Jay Ruane  0:00  

Hello, hello, and welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is my man Seth Price down there. Let’s talk a little bit more about the Fisher mastermind, because there’s a lot of people who don’t really know what a mastermind is in this context. So why don’t you explain it for us, so that people in the audience who haven’t heard of it know what they’d be getting into if they showed up at a John Fisher mastermind.

 

Seth Price  0:33  

So look, this is something he created about 12 years ago in Chicago the masterminds, You know. There’s this process where you sit around with some people that are also bright, you focus on your issue differently. They’ve morphed into different types of masterminds. This particular one, there’s usually one or two outside speakers with some sort of interesting angle. There’s very often updates. Michael McCready, very often talks on AI. I will talk about what’s new in search. people. Everyone brings their expertise to the table, but the magic happens when we sit around in a room and everybody raises the biggest issue facing their firm. And as a group, we try not to tell them what to do, but extract what’s there and give perspective based on things we’ve said & done. And you know, what’s interesting about having done this over the last 12 years is that all of our issues come into different categories right. there, whether it’s operations, marketing, hiring and firing, you know, the saw, the legal, production, each of these things. that as you do it, a couple things happen. You realize you’re not alone, and you realize that, that the people have been there, that what you think is like, I’ve, you know, nobody else has dealt with before, is generally things that other people have struggled with. You don’t always walk away with a bulletproof answer, but you’re going to come by with sort of like, Hey, this is a one off. You know, maybe you shouldn’t be focused on that, versus, Hey, I’ve been there, done that. And the greatest example that I see all the time is the struggle with the non lawyer, ops person, starting with an office manager to an ops manager to a director of operation, you know, with a continuation up to coo. And I think lawyers really struggle with how to and I know when I went back, I did not be partially because I was that person without the caseload, but that figuring out how to slot that in sooner than later, I think, is what starts to run your firm as a business, not as a law firm. And that is what I see most people, their entry level issue revolves around that? 

 

Jay Ruane  2:44  

Well, I think a lot of people you know are are reticent to bring somebody on because they know that the salary requirements for that are going to be on the higher end, compared to a frontline receptionist or even an associate, because if you have somebody doing operations, it’s a bigger thing, and they’re not necessarily ready and willing to give up that amount of revenue. Even though it would buy you freedom to generate more revenue or live the life that you want. I think there’s this pull that like, well, if it’s my firm, I should be doing it. I think there’s a little bit of therapy that goes on in these mastermind groups. I certainly saw it when I saw you in DC with Charley Mann’s group, which was phenomenal. And you know, you know, one of the things that happened, I piped up at one point in Charlie’s group, and I was and I looked at the lawyer who was on the hot seat, and I was just like, well, whose law firm is it because the bookkeeper was pushing back about using QuickBooks server based, or QuickBooks Online, and the lawyer wanted QuickBooks Online, and the bookkeeper said, No, I’m not comfortable with that. I said, Well, it’s your firm. You got to make this decision, right? And that lawyer was able to sort of work through it, be like, Yeah, you know what it is my firm, I get to make these decisions. And so I think there’s some therapy in some.

 

Seth Price  4:06  

Look, just like the show is, I mean, our listeners, I mean, this is, I get it, but the struggle is real. Look, you’ve bet on somebody, you can’t live without them, and they’re saying no to something. Now, look, part of the job as that manager is how to make them embrace what you want, but there are two reasons they don’t want it, right? One is a logical one, which is like, Hey, this is going to screw up your business. And the other is, I’m just afraid of it because I’ve never used it. And it’s like, you know, as we see more and more hacking situations, I bet on, you know, Intuit to protect me more than I do my IT guy. and that those, you know. It is, look, lots of options and masterminds. This is a cost effective one, which John runs as a passion play. And, you know, good meals, good people and a. We did buy in, which is good and bad, right? It’s nice when something is continuous. But for many of us, we made this our home. We show up all the time. It’s just, it’s great to see people.

 

Jay Ruane  5:07  

I can’t wait till you tell me, you know, you know, usually a week before you’ll send me an email of all the people that are attending. But it’s, you know, it’s funny. It’s I’ll, I still text people that I met at that first one that I went to 11 years ago in Chicago, which seems like so long ago, but I can still close my eyes and visualize being in the room  and working through the challenges I had at that time, and, you know, and breaking bread with that core group. And what’s crazy is, you know, Mike liner, who I met at that first one, I’m going to drive up to Maine in a couple of months and go fishing with my son, and him and his son, because, you know, we have that opportunity. And I’m sure sitting on the boat he and I will talk business for, you know, nine hours while the boys are casting for tuna. But I think, you know, that’s one of the great things about being, you know, in this space, is that you can make those friendships that can get you through the tougher times. You know you’re not doing this alone. Other people may be doing it similarly and riding alongside you, and if you could tap into that network, it’s a wonderful thing.

 

Seth Price  6:16  

I couldn’t agree more. And John’s a special guy who curated just a great group, and, you know, to be able to, like, lifelong friends. And some of it is, I’ve made it like my own home where, like, I brought you in, Gary Christmas, and now it’s like, you know, look, it’s rare that you and I get to hang out, but if you have 24 hours to hang out with somebody at this age when you know, it gives you a business reason to go and do something which reinforces these business friendships. It goes a long way. Yeah.

 

Jay Ruane  6:46  

So if you’re listening and you want to go, it’s the mastermind experience.com, but definitely sign up come visit with Seth and I in New York on April 10, because I think it’s going to be a fun day and and, like you said, the relationships that you build are going to be phenomenal.

 

Seth Price  7:05  

And, like I believe, first time attendees, if you type in BluShark as a code, it takes $500 off. So well, it’s down to 1000 bucks. It’s just, you know, I mean, you can eat, you can eat the food there for 1000 bucks itself.

 

Jay Ruane  7:17  

Absolutely. I mean, a day, you know, a night or two in New York City, you know, just, you know, that’s, that’s worth it. You know, for me, being the old man, that I am just getting away from the folks and at home and getting, you know, reliving my glory days, hanging out in the bars of lower Manhattan are going to be worth it for me. 

 

Jay Ruane  7:36  

Well, I gotta say before we go, there’s one news story that intersects law, pop culture and everything else, which is Afro man, you followed this?

 

Jay Ruane  7:45  

Oh, no, I’ve been following the whole time because, you know, at one point we had a, well, I’m a rap fan to begin with, so I had heard lemon pound cake before it became newsworthy.

 

Seth Price  7:58  

So for those not knowing, an Afro man living in Ohio had the police raid his house, and some small town raided his house. They came in, guns drawn and knocked down his door. They’re looking for, who knows what drugs they were looking for, drugs

 

Jay Ruane  8:13  

And then there was a claim that there was somebody he had kidnapped in the house, right?

 

Seth Price  8:18  

Like, pretty, pretty accentuated. And like this was like small town cops that were not the best and brightest. They dropped no charges ever brought. They don’t repair his door. They don’t destroy his place. They knocked off his security camera at one point. And you know, he then decides to monetize this incident by taking his security camera footage and turning into these rap songs, including which will hopefully get this spliced in. Tim, please take care of this, a scene of one of the officers walking through his house and basically stopping and doing a triple take on a lemon pound cake in the middle of it. 

 

Jay Ruane  8:41  

Looked like a good cake. 

 

Seth Price  8:45  

Looks like it was under the glass. Little thing. It was the whole, whole thing to do. And he got sued for like, four or $5 million collectively by a bunch of cops over defamation. And what’s great defamation, you take the stand to say how you’ve been harmed. And this, you know, Officer pound cake, as he’s called, was saying people started sending a pound cake to the station, and this, and that the one defense witness they called, I believe it was officer pound cakes ex wife, who was explaining how this did not really harm him in any way. And then it was, it was the whole thing. And anyway, it is you. If you can go down this rabbit hole for hours, I hope you enjoy it. But there are a lot of interesting lessons learned, both from, you know, the law on defamation.

 

Jay Ruane  9:48  

Hopefully it’ll be studied in law schools. No doubt this is, this is a great case, I mean, because any Law School professor who’s talking about this topic has to reference it. And I think I

 

Seth Price  9:58  

I don’t remember back to law School, and was a crime pro where I remember this professor starting to start just asking, why don’t we arrest people you know, and you know, why do we incarcerate like it was each of these questions? And you start to think about it, and with each step, you’re realizing that, like you know, there are their questions, when it may not be so comfortable as we go through that process. And I think what’s here? You know, we see a lot about small time, small town cops and rap they have when you realize how it impacts a person. This guy happens to have the vehicle to show people. But I mean, look, you do this for a living every day. The idea that you know, what recourse do you have?

 

Jay Ruane  10:41  

I have a perfect example. We just had a case that was set for trial last week, and the state finally dropped it after 18 months. We had a client who was arrested for. There was a traffic backup, and the client pulled over after he got through the area and looked at the police officer and said, get out there and do your job. Because the cop was sitting in his car, and our client got arrested for yelling at a cop to get out of the car and do your job. They charge him with disorderly conduct. They said that. He said, X, you know, certain things in front of little children that was disorderly, and this, turns out, that wasn’t on the body cam. It never happened, but we had to go all the way through and be ready for a trial. What is the cost? You know, we prepped it

 

Seth Price  11:34  

Costs him money. His life is upended.

 

Jay Ruane  11:38  

Yeah, and we prepped for the trial, and it was until the 11th Hour, after 18 months, after we are said, what he did that was disorderly. You can talk to police officers, and you can even raise your voice at a police officer. They have a heightened level that they should be able to take, and they actually have been trained in de-escalation, and the judge and the DA were like, you can’t speak poorly to a police officer. We’re like, do your job. Isn’t speaking poorly, no slurs, no bad language, just Hey, get out there. I pay your bill. I pay your salary. You get out there and do your job. And it took forever. So, you know, it’s those types of things that like, you know, is the intersection of the real world, right?

 

Seth Price  12:21  

The arrest was the punishment.  

 

Jay Ruane  12:24  

Yeah, 

 

Seth Price  12:24  

The arrest was the punishment. Why is this cop deciding on who gets punished? That’s the whole point of the judge. So, like, there’s all this stuff that happens before you get to a judge, and again, I’m not doing doing it justice, but when you go through and you start breaking down the elements of the criminal justice system, and, you know, bail, and each of these pieces that you know that are in there, like, why are we doing each of these things? And it’s, it starts to, it does make you think when you put, when you start to push on this, 

 

Jay Ruane  12:54  

yeah, the process. Look at somebody who’s been in the criminal justice system as a defense lawyer now for 28 years, the process, pretty much all the time, is the punishment in and of itself. I mean that and and the courts know it, the DAs know it, and they use that process to extract from a criminal defendant a pound of flesh even before the case gets even before the case gets actually litigated. And unfortunately, the system is set up a lot of times to extract that pound of flesh to the detriment of the person who has rights. Because, you know, they can’t take more days off from work because they’re hourly workers, and they’ll lose their job and they won’t make money. Whereas the DA, if he needs to take a week off to go do something. He has paid vacation. There’s a, you know, she has paid vacation. There’s an institutional bias in the system that I will rail on for the rest of my days. 

 

Seth Price  13:49  

Um, let me ask you and land the plane with this one. So there’s a guy online who’s, who’s always, I think he’s on the Long Island, I’m not sure, who goes into different like county buildings to videotape, and immediately they started, start saying, Hey, you can’t videotape in here, and there’s a whole suit. What’s your take on that whole process? I mean, that’s being done because, in one sense he’s being an ass, right? But in one sense, he’s almost always demonstrating what we saw with Officer pound cake, and what we’ve seen with this situation, which is this power hungry. We set our own rules that have nothing to do with the actual rules that exist, whatever the law and constitutional rights are that don’t really exist because you can’t get to the judge and all these things. like people always have to make a decision. Are you going to be doing something that puts your liberty in jeopardy? Because, you know, the arrest itself is massive punishment, and I just found it interesting. If you’ve seen these videos, are in my feed a lot where they are sort of testing people on things they shouldn’t be doing.

 

Jay Ruane  14:51  

I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen those videos, but I think it’s unfortunate that we are at a point in our society where, you know, people just trying to exercise their rights are getting…you can’t come in here. You can’t do that, you know, with no standing or no legal reason, just because we don’t want you to, right? And that’s, I mean, that’s just not American. And I think, you know, part of the ike with, you know, filming police officers. When you’re at a protest. how many times police officers, you know, give me that phone, and they take the phone away from a person who’s filming them. They have every right to film them in a public space and you know, they don’t want to be questioned. Authority doesn’t like to be questioned. Authority doesn’t like to be questioned at the local public school, at the local police department, at the city hall, or anywhere. Nobody likes to be questioned because they want their authority to just be recognized. And I think we need more people fighting the power, you know, bring back Chuck D and Flavor Flav man, fight the power

 

Seth Price  16:00  

As you know, I got to teach Flavor flav how to how to surf the internet while he was holding a Big Mac in certain 2000, 1990.No, this would have been 98-99 at the New Yorker Hotel, the former Mooney hotel on 8th Avenue

 

Jay Ruane  16:16  

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. All right, folks that do it for us this week here on the Law Firm Blueprint. Thank you so much for being with us. Of course, you can catch us anywhere you want to go on the go by subscribing to the podcast, the law firm blueprint, wherever you get your podcast. And be sure to catch us live, live on LinkedIn, 3pm Eastern, 12pm pacific every Thursday, as well as live in our Facebook group, the law firm blueprint. That’s gonna do for me. I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth Price. Thanks for being with us. Bye for now.