its difficulties because of the nature of the case itself.
If you had a, I always say that, you know, if you walked in and went to go pick up your 4 year old or your 5 year old daycare and you found him with a broken ankle and he's got a diaper rash that's so deep, it's, it's through his, his buttock and his bones are exposed, you know, and you went to the daycare center and said, why is my child suffering with a broken leg and why does she have a urinary tract infection and why does she have this giant gaping hole in her backside and her diaper is filthy and, and they said, well, we don't know how she got like that. We don't know how she broke her leg, we don't know how she got the big wound, we don't know how she got the infection. You know, she was with me all day. But you know, I don't, I Don't know. And they start looking around, do you know what happened to that kid? They'd shut that place down, arrest everybody involved and lawyers would line up around the block to represent that person.
Most of my clients come to me after they'd been rejected by three or four lawyers because if you don't know, know that a 90 year old is entitled to justice, then it just sounds like a really bad med mal case for an elderly person who has no income, no lost wages, and was already so sick, frail, vulnerable and sometimes dying that they needed 24, 7 nursing care before the thing you're suing about. And then when you find out, oh, it's a medical malpractice case and it's going to cost you 50 to $100,000 to prosecute it, it's easy for a bunch of people to say no first.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. So yeah, either ones that market it or say that they, they can handle it, pick them, picks them up and then end up going, this is not something we want or can handle.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: It's not hard to convince, hard to convince society that you can do something that you may not be able to do. I mean in today's world it's, it's really a dangerous thing. And I bring this up because being a nursing home abuse attorney, I don't have a great story for how I became a nursing home abuse attorney. Like I think I told you in our prep session that my boss came to me and said, if you want a job, I'll train you in this nursing home stuff. Like, I don't have some great stories. Some of the great nursing home. Yeah, some of the great nursing home story lawyers I know have really powerful stories about loved ones that were in that situation that prompted them to go to law school to do this, you know, and it's beautiful stories. I don't have it like I was looking for a job. But you don't stay in this business for 26 years until now developing a real passion for it because, because here's, here's the thing, there are way easier ways to make a living than what I do. And so you don't just want somebody who understands the, the regulations and the medicine and all that. At my, my stage of life and my stage of career, I deeply care about the cause of the institutionalized elderly. And I have now seen these families over and over and over again. The guilt and the pain and the shame of choosing the nursing home that killed their loved one is something that until you've done the work for a bit you're not really equipped to handle. There are big parts of my job that are a ministry, you know, not a, not a career. There's a big parts of my job where sitting with a daughter or son of someone who died in a nursing home that they chose requires a certain level of empathy and sympathy and compassion that if you're just rolling through it for a fee, you're not going to have. And they'll know, they'll, they'll pick it up quickly. They know who's on their side for.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Real, and they're kind of putting that on themselves for making that decision or somehow blaming themselves for.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah, and, you know, I'm choosing that facility I'm scared of death to make them a victim again. You know what I mean? Like, they're a victim when they come to you. They're never the same. Defense lawyers talk about the life expectancy of the resident all the time. Right. Oh, she was 90. She, how much longer was she going to live? But in my cases, it's not the life expectancy of the resident that matters. It's the life expectancy of the child who has to live the rest of their lives knowing they put mom in a home that killed them and, and in a bad way. You know, infected blood bed sores, broken necks. You know, so there's, there's parts of the job that are emotionally, you're also seeing the worst of humanity every day, which is another thing that is not easy to look at. So again, you know, I don't recommend it for everyone, but there's something very rewarding about taking on people who don't have a voice and really need a good lawyer who cares about them. And my experiences, like I said, my biggest problem now is that I, I can't take them all. You know, I, I, I can't. There's more than I, I can take because compassion and love and skill and heart and desire to hold them accountable is rare. Lawyers are not out there looking for that all the time. The people who do this work are great. I know them all, you know, the whole country that does them. I'm on a nursing home.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: You said that.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: AAJ's nursing home litigation Group, the Virginia Trial Lawyers Long Term Care section. Lawyers who do this work are special people for sure.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Sounds like you should be out there doing a mentorship or coaching program or speaking of some events. I don't know if you.
Yeah. So to share some of your, your knowledge to folks that really want to maybe get into it or go that direction.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: It's a good idea. I mean, I, I do try to mentor and teach. I teach cles and I speak a lot and. But you know, it required also, Kevin, it requires, requires people time.
Yeah. And it requires people to forego the easy thing and our society. I'm going to get off my soapbox and not be the old man shaking his fist at the cloud. You know, I think there's a lot of life, right, where if you're willing to sacrifice now and learn it now and suffer a little bit now and you're not just going to walk right in and be first chair in a multi million dollar med mal case, you get bigger and better rewards later. That. What is that? It's that marshmallow test from like the 50s where they gave the kids the, the marshmallows. They said if you eat the marsh, if you don't eat the marshmallow, you'll get two in an hour. And they track those kids later. So I think that, that unfortunately a lot of young lawyers coming out and some of it's, you know, law student loans and you know, financial pressures today are leading these kids not to take the long road and develop a real niche that they're proud of that, that, you know, moves them emotionally and spiritually, not just from how do I get my paycheck, how do I pay off my student loans, how do I buy a house and have a kid?
[00:29:37] Speaker A: You know, oh yeah, instant gratification. Nowadays you're exposed to, you know, a lot of successful lawyers are very vocal. They're on social media. They've been all these big settlements or, you know, so it's like I want to just jump right to, to that.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: You know, well, you built, you've built multiple businesses. I mean, you know that there's not, there's no shortcut to that. You can't shortcut your way to success in business. It really doesn't work. Everyone tries it. That's why the get rich quick scheme businesses sell so well. It's because so many people want that. Anyone who's actually successful, including the guy who's selling that course, they know that there's no such, there's no such thing as a short shortcut.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: The best shortcut I can give people is listen to others that have done it, join a mastermind group, listen to podcasts like this and others and just soak everything up you can because someone else has already done it.
You can read books and do all that stuff. The answers are out there. It's just, you got to Put in the time and work to, to figure it out for yourself. Niching is a big piece of that, you know, one of the, One of the pieces of the puzzle that I think is important.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Well, you, you love. And again, in the, in the pre, the pre podcast discussions we've had, you love, you love your work. Right? You love your business. You love what you're doing. You love helping people. I know from talking to Wayne, you're. You're just super passionate about helping the people that, that you're in contact with.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it has to be there.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: That's the stuff, though. That's the stuff that's going to get you there. I mean, if you, if you're passionate and it doesn't mean, you know, I always hear the. You got to love what you do. You won't work a day in your life. Loving what you do is really important, but the, the, the science of that is actually doing meaningful work. You know, it's not my work.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: You're still working.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: You're still working. Exactly. There's going to be days, and no matter what your job is, there's going to be days where you're going to be doing things you don't want to do. And so it's not that every day is just fun.
When you look back, you know, we, we have a saying in Williams deloache, and anywhere I go, quite frankly, that we do what we do because people who will never know we existed, who will never thank us, who will never even know, will have a more dignified and safe, clean, dignified existence at the end of life because of the work we did in our life. You know, it's a lifetime. So what is your legacy? What is your career? You know, and I know you look at yours the same way. It's. There's all these people that you're touching, and then they go off and they touch others. And you're helping people deliver great services to others in a way that really helps them. And you don't even know that the level of your impact, you know, but when you envision it, that's what gets you up every day.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things I have to tell my team and we worked this into, like, our mission and vision is why would some young folks. I got older folks, too, but young. Let's just say young folks want to go do marketing or build a website for a law firm. That sounds pretty boring.
Sounds terrible. And so although I've been working with lawyers for many years and understand that we wanted to help them, you have to bring it back to them, understanding who they're helping, what they're doing, and how many people they're impacting. And then we got to tell those stories, and we work that into our mission about how we're helping our clients, law firms connect with the folks that need their help that are in bad situations. And so it's kind of cool to see how that's gone across, like, the culture of our employees. See stories from the clients and how they helped or a case that was settled or went to trial and won. I mean, this is across, you know, not just PI, but it's criminal. It's, you know, family law, everything. Immigration.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: But it's passion. Passion stacking on top of passion. Right. So your passion is being used in service for people like you. Again, I can. I can speak about how Wayne speaks about you and. And Williams. The. Those people read this, that they. They get up every day and they think somebody can't pay the bills because they were harmed by the negligence or recklessness or intentional act of someone else. And. And we are the only thing that's going to be able to restore their lives, and they put all. All their trust in us. When, like, when you're representing, you're servicing someone like that. So. So you look at the whole picture, your passion, because, you know, look, Wayne's a great marketer, and. But he's a lawyer. These are lawyers, right? They're never going to be as good as you are. So when you come to them and you go, here's my passion, and I want you to be able to spin it to help those people who need it. It's like love on top of love, passion on top of passion. And that's. That's what business is. That's what. When you get to the highest levels, you realize business is not about what you get, it's about what you give. And the getting is great, but it's only after you kind of learn the lesson that it's not about getting paradise, like marriage in that way.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: It's.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Just, you know, I think general public, if I just hired a person off the street, what's their perception, you know, what's their perception of a law firm or a lawyer versus my team and my employees? If you were to ask them, I think you get a different answer from, again, someone off the street versus someone that, again, works for, like, a company like mine that's actually understands what they do, has a different. Different idea of how lawyers Help people versus lawyers don't help people, they just take money from people.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: That's all businesses though, eventually you can fool some people, but eventually your client base is going to know why you're doing what you're doing, right? If you are really doing this just for money, it'll catch up. Eventually it's going to catch up with you. You can't fool everybody with that. But if you are in a ministry, your business is your ministry. Your business is, is you expressing your highest calling. That comes out like, you can't hide that, right? I mean, that just comes out.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Well, it's going to draw people in, right? It's going to, right?
[00:35:27] Speaker B: And that's the thing.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Like, you know, I talk on the show a lot about like culture and you can have a good culture if you're just trying to make money or you're, you're trying to just scam people or you don't really care about the work, right? If not, if everyone has, if everyone cares about the work, that's going to be bleeding through everything, right? When you talk to anyone on the team or if you call Wayne's office down to the admin or assistant, like, you can tell they're excited about it, they're excited to help so huge.
And that's just gonna drive the business and be more successful. And that's, you know, for me, that's the only way that you're gonna really have a long term growth and success.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: It spins out. It spins out, right? You, you, you keep putting on in passion, you keep putting on care for these people that keeps on pushing you. They, they see it, it gets reflected. Then they're referring people to you, right? I mean, again, I get referrals all the time because people know, hey, it's not like, oh, Joe's the most brilliant lawyer in the world. I'd love, I'd love to say that, but the truth of the matter is I don't know that my clients are going off saying, oh, you, you know, you lost your mom in a nursing home, go get Joe. He represented our family because he knows the regulations like the back of his hand, which is true, but I don't think that's what they say. They say, I love Joe. That's what they say. And Joe loves me and my family. That's what, that's what he said. That's what they say.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: Well, I, I had a friend of mine on the podcast the other day that it's threw me through this question which I thought was interesting.
You know, if you Ever look at bad reviews for like a law firm, for personal injury firm? Do you ever see a bad review that's like the settlement was crap or.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: I'm not happy with the amount.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: It's always about the interaction with the law firm.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: So it's about the communication, either good or bad. It's not going to be about the out, the end result, typically. So it's. If you're passionate, you're helping your clients through the whole process, communicating and running a good business. Right. So you talked about having process and you care. Right. Then you're going to do well.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: I have a family right now. We're heading towards trial this fall and me and Steve Baker of Williams Deloitte, she's my partner on the case. We met with the administrator. She's. I think she might be the middle kid, the middle child of 11. Right. So it's a big family. Whoa. And we're talking about trial and going through everything. And she says to me, well, I'm just, I'm just really worried. You know, she's not worried about losing the case because what would happen to them? She goes, you guys have put six years of work into this and how will you get paid if we lose? And I'm like, you know, hope you're not allowed to worry about that.
But, you know, again, it's an example. It's because for six years we've been loving her and holding hope for her that she's going to get justice for her mom. And we're like, we're close. I mean, that's what happens is you get close in, in these.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: That's some. That's, that's intense. Well, Joe, man, I appreciate you coming on to share a lot of deep things.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Thanks. Thanks, Kevin.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: About niching, how helpful it is across the board and of course, having passion and caring love.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Love your clients, Love your clients. Fight against some evil. That's even better than if you're going to find a niche. Find a niche where you love the people you represent and you're fighting against something you really hate or fighting for something you really love. I mean, I think that's, that's the great message.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: I want to get you a cape.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: I don't think I need a cake. That's funny.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Well, Joe, thanks so much for coming to share.
What's the best way for our listeners to find and connect with you so.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: You can always, you can always get through to me at my, you know, I was my of counsel role@williams
[email protected] wd-law.com sorry. And you can always get me at my Firm, too, @joeusolawfirm.com and I'm on Facebook and Instagram. And put in my name in nursing home. And you'll find me everywhere. Like I said, you'll find shorter. Not shorter, you'll find thinner, more hair. All that versions of me talking about nursing home rights and resident rights from, you know, the late 90s to get.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Some fresh content out the door for you.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Kevin, it's been an honor. Thank you so much.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: All right, Joe. Yeah. Appreciate it. Everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in, as always. Hope you loved Joe's stories today. Thank you so much. We'll see you soon.
