Check Out Our Podcast: The Verdict
Today is part three of a series on the five failures from success that Clarke has experienced over the course of his life and our third unexpected blessing comes from an academic failure that unfolded over time. Hosted by Carson Grace Toomer, Clarke reflects back on his academic struggles during college. Unlike his brother, who attended a prestigious university and faced financial hardships, Clarke opted for a smaller school where he felt he could thrive without the burden of financial stress. However, this decision came with its own challenges.
Clark’s path took another unexpected turn when he faced rejection from law school. This moment of despair could have easily derailed his dreams, but instead, it ignited a fire within him and eventually led to greater opportunities.
This series is all about resilience and the mindset needed to navigate life’s challenges. We’ll share powerful insights about the value of mentorship and how one person’s belief in you can change everything. We hope this story serves as a reminder that failure is not the end; rather, it is often the beginning of a new chapter filled with possibilities.
Here’s what we discuss in this episode:
0:00 – Clarke’s college story
5:05 – Joining a fraternity
9:54 – Kicked out of school
14:24 – Decision to pursue law school
20:52 – Rejected from law school
29:05 – Lesson learned
38:15 – Life’s unexpected plan
Motivation, business, family, faith, law, overcoming challenges, childhood, confidence, self-esteem
Learn more about how Speaks Law Firm can help you: https://www.speakslaw.com/
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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, Mr. Speaks, we've kind of, you know, gone through a little bit of your life. Can you tell me what this third failure would be that you know, at the time was a failure, and now you are able to look back and kind of bring out positives from
it. Sure, yeah, it was an academic failure that kind of unfolded over a period of time. And so my brother had gone to UNC, and when he was there, he enjoyed it, but he didn't have very much money, and it seemed like it was harder for him because he didn't have as much money. He went. He like, I remember him having, you know, he worked the whole time that he was there. He didn't, I don't remember him going to a lot of, you know, he was there when Michael Jordan was there, and Lawrence Taylor was there for some of this period of time, and he went to some of this stuff, and he saw them around campus and stuff. But he he didn't go to some of the functions and games and participate. He certainly couldn't have joined a fraternity. I remember at one point in time he he waited tables. He was he worked in a sorority house, and he waited tables. And he waited tables at the sorority house in order to be able to have dinner. You know what I mean? And I remember, you know, he would call my mom, and I could tell he was kind of feeling her out to see if she was able to send him some money or whatever, because he didn't want to put her on the spot and make her feel bad if she couldn't. So that struggle did not seem terribly appealing to me. So for that reason and other reasons, I went to a smaller school, went to East Carolina. I loved it, loved the people, loved everything about it. And I don't want it to seem like I'm being critical of my brother. I hope it doesn't seem that way he was, he's great, he's a and he had a great experience, and he was great example for me, but, but just seeing that from the outside looking in, I'm like, I don't, I don't want to be the poorest person in this school. And it was, you know, housing was more expensive, tuition was more expensive, books or more all this stuff was more expensive, and it was just less expensive at at eight, East Carolina and so and I felt like I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond and not be, you know, the guy that couldn't afford to be there, you know? So I go there, but when I go there, I have a little bit of a bad attitude, because I feel like I'm smarter than everybody, right? I feel like I'll be able to ace this whole place. And, you know, which is a terrible attitude, and it's not true, by the way. Don't matter. It doesn't matter how smart you are. You're not born knowing the you know. You know economic theory, and you know whatever books you have to read, and literature and biological, biological principles. And you don't, you're not. You don't know if you don't read the material and study the read the books and study for the test and go to the lectures. And so I didn't really do that. In fact, you know, from the last episode. I mean, I was a, I was a, you know, chunky kid. So now I'm, I went to college when I was 17 years old. And so I, I was when I was a young, 17 year old. So I was, you know, I was, now I'm in shape, you know what I mean, and I'm and I'm just having more success socially. And so I, so I do all the things that, you know. And also, I came from a environment where a church environment, so like, if the church was open, we were there. I didn't go to church. Some people go. So you do go to church? Yeah, we go on Sunday. We went on we went to Sunday school, we went to Sunday we went to church, then we went to Sunday night, and we went on Wednesday night, and I went to Bible school. You know, they have church services on New Year's Eve. They have church service on Christmas Eve. Like we went to church, if it was open, we were there. And which was good. I don't got no but, but now I'm a little away from all that, and I and and also growing up, one of the good things about my background is, you know, I told you before that my dad left when I was young, so that put me, at that age, in a position where I knew I don't have the same space, the same latitude that My friends have, if my friends get in trouble, you know, if they get a speeding ticket or a drinking ticket or whatever, that's okay, you know what I mean, their family will figure it out. My mom could not have, could not manage one more thing on her plate. So I had, I had no ability to put that additional thing on her plate. And so that helped me, you know what? I mean, it helped me, keep me from doing things that I might otherwise have done, because I didn't want to put her in that position. So in school, you know, the whole wind up of all this thing is for whatever reason, I just I didn't study, I didn't do my work, I didn't go to class. I mean, half the time I sold my books back in order to have money to go out and you. Drink beer with my friends and stuff like that. I worked the whole time I was in. I did a I did join a fraternity, which ended up being a, just a phenomenal experience. And the reason my mom would have never agreed to it, because of the expense of getting forward and all this, but we she at some point comes and she's walking into the dorm to visit. She would she lived not too far away, and so she would drive over on Sunday so we could hang out and go to lunch and all this. And she comes to see me one day in my dorm, and the kid in front of her just continues to walk in, and when he walks through the front door, he lets the door close, and it closes in her face, and she's disgusted by this, right? She's like, a southern lady or whatever. She's like, you hold the door. And so he didn't do that. And then there's another door, and he let that door fall in her face, and she's like, following him up, and he ends up coming. He's like, three doors down from me, and she was and he and then as she's going up the stairs with him, she sees his T shirt, and it's got something terrible on it, vulgar or whatever, some kind of college t shirt, as you may have witnessed. And she was outraged by this whole experience. And she's so she's like, All right, that's it. You're, I'm gonna, we're gonna figure out a way for you to join a fraternity. And so I'm like, okay, you know, because I kind of wanted to anyway, and you know, because, again, I wanted an experience that was different from my brothers just being the poorest person in the whole place. And so I do join an fraternity. Now, the benefit of that is a couple things. First, at that point, I was kind of disorganized. I was more interested in having fun and having experiences that I hadn't had before, and meeting people and going out and and all this kind of stuff that I was in academics or leadership or any that kind of stuff, you know. But I was, I joined the fraternity, and our fraternity was different. Most fraternities I imagined, you know, had like, an identity, right? These are the preppy guys. These are the jocks. These are the whatever. You know, our fraternity was different, like, it was, like, we had just every kind of group or person. It was a lot of diversity in my fraternity, and it was awesome because of that country guys. And just, you know, some of our guys would wake up but two o'clock in the morning to cook a pig on game day, and some of the other guys would come in there with their martini and everything in between. We had just guys from all over the place. It was a really interesting mix of people. But what I learned from that experience was, and we had some guys who were just natural leaders. You know what? I mean, they were just leaders. You could put them anywhere. You could put them in a battle. You could put them on a football field. You could put them on a soccer field. You could put them in a, you know, in a business you could put and then they would just find a way to lead other people. You know, Jeff Marlatt is a person that comes to mind. Chris Stewart is a person that comes to mind. Barry Oliver is a person that comes to mind. You know, there's just lots of these people. Nelson's goddess person who comes to mind. They're just character guys, leader guys. Darren Parker, these are character guys, leader guys. Brad Rainey, these are, these are just people who I see over time demonstrate these qualities that I think are are really important and valuable. So even though I'm not really going to class and doing the things academically that I should be doing. I'm still learning, you know what I mean, and I'm becoming more and more involved in the fraternity. So I started off being like Rush Chairman, and I have to put together rush, which is where everybody comes to the fraternity to check it out. And the first time I do that, it's a disaster, like my ads were in the paper were so generic, and I didn't really know what I was doing. And I remember this alumni, Mike Schaefer, comes to the house, and he's like, who did this? This is terrible, this. So the next semester, I'm like, Okay, let me do this better, right? So the next semester, we put up a crazy ad campaign, and we have some really, we put together a committee collaboration. Remember, that's one of the things that's the things that's important to me. Collaboration, a rush committee, and we think about it from a lot of different and we put together this, this campaign, and we have the biggest rush class that we've ever had before or since, right? And the next semester, I just, I run for Pledge educator, and I become pledge educator, and I'm able to develop this big pledge class, and then after that, I become president of the fraternity, and I and by being president of fraternity, now I'm leading this organization of people. And it started out being like 21 people, and by this time, it's like 80 or 90 people in the in the sorority, I mean fraternity. And by this time, we're also competing. We're competing academically, we're competing sports wise, to try to get the Chancellor's cup and all this kind of stuff. And so I learned a lot during this time, even though I wasn't really doing well academically. But in fact, I wasn't just not doing well and academically. I was doing terribly. Academically. Yeah, and so at some point I get a letter, you know, and the letter says
you were invited to leave this university because your grades are terrible. And I was like, Oh my goodness. So I'm like, All right, well, it's okay. I'm scheduled to see the Dean anyway that day, because at that level of, you know, campus leadership, or whatever. You know, I'm connecting with these guys, and we, and I had been working with him on a project. We were looking at integrating this fraternity system and connecting, you know, the black fraternities with the white fraternities, white fraternities with black fraternities and all this. And we were working together with these guys to to build those connections and to build those relationships. And so we had been working together anyway. And so we, I had plans to see him that week, or whatever, maybe that day. And so I go see him, and we talk about whatever it is we're going to talk about. And then at the end of it, I'm like, Hey, man, let me talk to you about this other thing, you know, I got this letter. Do you mind taking care of this, you know? And I hand it to him. He what do
we do about this? And I'm like, Well, if you could just handle it, you know, he's like, I can't. I'm like, You're the dean. He's like, You misunderstand how this works. I cannot handle this. This is a mathematical problem, and you have to address it. He was cool. I mean, Dean, Ron spear, phenomenal guy, good friend of mine. For a long time, I've lost touch with him, but he was such a good guy because he he really did care about his students. And so I was like, Okay, well, that's bad news, right? And so now I've got to call my mom, I've got to call my brother, I've got to explain to them what's happened and own up to this thing. So I do that, and then I spend the next few months working, right? And so I got to get a job, so I work and then, and then also try to sell insurance. I'm like, Okay, well, I'm gonna be successful one way. There. Maybe college isn't in my bag or whatever. I'm gonna I'm gonna sell insurance, right? I know people who are successful selling insurance. So I start selling life insurance at 21 years old, 20 something like that, 21 years 20 years old, 20 years old. And, well, let's let me, let me correct myself. I start to try to sell life insurance. So I'm calling my friends, you know. And I'm like, Hey, man, have you thought about the future? And they're like, You mean, like Saturday? And I'm like, no, no. Like, life insurance. And they're like, I don't know, talking about man, but look like there's a band playing at the attic on Saturday, so let's go, you know? And I'm like, All right, so it was a difficult, difficult period, you know, because I'm trying to pay for my bills and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do. And I'm like, my friends are still in college, and I'm not, and I'm sort of living there, and it was just like an awkward stage. Anyway, so Thanksgiving comes around, and so for Thanksgiving, we would always go to my aunt's house in Raleigh. And again, I mentioned this before, but she has this big, beautiful house, and it's like a it's like a log cabin in the woods, but it's right in the middle of downtown Raleigh. She would decorate this place so that, you know, you walk in and didn't matter what time of day you got there, you always felt like You're right on time, right? So we'd come in with dogs and and, you know, my cousins would come out and their dogs would come out, and we walk up to the front, there's music playing that's like, sort of consistent with the holiday, Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or whatever it's it's smells like pumpkin pie, or it smells like, you know, Christmas, cinnamon, Christmas, you know, stuff or whatever. And beautifully decorated. She's got all the food and all the you know. And it's just such a phenomenal place. And with this particular time, I brought a girlfriend, my college girlfriend, with me. She was still in school. I was not. And then, you know, part of our tradition is we go around the room, and everybody tells some things that they're thankful for. And I remember the time being kind of like disgruntled, and be like everything being thankful for. And that's what I'm telling myself privately, not publicly. I'm like, I'm thankful for, you know, my family because I am, and I'm thankful for, you know, my health because I am. And then it finishes up, and my girlfriend shares some stuff about what she's thankful for we finish this up, and then it ends up being my aunt, my Aunt Susie, and myself and my girlfriend, we're just sitting there, kind of shooting the breeze. Maybe my mom is there as well, you know? We're kind of the last ones to stay in this room, and everybody else has kind of gone off and doing other things. And so she starts asking me what I'm doing, you know, what I'm going to do after school, you know? And I'm like, Well, I'm like, Well, I'm probably thinking about going into insurance. I like insurance. Well, her son, at that point is in law school. I have another cousin that's in law school, you know, there's so the cousins there's, like, they're doing different things and all this. So she says, in fact, my. Girlfriend was saying, well, she might want to be a paralegal. And so my aunt turns to me in the middle of this conversation, she says, I've always thought you would be a good lawyer. And I'm like, well, thank you. I appreciate saying that. She's like, No, I think you should consider going to law school. And remember, I'm not in school. I have flunked out of East Carolina. And I'm like, well, thanks. And she won't let it go. She's like, I think you should apply to law school. And I'm like, chill, you know, I mean, nobody here, not everybody really. I don't, I don't know who knew that, but nobody really knew I was and my girlfriend knew I wasn't in school. And she was like, you just, you know, you should really consider going to law school. I think you'd be a really good lawyer. And by this time, I'm like, hey, look, you know, we got to keep this, let's come back to this later, right? I hear what you're saying. I appreciate your you know? And finally, I'm like, I cannot go to law school. And she's like, why? She's like, I'm like, I don't have good grades. And she's like, so I'm like, now this is, this is my Aunt Susie. Susie. My Aunt Susie is the most successful person I have ever known in my life. And she never worked a day, not one day. She built this incredible family. She had this incredible home. She was she had a ministry at women's prison for years. In fact, I used to go there for work, and people would, I would ask people, and they Oh, yeah, I remember your aunt. She was so, I mean, and she, she, when you She died a few years ago, but when you went at her funerals, this sort of celebration, and so many people talked about the impact that she had all over her community, with the way that she had done things, and in the way that she had contributed to the lives of people in her community, it was incredible. So this is the kind of person that we're talking about, but at this point, I'm like, you know, she just doesn't understand the realities. She's not constrained by reality. You know, she doesn't work. She doesn't she doesn't understand how this part of the world operates. The truth is, I didn't understand how this part because what she says, she says to me, I go, I don't have good grades. And she goes, Well, that doesn't matter. And I'm like, Well, actually it does matter. And she goes, Well, did you know that there's a test that they give you and that the test counts in some schools more than grades. And I'm like, what test? She's like, the LSAT Law School aptitude test. And I'm like, it counts more. So one test you take in one day counts more than four years, or in my case, five years of school. She's like, Yeah, I'm like, that's not true. You know what? I mean, I'm not I'm not disrespectful to her. But on my mind, I'm thinking, that's not true. I'm still, like, kind of patting her on the head, going on and but now I'm sitting on the edge of my seat. And so she starts telling me more about this, and then I'm like, All right, well, how can I, how can I verify what you're telling me? Because I'm like, Okay, I know that. I have, you know, not done my best in school, but I'm good at tests, right? I can, I can do that, you know, sat law, you know, whatever. I can do that. So we go, so she takes me, and we go to Walden books and Crabtree Valley Mall. And they have, you know, the book section on the classes, I mean, the books that you might take that are relative to getting it relevant to getting in law law school or whatever. And one of them was this Baron's book how to get into law school. And so I get it, and I look at it, and sure enough, what she's saying is true. Some schools are 6040 some goals are 7030, LSAT, you know. In other words, they weigh the LSAT. They place more value on the LSAT than they do on the men, on the grades, you know, and so, so I don't eat i So I'm up the all night long until the next day, pouring over this book, trying to figure this out. And when I wake up the next morning, I have, like, a completely new plan, a completely new plan, and I tell my aunt about and she's like, perfect and like, it's no big deal. And I'm like, you know, but that was the beauty in her. She she did not see when other people saw limitations. She did not see limitations, and she never did, and she had a way of putting her some people would say naivete. Some people would say confidence. You know, what's the difference? If you get to the same place, she could put that confidence into somebody else and make everybody around her think that they were capable of greatness. And so I thought that was pretty special about her. But anyway, so I go back to school the next Monday or whatever, and I go make an appointment go see my buddy, the dean, and I tell him about this plan. You know, I don't know what his reaction is going to be, but he tells me about another kid that. He had, he had mentored that had a very, very similar story, and he's like, all right, you know, so now you got a plan. Here's what you need to do. And so he and I map out this plan together where I'm gonna, you know, take as many hours as I can take, have extra classes, have extra go to school in the summer, you know, and do all this in a condensed time and so. And so that's what I did. And I never met another B in law in college. I never met another B the whole time I was there. And so I finish college, graduate from college, and apply to law school. And so I remember, in fact, I remember
I still was, I still was, like, you know, that first part was so bad I don't know if I'm gonna be able to to get in so, so I we had a connection with the Pat one of my pastors as a kid was somehow connected to Wake Forest and Duke and and Campbell and all the law schools, just from his academic background. So, uh, so we always heard, you know, hey, it's not what you know is who you know. So I make reach out to him, and I send him a letter and say, Hey, can I come talk to you when I try? So I he writes me back, and I we agree on a time, and I come to see him. I gotta drive, like, six hours to see the guy. I sit down with him. He says, Well, why do you why do you want to be a lawyer? And I tell him, this is why I want to get prepared for the whole deal. He I tell him why I want to be a lawyer, and he is okay. And he goes, Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write these guys. And, you know, I feel good about it, you know? And so when I'm leaving his house, I'm so excited, because I'm like, this has worked exactly like it should have. And so you ever see the movie Jerry Maguire, you know this movie? I'm sure your dad has made you watch, right? So remember when he signs Cush, and then he's leaving Kush house, and he's like, flipping through the dial and all he's trying to find a song where he can just roll the windows down and belt out the song, or whatever. So I'm trying to do the same thing, right? So he, in the movie, he finds a free Tom Petty, free falling. Right? In my world, all I can find was, what I find is Whitney, Houston, I will always love you. And so I'm driving, I'm driving out of this guy's town, back to where I am. Wind is down, all four windows down, and I'm belting out, you know, I will always love you. It's to the top of my lungs. So I'm like, Yes, I have done this thing. I've got, I'm gonna get in. So I go back to my mom's house, and I'm, I'm in my and we in its weeks. You know what? I mean, I've applied and all this. And all this, and it's weeks before I hear back to the point where the guy that delivered the mail, I would see him, I would know what time he was coming. He would see me, and he'd be like, not today, because he would know that I'm looking for a fat envelope instead of a small envelope. Time goes on, time goes on, time goes on. Finally, the day arrives. You know he's like and it's a small envelope. He knows just as well as I do, because we've discussed this like in his route for for weeks. At this point, I go, I sit in my car. I didn't want to go inside. I didn't want my mom to be disappointed. I opened it up. Sure enough, he rejected so I, I'm like, you know, faith is a thing for me as part of my life. I'm feel like I'm in constant communication with God. So I'm like, what's the what's the point, man, why'd you let me get this far and then just to say no and pull the rug out from under me, you know? And I'm feeling really dejected about this whole thing. I got rejected from law school, like I have finally put together a plan. I feel like I've got my purpose of, you know, I've watched To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, 10 times I've read the book. I'm like, but this time I'm reading John Grisham books, you know, I mean, I'm like, This is who I am. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I was born to do, and now I can't do it. You know, it just I was I was like, I wasn't just upset or I was offended. I was like, my feelings were hurt that God would put it done that to me, even though I know now and then, probably, if I was honest with my that God didn't do anything to me. But then I started sort of drawing on some of these past experiences that we've talked about before. You know, from sports and from life lessons and from all this stuff, and I go just because they said you can't come to law school here, doesn't mean I can't go to law school there. So I start thinking about it anyway. So the next morning, at about eight o'clock on the steps of Campbell law school, I'm sitting there, and you know, the sun's peeking up over the trees, and I see the Dean of the Law School Admissions Office. You know, this campus has a big quad right in the middle, and it's a beautiful sort of spring day at this point in time. And the guy lives in the big house on the other side of the dorms across the quad. So he's like, and he's got it made, by the way, he hasn't. He doesn't seem like he has a very difficult job. He's happy all the time. His family lives there. He's a big shot in the community. This is Dean Lanier, super nice guy, and he comes walking across the campus, and he's like, sees people and waving at everybody, and got his coffee and all. And he sees me. He gets right up to the steps, and he sees me sitting there. He's like, you know? He just wasn't, I mean, the school's not in session, so he's not expecting anybody to be there, you know. And so he walks a little farther and goes inside, and I see him talking to through the glass. I see him talking to hit the receptionist, you know. And I come on in and wait. I've already told her, hey, I want to see this guy. I'd like to see him. And she says, Okay, we'll see what he can do. So I sit there for hours sitting in the reception room. Nobody's coming in and out of this place. Every now and then I see him go to his blinds and do like this, and he wait for me to leave. And I'm like, I'm not leaving. I'll be back here tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and I'm not leaving at some point, I guess he gets the picture that I'm not dangerous, right? And I'm not gonna, you know. And he goes, All right, come on in. So he's like, what is it I can do for you? And I'm like, You sent me this. And he grabs it glasses, you know, again. And, you know, what do we do about this? And I'm like, This is what I'm supposed to do, you know? You know, I've talked to God about this. I have looked at my and this is what I'm supposed to do, you know? And I know that you see this one number and but the test was great, the number was bad, the grades were bad. But I want you to go back and look at the whole picture, right? You're looking at just I'm not defined by one number. I want you to look and what you'll do is, if you look is you'll see a place where I was goofing off, and then when I got serious. And what I'm telling you is the time when I got serious is much more a reflection of what I'm capable of than the time when I'm goofing off. And so he looks at it, and he spends some time looking at with me. And then he takes his glasses off, and he says, All right, well, if I could get you a spot, how long would it take you to get here, and how much notice would you need? And I says, it takes me two hours get from my house to here, and he said, All right, I'll let you know. And a couple weeks later, I get a letter, and he says, You can't come to school here this fall. You can't do it, but what you can do is you can come next year, and we're having a program next summer where we're going to let in. It was called this performance based Admission Program. They let in like 100 kids, and like 25 of them get in. 20 of them, 25 of them get in. And so that's what I did the next year. Interesting thing about that is some of the best lawyers in the state of North Carolina went through that same program with me. I mean, phenomenal lawyers. David Corey out of Fayetteville, John Bircher out of New Bern, just Aaron Shaw out of New York. Just phenomenal. Lawyers came out of that program. Russ Bryan, who you know, just some very smart character, talented Robert Jones, a federal match for Jones here, Master judge here, who is a brilliant, brilliant person. So a lot of people came out of that program, but during that year, I didn't have anything to do. And so what I had, what I did was I went back to school, and I went into MBA school, business school, and I did business MBA classes during that period of time, which serves me well now. So again, there's blessings in all this. So the wind up of the whole thing is and then from there, I ended up getting in law school, but this whole experience of not being accepted right off the bat and having to do things a little bit differently, in a sort of a circuitous fashion, has been unbelievably helpful to me in my career. If I'd have just got straight in, I never would have appreciated it. I wouldn't have taken advantage of these different opportunities. I wouldn't have confidence to be able to do some of the things that I've been able to do, but now, if I get something that seems like a no, I'm like, so you're saying there's a chance, you know, and I'm like, All right, let's get let's, let's do it. So I don't usually hear in my professional life, no, or this can't be done. Or. We're not, you know, you know what I mean like, because I know that if, if I can re circle, regroup, re evaluate, collaborate, and do the things that I do, that I can might be able to change the outcome or influence the outcome of this situation. And that's why that curse, you know that curse is a strong word, but that's why that what I perceive was a terrible thing, a tragic thing, an awful thing, turned out to be one of the biggest blessings of my life,
right? So if you could kind of summarize what your mindset when applying for law school, when you, you know, talk to one of the deans at ECU and say, Okay, I've got this plan. I'm going to get, you know, back on track. I'm on the up. And then, you know, Could you summarize that mindset? And then summarize the mindset when, you know, you got the envelope, not the big letter, kind of, and then how that changed and altered after getting the envelope, you know, the rejection letter, and then, you know, becoming a lawyer describe kind of how your mindset tracked well.
So sure, yeah. I mean, when I when I talked to Dean Speer and we developed this plan together, I felt like, all right, I can this is going to happen. This is going to I'm going to do, I'm going to do this thing. And I was excited, and I felt encouraged, and I felt confident, I felt strong. And then when it didn't happen the way that I thought it should happen, I felt discouraged and betrayed and rejected and disappointed, you know, and then I was able to look back and draw on some other failure successes, failure successes, failure successes that I've had in life, some other examples that I've seen from other people, whether it was in sports, whether it was family members, whether it was my mom and she and she had, you Know, had to work two jobs to provide for us to pay, pay the electric bill or the house payment or whatever, or whether it was my brother who had to work, you know, several jobs to get through school or whatever, and just have that, that, that additional gear, okay, I thought it was going to take this much. Now, I know it's going to take this much. No problem. You know, I sort of drew on those examples and from those experiences to say, maybe there is a way, you know what I mean, and then that's where anything great starts with, the belief that something can be done, you know, even if it doesn't make sense to everybody else, you know. I mean, I remember telling some people, this is what my plan is. I remember telling a roommate in particular, this is what my plan is. And I remember him, you know, scoffing at the concept, you know what? I mean, he's like, this is you need to find something else to do, because this is not going to happen. And there are people who will sometimes, there are people who care about you, who are genuinely concerned for your best interest, who will say, Hey, I know what you're trying to do, but let's try to do something else, you know? And we do that to our kids, you know? I mean, or at least I do sometimes I don't mean to, God knows I don't mean to. But like, if, if one, if, if one of my kids comes and says, Hey, I want to be on. I want to be the next American Idol. I might have to say, Listen, I'm with you. I care about you. But that might not be in the cards, you know, then there's another part of me that goes, who are you to say that they can't do that, you know? Like, you know this movie. Have you seen this movie? The Pursuit of Happiness? I've heard of it. So Will Smith is in this movie, right? And it's about this guy who's a single dad who's trying to get into the investment world and all this kind of stuff. And he's playing basketball with his son on this sort of rooftop courtyard in Chicago. I believe it is. I don't know where it is, but anyway, he in his in his and his son, he's got his son of basketball for Christmas, and his son is, is trying to, is shooting and dribbling and all this kind of stuff. And he's in will says to him, he says, Hey, listen, you might have, I was never get very good at this, right? I know there are some people that are good at this. I this was not something I was good at. It may not be something you're good at. So you might not want to focus all your energy and attention on this. You might want to focus your energy and attention on books and stuff, because that was what he was better at and and then he sees his kid be disappointed, you know, because he's taking the joy out of his kid's face. You know, he's taking the joy out of his kids eyes, and the kid kind of throws the basketball off to the side. It. And he sits and he thinks about it for a minute, and he says, Hey, listen, if you have a dream that's big enough and strong enough, you don't let anybody talk you out of it, even me, and I thought it was powerful. I think it's accurate. One of the things I've been doing lately is I've been going to see a lot of these rock performers that I loved growing up, you know what I mean, before they retire or die or whatever, before I do whatever. And so we've seen all these different, you know, Rolling Stones, and we'll see back in black. I mean, I'm sorry, we'll see AC DC the summer, and we'll see seeing just John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, all these guys growing up, you know, and some of these guys don't necessarily have the greatest voice of all time. They just have something to say. Like in the movie, A star is born that he mentions that he's like, you know, everybody's talented. Is something, you know, but sometimes you don't necessarily have to be. They have the best voice to be one of the most recognizable, influential, impactful performers or singers, whatever. And that's just an example, like, if my kids are trying to be American Idol, you know, I don't think they're going to try to do that. But my point is, for me to try to talk somebody out of their dream is a mistake, you know. And if it is a dream that's powerful enough and strong enough and you believe in it enough, then I think anybody can accomplish it. You know, one of my favorite quotes is by Napoleon Hill, is whatever the mind of man can believe, can conceive, and believe it can achieve. And I believe that. I mean, that is a fundamental thing that I believe. And I think it's important for people to do that, and in order. And sometimes all it takes is my Aunt Susie. All it takes is one person saying to somebody, I think you can do this thing. I believe you can do this thing. You know, I believe I see something in you that is special, and I think you don't have limits, or whatever limits that exist do not apply to you, and that is a powerful and liberating and impactful lesson to give to people. So this, that's the biggest reason why I wanted to do this series, because I want to do for somebody else what my Aunt Susie did for me, and that is to let somebody else know who is, hopefully, you know, watching or consuming this information in some kind of way, book form, or watching this, or listening to it, or whatever that. Yeah, you can do this thing, you know, and these limits, they don't apply to you, that limits are made for other people and not for you.
What do you think you know, law school you learned, you know, looking back at your route to law school, that maybe wasn't as straight and narrow as somebody else that you had heard about had gone to law school. What do you think you know you thought about it at that time? What did you learn from this kind of potentially up and down road that you took?
I learned confidence and self reliance and that life is not you know, you have a plan. You've seen this, you've seen this graphic or whatever, that shows that your plan is like this, and then life is like, you know? And that's true. Time has a way of humbling us all. You know what I mean, like experience, life has a way of humbling us all. We all think at some point we're gonna think we got it figured out. Like, right now, I think, you know, it seems like I've got it figured out. I think it seems like I think I've got it figured out. We're doing a podcast called your you are five failures from success, meaning I was here and now I'm on the top. I'm on the pinnacle. I'm successful. I've done all the things I have, all the things I've built, all the things, there's a reasonable probability that when I'm 80 years old, it might be the nine failures that I've had to success. Because success is a moving target. Success is not a fixed place. Success is a you know, again, my aunt was the most successful person I've ever known, and she never worked a day in her life at a job. Because, you know, it's this sort of thing that we're shooting for that we never quite attest that attain. And it's different for different people. Different people have an idea of different so the thing that I have learned over this experience is that what I want to do is live intentionally, not let things unfold, not let things happen, not let circumstances dictate my day. My. Hour, my day, my month, my year, my life is to look work backwards and think about my aunt Susie's celebration of life and say, What do I want my legacy to be? What do I want to be on my tombstone? What do I want my children or grandchildren to say about me after I'm gone? What do I want them to carry forward from me when I'm gone? And how can I develop that plan and carry out that plan now, and also now I have the confidence. Confidence. I mean, there is no word, because confidence in my mind includes a measure of self doubt. Otherwise, it's arrogance to know that I might not be right, I might not be perfect, I might make mistakes, I might stumble along the way, but I can learn from other people. I can ask other people. I can collaborate with from other people. I can read books, I can study things, I can pray, and then from there, I can develop a strategy to get back to where I want to go, which is to have an impactful life that helps a lot of people.
Now, you know, you have this, okay, I you, I feel as though you're kind of conveying the message that through every struggle you get through, you gain some confidence in yourself that you can get through struggles 100% you know, that's you in law school. Has your outlook on the situation changed as you've kind of developed in your career and experienced it like amount of success, or is it about the same?
The circumstances are different, the challenges are different, but the general process is very similar right now. Now, one thing that is different is in college, I wasn't necessarily applying myself. You know what I mean? I was, I was applying myself through the things that I wanted to do, which was going out and being social and maintaining friendships and developing relationships, and, man, I had a blast. And I'm connected to a lot of those people to this day. I mean that are good friends of mine who I love to death and all that, but I wasn't really career focused, and I wasn't really committed to a path, and I wasn't really committed to an intentional lifestyle. I would like whatever happened. I was a good guy. Was go with the flow. We'll see what happens and, you know, and all that. Now I am much more deliberate about the things that I say and do and how I spend my time and the pursuit of what and the objectives that I pursue. So So that part is different. You know, intentionality is different. It's something I've learned from mentors and people that I work with and associate with. The first guy that comes to mind for intentionality is my friend, demon Pendleton, who runs a firm out of Richmond in Norfolk, who is a phenomenal guy and a leader and a thought leader in my industry, and is very much focused on intentional living and the way that he runs his business. He operates within his marriage, where he's he's a father, he's a very so so like that part of it, that part of my experience now, is different from before, but in terms of the dealing with adversity and dealing with challenges and dealing with obstacles and those types of things. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very similar. And the confidence that you have in being able to know, yes, challenges will come, you know, problems will come, failure will come for, you know, fair, this is not, it's not really five failures. It's, it might be six, it might be seven, it might be eight. We I will fail again, you know, but I am much better equipped to deal with it, to address it, to handle it, and also to anticipate it and to see what might lead to failure and to avoid it. Or sometimes you have to take that risk. You know, for example, one of my friends and mentors is John Fisher. He's a he's a Injury Lawyer out of New York, and he shared with our group recently, I'm involved in these different groups of people that do what I do and are committed to have given their clients, the best possible experience and results. He had a trial, and he knew it was going to be a hard trial. He knew that it was not not a good chance that he would be successful. He was not. There was a defense verdict, and he was sharing some of his experiences and what came to my mind. Was, you know the in the arena, The Man in the Arena. Are you familiar with this? But the idea is that the only way that you know defeat is by putting yourself out there and putting yourself into a battle, into a challenge, into a difficult, uncomfortable, unfamiliar circumstance, and at that point, you know you may fail, and you may fail more times than you succeed, but there's value in that effort. There's and also compare that person to the person who never tries at all. Who would you rather be, you know, and so, you know, for me, and I think for most people, it's a lot of times not so much, the regrets of what we did do that we failed at, or is what that we didn't attempt to do. So I don't ever want to be that guy. I do not ever want to be the guy. And I don't, I can't think of very many examples where I have been that guy that didn't, and it didn't attempt, I mean, even, even younger, before I put all this stuff together, you know. I mean, like, if I, you know, if I even when I was, even when I was a fat kid, you know, it was the Pretti school in my school, and I was like, Hey, how you doing? And she's, she was, like, visibly disgusted by the whole thing. But that didn't change the fact that that was, you know, my mentality, and it's that same mentality. And so I'm married to my wife, Nicole, who, I don't know if you've met her or not, she is fantastic. She's wonderful. We have a great relationship. It's not perfect. We argue, you know, but, uh, but it, it. It comes from that same sort of place of being like, you know, that's the person who I think is the most beautiful person in the whole world. And I'm going to ask her to go out with me, and if she laughs and is visibly disgusted, so be it, you know. And maybe I'll give her a week, and maybe I'll ask her out again, you know, in a safe way, you know. But so, so, so I think that it's, it is the the shots we never take that we regret, not so much, just the shots that we
miss. All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Speaks, sure.
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 you.
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, Mr. Speaks, we've kind of, you know, gone through a little bit of your life. Can you tell me what this third failure would be that you know, at the time was a failure, and now you are able to look back and kind of bring out positives from
it. Sure, yeah, it was an academic failure that kind of unfolded over a period of time. And so my brother had gone to UNC, and when he was there, he enjoyed it, but he didn't have very much money, and it seemed like it was harder for him because he didn't have as much money. He went. He like, I remember him having, you know, he worked the whole time that he was there. He didn't, I don't remember him going to a lot of, you know, he was there when Michael Jordan was there, and Lawrence Taylor was there for some of this period of time, and he went to some of this stuff, and he saw them around campus and stuff. But he he didn't go to some of the functions and games and participate. He certainly couldn't have joined a fraternity. I remember at one point in time he he waited tables. He was he worked in a sorority house, and he waited tables. And he waited tables at the sorority house in order to be able to have dinner. You know what I mean? And I remember, you know, he would call my mom, and I could tell he was kind of feeling her out to see if she was able to send him some money or whatever, because he didn't want to put her on the spot and make her feel bad if she couldn't. So that struggle did not seem terribly appealing to me. So for that reason and other reasons, I went to a smaller school, went to East Carolina. I loved it, loved the people, loved everything about it. And I don't want it to seem like I'm being critical of my brother. I hope it doesn't seem that way he was, he's great, he's a and he had a great experience, and he was great example for me, but, but just seeing that from the outside looking in, I'm like, I don't, I don't want to be the poorest person in this school. And it was, you know, housing was more expensive, tuition was more expensive, books or more all this stuff was more expensive, and it was just less expensive at at eight, East Carolina and so and I felt like I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond and not be, you know, the guy that couldn't afford to be there, you know? So I go there, but when I go there, I have a little bit of a bad attitude, because I feel like I'm smarter than everybody, right? I feel like I'll be able to ace this whole place. And, you know, which is a terrible attitude, and it's not true, by the way. Don't matter. It doesn't matter how smart you are. You're not born knowing the you know. You know economic theory, and you know whatever books you have to read, and literature and biological, biological principles. And you don't, you're not. You don't know if you don't read the material and study the read the books and study for the test and go to the lectures. And so I didn't really do that. In fact, you know, from the last episode. I mean, I was a, I was a, you know, chunky kid. So now I'm, I went to college when I was 17 years old. And so I, I was when I was a young, 17 year old. So I was, you know, I was, now I'm in shape, you know what I mean, and I'm and I'm just having more success socially. And so I, so I do all the things that, you know. And also, I came from a environment where a church environment, so like, if the church was open, we were there. I didn't go to church. Some people go. So you do go to church? Yeah, we go on Sunday. We went on we went to Sunday school, we went to Sunday we went to church, then we went to Sunday night, and we went on Wednesday night, and I went to Bible school. You know, they have church services on New Year's Eve. They have church service on Christmas Eve. Like we went to church, if it was open, we were there. And which was good. I don't got no but, but now I'm a little away from all that, and I and and also growing up, one of the good things about my background is, you know, I told you before that my dad left when I was young, so that put me, at that age, in a position where I knew I don't have the same space, the same latitude that My friends have, if my friends get in trouble, you know, if they get a speeding ticket or a drinking ticket or whatever, that's okay, you know what I mean, their family will figure it out. My mom could not have, could not manage one more thing on her plate. So I had, I had no ability to put that additional thing on her plate. And so that helped me, you know what? I mean, it helped me, keep me from doing things that I might otherwise have done, because I didn't want to put her in that position. So in school, you know, the whole wind up of all this thing is for whatever reason, I just I didn't study, I didn't do my work, I didn't go to class. I mean, half the time I sold my books back in order to have money to go out and you. Drink beer with my friends and stuff like that. I worked the whole time I was in. I did a I did join a fraternity, which ended up being a, just a phenomenal experience. And the reason my mom would have never agreed to it, because of the expense of getting forward and all this, but we she at some point comes and she's walking into the dorm to visit. She would she lived not too far away, and so she would drive over on Sunday so we could hang out and go to lunch and all this. And she comes to see me one day in my dorm, and the kid in front of her just continues to walk in, and when he walks through the front door, he lets the door close, and it closes in her face, and she's disgusted by this, right? She's like, a southern lady or whatever. She's like, you hold the door. And so he didn't do that. And then there's another door, and he let that door fall in her face, and she's like, following him up, and he ends up coming. He's like, three doors down from me, and she was and he and then as she's going up the stairs with him, she sees his T shirt, and it's got something terrible on it, vulgar or whatever, some kind of college t shirt, as you may have witnessed. And she was outraged by this whole experience. And she's so she's like, All right, that's it. You're, I'm gonna, we're gonna figure out a way for you to join a fraternity. And so I'm like, okay, you know, because I kind of wanted to anyway, and you know, because, again, I wanted an experience that was different from my brothers just being the poorest person in the whole place. And so I do join an fraternity. Now, the benefit of that is a couple things. First, at that point, I was kind of disorganized. I was more interested in having fun and having experiences that I hadn't had before, and meeting people and going out and and all this kind of stuff that I was in academics or leadership or any that kind of stuff, you know. But I was, I joined the fraternity, and our fraternity was different. Most fraternities I imagined, you know, had like, an identity, right? These are the preppy guys. These are the jocks. These are the whatever. You know, our fraternity was different, like, it was, like, we had just every kind of group or person. It was a lot of diversity in my fraternity, and it was awesome because of that country guys. And just, you know, some of our guys would wake up but two o'clock in the morning to cook a pig on game day, and some of the other guys would come in there with their martini and everything in between. We had just guys from all over the place. It was a really interesting mix of people. But what I learned from that experience was, and we had some guys who were just natural leaders. You know what? I mean, they were just leaders. You could put them anywhere. You could put them in a battle. You could put them on a football field. You could put them on a soccer field. You could put them in a, you know, in a business you could put and then they would just find a way to lead other people. You know, Jeff Marlatt is a person that comes to mind. Chris Stewart is a person that comes to mind. Barry Oliver is a person that comes to mind. You know, there's just lots of these people. Nelson's goddess person who comes to mind. They're just character guys, leader guys. Darren Parker, these are character guys, leader guys. Brad Rainey, these are, these are just people who I see over time demonstrate these qualities that I think are are really important and valuable. So even though I'm not really going to class and doing the things academically that I should be doing. I'm still learning, you know what I mean, and I'm becoming more and more involved in the fraternity. So I started off being like Rush Chairman, and I have to put together rush, which is where everybody comes to the fraternity to check it out. And the first time I do that, it's a disaster, like my ads were in the paper were so generic, and I didn't really know what I was doing. And I remember this alumni, Mike Schaefer, comes to the house, and he's like, who did this? This is terrible, this. So the next semester, I'm like, Okay, let me do this better, right? So the next semester, we put up a crazy ad campaign, and we have some really, we put together a committee collaboration. Remember, that's one of the things that's the things that's important to me. Collaboration, a rush committee, and we think about it from a lot of different and we put together this, this campaign, and we have the biggest rush class that we've ever had before or since, right? And the next semester, I just, I run for Pledge educator, and I become pledge educator, and I'm able to develop this big pledge class, and then after that, I become president of the fraternity, and I and by being president of fraternity, now I'm leading this organization of people. And it started out being like 21 people, and by this time, it's like 80 or 90 people in the in the sorority, I mean fraternity. And by this time, we're also competing. We're competing academically, we're competing sports wise, to try to get the Chancellor's cup and all this kind of stuff. And so I learned a lot during this time, even though I wasn't really doing well academically. But in fact, I wasn't just not doing well and academically. I was doing terribly. Academically. Yeah, and so at some point I get a letter, you know, and the letter says
you were invited to leave this university because your grades are terrible. And I was like, Oh my goodness. So I'm like, All right, well, it's okay. I'm scheduled to see the Dean anyway that day, because at that level of, you know, campus leadership, or whatever. You know, I'm connecting with these guys, and we, and I had been working with him on a project. We were looking at integrating this fraternity system and connecting, you know, the black fraternities with the white fraternities, white fraternities with black fraternities and all this. And we were working together with these guys to to build those connections and to build those relationships. And so we had been working together anyway. And so we, I had plans to see him that week, or whatever, maybe that day. And so I go see him, and we talk about whatever it is we're going to talk about. And then at the end of it, I'm like, Hey, man, let me talk to you about this other thing, you know, I got this letter. Do you mind taking care of this, you know? And I hand it to him. He what do
we do about this? And I'm like, Well, if you could just handle it, you know, he's like, I can't. I'm like, You're the dean. He's like, You misunderstand how this works. I cannot handle this. This is a mathematical problem, and you have to address it. He was cool. I mean, Dean, Ron spear, phenomenal guy, good friend of mine. For a long time, I've lost touch with him, but he was such a good guy because he he really did care about his students. And so I was like, Okay, well, that's bad news, right? And so now I've got to call my mom, I've got to call my brother, I've got to explain to them what's happened and own up to this thing. So I do that, and then I spend the next few months working, right? And so I got to get a job, so I work and then, and then also try to sell insurance. I'm like, Okay, well, I'm gonna be successful one way. There. Maybe college isn't in my bag or whatever. I'm gonna I'm gonna sell insurance, right? I know people who are successful selling insurance. So I start selling life insurance at 21 years old, 20 something like that, 21 years 20 years old, 20 years old. And, well, let's let me, let me correct myself. I start to try to sell life insurance. So I'm calling my friends, you know. And I'm like, Hey, man, have you thought about the future? And they're like, You mean, like Saturday? And I'm like, no, no. Like, life insurance. And they're like, I don't know, talking about man, but look like there's a band playing at the attic on Saturday, so let's go, you know? And I'm like, All right, so it was a difficult, difficult period, you know, because I'm trying to pay for my bills and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do. And I'm like, my friends are still in college, and I'm not, and I'm sort of living there, and it was just like an awkward stage. Anyway, so Thanksgiving comes around, and so for Thanksgiving, we would always go to my aunt's house in Raleigh. And again, I mentioned this before, but she has this big, beautiful house, and it's like a it's like a log cabin in the woods, but it's right in the middle of downtown Raleigh. She would decorate this place so that, you know, you walk in and didn't matter what time of day you got there, you always felt like You're right on time, right? So we'd come in with dogs and and, you know, my cousins would come out and their dogs would come out, and we walk up to the front, there's music playing that's like, sort of consistent with the holiday, Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or whatever it's it's smells like pumpkin pie, or it smells like, you know, Christmas, cinnamon, Christmas, you know, stuff or whatever. And beautifully decorated. She's got all the food and all the you know. And it's just such a phenomenal place. And with this particular time, I brought a girlfriend, my college girlfriend, with me. She was still in school. I was not. And then, you know, part of our tradition is we go around the room, and everybody tells some things that they're thankful for. And I remember the time being kind of like disgruntled, and be like everything being thankful for. And that's what I'm telling myself privately, not publicly. I'm like, I'm thankful for, you know, my family because I am, and I'm thankful for, you know, my health because I am. And then it finishes up, and my girlfriend shares some stuff about what she's thankful for we finish this up, and then it ends up being my aunt, my Aunt Susie, and myself and my girlfriend, we're just sitting there, kind of shooting the breeze. Maybe my mom is there as well, you know? We're kind of the last ones to stay in this room, and everybody else has kind of gone off and doing other things. And so she starts asking me what I'm doing, you know, what I'm going to do after school, you know? And I'm like, Well, I'm like, Well, I'm probably thinking about going into insurance. I like insurance. Well, her son, at that point is in law school. I have another cousin that's in law school, you know, there's so the cousins there's, like, they're doing different things and all this. So she says, in fact, my. Girlfriend was saying, well, she might want to be a paralegal. And so my aunt turns to me in the middle of this conversation, she says, I've always thought you would be a good lawyer. And I'm like, well, thank you. I appreciate saying that. She's like, No, I think you should consider going to law school. And remember, I'm not in school. I have flunked out of East Carolina. And I'm like, well, thanks. And she won't let it go. She's like, I think you should apply to law school. And I'm like, chill, you know, I mean, nobody here, not everybody really. I don't, I don't know who knew that, but nobody really knew I was and my girlfriend knew I wasn't in school. And she was like, you just, you know, you should really consider going to law school. I think you'd be a really good lawyer. And by this time, I'm like, hey, look, you know, we got to keep this, let's come back to this later, right? I hear what you're saying. I appreciate your you know? And finally, I'm like, I cannot go to law school. And she's like, why? She's like, I'm like, I don't have good grades. And she's like, so I'm like, now this is, this is my Aunt Susie. Susie. My Aunt Susie is the most successful person I have ever known in my life. And she never worked a day, not one day. She built this incredible family. She had this incredible home. She was she had a ministry at women's prison for years. In fact, I used to go there for work, and people would, I would ask people, and they Oh, yeah, I remember your aunt. She was so, I mean, and she, she, when you She died a few years ago, but when you went at her funerals, this sort of celebration, and so many people talked about the impact that she had all over her community, with the way that she had done things, and in the way that she had contributed to the lives of people in her community, it was incredible. So this is the kind of person that we're talking about, but at this point, I'm like, you know, she just doesn't understand the realities. She's not constrained by reality. You know, she doesn't work. She doesn't she doesn't understand how this part of the world operates. The truth is, I didn't understand how this part because what she says, she says to me, I go, I don't have good grades. And she goes, Well, that doesn't matter. And I'm like, Well, actually it does matter. And she goes, Well, did you know that there's a test that they give you and that the test counts in some schools more than grades. And I'm like, what test? She's like, the LSAT Law School aptitude test. And I'm like, it counts more. So one test you take in one day counts more than four years, or in my case, five years of school. She's like, Yeah, I'm like, that's not true. You know what? I mean, I'm not I'm not disrespectful to her. But on my mind, I'm thinking, that's not true. I'm still, like, kind of patting her on the head, going on and but now I'm sitting on the edge of my seat. And so she starts telling me more about this, and then I'm like, All right, well, how can I, how can I verify what you're telling me? Because I'm like, Okay, I know that. I have, you know, not done my best in school, but I'm good at tests, right? I can, I can do that, you know, sat law, you know, whatever. I can do that. So we go, so she takes me, and we go to Walden books and Crabtree Valley Mall. And they have, you know, the book section on the classes, I mean, the books that you might take that are relative to getting it relevant to getting in law law school or whatever. And one of them was this Baron's book how to get into law school. And so I get it, and I look at it, and sure enough, what she's saying is true. Some schools are 6040 some goals are 7030, LSAT, you know. In other words, they weigh the LSAT. They place more value on the LSAT than they do on the men, on the grades, you know, and so, so I don't eat i So I'm up the all night long until the next day, pouring over this book, trying to figure this out. And when I wake up the next morning, I have, like, a completely new plan, a completely new plan, and I tell my aunt about and she's like, perfect and like, it's no big deal. And I'm like, you know, but that was the beauty in her. She she did not see when other people saw limitations. She did not see limitations, and she never did, and she had a way of putting her some people would say naivete. Some people would say confidence. You know, what's the difference? If you get to the same place, she could put that confidence into somebody else and make everybody around her think that they were capable of greatness. And so I thought that was pretty special about her. But anyway, so I go back to school the next Monday or whatever, and I go make an appointment go see my buddy, the dean, and I tell him about this plan. You know, I don't know what his reaction is going to be, but he tells me about another kid that. He had, he had mentored that had a very, very similar story, and he's like, all right, you know, so now you got a plan. Here's what you need to do. And so he and I map out this plan together where I'm gonna, you know, take as many hours as I can take, have extra classes, have extra go to school in the summer, you know, and do all this in a condensed time and so. And so that's what I did. And I never met another B in law in college. I never met another B the whole time I was there. And so I finish college, graduate from college, and apply to law school. And so I remember, in fact, I remember
I still was, I still was, like, you know, that first part was so bad I don't know if I'm gonna be able to to get in so, so I we had a connection with the Pat one of my pastors as a kid was somehow connected to Wake Forest and Duke and and Campbell and all the law schools, just from his academic background. So, uh, so we always heard, you know, hey, it's not what you know is who you know. So I make reach out to him, and I send him a letter and say, Hey, can I come talk to you when I try? So I he writes me back, and I we agree on a time, and I come to see him. I gotta drive, like, six hours to see the guy. I sit down with him. He says, Well, why do you why do you want to be a lawyer? And I tell him, this is why I want to get prepared for the whole deal. He I tell him why I want to be a lawyer, and he is okay. And he goes, Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write these guys. And, you know, I feel good about it, you know? And so when I'm leaving his house, I'm so excited, because I'm like, this has worked exactly like it should have. And so you ever see the movie Jerry Maguire, you know this movie? I'm sure your dad has made you watch, right? So remember when he signs Cush, and then he's leaving Kush house, and he's like, flipping through the dial and all he's trying to find a song where he can just roll the windows down and belt out the song, or whatever. So I'm trying to do the same thing, right? So he, in the movie, he finds a free Tom Petty, free falling. Right? In my world, all I can find was, what I find is Whitney, Houston, I will always love you. And so I'm driving, I'm driving out of this guy's town, back to where I am. Wind is down, all four windows down, and I'm belting out, you know, I will always love you. It's to the top of my lungs. So I'm like, Yes, I have done this thing. I've got, I'm gonna get in. So I go back to my mom's house, and I'm, I'm in my and we in its weeks. You know what? I mean, I've applied and all this. And all this, and it's weeks before I hear back to the point where the guy that delivered the mail, I would see him, I would know what time he was coming. He would see me, and he'd be like, not today, because he would know that I'm looking for a fat envelope instead of a small envelope. Time goes on, time goes on, time goes on. Finally, the day arrives. You know he's like and it's a small envelope. He knows just as well as I do, because we've discussed this like in his route for for weeks. At this point, I go, I sit in my car. I didn't want to go inside. I didn't want my mom to be disappointed. I opened it up. Sure enough, he rejected so I, I'm like, you know, faith is a thing for me as part of my life. I'm feel like I'm in constant communication with God. So I'm like, what's the what's the point, man, why'd you let me get this far and then just to say no and pull the rug out from under me, you know? And I'm feeling really dejected about this whole thing. I got rejected from law school, like I have finally put together a plan. I feel like I've got my purpose of, you know, I've watched To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, 10 times I've read the book. I'm like, but this time I'm reading John Grisham books, you know, I mean, I'm like, This is who I am. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I was born to do, and now I can't do it. You know, it just I was I was like, I wasn't just upset or I was offended. I was like, my feelings were hurt that God would put it done that to me, even though I know now and then, probably, if I was honest with my that God didn't do anything to me. But then I started sort of drawing on some of these past experiences that we've talked about before. You know, from sports and from life lessons and from all this stuff, and I go just because they said you can't come to law school here, doesn't mean I can't go to law school there. So I start thinking about it anyway. So the next morning, at about eight o'clock on the steps of Campbell law school, I'm sitting there, and you know, the sun's peeking up over the trees, and I see the Dean of the Law School Admissions Office. You know, this campus has a big quad right in the middle, and it's a beautiful sort of spring day at this point in time. And the guy lives in the big house on the other side of the dorms across the quad. So he's like, and he's got it made, by the way, he hasn't. He doesn't seem like he has a very difficult job. He's happy all the time. His family lives there. He's a big shot in the community. This is Dean Lanier, super nice guy, and he comes walking across the campus, and he's like, sees people and waving at everybody, and got his coffee and all. And he sees me. He gets right up to the steps, and he sees me sitting there. He's like, you know? He just wasn't, I mean, the school's not in session, so he's not expecting anybody to be there, you know. And so he walks a little farther and goes inside, and I see him talking to through the glass. I see him talking to hit the receptionist, you know. And I come on in and wait. I've already told her, hey, I want to see this guy. I'd like to see him. And she says, Okay, we'll see what he can do. So I sit there for hours sitting in the reception room. Nobody's coming in and out of this place. Every now and then I see him go to his blinds and do like this, and he wait for me to leave. And I'm like, I'm not leaving. I'll be back here tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and I'm not leaving at some point, I guess he gets the picture that I'm not dangerous, right? And I'm not gonna, you know. And he goes, All right, come on in. So he's like, what is it I can do for you? And I'm like, You sent me this. And he grabs it glasses, you know, again. And, you know, what do we do about this? And I'm like, This is what I'm supposed to do, you know? You know, I've talked to God about this. I have looked at my and this is what I'm supposed to do, you know? And I know that you see this one number and but the test was great, the number was bad, the grades were bad. But I want you to go back and look at the whole picture, right? You're looking at just I'm not defined by one number. I want you to look and what you'll do is, if you look is you'll see a place where I was goofing off, and then when I got serious. And what I'm telling you is the time when I got serious is much more a reflection of what I'm capable of than the time when I'm goofing off. And so he looks at it, and he spends some time looking at with me. And then he takes his glasses off, and he says, All right, well, if I could get you a spot, how long would it take you to get here, and how much notice would you need? And I says, it takes me two hours get from my house to here, and he said, All right, I'll let you know. And a couple weeks later, I get a letter, and he says, You can't come to school here this fall. You can't do it, but what you can do is you can come next year, and we're having a program next summer where we're going to let in. It was called this performance based Admission Program. They let in like 100 kids, and like 25 of them get in. 20 of them, 25 of them get in. And so that's what I did the next year. Interesting thing about that is some of the best lawyers in the state of North Carolina went through that same program with me. I mean, phenomenal lawyers. David Corey out of Fayetteville, John Bircher out of New Bern, just Aaron Shaw out of New York. Just phenomenal. Lawyers came out of that program. Russ Bryan, who you know, just some very smart character, talented Robert Jones, a federal match for Jones here, Master judge here, who is a brilliant, brilliant person. So a lot of people came out of that program, but during that year, I didn't have anything to do. And so what I had, what I did was I went back to school, and I went into MBA school, business school, and I did business MBA classes during that period of time, which serves me well now. So again, there's blessings in all this. So the wind up of the whole thing is and then from there, I ended up getting in law school, but this whole experience of not being accepted right off the bat and having to do things a little bit differently, in a sort of a circuitous fashion, has been unbelievably helpful to me in my career. If I'd have just got straight in, I never would have appreciated it. I wouldn't have taken advantage of these different opportunities. I wouldn't have confidence to be able to do some of the things that I've been able to do, but now, if I get something that seems like a no, I'm like, so you're saying there's a chance, you know, and I'm like, All right, let's get let's, let's do it. So I don't usually hear in my professional life, no, or this can't be done. Or. We're not, you know, you know what I mean like, because I know that if, if I can re circle, regroup, re evaluate, collaborate, and do the things that I do, that I can might be able to change the outcome or influence the outcome of this situation. And that's why that curse, you know that curse is a strong word, but that's why that what I perceive was a terrible thing, a tragic thing, an awful thing, turned out to be one of the biggest blessings of my life,
right? So if you could kind of summarize what your mindset when applying for law school, when you, you know, talk to one of the deans at ECU and say, Okay, I've got this plan. I'm going to get, you know, back on track. I'm on the up. And then, you know, Could you summarize that mindset? And then summarize the mindset when, you know, you got the envelope, not the big letter, kind of, and then how that changed and altered after getting the envelope, you know, the rejection letter, and then, you know, becoming a lawyer describe kind of how your mindset tracked well.
So sure, yeah. I mean, when I when I talked to Dean Speer and we developed this plan together, I felt like, all right, I can this is going to happen. This is going to I'm going to do, I'm going to do this thing. And I was excited, and I felt encouraged, and I felt confident, I felt strong. And then when it didn't happen the way that I thought it should happen, I felt discouraged and betrayed and rejected and disappointed, you know, and then I was able to look back and draw on some other failure successes, failure successes, failure successes that I've had in life, some other examples that I've seen from other people, whether it was in sports, whether it was family members, whether it was my mom and she and she had, you Know, had to work two jobs to provide for us to pay, pay the electric bill or the house payment or whatever, or whether it was my brother who had to work, you know, several jobs to get through school or whatever, and just have that, that, that additional gear, okay, I thought it was going to take this much. Now, I know it's going to take this much. No problem. You know, I sort of drew on those examples and from those experiences to say, maybe there is a way, you know what I mean, and then that's where anything great starts with, the belief that something can be done, you know, even if it doesn't make sense to everybody else, you know. I mean, I remember telling some people, this is what my plan is. I remember telling a roommate in particular, this is what my plan is. And I remember him, you know, scoffing at the concept, you know what? I mean, he's like, this is you need to find something else to do, because this is not going to happen. And there are people who will sometimes, there are people who care about you, who are genuinely concerned for your best interest, who will say, Hey, I know what you're trying to do, but let's try to do something else, you know? And we do that to our kids, you know? I mean, or at least I do sometimes I don't mean to, God knows I don't mean to. But like, if, if one, if, if one of my kids comes and says, Hey, I want to be on. I want to be the next American Idol. I might have to say, Listen, I'm with you. I care about you. But that might not be in the cards, you know, then there's another part of me that goes, who are you to say that they can't do that, you know? Like, you know this movie. Have you seen this movie? The Pursuit of Happiness? I've heard of it. So Will Smith is in this movie, right? And it's about this guy who's a single dad who's trying to get into the investment world and all this kind of stuff. And he's playing basketball with his son on this sort of rooftop courtyard in Chicago. I believe it is. I don't know where it is, but anyway, he in his in his and his son, he's got his son of basketball for Christmas, and his son is, is trying to, is shooting and dribbling and all this kind of stuff. And he's in will says to him, he says, Hey, listen, you might have, I was never get very good at this, right? I know there are some people that are good at this. I this was not something I was good at. It may not be something you're good at. So you might not want to focus all your energy and attention on this. You might want to focus your energy and attention on books and stuff, because that was what he was better at and and then he sees his kid be disappointed, you know, because he's taking the joy out of his kid's face. You know, he's taking the joy out of his kids eyes, and the kid kind of throws the basketball off to the side. It. And he sits and he thinks about it for a minute, and he says, Hey, listen, if you have a dream that's big enough and strong enough, you don't let anybody talk you out of it, even me, and I thought it was powerful. I think it's accurate. One of the things I've been doing lately is I've been going to see a lot of these rock performers that I loved growing up, you know what I mean, before they retire or die or whatever, before I do whatever. And so we've seen all these different, you know, Rolling Stones, and we'll see back in black. I mean, I'm sorry, we'll see AC DC the summer, and we'll see seeing just John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, all these guys growing up, you know, and some of these guys don't necessarily have the greatest voice of all time. They just have something to say. Like in the movie, A star is born that he mentions that he's like, you know, everybody's talented. Is something, you know, but sometimes you don't necessarily have to be. They have the best voice to be one of the most recognizable, influential, impactful performers or singers, whatever. And that's just an example, like, if my kids are trying to be American Idol, you know, I don't think they're going to try to do that. But my point is, for me to try to talk somebody out of their dream is a mistake, you know. And if it is a dream that's powerful enough and strong enough and you believe in it enough, then I think anybody can accomplish it. You know, one of my favorite quotes is by Napoleon Hill, is whatever the mind of man can believe, can conceive, and believe it can achieve. And I believe that. I mean, that is a fundamental thing that I believe. And I think it's important for people to do that, and in order. And sometimes all it takes is my Aunt Susie. All it takes is one person saying to somebody, I think you can do this thing. I believe you can do this thing. You know, I believe I see something in you that is special, and I think you don't have limits, or whatever limits that exist do not apply to you, and that is a powerful and liberating and impactful lesson to give to people. So this, that's the biggest reason why I wanted to do this series, because I want to do for somebody else what my Aunt Susie did for me, and that is to let somebody else know who is, hopefully, you know, watching or consuming this information in some kind of way, book form, or watching this, or listening to it, or whatever that. Yeah, you can do this thing, you know, and these limits, they don't apply to you, that limits are made for other people and not for you.
What do you think you know, law school you learned, you know, looking back at your route to law school, that maybe wasn't as straight and narrow as somebody else that you had heard about had gone to law school. What do you think you know you thought about it at that time? What did you learn from this kind of potentially up and down road that you took?
I learned confidence and self reliance and that life is not you know, you have a plan. You've seen this, you've seen this graphic or whatever, that shows that your plan is like this, and then life is like, you know? And that's true. Time has a way of humbling us all. You know what I mean, like experience, life has a way of humbling us all. We all think at some point we're gonna think we got it figured out. Like, right now, I think, you know, it seems like I've got it figured out. I think it seems like I think I've got it figured out. We're doing a podcast called your you are five failures from success, meaning I was here and now I'm on the top. I'm on the pinnacle. I'm successful. I've done all the things I have, all the things I've built, all the things, there's a reasonable probability that when I'm 80 years old, it might be the nine failures that I've had to success. Because success is a moving target. Success is not a fixed place. Success is a you know, again, my aunt was the most successful person I've ever known, and she never worked a day in her life at a job. Because, you know, it's this sort of thing that we're shooting for that we never quite attest that attain. And it's different for different people. Different people have an idea of different so the thing that I have learned over this experience is that what I want to do is live intentionally, not let things unfold, not let things happen, not let circumstances dictate my day. My. Hour, my day, my month, my year, my life is to look work backwards and think about my aunt Susie's celebration of life and say, What do I want my legacy to be? What do I want to be on my tombstone? What do I want my children or grandchildren to say about me after I'm gone? What do I want them to carry forward from me when I'm gone? And how can I develop that plan and carry out that plan now, and also now I have the confidence. Confidence. I mean, there is no word, because confidence in my mind includes a measure of self doubt. Otherwise, it's arrogance to know that I might not be right, I might not be perfect, I might make mistakes, I might stumble along the way, but I can learn from other people. I can ask other people. I can collaborate with from other people. I can read books, I can study things, I can pray, and then from there, I can develop a strategy to get back to where I want to go, which is to have an impactful life that helps a lot of people.
Now, you know, you have this, okay, I you, I feel as though you're kind of conveying the message that through every struggle you get through, you gain some confidence in yourself that you can get through struggles 100% you know, that's you in law school. Has your outlook on the situation changed as you've kind of developed in your career and experienced it like amount of success, or is it about the same?
The circumstances are different, the challenges are different, but the general process is very similar right now. Now, one thing that is different is in college, I wasn't necessarily applying myself. You know what I mean? I was, I was applying myself through the things that I wanted to do, which was going out and being social and maintaining friendships and developing relationships, and, man, I had a blast. And I'm connected to a lot of those people to this day. I mean that are good friends of mine who I love to death and all that, but I wasn't really career focused, and I wasn't really committed to a path, and I wasn't really committed to an intentional lifestyle. I would like whatever happened. I was a good guy. Was go with the flow. We'll see what happens and, you know, and all that. Now I am much more deliberate about the things that I say and do and how I spend my time and the pursuit of what and the objectives that I pursue. So So that part is different. You know, intentionality is different. It's something I've learned from mentors and people that I work with and associate with. The first guy that comes to mind for intentionality is my friend, demon Pendleton, who runs a firm out of Richmond in Norfolk, who is a phenomenal guy and a leader and a thought leader in my industry, and is very much focused on intentional living and the way that he runs his business. He operates within his marriage, where he's he's a father, he's a very so so like that part of it, that part of my experience now, is different from before, but in terms of the dealing with adversity and dealing with challenges and dealing with obstacles and those types of things. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very similar. And the confidence that you have in being able to know, yes, challenges will come, you know, problems will come, failure will come for, you know, fair, this is not, it's not really five failures. It's, it might be six, it might be seven, it might be eight. We I will fail again, you know, but I am much better equipped to deal with it, to address it, to handle it, and also to anticipate it and to see what might lead to failure and to avoid it. Or sometimes you have to take that risk. You know, for example, one of my friends and mentors is John Fisher. He's a he's a Injury Lawyer out of New York, and he shared with our group recently, I'm involved in these different groups of people that do what I do and are committed to have given their clients, the best possible experience and results. He had a trial, and he knew it was going to be a hard trial. He knew that it was not not a good chance that he would be successful. He was not. There was a defense verdict, and he was sharing some of his experiences and what came to my mind. Was, you know the in the arena, The Man in the Arena. Are you familiar with this? But the idea is that the only way that you know defeat is by putting yourself out there and putting yourself into a battle, into a challenge, into a difficult, uncomfortable, unfamiliar circumstance, and at that point, you know you may fail, and you may fail more times than you succeed, but there's value in that effort. There's and also compare that person to the person who never tries at all. Who would you rather be, you know, and so, you know, for me, and I think for most people, it's a lot of times not so much, the regrets of what we did do that we failed at, or is what that we didn't attempt to do. So I don't ever want to be that guy. I do not ever want to be the guy. And I don't, I can't think of very many examples where I have been that guy that didn't, and it didn't attempt, I mean, even, even younger, before I put all this stuff together, you know. I mean, like, if I, you know, if I even when I was, even when I was a fat kid, you know, it was the Pretti school in my school, and I was like, Hey, how you doing? And she's, she was, like, visibly disgusted by the whole thing. But that didn't change the fact that that was, you know, my mentality, and it's that same mentality. And so I'm married to my wife, Nicole, who, I don't know if you've met her or not, she is fantastic. She's wonderful. We have a great relationship. It's not perfect. We argue, you know, but, uh, but it, it. It comes from that same sort of place of being like, you know, that's the person who I think is the most beautiful person in the whole world. And I'm going to ask her to go out with me, and if she laughs and is visibly disgusted, so be it, you know. And maybe I'll give her a week, and maybe I'll ask her out again, you know, in a safe way, you know. But so, so, so I think that it's, it is the the shots we never take that we regret, not so much, just the shots that we
miss. All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Speaks, sure.
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