Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Relay, the legal show for personal injury law firm owners presented by Lex Amica, the number one attorney referral network. I'm your host, Gabriel Stertz. Joining me today is Seth Price, a good friend. Founder of Price Benowitz 20 year law firm with 50 lawyers, Seth has used digital marketing to build his law firm and then spun the in house team into Blue Shark Digital Marketing, a firm representing 300 law firms nationwide. Seth is also the board chair emeritus of KIPP Charter schools. I've seen Seth at dozens of conferences and it's really impressive to me that someone who is running two very significant businesses has made the time to be face to face in person on the road. And I brought Seth on here because a, he's a successful business owner who has built from scratch two businesses and helped a nonprofit that's that scaled. And also he, like myself, really understands the importance and the value of, of showing up. And I think that's something that's very underrated in today's culture. So, Seth, it's great to have you on the show.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: It's awesome to be here.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: So I just want to dive right in here. The goal is to deliver value to personal injury law firm owners who are looking at scaling their businesses and building a better organization. So one of the things that I've really admired about you, like I said, is that you are at conferences, you have significant teams, right? And you are on the road, you're making time to meet with people. So I'd love to hear your philosophy. Why do you, when you could be off in, you know, your private island somewhere, why are you at conferences? Like, why is that so important?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Well, first, thank you for having me here. And what I would say is, to me, I have found that the interpersonal piece is one of the few things that can't be replicated. We're getting better. And younger people like yourself have done a great job using podcast and Zoom to try to, you know, do a great deal of networking offline, you know, meaning online, but try to replicate that. But to me, when the people that you meet, and for me, I have now multiple buckets, right? I have the law firm, so I may meet you. And now your organization is referring cases to Price Benowitz in PI and beyond. I may find that, hey, you or somebody in your circle has digital marketing needs and that's great for Blue Shark or as happened recently, you're like, hey, there's a bunch of interesting people going to a conference in Miami that has nothing to do with either of those Two things specifically, but as you can imagine, walked away with a great partner for Price Benowitz, a great partner for Blue Shark, and made me think generally about investing in other things at a level that I don't normally get sitting at home. So I've always said nothing great happens sitting at home and that I've been very blessed. I've scaled two organizations that have great teams, great management teams, great integrators using the EOS term. And that has given me the freedom to sort of go out there and figure out what's next. I've looked at other business opportunities, opportunities, some of which didn't bite at I saw a whole opportunity, I'm sure you did, with overseas labor and placing people, training people and said, you know what, I'm gonna do it for myself. I'm not gonna scale that into another business. Other times you see things that are, it can help in different ways, personal and professional. So I love it. I get, you know, jazzed by it. And so to me it's kind of a, a no brainer in that I'm doing what nobody else in my organization can do. They can go to conferences, they might be able to, you know, connect and find a great client for Blue Shark or find a referral source. But at the highest level, it's I that those. That's sort of one of my superpowers is figuring out who would be great to connect with and where can we add value to each other?
[00:03:36] Speaker A: I mean, I completely agree. All of the major opportunities that I've experienced have come from leaving the office of either a great idea for a business, an important relationship, you name it. So, and this. May I? Look, you've been practicing this for such a long time that it probably feels natural. But thinking back to the early days, was there a time when you felt like, is it really worth my time? Like, can I justify being on out of the office when there's so much that needs to be get to get done? Because I think for a lot of business owners that's a big challenge is well, I'm needed, right? Like I'm the owner, I have to be on the phones, I have to be managing people. That transition is very difficult for a lot of people. Do you ever feel or did you feel at some point that was something you needed to deal with?
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Well, so, okay, I think when it started and I went to conferences, I would. It was drinking from the fire hose. There was so much content coming in. I'd make these lists and I very big advocate for you, take notes you circle you star on the flight home, must be done on the flight home. You make a list, the top 10 list. Based on that, you prioritize three things you're going to do short term, four medium term, and three that you're going to have to kick even though they're great ideas for and leave them out there for a future time. There were definitely moments where I'm like, I have stuff on fire at work I shouldn't be getting. And there were times when I sort of curtailed it. I think that it's forced me to put a good team in place and that over time and you may be able to understand this and certainly some of your business partners can. My presence in the office has positives. It has negatives as well. And so the idea that I'm letting people do what they're paid to do goes a long way. And these conferences, my law partner jokes, keep them on a plane, keep them away in that I'm bringing these ideas and I'm bringing these different pieces back. And then the team itself can implement. You know, I'm part of all the EOS calls, et cetera. But one of my quarterly rocks for this quarter was to, you know, do this. The law firm is really trying to. And now. And now Plushark really don't dive into the weeds. Keeping myself out, forcing. There are times it kills you. One of my superpowers is I can look at a situation and very quickly dig and find whatever is really not good in the situation. Somebody not quite doing something right, doing it efficiently. And the problem is it can crush individual employees who may have lots of other. They may not. It may be that you're digging to a point where you finding the person's not working at all or doing something really toxic or what have you. But it is amazing, good and bad, how I can dig very quickly. And in a conversation that starts off, oh, what's going on? And then next thing you know, there's like, you know, a real issue and that the. The order of operations is, hey, you have a team, there's a manager. Let the managers deal with it. But that, you know, being so to me, I'm trying to take the positive of not being in the weeds every day. There are people that are. That are better at doing many, many tasks than I am at this point. Let them do the work and keep. Get out of their way.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm a huge F eos. And if you're listening to this and you don't know what that is, you need to Go look at that. You need a framework for running your business. It's incredible. And it sounds like, Seth, you're the visionary. You're looking outside of the business for the opportunities and the longer term. What do we build here? So, yeah, so just diving into that, like, what is your, what's your strategy? So you have an in house operational team that's getting the work done day to day. You're on some, you're on a quarterly cycle of looking at opportunities and ideas and implementing those. What does that look like for you? It sounds like you're pretty disciplined about how you take that kind of looking outside of the firm and then bringing that in.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Well, you know, look, I'm sure the team wouldn't think that because I go to a conference and I'm sending stuff, ideas back to them. But we are Both are on EOs, both have quarterlies, both set the rocks and meet weekly with the L10s. And it is interesting to see the difference because I'm a huge fan of Eos for both. Like Eos is just one of many scaling up by Vern Harch objectively is a more sophisticated program. I'm just, I think simple can very often be better. Which is why I think EOS got so much traction, for lack of a better word, the book name that created the EOS model. But that, you know, it is trusting the process and allowing things to go in and knowing that certain stuff, you know, one of the things we do during our EOS quarterlies is prioritize and figure out what do we want to keep, what do we want to kick, you know, what is going to be a rock and what's going to get kicked for the next quarter and you know, knowing that you're not going to get everything done you want immediate immediately, but prioritizing and thinking as a group and getting buy in that one. You may not agree on everything, there's good healthy conflict. But once you figure out what that roadmap is going to be, even if it wasn't your idea, you're all in and you're pushing forward.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, so tell me what you, what are you looking for when you're out of the office? Is, is there like a specific, okay, I need to meet five people, Is it. Look, I'm going to kind of go into the sessions as much as I can and I mean, I'm happy to share my strategy, but you've been doing this and you've really like leveraged this very effectively. So you show up at a conference like, what's the framework? Like, what are you looking to get out of it?
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Great question. I think a certain amount of is with purpose, where you're looking at who the attendees are and who you want to get to. One of the reasons I like speaking and I started a long time ago, before I had Blue Shark, was that it gave me access to some of the more interesting people. And it also was cheaper because usually the speaker didn't pay. So I was like, I was kind of frugal. So to me it's figuring out who's there that you would be interested in figuring out a combination of touching base with people beforehand, trying to set stuff up, and a certain amount of serendipity, allowing some of that time because I find some of that conversation can be great. And then evaluating the speaker list, who you've seen before that you, you know, great, because you and I go to enough of these that we have seen some and who are the ones. Wow, this is. I need to be in the room for this, this and this and really working with purpose, but at the same time leaving enough flexibility so that you have that time to get that individual and look like just the conference that you inspired me to go to in Miami, it was slightly out of our normal lane. I went last minute, it was sold out. I literally sat in the middle of a Ritz with a table and had, you know, for the, for the better part of 36 hours, had amazing conversations with thoughtful people that were rowing either many lanes or many strokes ahead of where I am or in different lanes and thinking about what they're doing and how it might be applicable to what we're doing.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, look, you say it so nonchalantly. I think that there's an undercurrent of what you're talking about, which I think most people don't understand, which is the value of curiosity. And, and when you're curious and you're showing up, really amazing things happen. Like that you would say, yeah, I'm going to go sit in the lobby somewhere. Like, that's terrifying to most people who think I need to book my calendar with 15 minute meetings every day in order to feel productive, or I need to check my email compulsively or like there's this like, productivity lie that when you can escape the kind of like the gravity of, well, if I don't pack every single minute with something that's programmed and scheduled, I'm not being productive. But to your, like, to your point, it's like when you have this open mind, like this kind of general heuristic of, I'm going to meet, you know, I've got people that I know that I want to meet. There's some sessions I want to go to, try to speak. Like, that's great. And then also. And one of the things, when I see you at a conference, I'll ask you, like, how's the conference going? And I love your response because I think it. I think it's very similar to mine. And so that's encouraging. You're like, it's always great because it just takes one good meeting or one good idea when you're a leader at the level that you are to make your business better. And so you don't need to go in and say, well, I haven't seen 20amazing sessions, so the conference sucks. You're saying, well, I might have a meeting here that'll pay off in six months or a year. And because of that, like, it's something that you invest your time, relationships form, you know, the.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: The founder of Lawmatics, right? Guy I knew casually, we went to a bunch of stuff. So my family in Israel by the Golan Heights In December of 2022, before everything broke out, go to the breakfast buffet. My family's sitting right next to me. I'm grabbing my plate. I look up and there's Matt, and it's like, there with his family. And like, all of a sudden, we've taken that relationship to, like, a different level. You know, it's. It's a serendipity of. And this guy's brilliant, right? He created one company and sold it. He's done another, which is crushing it. And so these are people that I want to sort of like, you know, in my home life, I have great friends and great neighbors. Some are successful, some are, you know, more working traditional. Two jobs, for lack of a better way of putting it. And the idea that we are able to go and have access to just incredible, creative business thought leaders and get time with them. You know, you. All these consultants want to charge you thousands of dollars for this and that. Many of them are very good. But the access to knowledge, that's there for the taking. One of the reasons, one of the conferences coming up, probably the next one after this podcast release. National trial lawyers. One of the reasons I love the Lowe's Hotel in Miami is the who's who, the personal injury world is sitting in that lobby, especially the elder statesmen and women who are there and are relatively accessible, probably more there than anywhere else. And I have found that, you Know, there. A lot of people seem very unapproachable, but if you actually are willing to put yourself out there and look one. One way is adding value to something they're doing. Second is asking not like a big favor, like you want a loan, but their perspective. You're dealing with something. How have they dealt with that issue before? To me, there is no better way to getting. Gaining a relationship. I mean, the founder of ncl, Keith Givens, guy I met when he started his conference, 150 people at the Ritz in South beach before I went to the Lowe's. And, you know, I was there. This is a guy who's been instrumental in my career. Never heavy lifts, but always, you know, Covid comes and he's like, you know, what's your mindset right now? He's like, have enough gas in the tank to get through it. That was what he. And it's like, simple, but, like, he's been through three or four different major ups and downs getting, you know, where. Where is his head at? He's not panicking, but he's like, okay, I got to make sure my reserves are decent so I can get through this process. And those are the parts that, you know, to me. And I wish. I wish there was. There are people that I see at conferences, plan on getting together between them, and you don't. You just see them at them. So it's almost like. And there are some people that you never see at a conference you only find online like this and sort of mixing and matching. But you said something. I'll just circle back to. Which was filling your dance card. Like, in one sense, it's great to have that. But, you know, look at the. The. The venture fund conference in Miami. I connected with a bunch of people, sort of did it. But you have to be, I think, agile enough to be able to audible that. Knowing that once you're at a location, things take a lot of life of their own and that you need to be able to say, hey, I'm here. I'm present with these people, having a great conversation, knowing that whoever is at your next meeting is likely blowing you off. One of the only thing I'd say strategically is schedule meetings earlier at your time away, because that way, when they inevitably do get bumped, you still have the opportunity to accomplish it while you're there.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: That's actually. That's a great point that I. That I had not thought of. I will be taking that. But, yeah, I. Look, that's really, really good advice, and I think that it's crazy to me to, to your point about the who's who in the lobby at ntl, I almost feel bad putting it on a podcast because to me it's like the greatest secret in the whole industry is that there's people that would never even look at my email, read it, pick up the phone, give me 15 minutes on the calendar. But if I walk into the right conference venue, you've got a dozen of those people sitting at the bar and you can walk up and if you're a normal, kind person, you ask decent questions and you're genuinely interested, you can have a conversation with someone who would never talk to you otherwise and they're just hanging out. Like to me it's like the greatest thing in the world and I feel like hesitant even to let it go out on a podcast because it's so powerful. Like I don't want to have like five other people trying to do the same thing. But you know, that's why we're here, is to give people value.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Well, I'll even wrap up with I have an amazing story, so hope you'll indulge me. So you talked about the KIPP charter schools. I was the board chair for about a decade for KIPP in Maryland. Baltimore school, eventually two schools, really rough area as far rough on a lot of levels. But the economic environment in Baltimore, not great. The union is pretty strong, teachers union pretty strong there. And we had an issue that the school came to a head that the union was. KIPP for those that don't know, is a high performing charter school and two 250 plus chapter schools around the country. It's one of the largest scalable success stories of inner city education. Charter schools are publicly funded, but an operator can control the day to day with those funds. So it can do amazing things. There are a lot of awful stories of people doing bad things with this public money. But when done right, you can do amazing, amazing stuff. Two friends of mine, a guy from college, guy from high school, got together back in like 93, 94 and started Kip out of teach for America and then created this monster program, the board itself. I was on the local Maryland board. The national board has like Reed Hastings from Netflix and John Fisher from the Gap was founded by his dad from Kappana Republic, Old Navy. So he's a powerful, powerful group. So I'm in this little local board. Maryland's in trouble and we couldn't get. The union was trying to say, well, since these teachers work longer hours because they're doing a charter School day and the way the KIPP worked, we want to have like 40% more revenue for those, you know, payment for. And it just didn't work with the model. It just. That would have put it. There was not enough money. It would have shut us down. So a friend of mine was tight with Newt Gingrich. Now I'm like a left of center Jewish guy from New York. And he says, Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton are doing a roadshow right now. And it happened to be like an anniversary of like Brown versus the Board of Education. It was a big event on the National Mall. I live in Bethesda, Maryland, right outside D.C. i take my son, I get in the car, I drive 25 minutes, I park the car and I go. And with a 10 month old, you can walk in anywhere. So if you ever want to go to like backstage somewhere, you got a 10 month old, nobody's saying no to you. So I walk backstage and I see somebody who was the contact and it was Newt Gingrich's handler. And he says, he brings me over to Newt. Newt's happy to see me, talk about the baby, yada yada. And he's like, what can I do for you? I'm like, you can do nothing. What you can do is you can bring me to Al Sharpton. Because if you bring the issue to the forefront, it's the Republicans trying to kill the teachers union. If Sharpton brings it to the forefront, then it's a civil rights issue that will help poor kids of color that need to get a better education than the public schools traditionally we're giving them in Baltimore. So the two of them got together, we got them to come to the school. They brought Arne Duncan, who was the Secretary of Education under Obama, to the school. So the three of them were there. CNN came and it accomplished what we needed. It's one of those things that. Could a phone call have done it? Maybe, but like face to face. The ask that I got to make to Newt Gingrich and every time he sees me now, I get a hug. I used to get texts and calls from him before debates when he was there. More in that world about charter school. An amazing guy who was selfless and did something to get done with his partner at the time that they were working on this project together. And it was remarkable. And so these are the interpersonal pieces that a conference call, even a zoom can't always do. And to me that was like a lesson learned that it took getting off the couch on a Saturday when I could have been watching some kids show with my son and instead went down and and made that interpersonal connection.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Man, that's fantastic story, Seth. And I had not heard that before. I love that. And as. Yeah, just to wrap up, it's look there, there's a lot of power in showing up. You took a risk, you did a long trip, and there was no guarantee of success. Right. But when you take those shots, that's how big things happen. So really appreciate you being on the podcast today. I look forward to seeing you in Miami in January. And I'm sure I'll see you a dozen times next year. So have a wonderful holiday. Thanks so much for being on this morning.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks for having me.
