Ep 84: The Realities of Being a Business Owner & Entrepreneur

I'm Clark speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer, welcome to the verdict. This is the elevation Leadership Summit.

My name's Carson Grace Toomer, and I'm here with American injury lawyer. Clark speaks now. Mr. Speaks. What are some of the top misconceptions about running a business and being an entrepreneur?

So the first one is, everybody kind of looks at the boss like that guy's got it made. And that's an easy place to be and, you know, and all that. And it's kind of like social media. You know what I mean when you see so people's social media posts, Instagram, Facebook, or whatever you see, their amazing day, their amazing trip. They're amazing experience. They're amazing meal. You don't see them having a peanut butter jelly sandwich, you know, I mean, you just see the very surface of the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg, and then you don't see what's going on underneath it. And so for me, that, like, like I few weeks ago, there was a deposition at my office, and I and I arrived at the same time the other lawyer arrived. The other lawyer is a very good friend of mine, been a friend of mine. We went to law school together. Very good friend of mine for a long period of time, you know, I drive up and they drive up and they, you know, see the car, they see the office, they see and they make certain. I can see in their minds, she's making certain, you know, assumptions based on these things. She even says, I should have done something differently, you know. And I'm like, wait a minute. No, that's not, it's not true necessarily, you know, this is what you're seeing. Is an image of that may not necessarily be, you know, accurate. For example, there's a there's a tax reason why I would have a a big, expensive car or truck or whatever, there is a very specific generated by Congress, taxable event that happens if you have, if you run your own business, that that encourages you to buy a big, expensive car, you know? And so people don't necessarily know that. And so the perception is that that people might see where you what you drive, or where you go on vacation, or the house that you live in, or whatever, and think you've got it made, and everything is easy, and in your just you got it made, and all you do is sit back and count money. That could not be farther from the truth. The reality is, is when you're running a business you are responsible for everything and and there are nights, you know, there is one or two nights a month where I'm like, you know, I can barely sleep because something is going on at at work, at my office, at this business that I am responsible for running that you know is a challenge or a threat to my team or my clients or the operation or whatever that is. So people don't see that stress. They don't see that those challenges, those those sort of, you know, sleepless nights, or those, you know, those times when you are, you have, you know, sometimes seemingly overwhelming challenges. You know what I mean, and you're and they don't see that all they see is what they see, and all they know is what they know. And they derive certain they develop certain conclusions based on those limited perspectives. And I just that's just that's not complete, and it's not, it's not a accurate picture necessarily, of what that person who runs that business is experiencing.

Okay, so what are some of the challenges that you faced when you were starting your business the

first thing? So when I was, when I got out of school, 1997 law out of law school, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, and I knew, at that point, I knew that I wanted to start my own law firm. I had, I had worked for some people in the past, and we did not see eye to eye on taking care of clients, on ethical decisions, on on how you treat other lawyers, how you treat other professionals, other people in the community, and I had and some people I had to work with, had great experiences with foster Bradshaw was a phenomenal firm, phenomenal guys, very smart people, very dedicated people, very, you know, talented people I worked with, Butler, Butler Daniel, he's very gifted Trial Lawyer, and remains a friend to this day, but I had worked another with some other people who I was not necessarily as crazy about in terms of the way that they approached ethical things and these kinds of decisions. So I decided I wanted to start my own firm. And so when I got out, I went with a buddy, and we went, you know, furniture shopping and I bought all the furniture my office probably 1000 bucks. I bought a used copier from another lawyer who for 200 bucks. And I remember it was so old and so and didn't work. In order to you would make a copy, and in order to advance that, you had to stick your hand up inside the thing and crank it forward and risk Alex. Electrocution in order to be able to get on to the copy the next page. So it was like, you know, and I had a, you know, my former boss, who was a judge, had told me, help me figure out how many rooms I needed and what kind of space I needed. And it was at the top of this hallway. And there was frequently, I would have to pass over homeless people in order to be able to get into the door in the morning, when I get to work and in it. And it was not exactly a palatial sort of experience, you notice, like, didn't smell good, and it was weird and some and all this, but, but, but each of those things. So you got a certain amount of money that you have to devote to this thing you want to you have a vision in your mind of what you want to have, right? Like you got legal shows, you got suits you got, you know, the practice you got, you know, whatever it is in your mind, what it depending on your generation of what, what kind of environment you know when you were, when you were working in, when you're going to school, law school, as a, as a young person, you do not envision working in, you know, you envision, you know, marble floors and Oakland walls and all this stuff. And that was not at all the experience that that I had, it was very sort of, you know, dirty and modest and all this. And, you know, it was clean, but you but, but it was like, not, not super nice, anyway, so, but, but all that stuff cost more than you think it does. Rent costs more than you think it does. The phone bill costs more than you think it does. Insurance costs more than you think it does. So you've got this money, and you've got to start a business, and you got to get your plane off the ground before you run out of whatever money you've got. And for me, I went to the bank. I went to my bank, and they had a program at the time where, if you were starting the business, you could borrow $25,000 and so I had to get this thing off the ground before that $25,000 runs out, you know. So I found a place, I found furniture, I found I couldn't afford to hire a secretary. My mom would come once a week, and she would bring paper towels and and whatever, and she would for the bathroom, and she would and so she would leave her, you know, card cardigan over the front desk, you know, I mean, over of the seat in the front at the front desk, and as if she were at lunch for four days in a row before she came on the fifth day. But all these things cost more than you think they're going to cost, and the expenses are more than you think they are. And in addition, you have these projections of of people that are going to hire you or to do whatever, if you're going to open a pizza shop or or a sandwich shop, or a you know, boat deal, whatever it is, you know, and you have these predictions of, and sometimes they're accurate and sometimes they're not, but the bills are accurate. You can calculate the expenses, but they're going to be more than you think, and the income is going to be slower than you think. So most businesses fail because they're under capitalized to begin with. People don't have enough runway. People don't have enough resources to be able to see it through to be able to do the things they need to do over a long enough period of time to get it off the ground. They underestimate how difficult that piece of it is, how how expensive it is, and how the money, even if you do get those clients, even if you do get those sales, even if you do get those customers, that they might not they might pay a month later, and you know, two months late, 60 days, 90 days, or whatever you know, or it might, there might be some kind of seasonal component to your business, but, but some, there's some piece of it that you haven't that you might not have taken into consideration, is going to cost more than and that that leads to the Second piece of this, which is the concept of leaders eat last, or the third piece, I'm sorry, the third piece, leaders eat last. And what I mean by that is so if you're a person who cares about your team and cares about your you know employees and cares about your customers or clients, or whatever, you know you've got to be in you're going to have to the rent has to be paid. The employees have to be paid. Your your service providers have to be paid. If there's a guy that cuts the grass, if there's a cleaning service, whatever it has, those things have got to be all those expenses have to be paid before the person who owns the business gets $1 and so it doesn't matter where you if you are starting a landscaping business on day one, or if you are Elon Musk, you know that is a fact that affects everybody this sort of cash flow. You know the idea that you do not get paid $1 until everybody else gets paid. So now for maybe for Elon Musk or Bezos, or the guy from Amazon or whatever, they have passed that and now they have all the money they need. You know, I don't know what their experience is, but for most normal people, regardless of the size, for anybody that you personally know, that you might know that runs a business, there is. A there is this sort of cash flow issue of, you know, you do not get any money until you have paid everybody else in the whole program. So that become that is a challenge that people have to be aware of. It's not necessarily a deterrent. It's just you gotta be aware of it when you're making these decisions

right now. How does you know having employees or working on a team and you being the leader of that team, how does that maybe deal with you being responsible, and how do you lead that team when it's you on the line? So,

yeah, that's a good question. So so I think effective leaders praise in public and correct in private, and I think that that comes from a very real scenario, which is, if something good happens, it's important to share credit with the people who are there if something bad happens, because every everybody, every business, every person, every int, every there's going to be a we're going to make a mistake. There's something's going to go wrong, or whatever, you know, if something goes wrong, and your employee, let's say you work at a inner, you know, an international hardware store, and somehow that company does something, they make a mistake, and somebody gets hurt, or they make a mistake and they in any kind of way. Every single person can walk out of Home Depot and go work at Lowe's, you know, if it's a, if it's McDonald's, and McDonald's does something that makes a mistake or miscalculation, or whatever, they can leave there and go to Wendy's. You know, if it's, you know, if it's ABC company, they can, if it's a law firm. One, they can leave and go law firm. Two, you know, there's one person that's going to be holding the bag if something goes wrong, and that is you. You know there is one person that's going and it's your name on the side. It's your responsibility. It's so no matter what, how much you know, how committed you are to helping your clients into providing, you know, exceptional service for your the people for whom you work. Sooner or later, something else, something's going to go wrong, and everybody in the whole operation is free to walk out the front door with no notice, and then you got to sit there and deal with it. And so that's an important thing to to for people to to realize when they're sort of thinking about, Oh man, it would be so great to be that guy or that girl, or whatever it may be, you know, but you got to recognize the whole picture of what's going on, the enormous responsibility, the response responsibility, of taking care of these people, you know. And we have 1000s of clients, you know, and so in lots of and whether you have, you know, a landscaping company, and you got a business, and I know it, a guy that has, has a wildly successful landscaping company, he was a very helpful to me. I used to have breakfast with him, and he used to tell share this information with me about business and those kinds of things. But, I mean, he had dozens of employees and trucks and stuff and all this, and that's an enormous responsibility, and people just need to recognize that. What would you

say the most is the most important thing for people to know when they're looking to start up their business well,

so when people are making a decision about whether to start their business. Start a business or not. Let's say you're deciding, should I start a law firm or should I not? You know, you're going to have to choose between two things that are potentially uncomfortable. One of those things is the uncertainty of having a business, of starting a business, like, are you going to make it? Are you not going to make it? Are you going to be able to do these things? Are you going to be able to get through these challenges and these challenge, these pitfalls and these, you know, whether it's cash or personnel or changes in the law or whatever you know. The other thing is, you know, so, so that's one thing that can be uncomfortable, is that uncertainty. The other thing is, regret. Are you going to regret not taking a chance on doing something? Because if you the great thing about having your own business is you can make these decisions, if you'll remember, the reason I didn't want to work for this other some of these other firms, is because I didn't agree with how they did things. I mean, even some of the guys that were phenomenal lawyers and great and great people. You know, there are some differences in how I would have approached something from where they and the and if you have your own shop, you can make those decisions. You can make those determinations. You can you can provide the level of service that you think is, is appropriate, is good, you know what I mean. And so if you have this vision in your mind of how you want to help people and how you in the service that you want to provide and how you want to make people feel, you can do that. You have complete power and autonomy and authority to do this thing. Will you regret not be able being able to make those decisions? And is that? More important than the pain of uncertainty in the times when you might not be able to sleep at night because you're worried about the way something one of these decisions will impact someone. 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 the elevation Leadership Summit.

My name's Carson Grace Toomer, and I'm here with American injury lawyer. Clark speaks now. Mr. Speaks. What are some of the top misconceptions about running a business and being an entrepreneur?

So the first one is, everybody kind of looks at the boss like that guy's got it made. And that's an easy place to be and, you know, and all that. And it's kind of like social media. You know what I mean when you see so people's social media posts, Instagram, Facebook, or whatever you see, their amazing day, their amazing trip. They're amazing experience. They're amazing meal. You don't see them having a peanut butter jelly sandwich, you know, I mean, you just see the very surface of the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg, and then you don't see what's going on underneath it. And so for me, that, like, like I few weeks ago, there was a deposition at my office, and I and I arrived at the same time the other lawyer arrived. The other lawyer is a very good friend of mine, been a friend of mine. We went to law school together. Very good friend of mine for a long period of time, you know, I drive up and they drive up and they, you know, see the car, they see the office, they see and they make certain. I can see in their minds, she's making certain, you know, assumptions based on these things. She even says, I should have done something differently, you know. And I'm like, wait a minute. No, that's not, it's not true necessarily, you know, this is what you're seeing. Is an image of that may not necessarily be, you know, accurate. For example, there's a there's a tax reason why I would have a a big, expensive car or truck or whatever, there is a very specific generated by Congress, taxable event that happens if you have, if you run your own business, that that encourages you to buy a big, expensive car, you know? And so people don't necessarily know that. And so the perception is that that people might see where you what you drive, or where you go on vacation, or the house that you live in, or whatever, and think you've got it made, and everything is easy, and in your just you got it made, and all you do is sit back and count money. That could not be farther from the truth. The reality is, is when you're running a business you are responsible for everything and and there are nights, you know, there is one or two nights a month where I'm like, you know, I can barely sleep because something is going on at at work, at my office, at this business that I am responsible for running that you know is a challenge or a threat to my team or my clients or the operation or whatever that is. So people don't see that stress. They don't see that those challenges, those those sort of, you know, sleepless nights, or those, you know, those times when you are, you have, you know, sometimes seemingly overwhelming challenges. You know what I mean, and you're and they don't see that all they see is what they see, and all they know is what they know. And they derive certain they develop certain conclusions based on those limited perspectives. And I just that's just that's not complete, and it's not, it's not a accurate picture necessarily, of what that person who runs that business is experiencing.

Okay, so what are some of the challenges that you faced when you were starting your business the

first thing? So when I was, when I got out of school, 1997 law out of law school, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, and I knew, at that point, I knew that I wanted to start my own law firm. I had, I had worked for some people in the past, and we did not see eye to eye on taking care of clients, on ethical decisions, on on how you treat other lawyers, how you treat other professionals, other people in the community, and I had and some people I had to work with, had great experiences with foster Bradshaw was a phenomenal firm, phenomenal guys, very smart people, very dedicated people, very, you know, talented people I worked with, Butler, Butler Daniel, he's very gifted Trial Lawyer, and remains a friend to this day, but I had worked another with some other people who I was not necessarily as crazy about in terms of the way that they approached ethical things and these kinds of decisions. So I decided I wanted to start my own firm. And so when I got out, I went with a buddy, and we went, you know, furniture shopping and I bought all the furniture my office probably 1000 bucks. I bought a used copier from another lawyer who for 200 bucks. And I remember it was so old and so and didn't work. In order to you would make a copy, and in order to advance that, you had to stick your hand up inside the thing and crank it forward and risk Alex. Electrocution in order to be able to get on to the copy the next page. So it was like, you know, and I had a, you know, my former boss, who was a judge, had told me, help me figure out how many rooms I needed and what kind of space I needed. And it was at the top of this hallway. And there was frequently, I would have to pass over homeless people in order to be able to get into the door in the morning, when I get to work and in it. And it was not exactly a palatial sort of experience, you notice, like, didn't smell good, and it was weird and some and all this, but, but, but each of those things. So you got a certain amount of money that you have to devote to this thing you want to you have a vision in your mind of what you want to have, right? Like you got legal shows, you got suits you got, you know, the practice you got, you know, whatever it is in your mind, what it depending on your generation of what, what kind of environment you know when you were, when you were working in, when you're going to school, law school, as a, as a young person, you do not envision working in, you know, you envision, you know, marble floors and Oakland walls and all this stuff. And that was not at all the experience that that I had, it was very sort of, you know, dirty and modest and all this. And, you know, it was clean, but you but, but it was like, not, not super nice, anyway, so, but, but all that stuff cost more than you think it does. Rent costs more than you think it does. The phone bill costs more than you think it does. Insurance costs more than you think it does. So you've got this money, and you've got to start a business, and you got to get your plane off the ground before you run out of whatever money you've got. And for me, I went to the bank. I went to my bank, and they had a program at the time where, if you were starting the business, you could borrow $25,000 and so I had to get this thing off the ground before that $25,000 runs out, you know. So I found a place, I found furniture, I found I couldn't afford to hire a secretary. My mom would come once a week, and she would bring paper towels and and whatever, and she would for the bathroom, and she would and so she would leave her, you know, card cardigan over the front desk, you know, I mean, over of the seat in the front at the front desk, and as if she were at lunch for four days in a row before she came on the fifth day. But all these things cost more than you think they're going to cost, and the expenses are more than you think they are. And in addition, you have these projections of of people that are going to hire you or to do whatever, if you're going to open a pizza shop or or a sandwich shop, or a you know, boat deal, whatever it is, you know, and you have these predictions of, and sometimes they're accurate and sometimes they're not, but the bills are accurate. You can calculate the expenses, but they're going to be more than you think, and the income is going to be slower than you think. So most businesses fail because they're under capitalized to begin with. People don't have enough runway. People don't have enough resources to be able to see it through to be able to do the things they need to do over a long enough period of time to get it off the ground. They underestimate how difficult that piece of it is, how how expensive it is, and how the money, even if you do get those clients, even if you do get those sales, even if you do get those customers, that they might not they might pay a month later, and you know, two months late, 60 days, 90 days, or whatever you know, or it might, there might be some kind of seasonal component to your business, but, but some, there's some piece of it that you haven't that you might not have taken into consideration, is going to cost more than and that that leads to the Second piece of this, which is the concept of leaders eat last, or the third piece, I'm sorry, the third piece, leaders eat last. And what I mean by that is so if you're a person who cares about your team and cares about your you know employees and cares about your customers or clients, or whatever, you know you've got to be in you're going to have to the rent has to be paid. The employees have to be paid. Your your service providers have to be paid. If there's a guy that cuts the grass, if there's a cleaning service, whatever it has, those things have got to be all those expenses have to be paid before the person who owns the business gets $1 and so it doesn't matter where you if you are starting a landscaping business on day one, or if you are Elon Musk, you know that is a fact that affects everybody this sort of cash flow. You know the idea that you do not get paid $1 until everybody else gets paid. So now for maybe for Elon Musk or Bezos, or the guy from Amazon or whatever, they have passed that and now they have all the money they need. You know, I don't know what their experience is, but for most normal people, regardless of the size, for anybody that you personally know, that you might know that runs a business, there is. A there is this sort of cash flow issue of, you know, you do not get any money until you have paid everybody else in the whole program. So that become that is a challenge that people have to be aware of. It's not necessarily a deterrent. It's just you gotta be aware of it when you're making these decisions

right now. How does you know having employees or working on a team and you being the leader of that team, how does that maybe deal with you being responsible, and how do you lead that team when it's you on the line? So,

yeah, that's a good question. So so I think effective leaders praise in public and correct in private, and I think that that comes from a very real scenario, which is, if something good happens, it's important to share credit with the people who are there if something bad happens, because every everybody, every business, every person, every int, every there's going to be a we're going to make a mistake. There's something's going to go wrong, or whatever, you know, if something goes wrong, and your employee, let's say you work at a inner, you know, an international hardware store, and somehow that company does something, they make a mistake, and somebody gets hurt, or they make a mistake and they in any kind of way. Every single person can walk out of Home Depot and go work at Lowe's, you know, if it's a, if it's McDonald's, and McDonald's does something that makes a mistake or miscalculation, or whatever, they can leave there and go to Wendy's. You know, if it's, you know, if it's ABC company, they can, if it's a law firm. One, they can leave and go law firm. Two, you know, there's one person that's going to be holding the bag if something goes wrong, and that is you. You know there is one person that's going and it's your name on the side. It's your responsibility. It's so no matter what, how much you know, how committed you are to helping your clients into providing, you know, exceptional service for your the people for whom you work. Sooner or later, something else, something's going to go wrong, and everybody in the whole operation is free to walk out the front door with no notice, and then you got to sit there and deal with it. And so that's an important thing to to for people to to realize when they're sort of thinking about, Oh man, it would be so great to be that guy or that girl, or whatever it may be, you know, but you got to recognize the whole picture of what's going on, the enormous responsibility, the response responsibility, of taking care of these people, you know. And we have 1000s of clients, you know, and so in lots of and whether you have, you know, a landscaping company, and you got a business, and I know it, a guy that has, has a wildly successful landscaping company, he was a very helpful to me. I used to have breakfast with him, and he used to tell share this information with me about business and those kinds of things. But, I mean, he had dozens of employees and trucks and stuff and all this, and that's an enormous responsibility, and people just need to recognize that. What would you

say the most is the most important thing for people to know when they're looking to start up their business well,

so when people are making a decision about whether to start their business. Start a business or not. Let's say you're deciding, should I start a law firm or should I not? You know, you're going to have to choose between two things that are potentially uncomfortable. One of those things is the uncertainty of having a business, of starting a business, like, are you going to make it? Are you not going to make it? Are you going to be able to do these things? Are you going to be able to get through these challenges and these challenge, these pitfalls and these, you know, whether it's cash or personnel or changes in the law or whatever you know. The other thing is, you know, so, so that's one thing that can be uncomfortable, is that uncertainty. The other thing is, regret. Are you going to regret not taking a chance on doing something? Because if you the great thing about having your own business is you can make these decisions, if you'll remember, the reason I didn't want to work for this other some of these other firms, is because I didn't agree with how they did things. I mean, even some of the guys that were phenomenal lawyers and great and great people. You know, there are some differences in how I would have approached something from where they and the and if you have your own shop, you can make those decisions. You can make those determinations. You can you can provide the level of service that you think is, is appropriate, is good, you know what I mean. And so if you have this vision in your mind of how you want to help people and how you in the service that you want to provide and how you want to make people feel, you can do that. You have complete power and autonomy and authority to do this thing. Will you regret not be able being able to make those decisions? And is that? More important than the pain of uncertainty in the times when you might not be able to sleep at night because you're worried about the way something one of these decisions will impact someone. 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.