Ep 81: Five Failures From Success (Part 5): Financial Collapse

I'm Clark speaks the catastrophic injury. Lawyer, welcome to the verdict. This is five failures from success. Hey,

welcome back. My name is Carson Grace Toomer, and I'm here with American Injury Lawyer, Clark speaks now, Mr. Speaks last one that we have, right? You were five failures from success. Tell me about this fifth failure.

So the fifth failure is deals with a financial collapse, and sort of the way that happens is so like, I say, I've built this firm. I built this practice. At that point. I hadn't built a firm. I'd built a practice. Like I was a lawyer, and I was a really good lawyer. I was trying a lot of cases in state court and federal court. I was in the trial level. I was in the court of appeals. I was in the US Supreme Court with briefs. I'd argued in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court. You know, I was doing all the things that I wanted to do professionally. I had made some you know, I made a good living, right? Because I was, I worked hard, and I did a really good job, and I was developing a reputation as being a good lawyer. And, you know, I was trying to think, Okay, what do I do with the money that I was making? I want to be responsible with it. And the people that I knew that were successful had bought real estate. I never really met anybody that you know, the old guys. You never met any old guys going, I wish I hadn't bought that. So, for example, I used to have breakfast at this breakfast place, and I loved it, because it was all these old guys that would get in there, and they would just shoot the pres right. And at that point, I wasn't terribly connected with my dad. So these guys became like mentors for me, and one of them in particular is a guy who came here in his teens, and he was a cook on a rail car. And guy's name was whitey provat, and he told the most amazing stories. Well, he the play the rail car was coming through town, and he was a cook, and he the rails. Car stopped here, and everybody had a few minutes to walk around. Well, he walked around. And he just decided, while he was here, he was like, this is where I'm stopping. So he got off train, and he stopped right here, and he opened a little diner, and he was good at what he did, and so he built his diner, and he operated his Diner for 60 years, something like that, maybe, maybe longer, what? But you didn't know is that he started buying real estate all up and down, all around. And by the end of it, he owned half the town, you know. So he still had his restaurant, his little kind of breakfast place, but he also had all these, this, this other property. And so I was like, Okay, well, that sounds good. I'll do that. So I started buying property, you know, and I kind of was working with some people who, and I thought we all knew what we were doing, because the stuff kept you'd buy it one day, and then you could turn around, sell it six months later and make 10s of 1000s of dollars, or, you know, just some kind of ridiculous money, and I'm like, Okay, well, I'm not, I don't, I don't gamble. I don't have any of these sort of negative, uh, hobbies or whatever. I don't have, like horses or race cars or whatever, you know I mean, or I don't go to Vegas or whatever. So this will be something that I can do on the side that'll get me create some financial stability and for my family. And then, in addition to that, some of the things I'm buying are like coastal properties, like beach property. Most of the stuff I'm buying is on the water. So I have a house on the water. It's a huge house on the water, much bigger than we need. I'm buying a house that I have, a house at figure eight, a private house at figure I mean, you know, personal residence at figure eight, I have lots all over the place that are like on the water, and because at that point I'm here, and also, and I'm doing research, and I'm hearing that the trend, the population trend is that, you know, in 50 years, 90% of the people will live in 20 within 20 miles of the coast. And there's a general trend for people in the North to move into the people in the south, and then people in the deep south moving back to sort of a middle, middle state like North Carolina. And so the population trends for North Carolina, just like this, you know? And so I'm in so I start buying real estate, buying more and more real estate. Well, look at that point, especially if you're a successful person and you have and you're making a decent living, there were mortgage People would call me all the time and say, hey, you know, can we get? They're trying to sell you mortgages, right? They're trying to say, Hey, if you find something you want, we'll back you. We'll do it, you know? And they had all kinds of different products, and it's just getting so I'm buying more things and more things and more things, you. Yeah. And so I remember when I bought the place, the beach house, part of my thinking was that, growing up, we would always go and rent a beach house. We didn't, we didn't. We went a couple times, but my aunt would go and rent, rent a beach house, and one time in particular, she invited us to go with her, and so we went. It was such a great family thing. And I'm like, you know, my mom loved it. And I'm like, Okay, this would be something like, If I could do this, this will be a thing that our family can use and enjoy, and it would be kind of the fulfillment of that thing, you know. So my intentions were, all you know, good about that, I guess, you know. But I, but I wanted to be able to to I had this perception of what I wanted from a house. I wanted to be on the water. I wanted to have a beach house, to be on the ocean. I want to be able to have these experiences with my family. I want to be able to provide these experiences for my brother, for my mom, or whatever, you know, and that's kind of the vision that I had. And so that's what we did. So so we see we bought and I'll never get we, uh, I'm in a closing with my wife, we just bought another waterfront lot in a beach community, beautiful lot, beautiful amenities, nice place, and it's an interest only loan, right? And she, she says to me, she goes, You sure this is a good idea? You know, we're already at the closing, right? We've already everybody's there, and we got the financing lined up and all the stuff. And I'm just like, I remember I said something smart, like, so you gonna fly the plane? Now I knew when I said it. I was like, that's not a character. I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't have said that. And I'm also, my wife is from Thomasville, and so she would have lucky I didn't have a fat lip when I was walking out of there. But anyway, the point of it is, is that she just was like, All right, you know, I'm could tell she was like, All right, I'm gonna let you have that one. But, you know, so, so, but I just knew that was just a dumb thing to say, you know. And then it was a few months later, I had these guys that I invested in real estate with, and they were big guys. They were big football players, and they played football in college and all this, and they were physically big people. And we were going to a bowl game, to a, you know, a college football bowl game. And we and we, we all decided we were going to fly private because we were big shots, you know, so we chartered a plane to go down to the pole game. And I remember my buddies were so big that they had to get seat belt extenders. Their seat belt would not fit around them, so they had to get an extension to connect to this end and then connect to this end. And I remember thinking at the time. I remember thinking that's, there's something symbolic about that, as foreshadowing of something that's not good we are. We are too fat as a society, as an economy, as a real estate community, is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I'm I'm afraid this is a problem. And at that point, I was, but I was very, you know, I felt like I knew math and I knew business math, and I'd, you know, taking MBA classes and all this, and I was and I felt like I knew what I was doing. And I was like, even if the market adjusts 20% 30% 40% I'm still fine. So I'll be fine. I have a friend who runs hedge funds. He's sometimes he lives in New York, sometimes he live in California. He calls me from California one day, and I'm sitting on my back porch, and at this point, I'm, you know, I've kind of stretched myself thin. I've bought a whole other property with the intent to sell one of these other properties, and I knew I was had to be careful about that, but it was just something I really wanted. And I'm like, I'm gonna buy this thing and sell this and then I'll be fine. He calls me and he says, Hey, listen, um, I know you're buying a bunch of stuff.

You're gonna have to be careful. You're I'm seeing some things that that financially on the global indexes and all that are problematic. And you're going to have to be careful of what do you mean? He says, Well, this curve is inverted, and this yield is this and, and here's what we're seeing here, and, and that is just those are bad signs for the housing market. And you're very heavily invested in the housing market, like too heavily invested in the housing market, you know. And I'm like, asking him some more questions. By the end of that conversation, I am like, I all of a sudden, it was like, somebody turned on the lights and I could see where we were as a nation in the housing market, and we had already gone off a cliff, and we didn't know it yet. And it was like, it was like Wiley Coyote, you know, chasing the runner. We were already out here. There was no there was no soft landing. There was no landing at all. And so I called everybody on Monday morning and said, We are selling everything. And so we put four sales signs in, in every every single. Thing. And then I had, I had my biggest place for sale. And if I could have sold that, I felt like I would have been fine, right? I've been, I would have been fine. I was gonna I didn't really want to sell it. House at Figure Eight Island. I didn't, I wasn't excited about selling it, but I needed to be out from under it so I could manage the rest of this. So a guy comes to look at it that week, and he's like, I'm gonna buy it. I just want to stay in it for the weekend, and I'm gonna buy it. You know, we agreed on a number, and guy had the contract and all this. So my family and I go to Hilton Head for the weekend to just to hang out, because somebody's in our beach house, and we're gonna sell anyway. So I'm sitting there with my buddy, the same one who runs a hedge fund. We've We've met with our families in Hilton Head to kind of hang out. We get up and he and I are just reading the paper and whatever, and the TV's on and we see the Dow Jones start to fall. It starts to fall, starts to fall, starts to fall, fall. It goes down like 1000 points in a day. All they talk about on the news is the housing market, you know. So the housing market has gone to pieces. It's a collapse. It's a disaster. You know. Nobody was expecting this. So if you ever go back and watch the movie, The Big Short. That's what this is about. And what had happened is all these investment people had packaged all these mortgages in different ways as to make them seem like the housing market was stable and supported by people who could pay for all this stuff. But it was really a house of cards, and it was waiting to collapse, and it collapsed that day, so I go back to we finished the weekend. First of all, I'm like, Oh no. I go back that Monday, and the guys left the house, you know, and I go, and I just swing by there to make sure everything's okay. And I look in the trash can, there's a contract I never heard from him again. So, so this is when I'm I'm sitting on the back porch later that week. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not feeling good because, because being a husband, being a father, being a provider, being a respectable business person in the community had become my identity, right? It become something that i i Like, that people thought of me as that guy. There goes so and so. He is successful. He drives this kind of car. He lives in this big house on the water. He has this success, you know? He has this business and all this, and I had grown accustomed to that kind of thing, and then now, you know, this was bad, right? And so all I can see and think in my mind is that my entire house of cards is going to collapse around me. How's this going to fit my law license? How's going to affect my my relationships? How's this going to affect my marriage? How's this going to affect because I got a ton of friends that got divorced through that process, because a lot of my friends were heavily invested in in some of your friends, too, got divorced as your parents. Friends through this process got divorced because of similar sets of circumstances, and it's easy to look down on them and condemn them or judge them or whatever, but that's a lot of stress, like, I'll never forget when I started seeing this whole thing go down, I remember my kids were went and slept with my wife, and I remember being in Katie's bed with the sheets covers pulled up like this, and it's probably four o'clock in the morning, and I've just got my eyes wide open, And I'm like, What am I going to do? What am I going to do? You know? And it's like, also, if you've came from financial stress, and then now you go back to financial stress, it's like some of the, you know, it's almost like PTSD. It's almost like you, you these things are so they're still fresh, even though they were 3040, 50 years ago, and then you're like, oh my god, I have put my own children in this harms way when I for no reason whatsoever, like, what have I done? So my mom, my wife, takes my kids, and they go to, you know, some birthday party or whatever, and I sort of say, I gotta work, and I stay home and I'm sitting there and I'm and I'm on the back porch, and I'm thinking about it, I might even have still been drinking at this point in time. I don't remember. In time. I don't remember. I think I probably was drinking at this point in time. And I'm just like trying to figure this thing out. I got a clipboard, a calculator, and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do here. I'm on the back porch looking out of the water, and the TV's on through the screen, and this movie, Blood Diamond is on. Do you know this movie? So Blood Diamond is Leonardo DiCaprio, phenomenal movie. And he's a diamond smuggler in Africa, right? And the movie is about this father, this African father, played by this phenomenal actor, not Leonardo DiCaprio, but a different guy. I forget his name, but he's a phenomenal actor, and He's raising his kids up in a very modest but very right way. Good Father, good husband, loves his kids, loves his family. Everything's great. This terrible, mean, militant evil, you know, group just comes through villages, steals the women, sells them into prostitution, takes the boys, gets them hooked on get them hooked on drugs, put a rifle in their hands, put them into their armies, till they so they can go sack the next village, and then all and then the dads are like, lined up. They go long sleeve or short sleeve. You want to just cut your arms off here or here. And then if they don't want you to cut your arms off, they do this. So you can't fight them. You can't come you can't rebel against them. If they don't do that, they put you in these diamond mines for you to find diamonds for this thing. And the whole thing is about this guy trying to get, re, get, reassemble his family after they have been ripped apart by this evil militia, you know. And I'm watching this thing as first time I've ever seen it, and I'm just like, I don't even hear the words. I'm in the back porch, separated by windows and glass and screen and all this. But I'm seeing this thing unfold. And by the end of it, I'm sitting there watching this, this this movie, you know, and I'm compelled by the thing, the story of this guy trying to keep his family together. And, you know, and I'm emotional about the whole thing, you know, I'm invested in it. And then I remember, I think they came home, that movie ended. I'm I'm sitting there thinking that night, and I'm thinking about it all, and I'm like, You know what? No matter what happens, they're not going to come take my wife, they're not going to come take my daughters and sell them in pros. They're not going to come take my kids and and get them hooked on drugs. They can't touch my family. The day before this incident happens, I have probably three foreclosure notices on the bulletin board at the courthouse. That's where they when you get a foreclosure, when you have a house, a center, foreclosure, whatever, they'll put the foreclosure notices on a bulletin board, and that, if you'll remember, that's where my that was pretty much my office at that point time. I'm every day for almost 20 years. So I was in there every single day. And there's all these busy bodies that are busy body lawyers and whatever, that sit in there and they read the foreclosures and giggle or whatever, because, oh my gosh. Can you gossip? You know, so the day before, I had seen them there, and I knew that I had three notices on that board. And so I go, and so I walk in the door, I see them. I'm like, oh gosh. So I walk all the way. I gotta go to this court room over here, that's just 40 feet past where they are. I go all the way up and around the building and come all the way down to those sides to avoid them. Then I see that movie that night. I can have this clarity in my head where I'm like, Hey, I don't have to. Nobody's taking my kids, nobody's taking my wife, nobody's taking my health. So this is where the gratitude thing. Remember, I told you I was going to and I, and that was a dark time for me. That was a really dark time for me, because I was very, like, fearful that I have messed up. I've been given everything, you know, God has given me everything, and I have just wasted it all and thrown it right in the toilet. So then I see this movie and I and I'm like, liberated, and I'm like, wow, they can't, they can't touch me. So the next day I walk in, same thing's going on, different busy bodies up there. That's why I walk straight to the billboard. I flip through until I find my notices. I find all three of my notices. I put them on the top, and I jam the pin right back into them, and I keep walking. And they never have a

tiniest bit of power over me after that again, you know? And I'm like, here it is. And so the next thing that happens is over the course of the next and so, by the way, is this is not, there's no, like, giant silver lining where I where it all makes is, right? The next day. It is a series of disasters after that. It's just, for example, you know, my house did get foreclosed on. My big house on the water did get foreclosed on. They did sell it to someone else, somebody else lives in it to this day. You know, now I still had a job. I had a good job, I still made money. So I moved into another great Mike. So when this was happening, I was at my kids at Disney World, and when we came back, we moved to a different house, and we rented a different house for four or five years, and love didn't have the time of our lives, right? But it wasn't without consequence. I got sued by banks, you know? I got sued by half dozen banks, and the difference is, that's what I do, so I sued them back, you know. So, you know. And so I got to work at three o'clock in the morning, and I went through my old textbooks, and I'm like, What can I find to sue them back? And I sued every one of them back. And then they were like, what do we do? What's going on here? What are they there? This guy is suing us. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm suing you. And I did sue them. I think they were implicit and they were complicit in the whole process. Yes, but the whole thing unfolds over a period of time that is difficult, and it did affect, you know, like it was hard. My wife and I had to have a conversation, you know, we had. She was like, you know, hey, what's, you know? What do we do now? And I'm like, well, and this is when I learned a valuable lesson about accepting responsibility. I'm like, I know you've worked hard. I've worked hard. I have messed this whole thing up. I have made mistakes that have set our family back. We thought we were going to have this kind of lifestyle. We are not. We are not going to have that kind of lifestyle. We are we are going to lose everything. And so I'm like, I want you to get out of your system whatever kind of criticism and fussing and resentment that you have. I don't want to live with this around my neck for the rest of my life. I was aggressive about getting in this situation. I would be aggressive about getting out of this situation, but this is my fault. It's not your fault. It's not the society's fault. It's not the economy's fault. It is my fault. I have made bad decisions, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it's gonna affect you. I'm sorry that's gonna affect her kid, our kids, and I'm sorry it's gonna affect our plans. I'm sorry. And so she's like, you know, she says a couple things, you know, where she's like, okay, yeah, that was done, you know. And then we talk for a few minutes about, okay, what do we want out of life? What are the things that make us happy? What are the things we've got at that point, 40 something years left on, if things go well, health wise, what do we enjoy in life and what do we want to accomplish? And we're like we like our family, we love our family, we love our kids, we love to do things together. I don't care if I drive a Mercedes. I don't care if I drive a 10 year old station wagon. I don't care if we live in a big house in the water, as long as we're together, you know, she agrees, you know, and we decide that we're going to stick it out and we're going to be to continue to be together. It was never really a question. She was always supportive. You know, she was, I'm sure she was frustrated, I'm sure she was angry, I'm sure she was disappointed. We said what we had to say. We moved on. Nine months later, we had another child, fully recognizing that we may not, might not, have this sort of Country Club life. It might be much more of a blue collar thing going forward. That was the plan, in fact, you know, get rid of everything and and just be have a have a modest life, life, life and lifestyle, you know, and I was so worried about what everybody's perception of that, because when you're kind of like the the poor kid that didn't fit in in the country club or whatever, and then you kind of get to the place where you are at the country Club, and then you go back, you know, you feel like everybody judges you and thinks about you, a certain one, to be honest with you, I bet nobody cared. They were just probably pulling for you to do the best you can, you know, but, but internally, it is a it is unpleasant, and it's a bad it's a bad feeling. But I, but I was so grateful that, hey, in our country, nobody's going to put me in jail, nobody's going to take my kids, nobody's going to, you know, take my family away, you know. And one of the things that, coincidentally, right at this same time, you know, I am in the process, so I'm doing these cases, and they're getting more and more and more and more serious, and I represent, I'm asked to represent this guy who is a very, very dangerous person in a very, very dangerous context. And immediately I say yes, and then I start thinking about how I'm going to have to protect my family, and I call my wife to tell her, Hey, we're going to have to take these extra precautions because of how dangerous this case is. I hear myself saying, and I'm like, I can't, you know? So I call him back and I say, Hey, I can't. But really, I can't do that anymore, because I'm not going to subject my family to that kind of risk of danger. I told you I'd represent somebody. In this case, I'll represent somebody else, and so, so I represented somebody who was less dangerous and less involved. And we got through that but, but it forced me now I'm in a situation where I've, I'm mid 40s, I don't know, 40 years old, probably 40 years old. I've got to figure out, and I've got to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. You know, because if I continue with criminal defense, you're representing more and more and more danger that in the way I was approaching, I wasn't continuing to do more and more DWIs. I was doing more and more dangerous people, murderers, gang men. Members, and not like little local, nonsensical clubs, I mean, like real gang members who are organized, smart, serious and mobile. And I, I was like, I cannot. I can't do that. Not to mention that now I'm part of these organizations where we go. We would go to these. So I had capital cases. Capital cases are death penalty cases. So when you have a capital case and it's a death penalty case, you have the opportunity to go get together with a a group of other lawyers that have death penalty cases, and you can collaborate. 14 lawyers will go to Duke, for example, and we'll collapse bringing our bring our files, and we'll introduce ourselves, and then we'll work on my file, and then we'll work on his file, and then we'll work on her file. And these are some of the best legal minds in the country. I mean, Mary Ann Talley, Jonathan Brown, phenomenal lawyers, brilliant people, brilliant people. And then some of these other lawyers from different places, Fayetteville, Asheville, New Bern Greenville, Winston, whatever, around the around the state. These guys are so good and so talented, but you've never heard of them. You would never in a million years hear any of these people. But I started noticing that they weren't necessarily healthy, right? Not, not know. Mary Ann Talley and Jonathan brown were the leaders of this organization, but some of these other guys were like, you know, I'd see him. They'd go out to the car and lunch and get a drink. You know, they'd be called their third lawyer for their third divorce. You know, they're taking the blood pressure medication in the room. You know what I mean? The the lifestyle that they had when they're representing these people in these difficult, difficult life and death situations all the time, was something that I was like, Hey, I don't know if this is, I don't know if this is for me, especially when you combine that with the danger of representing some of those people, you know, and if you have a public life that can be, that can be dangerous, I have friends that are in that in that world to this day, and they have it. They don't. They have a hard time being on like social media or being out in the public, because you just never know who you're going to run into. Your client might have talked about another client, and that bright product put you in danger. You know, your client might have gotten convicted, and that might have been his affiliates would be frustrated with you, or whatever. So there it could be a dangerous situation. So all this is going on at the same time, I go to a conference, I talk to some mentors and and collectively we say that guy comes back and says, Hey, let's look back at your career and let's find where you were the most effective. You helped somebody the most. You felt like a lawyer. You felt like you did a good job for somebody, and you enjoyed what you were doing. You know you enjoyed and it came back with these three cases, all of which were injury cases. And it was with great clarity, both of us were like, This is what we're going to do. I'd always done injury stuff. I'd always done Personal Injury right throughout the process, but it was

a third to a half of what I was doing every day, and the rest of it was these other criminal cases, you know. So then now my focus shifted entirely, and it was entirely about these personal injury cases. And so then, you know, I could take the things that I had learned, and it's different, because in the personal injury world, very few cases are tried. Almost no case is tried. All the skills are the same, opening, closing, direct cross, jury selection, all those things are the same, but almost no. Personal injury cases get tried. But I tried, I mean, tons of cases in criminal court, and I had, because of that, I had tried tons of cases in civil court, you know? And so now I have this sort of unique skill set, because I have tried so many cases and built these, this reputation, these relationships, so that I can take that and apply it to civil law, personal injury law, where I never saw, to this day, I have never seen any of my competitors at the my real competitors at the courthouse. Never seen them one time, you know, never seen most of them in person, period. But definitely never seen seen them at the courthouse, you know, versus, that was my second home for 20 years. So that's an that's an image, or rather, of the of like, how this financial collapse led me to being in some good places, right? Like I I had this financial collapse, and because of it, I was forced to take inventory of what was important in my life, what mattered to me. What mattered to my family, what I wanted to accomplish, personally and professionally, and if that financial collapse hadn't happened, I would have continued to take private planes to bowl games, and never had the space, the silence or the motivation to answer those questions.

What mental steps you spoke about it briefly, about with you and your wife, but what mental steps did you take in order to rebuild your financial stability?

The first thing that I had to do was to accept that something bad financially was going to happen, and I imagine it's probably the same thing for anybody you know, you're hurt, you're out of work, or something bad happens. And also, we're so much of our identity is based on our ability to provide for our families in these times, right? You know, when people say, what do you do? You know, we all answer by saying, This is what I do professionally. You know, if your dad was to you're to bring home a boy, what do you plan to do? You know? What do your parents do? You know? What's you know? And also, I had a job. I had a stable job. I had a great job. I was good at what I did, so that gave me an advantage, right? For sure, my wife had a great job. She was good at what she does. She's very dedicated. And so that really so we didn't feel this thing quite like it might other people might feel it, because I still made a living, and I still had income coming in and all that. We just lost all our assets, you know, they come and take the place, and somebody else is living there, you know. And then we got, you got lawsuits you got to deal with, and you've got mediations and conflicts and all that, not to mention the phone calls they call you all the time, like there's you know. And so what I did before that, to deal with that is I called him about a month before this was going to go down. I knew it was going to go down. I called him a month before I got I told all the creditors that I wanted to change the my phone number, and I had it all the calls come to my cell phone so that I wouldn't subject my family to this additional stress, but that mean my cell phone rang 24 Well, you know, during from from eight to 11 or whatever, from seven to 11, all day, every day, from people saying, Hey, where's our money for this house you bought, you know. So it was not easy, but it but it wasn't as hard as maybe some people have to have to deal with, to the point where by the end of it, you know, I would be riding with one of my kids and that, you know, they were young by the time that time. And you know, I might go, Hey, and it'd be somebody calling for a house payment of $20,000 on this house in the water or whatever. And I'd be like, hold on a second. This for you. I'd hand it to my six year old son. He'd be like, hello, you know. And and then the guy would be like, well, you know, what can we expect this? And he's like, what's your name? And, you know, I like pirates or whatever, you know. So, so anyway. And then I was like, we'll get back to you. So not to belittle the problem, but like, that was an important milestone for me, because I'm like, I'm not going to let this it's a problem, but it's not I'm not going to let it shape my world. And it comes back to intentionality. This is the situation that I'm in. This is the situation I want to get to. What am I going to be able to do between here and here to get there? And me fretting about this situation that I can't change at this point in time, it has happened. So accepting that process, accepting the fact that we are here, we used to be here, now we're here. Okay, fine, what do I need to do next? What's the next thing I need to do? What's the next step I need to take if I want to improve 1% every day, which is part of my core values, what do I need to do to get to get to that next step? You know, what is that next step? And then what is the net? What is the effort that I need to put in, what are the activities that I need to do to get there? And so that was looking at it like that, but also having the, you know, the support of my family. My kids did not give a they did not care, you know, if we lived in a big house in the water, or if we moved to a different house, we had the time of our the most fun we ever had was in the house that we lived in after that, when they were, you know, that's where we had the dance parties. That's where we camped in the backyard. We had to, you know, Pirate stories, and we dressed up on a Tuesday or whatever, and Halloween gear. Yeah, it was just, we had the most fun at that point in time be and they did not care one bit about any of it, you know. So that was, that was an important lesson for me. What

else would you say you learned? Yeah, going through this, I

learned that success is not defined by bank accounts, and a person's worth is not defined by his or her bank accounts. You know, my friends didn't care. Many of them were going through the same stuff my employees did. Didn't care. I didn't have very many employees, but they didn't care. They just was long as I was taking care of my obligations to them. That was good. My family, you know, we've talked about that. My wife, you know, she wasn't thrilled with it. She was upset about it, of course. And then we recommitted to our relationship and our plan, and we went on about our with our lives. So I learned once again, that this failure, and this is this is a failure that is distinctly my fault, right? This one of my dad. Is that my fault? I was eight years old? Is it my fault? My dad left now, you know, a lot of this is, but this is 100% my fault. Like I did this, I overextended and all this. I bought stuff I couldn't have afford. It couldn't afford I thought as an investment, it wasn't. It collapsed. And if you don't know how that whole thing worked, I do encourage you to watch the movie, to dig short, because it shows exactly kind of the dynamic that was going on at that time. But what I learned is, even if something that you think is just an unacceptable outcome, unacceptable, no way this can happen that you just cannot live with this thing. Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's an injury, maybe it's all sudden you find yourself broke, or you can't see your kids like you want to, or it's a health challenge, or you have a diagnosis that's terrible, or whatever, and you think, man, I just I cannot do this. That's where I was when I was in Katie's bed with the sheets up like this, and I'm looking out the window going, I cannot. I don't know how this is going to end. You know, this is not good. I am fearful that it's all you know, because you start catastrophizing in your mind. Okay, this is, you know, we're all gonna be on the street. You know, we were never on the street. You know it was, it was fine, and it was such a blessing, because it forced me to go back and look at who I was and what was important to me and what I wanted to accomplish. And from there, I was able to start the foundation of building, what do we have? 50 employees to several offices. We help 1000s of people, you know, and it starts right there with that was, that's the moment at which we decide what my what God put me on this earth to do is to help injured people recover, physically, financially, emotionally, and this is how we're going to do it. And this is the pathway. It hasn't been 100% direct. It has been up and down and sideways, you know, but it that stress, that discomfort, that challenge, was the catalyst that helped me formulate my mission, vision values. This is what I'm here to do, and this is how I'm going to do it. And as terrible as it was, and as the kind of thing that it was, where it caused me to think this is the worst thing that's ever had. I must have thought that 100 times this is worth worst thing I had to work. I worked on weekends for two years out of town at a had a friend of mine who was, who was, who was, had bought an apartment complex and was converting it over to a condos to sell. And I worked out of town for two years on the weekends in addition to working, you know. So I worked seven days a week for two years to try to make some additional money to help us dig out of this situation. And it was that money that I earned from that that helped us, you know, purchase an office and start a plan to be able to build, you know, the rest of this and so. And while I was there, I had to, part of my responsibility was to develop a marketing plan to sell condos in the worst real estate market in anybody's memory. So then I had, I ended up diving into all these different sources and reading and learning all about it. It was in Chapel Hill. So I had resources. So I had to learn all these different things and but I had the resources there and the people there to help me figure out and I, and I took over the marketing campaigns to distribute and to sell those places, and I learned about the operation of of a business, operational components of a business, people and in processes and those types of things. And so those things combined to be the platform for what we've built here now. Now I've, you know, I some of the less, the unbelievable lessons I learned from marketing those condos, is how I learned to market my business. The first lesson I learned is, the first lesson of marketing is you have to have a great product. You have to so if that means a law firm, you have to have great legal services that you offer for people. If you have condos, you have to have great, well built, solid condos, anything else, and you're just announcing to the world with a megaphone that you have a terrible product, and they need to learn about it more quickly, you know. So So this, the lessons that I learned from these experiences are hard to describe just how important and how valuable they were, and how I thought they were so terrible and they were so terminal and determinative of the outcome. But I would, if looking back on it, if I could go back and if I could, if I could take them away, if I could take that away and so that I did not have that problem, I wouldn't do it. Is one of the best things that ever

happened to me. Well, thank you. Mr. Speaks, thank

you. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time bye.

I'm Clark speaks the catastrophic injury. Lawyer, welcome to the verdict. This is five failures from success. Hey,

welcome back. My name is Carson Grace Toomer, and I'm here with American Injury Lawyer, Clark speaks now, Mr. Speaks last one that we have, right? You were five failures from success. Tell me about this fifth failure.

So the fifth failure is deals with a financial collapse, and sort of the way that happens is so like, I say, I've built this firm. I built this practice. At that point. I hadn't built a firm. I'd built a practice. Like I was a lawyer, and I was a really good lawyer. I was trying a lot of cases in state court and federal court. I was in the trial level. I was in the court of appeals. I was in the US Supreme Court with briefs. I'd argued in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court. You know, I was doing all the things that I wanted to do professionally. I had made some you know, I made a good living, right? Because I was, I worked hard, and I did a really good job, and I was developing a reputation as being a good lawyer. And, you know, I was trying to think, Okay, what do I do with the money that I was making? I want to be responsible with it. And the people that I knew that were successful had bought real estate. I never really met anybody that you know, the old guys. You never met any old guys going, I wish I hadn't bought that. So, for example, I used to have breakfast at this breakfast place, and I loved it, because it was all these old guys that would get in there, and they would just shoot the pres right. And at that point, I wasn't terribly connected with my dad. So these guys became like mentors for me, and one of them in particular is a guy who came here in his teens, and he was a cook on a rail car. And guy's name was whitey provat, and he told the most amazing stories. Well, he the play the rail car was coming through town, and he was a cook, and he the rails. Car stopped here, and everybody had a few minutes to walk around. Well, he walked around. And he just decided, while he was here, he was like, this is where I'm stopping. So he got off train, and he stopped right here, and he opened a little diner, and he was good at what he did, and so he built his diner, and he operated his Diner for 60 years, something like that, maybe, maybe longer, what? But you didn't know is that he started buying real estate all up and down, all around. And by the end of it, he owned half the town, you know. So he still had his restaurant, his little kind of breakfast place, but he also had all these, this, this other property. And so I was like, Okay, well, that sounds good. I'll do that. So I started buying property, you know, and I kind of was working with some people who, and I thought we all knew what we were doing, because the stuff kept you'd buy it one day, and then you could turn around, sell it six months later and make 10s of 1000s of dollars, or, you know, just some kind of ridiculous money, and I'm like, Okay, well, I'm not, I don't, I don't gamble. I don't have any of these sort of negative, uh, hobbies or whatever. I don't have, like horses or race cars or whatever, you know I mean, or I don't go to Vegas or whatever. So this will be something that I can do on the side that'll get me create some financial stability and for my family. And then, in addition to that, some of the things I'm buying are like coastal properties, like beach property. Most of the stuff I'm buying is on the water. So I have a house on the water. It's a huge house on the water, much bigger than we need. I'm buying a house that I have, a house at figure eight, a private house at figure I mean, you know, personal residence at figure eight, I have lots all over the place that are like on the water, and because at that point I'm here, and also, and I'm doing research, and I'm hearing that the trend, the population trend is that, you know, in 50 years, 90% of the people will live in 20 within 20 miles of the coast. And there's a general trend for people in the North to move into the people in the south, and then people in the deep south moving back to sort of a middle, middle state like North Carolina. And so the population trends for North Carolina, just like this, you know? And so I'm in so I start buying real estate, buying more and more real estate. Well, look at that point, especially if you're a successful person and you have and you're making a decent living, there were mortgage People would call me all the time and say, hey, you know, can we get? They're trying to sell you mortgages, right? They're trying to say, Hey, if you find something you want, we'll back you. We'll do it, you know? And they had all kinds of different products, and it's just getting so I'm buying more things and more things and more things, you. Yeah. And so I remember when I bought the place, the beach house, part of my thinking was that, growing up, we would always go and rent a beach house. We didn't, we didn't. We went a couple times, but my aunt would go and rent, rent a beach house, and one time in particular, she invited us to go with her, and so we went. It was such a great family thing. And I'm like, you know, my mom loved it. And I'm like, Okay, this would be something like, If I could do this, this will be a thing that our family can use and enjoy, and it would be kind of the fulfillment of that thing, you know. So my intentions were, all you know, good about that, I guess, you know. But I, but I wanted to be able to to I had this perception of what I wanted from a house. I wanted to be on the water. I wanted to have a beach house, to be on the ocean. I want to be able to have these experiences with my family. I want to be able to provide these experiences for my brother, for my mom, or whatever, you know, and that's kind of the vision that I had. And so that's what we did. So so we see we bought and I'll never get we, uh, I'm in a closing with my wife, we just bought another waterfront lot in a beach community, beautiful lot, beautiful amenities, nice place, and it's an interest only loan, right? And she, she says to me, she goes, You sure this is a good idea? You know, we're already at the closing, right? We've already everybody's there, and we got the financing lined up and all the stuff. And I'm just like, I remember I said something smart, like, so you gonna fly the plane? Now I knew when I said it. I was like, that's not a character. I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't have said that. And I'm also, my wife is from Thomasville, and so she would have lucky I didn't have a fat lip when I was walking out of there. But anyway, the point of it is, is that she just was like, All right, you know, I'm could tell she was like, All right, I'm gonna let you have that one. But, you know, so, so, but I just knew that was just a dumb thing to say, you know. And then it was a few months later, I had these guys that I invested in real estate with, and they were big guys. They were big football players, and they played football in college and all this, and they were physically big people. And we were going to a bowl game, to a, you know, a college football bowl game. And we and we, we all decided we were going to fly private because we were big shots, you know, so we chartered a plane to go down to the pole game. And I remember my buddies were so big that they had to get seat belt extenders. Their seat belt would not fit around them, so they had to get an extension to connect to this end and then connect to this end. And I remember thinking at the time. I remember thinking that's, there's something symbolic about that, as foreshadowing of something that's not good we are. We are too fat as a society, as an economy, as a real estate community, is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I'm I'm afraid this is a problem. And at that point, I was, but I was very, you know, I felt like I knew math and I knew business math, and I'd, you know, taking MBA classes and all this, and I was and I felt like I knew what I was doing. And I was like, even if the market adjusts 20% 30% 40% I'm still fine. So I'll be fine. I have a friend who runs hedge funds. He's sometimes he lives in New York, sometimes he live in California. He calls me from California one day, and I'm sitting on my back porch, and at this point, I'm, you know, I've kind of stretched myself thin. I've bought a whole other property with the intent to sell one of these other properties, and I knew I was had to be careful about that, but it was just something I really wanted. And I'm like, I'm gonna buy this thing and sell this and then I'll be fine. He calls me and he says, Hey, listen, um, I know you're buying a bunch of stuff.

You're gonna have to be careful. You're I'm seeing some things that that financially on the global indexes and all that are problematic. And you're going to have to be careful of what do you mean? He says, Well, this curve is inverted, and this yield is this and, and here's what we're seeing here, and, and that is just those are bad signs for the housing market. And you're very heavily invested in the housing market, like too heavily invested in the housing market, you know. And I'm like, asking him some more questions. By the end of that conversation, I am like, I all of a sudden, it was like, somebody turned on the lights and I could see where we were as a nation in the housing market, and we had already gone off a cliff, and we didn't know it yet. And it was like, it was like Wiley Coyote, you know, chasing the runner. We were already out here. There was no there was no soft landing. There was no landing at all. And so I called everybody on Monday morning and said, We are selling everything. And so we put four sales signs in, in every every single. Thing. And then I had, I had my biggest place for sale. And if I could have sold that, I felt like I would have been fine, right? I've been, I would have been fine. I was gonna I didn't really want to sell it. House at Figure Eight Island. I didn't, I wasn't excited about selling it, but I needed to be out from under it so I could manage the rest of this. So a guy comes to look at it that week, and he's like, I'm gonna buy it. I just want to stay in it for the weekend, and I'm gonna buy it. You know, we agreed on a number, and guy had the contract and all this. So my family and I go to Hilton Head for the weekend to just to hang out, because somebody's in our beach house, and we're gonna sell anyway. So I'm sitting there with my buddy, the same one who runs a hedge fund. We've We've met with our families in Hilton Head to kind of hang out. We get up and he and I are just reading the paper and whatever, and the TV's on and we see the Dow Jones start to fall. It starts to fall, starts to fall, starts to fall, fall. It goes down like 1000 points in a day. All they talk about on the news is the housing market, you know. So the housing market has gone to pieces. It's a collapse. It's a disaster. You know. Nobody was expecting this. So if you ever go back and watch the movie, The Big Short. That's what this is about. And what had happened is all these investment people had packaged all these mortgages in different ways as to make them seem like the housing market was stable and supported by people who could pay for all this stuff. But it was really a house of cards, and it was waiting to collapse, and it collapsed that day, so I go back to we finished the weekend. First of all, I'm like, Oh no. I go back that Monday, and the guys left the house, you know, and I go, and I just swing by there to make sure everything's okay. And I look in the trash can, there's a contract I never heard from him again. So, so this is when I'm I'm sitting on the back porch later that week. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not feeling good because, because being a husband, being a father, being a provider, being a respectable business person in the community had become my identity, right? It become something that i i Like, that people thought of me as that guy. There goes so and so. He is successful. He drives this kind of car. He lives in this big house on the water. He has this success, you know? He has this business and all this, and I had grown accustomed to that kind of thing, and then now, you know, this was bad, right? And so all I can see and think in my mind is that my entire house of cards is going to collapse around me. How's this going to fit my law license? How's going to affect my my relationships? How's this going to affect my marriage? How's this going to affect because I got a ton of friends that got divorced through that process, because a lot of my friends were heavily invested in in some of your friends, too, got divorced as your parents. Friends through this process got divorced because of similar sets of circumstances, and it's easy to look down on them and condemn them or judge them or whatever, but that's a lot of stress, like, I'll never forget when I started seeing this whole thing go down, I remember my kids were went and slept with my wife, and I remember being in Katie's bed with the sheets covers pulled up like this, and it's probably four o'clock in the morning, and I've just got my eyes wide open, And I'm like, What am I going to do? What am I going to do? You know? And it's like, also, if you've came from financial stress, and then now you go back to financial stress, it's like some of the, you know, it's almost like PTSD. It's almost like you, you these things are so they're still fresh, even though they were 3040, 50 years ago, and then you're like, oh my god, I have put my own children in this harms way when I for no reason whatsoever, like, what have I done? So my mom, my wife, takes my kids, and they go to, you know, some birthday party or whatever, and I sort of say, I gotta work, and I stay home and I'm sitting there and I'm and I'm on the back porch, and I'm thinking about it, I might even have still been drinking at this point in time. I don't remember. In time. I don't remember. I think I probably was drinking at this point in time. And I'm just like trying to figure this thing out. I got a clipboard, a calculator, and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do here. I'm on the back porch looking out of the water, and the TV's on through the screen, and this movie, Blood Diamond is on. Do you know this movie? So Blood Diamond is Leonardo DiCaprio, phenomenal movie. And he's a diamond smuggler in Africa, right? And the movie is about this father, this African father, played by this phenomenal actor, not Leonardo DiCaprio, but a different guy. I forget his name, but he's a phenomenal actor, and He's raising his kids up in a very modest but very right way. Good Father, good husband, loves his kids, loves his family. Everything's great. This terrible, mean, militant evil, you know, group just comes through villages, steals the women, sells them into prostitution, takes the boys, gets them hooked on get them hooked on drugs, put a rifle in their hands, put them into their armies, till they so they can go sack the next village, and then all and then the dads are like, lined up. They go long sleeve or short sleeve. You want to just cut your arms off here or here. And then if they don't want you to cut your arms off, they do this. So you can't fight them. You can't come you can't rebel against them. If they don't do that, they put you in these diamond mines for you to find diamonds for this thing. And the whole thing is about this guy trying to get, re, get, reassemble his family after they have been ripped apart by this evil militia, you know. And I'm watching this thing as first time I've ever seen it, and I'm just like, I don't even hear the words. I'm in the back porch, separated by windows and glass and screen and all this. But I'm seeing this thing unfold. And by the end of it, I'm sitting there watching this, this this movie, you know, and I'm compelled by the thing, the story of this guy trying to keep his family together. And, you know, and I'm emotional about the whole thing, you know, I'm invested in it. And then I remember, I think they came home, that movie ended. I'm I'm sitting there thinking that night, and I'm thinking about it all, and I'm like, You know what? No matter what happens, they're not going to come take my wife, they're not going to come take my daughters and sell them in pros. They're not going to come take my kids and and get them hooked on drugs. They can't touch my family. The day before this incident happens, I have probably three foreclosure notices on the bulletin board at the courthouse. That's where they when you get a foreclosure, when you have a house, a center, foreclosure, whatever, they'll put the foreclosure notices on a bulletin board, and that, if you'll remember, that's where my that was pretty much my office at that point time. I'm every day for almost 20 years. So I was in there every single day. And there's all these busy bodies that are busy body lawyers and whatever, that sit in there and they read the foreclosures and giggle or whatever, because, oh my gosh. Can you gossip? You know, so the day before, I had seen them there, and I knew that I had three notices on that board. And so I go, and so I walk in the door, I see them. I'm like, oh gosh. So I walk all the way. I gotta go to this court room over here, that's just 40 feet past where they are. I go all the way up and around the building and come all the way down to those sides to avoid them. Then I see that movie that night. I can have this clarity in my head where I'm like, Hey, I don't have to. Nobody's taking my kids, nobody's taking my wife, nobody's taking my health. So this is where the gratitude thing. Remember, I told you I was going to and I, and that was a dark time for me. That was a really dark time for me, because I was very, like, fearful that I have messed up. I've been given everything, you know, God has given me everything, and I have just wasted it all and thrown it right in the toilet. So then I see this movie and I and I'm like, liberated, and I'm like, wow, they can't, they can't touch me. So the next day I walk in, same thing's going on, different busy bodies up there. That's why I walk straight to the billboard. I flip through until I find my notices. I find all three of my notices. I put them on the top, and I jam the pin right back into them, and I keep walking. And they never have a

tiniest bit of power over me after that again, you know? And I'm like, here it is. And so the next thing that happens is over the course of the next and so, by the way, is this is not, there's no, like, giant silver lining where I where it all makes is, right? The next day. It is a series of disasters after that. It's just, for example, you know, my house did get foreclosed on. My big house on the water did get foreclosed on. They did sell it to someone else, somebody else lives in it to this day. You know, now I still had a job. I had a good job, I still made money. So I moved into another great Mike. So when this was happening, I was at my kids at Disney World, and when we came back, we moved to a different house, and we rented a different house for four or five years, and love didn't have the time of our lives, right? But it wasn't without consequence. I got sued by banks, you know? I got sued by half dozen banks, and the difference is, that's what I do, so I sued them back, you know. So, you know. And so I got to work at three o'clock in the morning, and I went through my old textbooks, and I'm like, What can I find to sue them back? And I sued every one of them back. And then they were like, what do we do? What's going on here? What are they there? This guy is suing us. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm suing you. And I did sue them. I think they were implicit and they were complicit in the whole process. Yes, but the whole thing unfolds over a period of time that is difficult, and it did affect, you know, like it was hard. My wife and I had to have a conversation, you know, we had. She was like, you know, hey, what's, you know? What do we do now? And I'm like, well, and this is when I learned a valuable lesson about accepting responsibility. I'm like, I know you've worked hard. I've worked hard. I have messed this whole thing up. I have made mistakes that have set our family back. We thought we were going to have this kind of lifestyle. We are not. We are not going to have that kind of lifestyle. We are we are going to lose everything. And so I'm like, I want you to get out of your system whatever kind of criticism and fussing and resentment that you have. I don't want to live with this around my neck for the rest of my life. I was aggressive about getting in this situation. I would be aggressive about getting out of this situation, but this is my fault. It's not your fault. It's not the society's fault. It's not the economy's fault. It is my fault. I have made bad decisions, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it's gonna affect you. I'm sorry that's gonna affect her kid, our kids, and I'm sorry it's gonna affect our plans. I'm sorry. And so she's like, you know, she says a couple things, you know, where she's like, okay, yeah, that was done, you know. And then we talk for a few minutes about, okay, what do we want out of life? What are the things that make us happy? What are the things we've got at that point, 40 something years left on, if things go well, health wise, what do we enjoy in life and what do we want to accomplish? And we're like we like our family, we love our family, we love our kids, we love to do things together. I don't care if I drive a Mercedes. I don't care if I drive a 10 year old station wagon. I don't care if we live in a big house in the water, as long as we're together, you know, she agrees, you know, and we decide that we're going to stick it out and we're going to be to continue to be together. It was never really a question. She was always supportive. You know, she was, I'm sure she was frustrated, I'm sure she was angry, I'm sure she was disappointed. We said what we had to say. We moved on. Nine months later, we had another child, fully recognizing that we may not, might not, have this sort of Country Club life. It might be much more of a blue collar thing going forward. That was the plan, in fact, you know, get rid of everything and and just be have a have a modest life, life, life and lifestyle, you know, and I was so worried about what everybody's perception of that, because when you're kind of like the the poor kid that didn't fit in in the country club or whatever, and then you kind of get to the place where you are at the country Club, and then you go back, you know, you feel like everybody judges you and thinks about you, a certain one, to be honest with you, I bet nobody cared. They were just probably pulling for you to do the best you can, you know, but, but internally, it is a it is unpleasant, and it's a bad it's a bad feeling. But I, but I was so grateful that, hey, in our country, nobody's going to put me in jail, nobody's going to take my kids, nobody's going to, you know, take my family away, you know. And one of the things that, coincidentally, right at this same time, you know, I am in the process, so I'm doing these cases, and they're getting more and more and more and more serious, and I represent, I'm asked to represent this guy who is a very, very dangerous person in a very, very dangerous context. And immediately I say yes, and then I start thinking about how I'm going to have to protect my family, and I call my wife to tell her, Hey, we're going to have to take these extra precautions because of how dangerous this case is. I hear myself saying, and I'm like, I can't, you know? So I call him back and I say, Hey, I can't. But really, I can't do that anymore, because I'm not going to subject my family to that kind of risk of danger. I told you I'd represent somebody. In this case, I'll represent somebody else, and so, so I represented somebody who was less dangerous and less involved. And we got through that but, but it forced me now I'm in a situation where I've, I'm mid 40s, I don't know, 40 years old, probably 40 years old. I've got to figure out, and I've got to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. You know, because if I continue with criminal defense, you're representing more and more and more danger that in the way I was approaching, I wasn't continuing to do more and more DWIs. I was doing more and more dangerous people, murderers, gang men. Members, and not like little local, nonsensical clubs, I mean, like real gang members who are organized, smart, serious and mobile. And I, I was like, I cannot. I can't do that. Not to mention that now I'm part of these organizations where we go. We would go to these. So I had capital cases. Capital cases are death penalty cases. So when you have a capital case and it's a death penalty case, you have the opportunity to go get together with a a group of other lawyers that have death penalty cases, and you can collaborate. 14 lawyers will go to Duke, for example, and we'll collapse bringing our bring our files, and we'll introduce ourselves, and then we'll work on my file, and then we'll work on his file, and then we'll work on her file. And these are some of the best legal minds in the country. I mean, Mary Ann Talley, Jonathan Brown, phenomenal lawyers, brilliant people, brilliant people. And then some of these other lawyers from different places, Fayetteville, Asheville, New Bern Greenville, Winston, whatever, around the around the state. These guys are so good and so talented, but you've never heard of them. You would never in a million years hear any of these people. But I started noticing that they weren't necessarily healthy, right? Not, not know. Mary Ann Talley and Jonathan brown were the leaders of this organization, but some of these other guys were like, you know, I'd see him. They'd go out to the car and lunch and get a drink. You know, they'd be called their third lawyer for their third divorce. You know, they're taking the blood pressure medication in the room. You know what I mean? The the lifestyle that they had when they're representing these people in these difficult, difficult life and death situations all the time, was something that I was like, Hey, I don't know if this is, I don't know if this is for me, especially when you combine that with the danger of representing some of those people, you know, and if you have a public life that can be, that can be dangerous, I have friends that are in that in that world to this day, and they have it. They don't. They have a hard time being on like social media or being out in the public, because you just never know who you're going to run into. Your client might have talked about another client, and that bright product put you in danger. You know, your client might have gotten convicted, and that might have been his affiliates would be frustrated with you, or whatever. So there it could be a dangerous situation. So all this is going on at the same time, I go to a conference, I talk to some mentors and and collectively we say that guy comes back and says, Hey, let's look back at your career and let's find where you were the most effective. You helped somebody the most. You felt like a lawyer. You felt like you did a good job for somebody, and you enjoyed what you were doing. You know you enjoyed and it came back with these three cases, all of which were injury cases. And it was with great clarity, both of us were like, This is what we're going to do. I'd always done injury stuff. I'd always done Personal Injury right throughout the process, but it was

a third to a half of what I was doing every day, and the rest of it was these other criminal cases, you know. So then now my focus shifted entirely, and it was entirely about these personal injury cases. And so then, you know, I could take the things that I had learned, and it's different, because in the personal injury world, very few cases are tried. Almost no case is tried. All the skills are the same, opening, closing, direct cross, jury selection, all those things are the same, but almost no. Personal injury cases get tried. But I tried, I mean, tons of cases in criminal court, and I had, because of that, I had tried tons of cases in civil court, you know? And so now I have this sort of unique skill set, because I have tried so many cases and built these, this reputation, these relationships, so that I can take that and apply it to civil law, personal injury law, where I never saw, to this day, I have never seen any of my competitors at the my real competitors at the courthouse. Never seen them one time, you know, never seen most of them in person, period. But definitely never seen seen them at the courthouse, you know, versus, that was my second home for 20 years. So that's an that's an image, or rather, of the of like, how this financial collapse led me to being in some good places, right? Like I I had this financial collapse, and because of it, I was forced to take inventory of what was important in my life, what mattered to me. What mattered to my family, what I wanted to accomplish, personally and professionally, and if that financial collapse hadn't happened, I would have continued to take private planes to bowl games, and never had the space, the silence or the motivation to answer those questions.

What mental steps you spoke about it briefly, about with you and your wife, but what mental steps did you take in order to rebuild your financial stability?

The first thing that I had to do was to accept that something bad financially was going to happen, and I imagine it's probably the same thing for anybody you know, you're hurt, you're out of work, or something bad happens. And also, we're so much of our identity is based on our ability to provide for our families in these times, right? You know, when people say, what do you do? You know, we all answer by saying, This is what I do professionally. You know, if your dad was to you're to bring home a boy, what do you plan to do? You know? What do your parents do? You know? What's you know? And also, I had a job. I had a stable job. I had a great job. I was good at what I did, so that gave me an advantage, right? For sure, my wife had a great job. She was good at what she does. She's very dedicated. And so that really so we didn't feel this thing quite like it might other people might feel it, because I still made a living, and I still had income coming in and all that. We just lost all our assets, you know, they come and take the place, and somebody else is living there, you know. And then we got, you got lawsuits you got to deal with, and you've got mediations and conflicts and all that, not to mention the phone calls they call you all the time, like there's you know. And so what I did before that, to deal with that is I called him about a month before this was going to go down. I knew it was going to go down. I called him a month before I got I told all the creditors that I wanted to change the my phone number, and I had it all the calls come to my cell phone so that I wouldn't subject my family to this additional stress, but that mean my cell phone rang 24 Well, you know, during from from eight to 11 or whatever, from seven to 11, all day, every day, from people saying, Hey, where's our money for this house you bought, you know. So it was not easy, but it but it wasn't as hard as maybe some people have to have to deal with, to the point where by the end of it, you know, I would be riding with one of my kids and that, you know, they were young by the time that time. And you know, I might go, Hey, and it'd be somebody calling for a house payment of $20,000 on this house in the water or whatever. And I'd be like, hold on a second. This for you. I'd hand it to my six year old son. He'd be like, hello, you know. And and then the guy would be like, well, you know, what can we expect this? And he's like, what's your name? And, you know, I like pirates or whatever, you know. So, so anyway. And then I was like, we'll get back to you. So not to belittle the problem, but like, that was an important milestone for me, because I'm like, I'm not going to let this it's a problem, but it's not I'm not going to let it shape my world. And it comes back to intentionality. This is the situation that I'm in. This is the situation I want to get to. What am I going to be able to do between here and here to get there? And me fretting about this situation that I can't change at this point in time, it has happened. So accepting that process, accepting the fact that we are here, we used to be here, now we're here. Okay, fine, what do I need to do next? What's the next thing I need to do? What's the next step I need to take if I want to improve 1% every day, which is part of my core values, what do I need to do to get to get to that next step? You know, what is that next step? And then what is the net? What is the effort that I need to put in, what are the activities that I need to do to get there? And so that was looking at it like that, but also having the, you know, the support of my family. My kids did not give a they did not care, you know, if we lived in a big house in the water, or if we moved to a different house, we had the time of our the most fun we ever had was in the house that we lived in after that, when they were, you know, that's where we had the dance parties. That's where we camped in the backyard. We had to, you know, Pirate stories, and we dressed up on a Tuesday or whatever, and Halloween gear. Yeah, it was just, we had the most fun at that point in time be and they did not care one bit about any of it, you know. So that was, that was an important lesson for me. What

else would you say you learned? Yeah, going through this, I

learned that success is not defined by bank accounts, and a person's worth is not defined by his or her bank accounts. You know, my friends didn't care. Many of them were going through the same stuff my employees did. Didn't care. I didn't have very many employees, but they didn't care. They just was long as I was taking care of my obligations to them. That was good. My family, you know, we've talked about that. My wife, you know, she wasn't thrilled with it. She was upset about it, of course. And then we recommitted to our relationship and our plan, and we went on about our with our lives. So I learned once again, that this failure, and this is this is a failure that is distinctly my fault, right? This one of my dad. Is that my fault? I was eight years old? Is it my fault? My dad left now, you know, a lot of this is, but this is 100% my fault. Like I did this, I overextended and all this. I bought stuff I couldn't have afford. It couldn't afford I thought as an investment, it wasn't. It collapsed. And if you don't know how that whole thing worked, I do encourage you to watch the movie, to dig short, because it shows exactly kind of the dynamic that was going on at that time. But what I learned is, even if something that you think is just an unacceptable outcome, unacceptable, no way this can happen that you just cannot live with this thing. Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's an injury, maybe it's all sudden you find yourself broke, or you can't see your kids like you want to, or it's a health challenge, or you have a diagnosis that's terrible, or whatever, and you think, man, I just I cannot do this. That's where I was when I was in Katie's bed with the sheets up like this, and I'm looking out the window going, I cannot. I don't know how this is going to end. You know, this is not good. I am fearful that it's all you know, because you start catastrophizing in your mind. Okay, this is, you know, we're all gonna be on the street. You know, we were never on the street. You know it was, it was fine, and it was such a blessing, because it forced me to go back and look at who I was and what was important to me and what I wanted to accomplish. And from there, I was able to start the foundation of building, what do we have? 50 employees to several offices. We help 1000s of people, you know, and it starts right there with that was, that's the moment at which we decide what my what God put me on this earth to do is to help injured people recover, physically, financially, emotionally, and this is how we're going to do it. And this is the pathway. It hasn't been 100% direct. It has been up and down and sideways, you know, but it that stress, that discomfort, that challenge, was the catalyst that helped me formulate my mission, vision values. This is what I'm here to do, and this is how I'm going to do it. And as terrible as it was, and as the kind of thing that it was, where it caused me to think this is the worst thing that's ever had. I must have thought that 100 times this is worth worst thing I had to work. I worked on weekends for two years out of town at a had a friend of mine who was, who was, who was, had bought an apartment complex and was converting it over to a condos to sell. And I worked out of town for two years on the weekends in addition to working, you know. So I worked seven days a week for two years to try to make some additional money to help us dig out of this situation. And it was that money that I earned from that that helped us, you know, purchase an office and start a plan to be able to build, you know, the rest of this and so. And while I was there, I had to, part of my responsibility was to develop a marketing plan to sell condos in the worst real estate market in anybody's memory. So then I had, I ended up diving into all these different sources and reading and learning all about it. It was in Chapel Hill. So I had resources. So I had to learn all these different things and but I had the resources there and the people there to help me figure out and I, and I took over the marketing campaigns to distribute and to sell those places, and I learned about the operation of of a business, operational components of a business, people and in processes and those types of things. And so those things combined to be the platform for what we've built here now. Now I've, you know, I some of the less, the unbelievable lessons I learned from marketing those condos, is how I learned to market my business. The first lesson I learned is, the first lesson of marketing is you have to have a great product. You have to so if that means a law firm, you have to have great legal services that you offer for people. If you have condos, you have to have great, well built, solid condos, anything else, and you're just announcing to the world with a megaphone that you have a terrible product, and they need to learn about it more quickly, you know. So So this, the lessons that I learned from these experiences are hard to describe just how important and how valuable they were, and how I thought they were so terrible and they were so terminal and determinative of the outcome. But I would, if looking back on it, if I could go back and if I could, if I could take them away, if I could take that away and so that I did not have that problem, I wouldn't do it. Is one of the best things that ever

happened to me. Well, thank you. Mr. Speaks, thank

you. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time bye.