Jay Ruane  0:07  

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 Seth Price. Set down in his DC office, Seth, you’ve been all over the place. I see on Facebook you’re going up to Syracuse, dropping off your son, you’re back in the office today. How’s your week going?

Seth Price  0:23  

It’s going really good. Got the eldest is off. He’s launched the Fall College of Sport Management. Sport. He’s doing sports management. Couldn’t be more excited. And look, I go and it’s when you drop your kid off, it’s like a $400,000 nut you’re signing up for, one way or the other, right? Not all of us go to university, but all in your it’s about 400,000. You start to think about it, like ROI, and like I’m blessed that we have the resources to do it. I know that if you have very limited resources, it’s not as high a nut, but you know it starts to make you think, and the thing that I was impressed about Syracuse, like they don’t pretend to be an Ivy. Their schools that are elite are the communication school. They have sport management. They have a business school. So basically, when you speak to people there, I know when I the majors when I went to UPenn were all. I mean, there were pre med, and there was things like that. But there were a ton of kids with majors on like crazy nonsense that would never make a buck in life. Now, liberal arts education, good foundation, do a lot with it. But I think that Syracuse has sort of recognized, hey, we’re at that level where the network matters. Make sure that people get a good, solid, basic, you know, general education. But if we don’t train people to do things, it was very so. I was very impressed that way.

Jay Ruane  1:50  

That’s awesome. And I mean, you know, the cool thing about it is, you know, these larger universities have the smaller programs, so everybody gets to know each other in their field for the future, and they can start building their network immediately. I mean, I didn’t really…

Seth Price  2:04  

I did a LinkedIn post on this. One of our friends’ kids, who’s a year ahead of him there, amazing kid. His dream is to be an NFL special teams coach or something. He wants to be a coach, and this kid is not. He’s a a you know five foot seven very nice kid who basically has a spreadsheet of contacts you know who he’s reached out to who’s contacted back who’s had one contact with, wants to contact again and he is you know in addition to paying his dues with the scut work on the Syracuse football team special teams group. He has built a network and is looking at it the way lawyers should be. All the stuff that John Fisher talks about, you talk about, you know, who’s next on the haircut list. If you’re a consideration of the show, right? Have you touched and in what order and in a really positive way? The stuff we discussed when I had dinner with him a few months back was how do you take that list, maybe put a podcast, and now you’re you’re adding some value, giving them some visibility. But the the way that these kids are looking at, and to me, whether or not he ever becomes a football coach, hope he does. Hope he follows his dream. But if you can network in that way, you’re going to be successful with anything you do.

Jay Ruane  3:24  

Well, you know it’s interesting that you bring that up because it seems like these younger generation. The ones that are driven, are driven, but there is an also a class of people who are just sort of waiting for stuff to happen for them, and everyone poo poo’s it and says, “Oh, you know these young people-they don’t have it. But if I look back at my generation, you know, you know the Gen Xers or your generation, the Baby Boomers, Seth. If we look…

Seth Price  3:55  

We’re only two years. We know we’re two years apart.

Jay Ruane  3:57  

I know. I had to get the dig in there, but like, think about it. Like, there was you always knew who were the hustlers and who weren’t. And I don’t know. It’s interesting. I saw a show over the last couple of weeks. I watched it with my wife. It’s on Peacock. It’s the Five Star Weekend with Jennifer Garner. My wife’s a huge Jennifer Garner fan, and there’s a very driven character in the show. She’s an agent, lawyer agent, and she made a passing reference that this younger generation mistakes boundaries for lack of work ethic, and so she says, “Oh, you keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s boundaries. You need work-life balance on the thing, but you got to hustle.’ And I like saw that, and immediately it perked up. And I really thought that was something interesting because, you know, when you’re young, I get it. You want to have a life, but you’re also supposed to be grinding and putting your. And I think about it now. Like I mean, I’m with AI. I’m working more than ever. I’m not working less. I’m making more. 

Seth Price  5:07  

Look, it’s funny. People make fun of me of the younger generation within work circles as the grind economy they call my world. And I’m like, but that’s it’s those connections.

Jay Ruane  5:17  

But that’s any job right?

Seth Price  5:20  

Like it is. I mean, it depends whether you want a job or whether you want to build something. If you’re building something, you know there was that famous sort of interview with the now former CEO of Starbucks who said, “If somebody calls me at 6o’clock, it better be for a good reason, and they got he got crushed, and again, it shouldn’t be that you have no life, and like maybe academically that’s right, but look what happened on his watch. Like there’s a certain amount that just my love partner always talks about just just going slightly better than mediocrity, and it’s like you have an amazing track in life.

Jay Ruane  6:01  

Well, and that that that that makes me wonder though, is it that we are looking back through rose-colored glasses, saying, “Oh, our generation had it, and this generation doesn’t, or is it 10% 20% at 12% whatever the number is, of a population that will always be those hustlers, and so it really doesn’t matter what generation you’re from? Because there’s, I see young people who want to build. I see young people who want to coast. You know that type of thing, and maybe also

Seth Price  6:36  

Also look, we’ve seen we’re about we’re starting to see it more in law and digital law, or marketing of law, but we’re also seeing it like media, right? So one of the big schools at Syracuse deals with media communications, TV, radio, whatever’s left of TV. So the kids graduating, they aren’t. You know, look, there’s all sports broadcasting division. So these guys want to broadcast a game, assuming AI commentators don’t take over, but the idea that you know what I’m seeing kids come out. One family friend who just graduated, he wants to be an interviewer, and there’s not a straight path. You’re not going to just you know stand up and take over you know Costas’s slot. He’s on his own at the basketball Hall of Fame, you know, getting interviews, creating content, building his own, and like anything else, 10,000 hours. If you do this for a while and you get really good at it, but you know, there’s no sugarcoating the fact that some of the major slots go through nepotism, right or wrong, but the other ones are: Are you going to be out there on a Friday night at 9o’clock honing your craft on a show nobody’s watching to get yourself to the point? And do you have the bankroll to get yourself there? You know, because it may be a lot of lean years before you see anything. But I think what I’m most impressed with is that people are recognizing the path is not straight. May not what they’re starting on may not even yet exist for where they’re going to end up. Look at us, right? You know,

Jay Ruane  8:11  

Yeah, I mean, the path to where I’m sitting today didn’t really exist in the criminal defense space in in 1999, 1998, and in Connecticut. I don’t even know if it existed anywhere, and we sort of had to forge for ourselves. I know you did too with the machete cutting down the stuff in front of you, but that leads me to the follow up in the context of how do you find those people that like really want to be the best reception team?

Seth Price  8:42  

Well, okay.

Jay Ruane  8:44  

Or do those people not exist?

Seth Price  8:47  

Well, and you got to be careful because if they found a Jay Ruane, he’s not sticking around. That’s the worst part. That’s why I’m certain. Like I went to UPenn. I can’t take a UPenn resume for the most part because they want to dabble. They’re gonna go to Europe for a year. They’ll go to a hedge fund for like whatever it is. You don’t want somebody dabbling. You need somebody solving your problems as an entrepreneur. Okay, so that

Jay Ruane  9:08  

Okay so that that brings me to the question then today. We hear it all the time. You only want A players, and the question I have for you is: Can you have a law firm that only has A players in every seat, and I don’t think it’s possible, and I don’t think it’s necessarily the right thing to have to have only A players. Do I want only A players in my legal? Absolutely, I want people who are you know client centric, educated, whip smart when it comes to things. But you know, for the copy clerk for the you know the person who’s who’s organizing discovery. Do I need an A player?

Seth Price  9:46  

A lot of this is nuanced, like most things. I want to say it depends because you’ll get you know, but you know. Look, there is an A person for that copy job. That may not be that person may not be. They may not figure out how to problems with you. Wish they could, but if they literally just show up every day, yeah, 

Jay Ruane  10:06  

showing up, it ain’t there, 

Seth Price  10:07  

And they’re not toxic, and they care. You know, you’ll fill in a lot of gaps. But you know what? This I’m going to bring this because I think I’m going to land on the plane with it. No pun intended. So American Airlines, you know, I’m in DCA. It’s convenient in my house. Have status always late, and you come into DC at night, and it’s almost comical. There are four things that have to happen when you land when the plane comes in. God forbid it gets in safely. It gets it wasn’t on time, several hours late with weather and everything else. But you need a gate assigned to you, not a given in DCA. You need a ramp crew to bring it into the to the gate. Not a given they’re going to be there. Last night we got the first two. No gate agent to bring the jet bridge out. 20-25 minutes, right? And the final, the fourth, you know, FU is luggage. If you checked anything, God forbid, late night DC and BWI awful. Just why? So what struck me at while waiting 25 minutes for probably the 10th time in the last two and a half years, where for no reason other than a body was not there for a joystick, and I’m thinking to myself, in a perfect world, if the joystick was remote, why does the guy have to be at the end of the jet bridge to do this, if you had cameras and sensors, theoretically, right? Or why can’t we have a drone that brings it? Whatever it is, the idea we’re still at a point where there’s a limitation, and I’m assuming for a second I’m going to be take the positive route that it’s not they don’t want to pay for it; they can’t get enough good people who will schlep to Arlington, Virginia, at like in the evening hours into the overnight, not a desirous one of your family to do these different variety of jobs, and that’s where it started striking me, which is we talk about A players, but how many A players? And you’re in a suburban market. You have certain advantages. Want to get to where you are. We both know over the years some of our A players have moved to other jurisdictions, and we generally say, “Sure, we know you’re an A player. You’re gonna we’ll keep you where you go there. And in one sense, the words of John Morgan come in like work from home’s nonsense. You know, not working if you call it work from home. At the same time, in D.C. this summer, we had the metro close down three stops, which meant you got off the metro, commuting in from Maryland, got on a shuttle bus for three stops, got back off the shuttle bus, back onto the metro, and back to work. Crazy, right? You have people coming in from like people are now living an hour, hour and 20 minutes into Virginia. We now out my window have the National Guard perimeter security because they’re putting on a NASCAR race, some sort of race on the National Mall in a week or so. My point is, there’s so many obstacles to getting people in the office, and I’m sort of now almost the opposite, which is: Am I protesting too hard that.. Am I delusional the thing I can quote unquote get an A player who over years is going to make the schlep to a difficult place to do their job. How long can that sustain? And are we at the point where certain jobs, yes, have to have to be there, but are we at the point we’ve seen with international labor? We’re leveraging AI. Should we be looking at more of a national and global workforce wherever possible, limiting the number of people in office? Now, there’s culture, there benefits, but I’m sitting there, you know. I’m sitting on a plane with a whole bunch of other people for no reason for the 10th time trying to get to a gate. If American Airlines, with all these resources, can’t figure it out, who am I to think that we can keep paralegals for an extended life? You know, in a competitive market. I know if you’re in a Detroit, for example, less economic opportunities. Maybe you can do that. But are we at the point where you’re looking? If you want to get closer to the amorphous A player, that we need to look nationally and limit the number of things that are being done physically in the office. I don’t know. I’ll throw this back to you.

Jay Ruane  14:20  

Yeah, and I mean that’s that’s a really good question. I mean, the reality is, is I think the first thing you need to do when you’re sitting down identifying a role that needs to be filled is ask the question: Is this hybrid, in office, or remote? And have an honest conversation with your people because you might find that no, this is like have we have a role up right now, right? We’re starting the process with an eye towards hiring and onboarding for January 1, right? So we’re starting the process now. It’s the end of August. We figure a three month timeline is good for us to get us where we want to be. And the conversation we had last week in my level 10, my leadership meeting was. Is this hybrid or in office? We knew it wasn’t remote, right? And the conversation really revolved around well, if it’s hybrid, we can expand our geographic area because if someone’s coming in two or three days a week, they may be a better quality candidate, more likely to come versus somebody who has to come every day.

Seth Price  15:23  

I’m going to push you into the visionary seat. You’re assuming that you have to go within your normal rules. Why can’t a person from Oklahoma that can get a nonstop flight to Kennedy, you know, or whatever? You know, why can’t you make it where the person comes in for a week of training. They come in two, three times a year. That’s not the normal hybrid. But are we at the point? This is you know when I’m looking at it. You only learn this when somebody quits and you sort of figure out what you’re dealing. Now there’s consequences of it, but if 90% of a parallel, take family law, family law paralegal could be done remotely, hypothetically, with somebody assuming they’re actually working, they’re doing it, and you could get a rock star somewhere in the United States. Are you better off hiring some admin around the office? The 10% that has to be done in person, 5% will be done by an admin when it can be, and 5% will be sucked up by the lawyer, right? Meaning, if you could get high quality for 90% would you be better off for the lawyer in the long run? Like, meaning you’re going back and saying hybrid versus this versus that. I’m throwing it all out and saying it shouldn’t be the best player on the draft board, and not looking at those now, California probably a lot harder. But is a one hour flight acceptable for a quarterly visit?

Jay Ruane  16:53  

I think that’s absolutely. I mean, we have an attorney who is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and comes in quarterly, and will come in for trials. But all the other stuff is. And how did that?

Seth Price  17:06  

How did that come to be? How did you end up with that?

Jay Ruane  17:08  

So he was a law student with us during COVID, and we got very comfortable with him working remotely. And he worked on some of these files. And then he said, “Look, my girlfriend has an opportunity as a dentist in Oklahoma. I want to move there. What can we make happen?

Seth Price  17:23  

Understood. And when I look around my firm, law firm, the people that have been with us 10 years plus, or go are tracking towards 10 years, are people that may have started out for a couple years in office, but fled for whatever personal reason. And to me, I’m like, okay, we got comfortable with it. God forbid we could somehow interview well enough, get the bar high enough, have people come for some week, two weeks, pick your poison, get comfortable enough with them. Could we truncate that so that we were and again negatives? You got to do tax returns all over the country. You have some people that will be asleep at the wheel, out of sight, out of mind. But to me, I just saw a resume today for a manager that I I’m. It blew my. It hurt because they were the best of the I don’t know four to seven candidates they had screened, and I looked at this person, and they had nine to 12 months consistently on their resume for 15 years. A nonprofit for the last couple years, which is normally game over. Just you can’t, but they had for profit and five years. This is the part where I’ve seen this movie before, as a quote-unquote consultant, which means if you think if your resume has nine month tenures all over it, imagine what they’re hiding to show me they were a consultant for five years. Right? If you like, you weren’t even smart enough to combine two of those jobs from 18 years ago. You know, give three months more to two jobs and make one disappear. If you literally are showing me nine months, 12 months, eight months on a resume consistently, and then five years as a consultant, imagine what’s beneath the surface there. I’ve seen it. I’ve had it marketing people multiple times, and the moment they quit on no notice two months in, you’re gonna see that their resume, their LinkedIn goes straight back to consultant. It never left, and I’m just to me, I’m like, how do I have a shot? You know, you see some of these amazing firms usually in more economically downtrodden markets that have amazing tenure for people. How can I try to keep people in the fold. Now, downside: the people that started with you, there is some bonding and loyalty that goes on. But yeah, is it if you could get the right person, pay them the right amount? They don’t have commuting time. Am I all of a sudden, despite John Morgan telling me those? If you get the person who’s actually gonna work. Well, is this now the direction I should be looking at?

Jay Ruane  20:05  

I hate to sound like Seth Price here, folks, but I’m gonna say it depends, and I think it depends on what your culture is. I depend. I think it depends on the type of practice that you have, and I’m not saying the the practice area. I’m saying the type of practice that you have. For what John Morgan has, and his culture, and his people, and the pressures and the KPIs that he has, maybe he can’t make remote work. But maybe you’re a firm of you know 12 people, and you can make that work. And I think that’s one of the things that I think you need to take into consideration. I mean, I think your firm obviously is bigger than mine. You may have different roles and different needs than my firm has, and my firm is bigger than some other firms. And we may and and so the solo, you know, who’s making his first hire, remote may not be the best thing for him. You know, it may be I need you need to be with me, so we can figure out our system.

Seth Price  21:03  

Right right And that’s okay. So the people we can get in house that are willing to schlep to the office are junior, more green people. Yeah, I’m talking about, and I’m talking about a for me a practice group we are building out, not one of our established ones where there’s a sort of a cadence and PI or a known quantity, and people like working here, et cetera. But in some of our startup areas, you don’t have that. Like, think back to as you were building, and you don’t have that same cadence. And I’m sitting there. I spoke to Marco Brown this morning, just looking for some family law guidance, and it’s like I think the key is until you get a person who can train the people. That is the missing piece for most law firms. That if you have a person, whether it’s Jay, and at this point it’s not Jay, but if you have a person who can train staff, it allows you to leverage international a lot more. It allows you to go virtual a lot more because there’s a checks and balances. But the piece that I hate, and I heard this as PTSD from this from early days of building PI. We want experienced people. When you get that that lady with the, you know, eight, you know, with literally I think a dozen different opportunities over the last, you know, 10 years on the resume. That’s the experienced person, and I’m like, no. Occasionally, pick somebody up for….

Jay Ruane  22:25  

Sounds like it’s gonna be a trainwreck because they’ve only lasted. That was, and the experienced person comes with a lot of bad habits.

Seth Price  22:33  

Like when you look at a cravath place that I started my career way back coming out of college, you know, they historically did not take laterals. You learn the Krevath way from day one. How do you format a letter? Everything, and they. I think they’ve broken that since. But for many, many years, it was lockstep. First year up to eight, upper out.

Jay Ruane  22:53  

So let me ask you a question then, because I we’ve really just started to. I mean, we’ve had fits and starts of it, and we’ve had a couple different ways to approach it, but we really sort of formalized our onboarding and training program. At what point do you need to bring in somebody whose job it is to train the new hires? Because a lot of people, I think, in our audience are great. We have a new hire. Here’s your desk. Here’s your phone. Good luck.

Seth Price  23:19  

Well, it’s okay. So look, and as we grew, we did have a full. We had two full-time trainer. What full-time trainer? It’s an expensive, expensive piece, and there are two. But there are two components to it. There’s the first day nicey nice policies and procedures, but what I really need, and I think that’s where we morphed our trainer to, is processes and procedures per seat, because only then can you replicate. It’s not the trainer as far as you know. Here’s the benefits. Here, all of that will figure out, right? Plenty of firms don’t do that well, and they still survive. But if there’s a way to bring in people that aren’t “quote unquote” experienced that don’t have the best like that is the that is the ultimate. And now, look, my current look is I’m I’m actually there are enough people who’ve done this for long enough. Are there international players, some with law degrees who have worked at a law firm where they have enough experience generally that the training won’t be as harsh? And to me, one of the things we’ve talked about a lot over the years is: Does somebody actually want to do that job? That’s the greatest risk of first-year attorneys.

Jay Ruane  24:28  

And how do you parse through those people in the interview process that are great interviewers but terrible at executing the job? I mean, we’ve both had that person sitting across the table from us, and you’re like, “Wow, this person’s gonna rock! This is great! My problems are solved. And three and a half, you’re like, “What the hell did I hire? Like, like that’s you know, it’s it’s

Seth Price  24:53  

which is why I which is why I’m like you. You almost want to hire for traits if you get somebody whose attention to d2 actually has. But look, I.

Jay Ruane  25:01  

But everyone’s going to tell you that they have that in their interview. How do you how do you measure that?

Seth Price  25:06  

Testing. We look over the years. We’ve done tests. Look, way back in the day when everything was in person, we used to have people sit with them for half half a day, literally do a job here, show for half a day, and then do the job.

Jay Ruane  25:16  

We love those, you know, shadow days.

Seth Price  25:19  

And look, we they’re testing, and then they stop using the testing, and the struggle is real. There’s a lot of academic that’s right, but it is, you know, I think to a certain extent it goes back. We talked about you know how like Jay Ruane time, like what’s the most important use of it? But if you’re able to get those people in place, and you have a person, whoever that person is, who could then train and develop those people? That’s a huge competitive advantage as far as scaling. And until you have that, you’re just putting bodies in places and hoping that it works out.

Jay Ruane  25:52  

Yeah, and I mean, it you know, the the biggest challenge of of running a law firm is managing people. It’s not getting cases. Nope. 

Seth Price  26:04  

And spoiler alert: BluShark Digital is no different. If you remember, I did a thing. You were watching the video first day. I put a little sign on my desk at BluShark when we started. It’s an HR play. If I can staff, it’ll be successful. It’s all the execution of a vision.

Jay Ruane  26:20  

And I wonder, I wonder, is the fact that firms are successful is it pure luck? Because I don’t, I mean, I’ve talked to dozens of lawyers early in the game of their scaling, and I’ve talked to you know hundreds of people after they’ve scaled, and the people after they’ve scaled always seem to say it’s when HR came into play and we had objective metrics for hiring people that type of thing, but a lot of times the younger people are like, “Well, I’m just doing it myself because I don’t have the resources, I don’t have the that type of thing, and and is it is you know. Okay so I’m gonna I’m gonna draw a corollary here and and let me get your input on it. I know there are some big players in the national PI market that if you know they go into massive debt as they’re building their cases and their branding and their marketing and they’ll spend money on marketing because and. They’ll take a credit line and spend marketing on money, money on marketing, because they know that that’s going to yield money down the line. Is is is going into debt to hire the right people, as or hire the right person to help you get the right people? Is that similarly something that you should be considering, because I know I wouldn’t have done it. I probably still wouldn’t do it, but maybe, just maybe, like

Seth Price  27:50  

I’m very. We’ve been working with credit lines now for case costs, things like that, and over the last couple of years, we’re not we’re late to the game on it. The piece that scares me outside of PI. PI, if you know you have assets, no big deal. You’re going to get paid back. It’s it’s there, but if you’re trying, if you’re putting money against things that don’t have assets, now you’ve made this point over the years repeatedly, which is you have to capitalize yourself to build any restaurant, right? You know, you go in with that piece. You know, we have seen like history is written by the victor. You have a good business plan. Is there an example where borrowing money to get the right person, if they stay, if it’s the right person, if you that person could be maybe, but I think more often than not, the right hustler, going back to the hustle culture, is going to find a way to eke out enough money, take a little bit less for themselves to put that person in place. That if you’re going to debt in a non-contingency place to do that, it’s a scary place to be. 

Jay Ruane  28:56  

It is scary.

Seth Price  28:58  

They should have capitalized fear, medit, whatever that means, but what is the business plan? And again, it scares me a lot, and I don’t want to be the person advocating for putting credit lines out there to build something, knowing that the first person may not be right, the second person it may be, the third person. So to me, that’s a scary place to be.

Jay Ruane  29:22  

It is for me too. I’m I’m in a unique position. You know, as many of the listeners know, I do. I have done some post conviction work. One of the cases where we got a young man out. Well, he wasn’t young. He was young when he went in. He was middle age by the time he got out. We got him out. He was set to go to trial in two weeks against the city of New Haven, and last week they announced the settlement, which will pay him a million dollars for every year he was in jail, which is fantastic for him. He deserves every dollar of it. I’m lucky I’m going to be getting a piece of that, and so now I’ve got this sort of unnatural windfall into my firm, and I have to make some major decisions on how do I take this? Do I take it as profit, which I could do, and and say you know this isn’t what I normally do, so it’s a windfall, and I get the lion’s share of it because it’s you know it’s the benefits of being the owner, or do I invest in more people, new people, different people? Do I expand my operation? Do I take on you know another state because there’s some opportunities that I’ve I’ve recently been talking to people about? So I’ve got to do some deep soul searching on what I want to be when I grow up because I’m very comfortable and happy where I am right now, and I don’t know if I want to necessarily be the one on the ships, you know, exploring, trying to do something. But I could put other people in those in those roles and have them do it for me. Now that I’ve got some funds to just throw at it, so I’m in. I’m really

Seth Price  31:00  

like anything else. If you’re throwing at it’s not the answer, if you’re like, hey, this trainer I would never have paid for before, but I can take a you know six figures less income next year because of it. What I hope it lets you do is take some chance educated risks or chances.

Jay Ruane  31:17  

Yeah, and that’s the question I have. Like, do you know what? I mean, we have a we have a practice area. You know, it’s interesting. I put up a website during COVID, and just we did it internally. We wrote our own content for it, and it’s generating, you know, five to 10 calls a week organically. And we have never touched it. We had a lawyer that was in that role who left us in 2023 before it really started to generate calls, and now it is. So I could take some money, hire a lawyer that can do that area of law, and see if I need to help the

Seth Price  31:51  

Timeout. Look, we got. I know we got to wrap this up, but I don’t. I’m not buying this. The question shouldn’t be because you got a windfall. Take it, don’t take whatever you want to do, but to me, is it a smart? Do you is it a smart area that you that has potential for growth? Is it going to distract you from other stuff? You know, great. You have those many calls. What would it take to get more? Right now, we’re seeing paid search being prohibitive in a lot of fee for service markets. So next thing you know, can you build out something more digitally? That’s never where you’ve invested. You’ve done it with through sweat equity for most of your career. 

Jay Ruane  32:25  

I’ve taken the time to do the digital stuff. You know, but it’s just I don’t know. See, that’s and that’s part of the thing. You know, we talk about we laugh about this offline. We talk about how it’s therapy for both of us, but in reality, I think the what do you want to be when you grow up conversation is something that you almost have to have every year, because what I want it to be

Seth Price  32:45  

periodically, because it does change.

Jay Ruane  32:49  

You know, it’s…

Seth Price  32:50  

We just came off, but we just both came off three weeks in in Europe. Yeah, changes your mindset. 

Jay Ruane  32:55  

I just booked a trip back to Alaska next year. You know, and I’m happy with that, and I don’t necessarily want to work more. You know, to be fair,

Seth Price  33:05  

I got to tell you, but I mean, let me flip it back. Big deal. Jay takes two weeks of vacant. That’s not make. That’s not the issue. What I see a lot of people doing is they really you know they really want to work 10 to two three days a week. Those are the life moments where things change. In fact, you want to take two weeks vacation. You probably should have been doing it for a long time.

Jay Ruane  33:25  

Probably, probably. But yeah, I’m gonna leave. I’m gonna leave work a little early tomorrow. Take my son into New York City. My son has gotten bitten by the acting bug. He’s a freshman in high school, going into his sophomore year, and so I’m gonna take him to go see Book of Mormon and have some steak and multi favorites.

Jay Ruane  33:42  

So where

Seth Price  33:44  

Where you go for steak?

Jay Ruane  33:46  

So I think we’re going to go to Relays de Venise. It’s a it’s a it’s a bit of a chain. They had it in Paris. They have it in New York City. It is steak frites only.

Seth Price  33:57  

Well, then I’ll give you I’ll give you my spot for that.

Jay Ruane  34:00  

Okay,

Seth Price  34:00  

medium rare. Okay, it’s 33rd and third is a buddy of mine named Mark Bucher. He has about a dozen 20 of them around the country now. He’s putting them in NFL cities, so any city with an NFL team gets gets one. He started DC with about three, and you know they’re they’re Philly, New York, Dallas, you know, budget, all these things, and he went to Paris with his kids and saw this and said, “I got to bring it back. And it is-they have their own secret sauce, two put alls on the menu, two portions of steak frites, 30 some odd dollars, yeah, medium rare. 

Jay Ruane  34:39  

Alright Im going to check that out then. I’m going to I’m going to look as soon as we get off here. I’m going to look that up, get myself a table, and that’s and that’s our plan.

Seth Price  34:46  

There you go. Well, look, this has been great, and until next week,

Jay Ruane  34:51  

until next week, it’s good to be back, folks. That’s going to do it for us here in the Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, you can catch us anytime you want on the go by subscribing to the Law Firm Blueprint. Print podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. I get mine from Apple. Seth gets his from Google, I guess Google Podcasts, and you can catch us live on LinkedIn, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, as well as in our Facebook group every Thursday. So Thursdays live LinkedIn and Facebook group 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific. That’ll do it for us today. I am Jay. He is Seth. Bye for now.