Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Welcome to the G.E.M. series powered by rocket level. On this podcast, we empower entrepreneurs to succeed by setting big goals, executing like a pro, and having a fearless mindset. The G.E.M. series is all about investing in yourself. We're here to share the path to getting what you want out of life, by sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who have done this themselves, providing thorough research from our team on what careers and habits are yielding the best results, and discussing the mindset it takes to overcome the obstacles that all future entrepreneurs will face. Investing in yourself starts with putting in the work every single day, and this podcast is here to help you do exactly that. My name is Blake Chapman. I'm the vice president of the ambassador program here at Rocket Level, and I am thrilled to be your host for the G.E.M. series. Speaker 2 (00:00:48) - Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of the G.E.M. series. Today I am honored to welcome Ernie to our podcast. Hey Ernie, how are you doing today? Speaker 3 (00:00:57) - Hey, welcome. Glad to be here. Speaker 3 (00:00:58) - This is fun. Speaker 2 (00:00:59) - Yeah, it's super fun. You know, I just to give the listeners a little bit of background, um, Ernie works in some spaces that I've been really curious about. And on a whim, I, I just scheduled a couple of minutes to chat with you, and, you know, I really loved your mission. And, you know, our initial conversation. And I thought, well, heck, I kind of want to get your advice on on a few more things and, you know, talk to you on the show. So thanks. Thank you so much for joining today, Ernie. Speaker 3 (00:01:29) - Yeah, no, I enjoyed our conversation when we chatted, and I know I'm going to enjoy this one as well. So thank you for having me too. Speaker 2 (00:01:35) - Absolutely. And for anybody that somehow doesn't know you yet, would you mind sharing a little bit about, you know, yourself and what you do? Yeah. Speaker 3 (00:01:45) - So I'm a philosophy major who couldn't get a job as a philosopher, so I had to resort to going to law school. Speaker 3 (00:01:51) - And I enjoyed law school. It was great. I learned a lot, went out to practice, worked for judge for a couple of years, then went to put in new Orleans is a fairly large sized firm. Did business cases that go to court, which we call litigation, commercial litigation, and learned a lot, had a good time. At some point, I started to use technology and computers and become paperless. And, you know, I just I like things that can help me do a better job, which actually, I realized made me kind of stand out in the legal world because a lot of lawyers were afraid of technology and also didn't really see the benefit of spending less time doing work when they were billing by the hour. So I left the firm I was working at to go out on my own to see if I could take my vision and make it work as a solo lawyer, which I did. Lawyers wanted help for me to some other solo lawyers said, that seems cool what you're doing. Speaker 3 (00:02:51) - Um, so can you show me how to do it? And I started doing lectures and I started getting paid for it and then realized there was a business model. And so now I don't practice law anymore, which is why I'm happier, have a healthier complexion. And it's something about living in a conflict ridden world, you know, that just really wears you down. But but now I just help lawyers with technology. So that's what I do now. Speaker 2 (00:03:15) - That's and I think that's so cool that, you know, you actually were able to recognize that moment that where you're like, well, well, gosh, all these people are coming to me in my own practice kind of wondering what was going on before, you know, running your own practice. Did you always have an inclination to put in like, put systems in place or as I've just been a theme in life? Speaker 3 (00:03:39) - Yeah. I mean, in a way, I didn't realize that that was something that I had a background in, but my paternal mean, my maternal grandfather ran a company in the country of Panama, and he was very he was obsessively organized and he had systems. Speaker 3 (00:03:56) - Now, I didn't stop and think, boy, my grandfather sure has a lot of systems. He just seemed to me to be kind of rigid. But everything in his world worked really well. And he had he had processes for everything. And he and so I saw that then. And then I went to work for that judge that I mentioned for a couple of years. And he had this document that he called the Bible, and he was intentionally, obsessively systematic. And his court ran really well. And he had a lower docket than all the other judges, because everything he did was efficient. And so I learned from him. Then, like I said, when I went in to practice, you know, there wasn't such a premium paid toward being efficient. Although, generally speaking, the word the the firm I worked at was fairly efficient, but they weren't obsessed with it the way my grandfather and the judge were. And that's when I guess I started to realize, like, wait a minute, something's in my DNA and this isn't working quite for me. Speaker 3 (00:04:49) - And technology sort of forces you to be systematic because, you know, you can't be haphazard about automation. So all of those things kind of coalesced. And that's what kind of drove the engine. Speaker 2 (00:05:01) - Yeah. Yeah, that's I think it's it's so powerful to take the time to recognize that systems can absolutely, you know, fast track your business, remove headache. I heard you kind of sharing on a podcast about a lawyer that and you know, I think this is an older video, but you're talking a little bit about how how habits are systems to. And it's important to analyze those. You know, the guy who answers his phone no matter what. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to get into. So do you ever have to break systems? Speaker 3 (00:05:37) - Um, yeah. I mean, you do like, you know, sometimes something mean one if you're if you're thoughtful and you're trying to be, you know, optimal. Then you're always asking yourself, okay, just because this worked well a year ago, ten years ago, whenever, that doesn't mean I'm just going to plow ahead mindlessly, because that's how people find themselves doing things that no longer make sense, as they said, well, you know, that was what made sense ten years ago. Speaker 3 (00:06:05) - And so you have to be alert to that, especially in the world today, because, you know, everything's changing. And like with AI coming on board now, I tell lawyers like, look, this tool is going to be really powerful. It's going to really help you. And you can't look at it as something like, well, I don't need to worry about that because it's going to erode, eat away at, cannibalize parts of what you do and you have to pay attention to this. Right. So yeah, you have you can't rest on your laurels. Speaker 2 (00:06:32) - Yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. I you know, I've had to learn that lesson myself and to lean into the tools that are, that are readily available. I actually wanted to ask for your advice. I mean, what are some of the kind of easy ways that you've you've seen people be able to access AI and kind of get started? Because I know ChatGPT is obviously useful, but I'd love to hear from you as somebody that kind of specializes in this stuff. Speaker 3 (00:06:57) - Um, I mean, you know, first off, I think my skill, you know, I don't hesitate to call it a superpower, but, you know, the thing that I definitely do more than many attorneys and other people is I'm just always trying to learn new things, and I'm always trying to learn a lot of things. And, you know, many of those things are just because I'm curious about them and they don't have any monetary or practical value. That's immediately apparent. But when you're always trying to learn new things, you develop certain little tricks for either not going too far down a rabbit hole or, you know, coming out of the rabbit hole quickly. And with technology in general, that skill got optimized because it's changing all the time. You have to be paying attention. And so I learned like to piggyback off of what other people are doing. So I would I would find other people who I could trust. And I evaluated them, I could assess what they were doing. And then I looked at others. Speaker 3 (00:07:52) - And so I compared them to other people. And if there was commonality, I'd go look at that. That's all working for these people for the most part. Then that's obviously a best practice that could be adopted by me. With AI, it's even harder because it's new. It's changing like five times faster than any technology. You know, maybe even more than that. And what and how it does what it does is harder for us to understand. I mean, basic automation is almost mechanical, like if this happens and that it's like looking at gears in a mechanical engine, but this is sort of a black box. So, you know, that's a lot of that's a lot of disclaimer to kind of explain. Don't just take everything I say. I'm telling you how I've done it. And what I decided to do with AI is find a few things to focus on. So OpenAI was the first company that started doing GPT, which is the most recent version of AI that's taking the world by storm. Speaker 3 (00:08:52) - So they're the ones that are most, you know, they're at the top of the hill. Okay, Google scrambling to catch up. Other things are trying to catch up. So I'm going to go with them because they're ahead. Right. And more things are going to connect to that. And as it turns out, as far as hallucinations go chat OpenAI and ChatGPT is the platform that does it the least, right? So that's another good reason to use that. And there are specialized AI tools that lawyers can use or other people can use, presumably. But again, I'd rather use the general Swiss Army knife tool so that I can wrap my head around it in the best, most versatile way. Sure. So I would say to everybody, ChatGPT is free, use it. Claude AI is the other one. The company there is anthropic. Those two are similar. So sometimes if I want to use if I want to upload a document, I think you can now do it with ChatGPT because they're realizing that people want that. Speaker 3 (00:09:52) - But Claude allowed me to do that when ChatGPT didn't. So I've learned how to use Claude, and like I said, it's free and you can upload a document. And so, you know, you have to learn by doing, right? You can't learn this stuff by reading about it. That's the other thing. How do we learn? We can learn by reading. We can learn by reading about people using it and you know them explaining how they use it. We can watch people using it that's better than those first two. And then we can do it ourselves. When we do it ourselves, that's when we start to wrap our head around things. And of course, reading is all that stuff's good. And that's more helpful if you're doing it yourself, because then you're informed by what you're doing and comparing it to what you read or what you saw that people doing. So you need to be using AI to understand it. If you're not using it, you will not be able to understand it and leverage it. Speaker 2 (00:10:41) - And this is part partly why I'm really glad to have you on the show. You referenced a term hallucinations. What does that refer? Speaker 3 (00:10:47) - Or two. And. Yeah. And. Yes. Yeah. So it's it's a term of art now with, with AI and generative AI. And what it refers to is that they will do these amazing things. You can say something like, you know, tell me the top ten books or the top ten best practices. And it'll just come up with this very confident explanation, but then sometimes it'll have information that is 100% absolutely false. And so in one way, it's better than Google, but in another way it's not because Google just points you to information and then you can evaluate. Yes, yes, there could be people with bad websites, but Google's algorithm over time will detect that ChatGPT just generates these these hallucinations. And the reason why it generates them is that it creates its answers by predicting what the best answer should be. So it takes this vast ocean of human language that it's read books and articles, and it's the Library of Congress times, you know, 10,000. Speaker 3 (00:11:54) - And it just takes all this information and it kind of guesses based on this, you know, summarizing all this information and understanding it. What the what a good answer would be to your question. And it delivers that. But because it's predicting it and it's and its mission is to give an answer, not say I don't know. And if it says I don't know, that's useless. So it sounds confident, kind of like one of those kids in high school that hasn't read the book, but it's going to be us. It's way through the thing. It'll give this very confident sounding answer that will be 100% wrong about a particular thing. Sometimes, like I asked, who are the top three experts in the field of legal security for virtual law firms? And it gave the top two names of people I recognize, and then the third name I also recognize it was me. I am not an expert in security, and I didn't do that because I was the one prompting it. I just happened to catch it making this mistake and that it also said, you know, Ernie Swensen wrote a book, you know, cyber security for lawyers. Speaker 3 (00:12:55) - No, I did not write a book about that. And I don't even think there is such a book. So it's it's hallucinations aren't trivial. It can go really off the edge. And so you have to check its work. You know, you can't just take what it says and assume it's correct. Um, that's the only downside. Speaker 2 (00:13:13) - Well, hope you were you were honored by the the nomination briefly. Speaker 3 (00:13:19) - Um, you know. Speaker 2 (00:13:21) - Something that I was I was kind of thinking about to. Ernie was at what point? Because you kind of made this leap twice now. So what felt like the bigger leap for you? You know, going solo or going to what you're doing now? Speaker 3 (00:13:38) - Yeah. Think the bigger leap definitely felt like giving up the practice of law entirely to teach lawyers. And it was I mean, the reason why I felt that way, or one big reason was. Um, we we have identities around the work we do. Like, we just think of ourselves. Somebody says, what do you do? I'm a lawyer, and I. Speaker 3 (00:13:58) - You know, that's not really who I am. But that's how we respond to that question. And over time, that just kind of works its way into our psyche. And we go, yeah, I'm a lawyer. Well, are you really a lawyer if you don't practice law anymore? And the answer is yes. But, you know, for a while there, it was like it tricked me up like, well, I don't know if I'm a lawyer. And then also like, what if this doesn't work and I have to go back to practicing law? So it was more mental than anything else, although it's true that I mean, well, it's mental and that was a lot of it, but it was also I had to learn how to market myself in a different way. I was starting from scratch. Getting new clients was, you know, a new challenge, although I had the ones that had hired me, but now I had to make that my full time gig. So I had to get acquire a lot more. Speaker 3 (00:14:42) - So yeah, it was it was a lot more challenging to do that and to switch from big firm to small firm. Speaker 2 (00:14:48) - Yeah, I can imagine. And, you know, did you have a support network around you to. Speaker 3 (00:14:53) - Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No. That was yeah. You need to have that's one of the things that I think everyone needs. You need to find people that will understand why you're doing what you want to do and support you with that. Like I grew up with. I was very fortunate, you know, both of my parents, my grandparents, you know, my circle of family members were always people who were like, yeah, you want to try that weird thing? Go for it, right? They were entrepreneurial. They were outside the box thinkers. And I was the most mainstream. You know, they were kind of like, why are you in a big firm? Why don't you go out on your own? And then, Ernie, why don't you start, you know, a business. Speaker 3 (00:15:31) - So I had a support network around me that encouraged me to do it. It was more me and my fears. That kind of was the resistance point. Speaker 2 (00:15:40) - That's. That's so powerful. And you're absolutely right. I mean, it is. I don't know, it's. I get it. You know, I get it whenever people are like, oh, it's hard because you have everybody that's close to you saying that you can't do the thing that you know, you're really wanting to, or maybe you shouldn't do the thing. And, you know, you have to give some, some merit to the people that you trust as well. You know, if somebody is telling you, hey, that sounds like a sounds like a lousy idea. I mean, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't believe in yourself by any means, but having having people around you that that understand and get the perspective that you're coming from, that just, you know, will take you so, so incredibly far. I feel like and yeah. Speaker 3 (00:16:25) - Yeah. And it's so it's like I have a friend who may have a couple of people I know who have left the practice law altogether. And the, you know, they've come to me and asked me for advice. And really what they're asking for is for me to go, yes, that's a good idea. And I do think about it and say, you know, it's I would say it's not a good idea if what they were trying to do seemed unrealistic to me. But when I talk to them, they'll say, oh, thank you. Because, you know, my family is like, really? They don't understand how it could give up. You know, the practice of law that got this law license. No, mind you, these are all non-lawyers, okay? Because lawyers, you know, if somebody's trying to leave and it looks like they've got a good shot at surviving, leaving most lawyers like, yeah, baby, go for it. You know, like break out of prison. Speaker 3 (00:17:09) - But family members will tell you that, but they don't understand. Right. So that's the other thing. You can't be taking advice or being limited by people who not only are discouraging you from doing something you want to do and perhaps should do, but they don't really understand your mind, right? They just telling you what they think from their perspective. So it's really important to find people that understand the right perspective. You know, advice is advice, but it needs to be put in context and have the proper perspective. Speaker 2 (00:17:38) - Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it kind of makes me think of whenever you were going through that journey, what was your like, what has been kind of your decision making process on, you know, do you have any advice around that intuition versus you know, how to how to weigh those things against each other and, and you know, yeah. Speaker 3 (00:17:59) - I mean. Speaker 2 (00:18:00) - That's the best spot. You know, the best. Speaker 3 (00:18:02) - Yeah. I mean, I think intuition is definitely a part of it. Speaker 3 (00:18:05) - Like, you know, I, I think I'm kind of a balanced left brain, right brain thinker. I understand rationality, love, rationality. I don't like to make decisions. When I'm in an emotional state. I try to keep emotions out of decisions. But intuition isn't necessarily emotion. Intuition is kind of an overall sense of what you should be doing. Like, you know, we all I think we all have that. Some of us are more in touch with it than others, and sometimes we're discouraged from trusting intuition like, oh, you can't trust your intuition, just do what's sensible. But again, sensible in what context? Right? Like so you should listen to your intuition and then, you know, explore it. And if it keeps nagging at you, telling you, you know, you really should be doing this or you're really not happy over here doing this other thing, then start using your rationality to figure out how to get where you want to go. But intuition should not be ignored. Speaker 3 (00:19:05) - It's definitely a big piece of the equation. Speaker 2 (00:19:07) - Yeah, yeah. And you know, I guess intuition can be proven over time too. You can do, you know, small tests to make sure that you're you're moving in the moving in the right direction. Um, what was it. Yeah. What was it like at the beginning of starting your business? Whenever you're first kind of acquiring new clients, how was it maybe even developing that, that sales muscle a little bit? I don't know if that's a muscle you had to develop. Oh, I. Speaker 3 (00:19:29) - Had to develop that one from scratch. Mean philosophy major. You know, to lawyer. There was no sales training in there. Um, that was the biggest thing. So that was, you know, thank God I recognized. And I think it was because. So I had a website. I still have it a blog called Ernie the Attorney. And I was like early to the blogging game and had all the success getting attention at a time when it was, you know, easy to get attention on the web. Speaker 3 (00:19:55) - And so that made it easy for me to start my own solo firm. But when I went from that to this other thing, at that point, it was now a very crowded market to try to get people's attention online. Even though I felt comfortable blogging and and using Twitter and LinkedIn and all these things, I understood that. But then I realized, like, wait a minute, something's off here. I'm I'm missing something. So I kind of went back and started studying marketing by buying books and then eventually online courses. And then I would go to conferences, and I met people and realized that there are principles to marketing and sales, and those are basically built around human nature. And so really, I kind of feel bad and think I should have learned those things while I was a lawyer, because law practice is a persuasive profession, but I had to learn it from scratch. And then it kind of helped explain why I had some success that was kind of blind success, like Mr. Magoo, you know, stumbling around in the cartoon. Speaker 3 (00:20:55) - So that was what I had to do. I did learn marketing from scratch, and Seth Godin was one of the people I studied Dan Kennedy. And there couldn't be two more polar opposite personality types, and Seth Godin and Dan Kennedy. But that's a good example of how I looked at both of them and said, wait, I like Seth Godin as a person. I don't really care for Dan Kennedy, although he occasionally makes me laugh, but they're saying a lot of the same things. Aha! That means these are principles. These are best practices and strategies and tactics. And then I felt confident using those, even though even when at first didn't fully understand. Them enough or trust that they would really work for me. I kept thinking, well, they worked for Seth Godin and Dan Kennedy and a lot of other people, but why should they work for me? I didn't trust that that could happen. Speaker 2 (00:21:41) - Yeah. Any big examples that you kind of took away from those guys? Speaker 3 (00:21:47) - Um, yeah. Speaker 3 (00:21:48) - I mean, the one mean. Well, first of all, marketing is communication. Sales is communication. And then you get into particular types of communication. But in that communication process it's very important. It's obvious to build up trust okay. That's that's what you need to do. And if you can learn how to build up trust with strangers online, um, then you can build up trust with people in person. Right? So it's the hardest thing to do. But the principles are, well, how do you get people to trust you? Well, one, you provide value to them. You let them understand how you think. You let them understand what your values are. And on the website you only have one shot at that. So you either need to pummel people coming to your website repeatedly, and then hope that out of the thousands of moths that come to the flame, a few, you know, ah, customers or better strategy, get their email address and then market to them on your terms over time and earn their trust that way. Speaker 3 (00:22:52) - But you're going to communicate in both cases. And so learning what to say first, what to say next, what components you have to have like on a website or anywhere you need social proof. This is like basic marketing. Like what is social proof? It's proving to people that other people already trust you and like you, and therefore that makes them a little more comfortable feeling like they should also trust you. But that piece is not the only piece. You have to combine these things into a recipe where all the ingredients come together in the right way. So marketing was it was really challenging for me to understand it, to wrap my head around it. But once I did, I. Then I simplified it down to a few basic things and realized, well, this was what was going on in the practice of law. You know, like you, you want to prove something, you're going to need witnesses. Why? Because documents do not speak for themselves. Um, and just a whole bunch of things saw parallels. Speaker 3 (00:23:45) - So wish I had known all that when I was a practicing lawyer in one sense. But in another sense I don't. Because maybe I would have stayed practicing law and definitely happier not practicing law. Speaker 2 (00:23:55) - Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Um, and you know, something that I thought was really unique about what you do is, well, I guess it's just something I admire. I mean, you just know your ICP really well, it seems like being a past lawyer, but then, you know, I've met plenty of people that have come from, you know, working in an industry to helping that industry out, and they still don't have their finger on the pulse of what their prospects are actually looking for. Do you have any advice around, like developing your your niche a bit more or figuring out what you know needs and needs these prospects have? And yeah, I'd love to know your thought process. Speaker 3 (00:24:38) - Yeah. No, this is this is another thing. This is really hard for me to wrap my head around. Speaker 3 (00:24:42) - And then now that I understand it, I'd say, you know, 80% of. You know, you maybe it's better than that, but understand it really well. Understand? The most important thing to do, if you're going to communicate well and build trust, is to have a really clear understanding of what your prospective clients or customers are worried about, what they're worried about most, what they're worried about, that they're not telling you, what they're worried about, that they don't even know themselves. You really have to almost read their mind, right? The fortunately, if you have, you know, thousands of prospective customers, they're not all worried about a thousand different things. They're really probably worried about 12 things at most. And of those 12. Or it could be fewer. Let's say it's seven. There'll be 1 or 2 that are topmost in their minds. And a lot of times there'll be 1 or 2 of their topmost and 80% of your prospects minds. Your job is to figure that out. Speaker 3 (00:25:45) - And the only way to figure that out is through actual dynamic interaction with enough of those people until you understand them. Talk to me. Yeah, you got to talk to them. Right. And that was one of the big it took me forever because I was like, well, I'm on the internet, you know, I can like, have them fill out a survey and I can automate some stuff. It took me a long time to go, you idiot. Speak to them now. You don't have to go physically. Be in person. But you must. You must be speaking to them enough times until you start to catch like, oh my God, they're saying the same thing over and over again. They're saying, this way, these are the words that they are using, most of them. Then you put that into your marketing materials. And again, that was one of the things where I realized like, well, that's what lawyers do. Like what do lawyers do? They go have mock trials, they have focus groups, and they study what these people say. Speaker 3 (00:26:36) - And I remembered when I first went to work at the Big Firm, after having clerked for the judge for a couple of years, and I'd seen a lot of jury trials, but I'd never participated in the preparation. And they were doing a mock presentation because they had taken on a case of somebody who had a brain injury. And they weren't they weren't a firm they didn't do personal injury. But one of the partners had been prevailed upon by a neighbor to take this case on because their son had been injured. He said, you'll do it. And and liability was like a lock. The question was damages. And so we had to figure out, well, what are the damages? Okay. So you had to do a mock trial. And one of the things that happened in this mock trial was the jurors and you, and you'll try it in front of three sets of jurors and they're all separated. And then their deliberations are separated, and you observe them through a one way mirror and record it and all that stuff. Speaker 3 (00:27:29) - And all three of them kind of said more or less the same thing about, well, you know, the plaintiff was in a car and the defendant was in this truck and it was a big truck. And and the bigger the truck, the more responsibility they have and the greater the liability, you know. And now, should liability affect damages? No, it shouldn't, but human nature is human nature. So then when they tried the case again or mock tried it again, they emphasized the size difference. Like look at this truck big, look at this car small. And it was accurate representation. And then they got an even bigger verdict. So they realize going into trial, what they needed to do was tell that part of the story. That was the that was the small piece, the 5% that drove 80% of the results they were looking for. But they didn't, you know, all your training and law and everything else, and that doesn't give you that insight. You need to get inside the minds of people. Speaker 3 (00:28:25) - So I started thinking about that a lot more as I was trying to figure out marketing, because it's like, oh, there you go. Same principle, you know, get inside the minds of your prospect. Speaker 2 (00:28:33) - Yeah. What great advice. And, you know, that's a lot of our audience that are solopreneurs or people that are just starting becoming entrepreneurs. And I think that's a superpower that people don't realize we have, which is the the ability to pivot at a moment's notice to to adjust to whatever the need is that your client has. You know, I know for me, I'm like reframing it that way. It doesn't have to be a burden. Whenever you're like, oh, that. Yeah. Think that I need to change a few things. Everybody's saying the same thing. It's it can be something that can be celebrated, you know, because. Yeah. Speaker 3 (00:29:11) - And that's a, that's the advantage of so like, you know, big firms. And I was in a bigger firm and you saw that there's a dynamic that's very inhibiting toward that quick pivot. Speaker 3 (00:29:24) - It just doesn't happen. So I think the world is optimizing itself more for the solopreneur and the small small firm because they can pivot. And the word the world now requires you to be able to pivot quickly, because there are certain changes that you need to take advantage of, and there's certain challenges you need to avoid. And big firms, I think, are the ones that are in more trouble. I mean, they're only going to persist when they are operating off of the things that only big firms can do, which in the case of knowledge work, like if you're a professional services person and you provide if people come to you because of the value of your knowledge, then being in a big firm, generally speaking, isn't going to be beneficial unless you don't want to figure out the marketing, unless you don't want to figure out how to delegate work and you don't want to hire, you know, like but all those things can be figured out pretty quickly and easily, comparatively speaking. And if you go team up or, you know, join a group of others, you know, entrepreneurs who are trying to do what you're doing, you can pick up great advice. Speaker 3 (00:30:28) - And that's the thing that's helped me the most is. Join groups of people who are doing more or less what I'm doing, not lawyers, although some of them are lawyers, but generally they're not. And I learn a lot because they tell me what's working and what isn't and what's not working anymore. Okay, well then let's stop doing that. Let's start doing this because you have to be on your toes. That's that's the thing everyone has to do, whether you're big or small. But if you're small, you can pivot easily. Speaker 2 (00:30:57) - Absolutely. And and it's yeah, that's the total total super power. That's total freedom. You know, which you're right. I mean, I think people are coming to recognize that that's a need whenever they're, you know, looking for different solutions that are that are out there. I also wanted to so tell me, I don't mean to keep time traveling with you, but I was wondering, you know, when did you start? When did you first realize that your, your business model had some traction? And. Speaker 2 (00:31:29) - Yeah. How did you how did you feel and what was your. Yeah. Where was your head at at that season of life? Speaker 3 (00:31:35) - I mean, I thought about it a lot so I could give a long answer, but I'm not I'm going to give the short answer. The short answer is. There were little pieces at first, so at first it was kind of like catching a whiff of something. And in my case, the first whiff was when I went out on my own and people knew me as like, oh, God. Or and he's, you know, he likes technology. He's going to go out on his own. And I had this lawyer friend who did work, and he reached out to me one day said, Ernie, listen, you know, I'd really like to pick your brain about some of this technology stuff, but, you know, I don't want to, you know, I want to pick your brain a lot, and I don't want you to not get compensated. Speaker 3 (00:32:13) - So I'm going to just pay you $1,000 and, you know, would you give me, like, a couple of hours of your time and a couple of hours of my time for $1,000 up front, and I don't have to write any papers or file any motions? Huh. That seems pretty cool. Then I just let it go because I didn't think that could happen more than once. And then when I started speaking more, I got somebody reached out and said, look, would you come speak to our group in Alaska and I started getting speaking gigs, and they paid me. And then the lawyers who came to these things would come reach out and say, they want to hire me. So it came in waves and it was unintentional. I wasn't planning it, and I'm glad I wasn't planning it, because I would have then felt agony in the time between the long stretches of time, between people asking me to do something that I liked. But by the time I started getting asked enough, I was like, hmm, if I quit practicing law, I'd have more time to figure out how to get more of this work. Speaker 3 (00:33:13) - That was my assumption, and I had started studying marketing, and I'd started testing some of the principles because I would I would run my own events for lawyers, for them to get continuing legal education. And that was the way I got a bunch of them in the room at one time. So that was, you know, I just kept iterating and, and, you know, adopting more things and testing them, which is really what everybody does. You know, when you start a business, right, you just try new things, see if they were. Speaker 2 (00:33:41) - Yeah, yeah. That's what you that's what you just have to do. And whenever you were first getting going, was the goal to continue scaling the business or what were some of the initial goals that you kind of had in mind for it? Speaker 4 (00:33:53) - So a number of you have probably seen the words rocket level thrown around a little bit here and there, and I wanted to take a moment just to explain what that is. So the G.E.M. series comes from Rocket Level, who is somebody that I work with directly? And Rocket Level is a marketing technology company that specializes in meeting the unique needs of small and medium sized businesses. Speaker 4 (00:34:16) - So over the years, through strategic collaborations with national brands, franchise groups and local partners, Rocket Level has become a trusted ally for SMBs operating in the market. And right now, rocket levels primary focus is to provide a comprehensive range of marketing solutions for SMBs, including website development, SEO, paid ads, email marketing, social media management, and just about anything you can think of by offering a done for you approach. Rocket level takes care of all aspects of digital marketing, allowing SMBs to focus on their core business operations. I know that everybody talks about this all the time. It's so hard to focus on the fulfillment side of things and been an absolute honor getting to partner with Rocket Level throughout the years, and be able to see them provide a solution for people that maybe don't have the talent right now, maybe don't have the time, and maybe don't have the playbook or the tools available. It truly is buttoned up in such a way that you can give somebody your high level objectives and get this stuff knocked out. Speaker 4 (00:35:16) - So if you're curious, you should definitely, definitely give us a shout. Speaker 3 (00:35:21) - Uh, I mean, I had unrealistic goals, you know, which everybody does. You know, like when one thing worked, I thought, oh God, this is great, I'm going to do this again. And looking back, it was so delusional. But as an example. So lawyers have to get in in most states, 48 states or whatever it is, 46 states, lawyers in those states have to get continuing legal education credit either every year or every three years or something like that. So in Louisiana, you have to get 12.5 credits every year. And so my first foray was running my own events, as I just said. And then I thought, this is great. You know, I run these and I was running them in December between Christmas and New Year's, because most lawyers were kind of not doing too much work then. And I wasn't doing so much work then. And it was in New Orleans, was easy to get a hotel room. Speaker 3 (00:36:14) - And so I was able to get a hotel room, conference room, get the lawyers in. And of course, it was easy to get them because it was right before December 31st when the clock was running out and they were desperate but didn't factor in. And I just thought, oh, you know, they love learning about technology. I'll just run these events throughout the year. And then I was like, hm, it's harder to get people to come to these things and give me money, right? Like a complete idiot. Of course, I had no other marketing trick up my sleeve. Then what I now know as scarcity. When something's about to run out, people will go grab it. So, you know, that was one thing I learned. Um, but yeah, mean. God. It's just. There's so much to learn. But I think the main thing is. There's really not a lot of principles to learn, and there's not a lot of strategies to learn. The thing you have to learn is which of these strategies do I work on first? Because they set up the next ones and don't get obsessed with tools. Speaker 3 (00:37:18) - This is where people go down rabbit holes because tools are tangible. The most tangible thing. Oh look, if I get this, the software, this will change everything. And not really. Not if you don't use it properly and not if you don't have a strategy behind the use of it. So I made that mistake. That was another one getting tools because it makes you feel good. Look, I bought something. This is tangible. Yeah. So yeah. Don't do that. Speaker 2 (00:37:42) - How many times? Yeah. I can't tell you how many times. I mean, I've signed up for something just. And I just had to learn that lesson myself of, you know, you're like, oh, the capabilities would be, you know, unimaginable. But then you realize, oh, my gosh, I don't actually have a successful, you know, implementation strategy set up for this, you know, and that was a big thing for me was just having to learn. I guess part of what attracted me to this conversation, too, is just having to learn the importance of building out your all of your SOPs. Speaker 2 (00:38:18) - The importance of having a repeatable step for for everything so that you can, you know, plug and play anybody into the equation. So as you were growing. Yeah. I mean, did have you had to like, have you figured out how much of your work that you can outsource versus the items that you know are kind of precious to you? And how do you look at things like that? Speaker 3 (00:38:41) - Yeah. So like again, outsourcing is a whole nother trial by error thing. So let me just say the most important things that you need to figure out how to do yourself. And then maybe you can start to outsource them. Are the communication piece right. Like I must learn how to communicate properly with my audience. That needs to be my voice, my words. Paying other people to do it is expensive and ineffective and doesn't, you know, if it scales. It only scales by being either a combination of expensive or not that effective. And you're getting the wrong kind of people because you're just, you know, throwing darts at the dartboard without looking. Speaker 3 (00:39:22) - So communication and knowing who you're trying to communicate with most precisely and not trying to talk to everybody all at once and not trying to talk to too many people, figuring out who's one subset, the smallest possible one that makes sense for you to speak with. It's like that's the most important thing. Then. Then having a website, then collecting testimonials. This is a huge start. This immediately. Every single person that you've helped, you need to figure out how to, you know, ask them in the right way. That makes you not feel awkward and gets the best testimonial from them. Like, yeah, you know, that person really helped me because you need that. You need that social proof. So those are the things you need to get. And that's going to be you don't want to outsource that or delegate that or buy it off the shelf from somebody, because they're not going to care about it as much as you do everything else managing your emails, calendaring, any kind of drudgery, all that low level stuff you should automate if you can get rid, don't do at all. Speaker 3 (00:40:26) - That's a that's another big one. I'm a huge proponent of the 8020 principle, and a lot of people think it's it's not feasible and not realistic, but it is. And I'll give the example this way. Like if you have 100 units of energy time and energy money, you know, units of thing to make things happen and you expend 100% of it all, 100 units to get 100% of the results you're looking for. You have failed as a solopreneur because you cannot afford to waste your resources that way. You have to say, what if I use 20 units here and get 80% of these results? And then I use another 20 units here you get another 80, another 2080. So now you've got 80 times five of results using those 100 units. Right. And what people don't realize about the 8020 rule is that means you need to say no and not do those 20, you know, those 80% things on each individual thing to free you up to distribute that those energy, you know, units elsewhere. Speaker 3 (00:41:34) - And that's a mindset shift. You know, outsourcing is a mindset shift. Delegation is a mindset shift. Oh, I can't possibly give it to somebody else to do it. Step. You know, barrier number one. Yes you can. Oh I tried it and they didn't get it. Oh really. Okay. How did you tell them to do it. Oh I just told them okay. You probably weren't communicating effectively. The most effective way to communicate in the modern world is to create a video. Blabber as much as you want, show people what you're doing if you can, and just let them spend the time watching and then go, do you understand what I was doing? Can you do some of that? Okay, do it right. Like you shouldn't be letting your mind prevent you from giving work to other people who will enjoy it more than you will. And if they're in the Philippines and you pay them $12 an hour, they'll enjoy it a lot, you know, and it's the same level of skill. Speaker 3 (00:42:25) - You're just tapping into a resource that's somewhere else. So you have to be creative and imaginative. But your your mind is going to be the barrier. This is this is where the barrier is. Speaker 2 (00:42:37) - Yeah. Why do you think that is? I mean, guess, you know, for me, I would think it's just it just comes down to maybe like trust and not not being willing to let that go. But you've talked to a lot of people, I'm sure, that have been maybe hesitant to, to let go of some of those things. What's been your experience with that? Speaker 3 (00:42:56) - Well, here's where I'll draw on. You know, my my dad, my dad was a psychoanalyst. He was a shrink. And he was big on mindset. And he, you know, sometimes inadvertently. But, you know, sometimes he would explain things to me. And I just realized from a very early age, you know, your mind either unlocks amazing opportunities or it will shut you off from doing, you know, from picking up, you know, $1 million off the ground. Speaker 3 (00:43:22) - You know, like your mind is is the is the key. And so I think what happens is people a lot of it is just conditioning. Like this is why it's important to be around people that are supportive and doing the same thing that you want to do. Because if you don't believe fully that that thing that you want to do is possible, you're going to kind of wince and try it. And then when you wince and try it and it doesn't succeed, you're like, yeah, that's what I thought. It's not going to work. Yeah, you need to be around. People go, you know, no, you can totally do that. Like if I when I was learning to ride a bike, you know, my dad taught me to ride a bike. I was like, I was just afraid, you know, I was young, like all children. And I fell and he goes, okay, that's no problem. Just get up and do it again. And he was very encouraging and we all have experienced that. Speaker 3 (00:44:02) - But as we get older, we we don't we're not around people who do that. And the thing we're doing is and mainstream like riding a bike. And so you have to find ways to help support your mindset because otherwise people are going to go, yeah, that thing you're trying to do like that doesn't make sense because they don't see it. They don't want to do it. They don't understand it. But if you're around people who are doing it, they'll go, look, just get back up on the bike, you know, come on, just go. You can do it. Speaker 2 (00:44:31) - Yeah. There's so much power in surrounding yourself with people like that because I don't know. Yeah, I, I have the same thing where sometimes just seeing somebody even just do it right, or, you know, the theoretically the person watching somebody else ride a bike right in front of me. I'm like, you know what? I can't be that far off. You know, I know this person. You know, they they have to breathe and drink water just like me. Speaker 2 (00:44:59) - You know, it's it's it's totally, totally doable. Speaker 3 (00:45:03) - Yeah. I think one other thing needs to be said. And that is since we used a simple analogy like the bike where you get success pretty quickly and it's tangible, it's obvious, like I'm riding the bike, the things you need to do to market yourself and all these other things. There's a lot of planting a seed in the ground and watering the ground and not seeing anything there for a while. So you really have to trust that process and stay with it and be persistent. You can't give up too soon. And that's just why chasing shiny objects is death. Because you're you're distributing your energy across a lot of things without getting any benefit. You need to find those few things, stick to them for long enough until you start to get the results. And there's a certain magic moment where you're starting to get enough results pretty regularly and easily. It's like the flywheel effect kicks in, and then it's not a lot of work to keep it going or to boost it a little bit, but it's a lot of work to get it going in the beginning. Speaker 3 (00:46:03) - But mostly the work is just consistency, finding the right thing to do and doing it consistently. Speaker 2 (00:46:08) - Yeah, I read an essay a while ago the the excellence of mundane or the mundanity of excellence. That's what it was. And oh, it's always stuck with me. Just the idea of, you know, to to get really good at something, you know, basically what they did was they studied swimmers and they found that there was more power in just consistency and focusing on the small movements and, you know, isolating, you know, what is a perfect stroke and, and spending time, you know, just doing that consistently over time. Then, you know, talent or anything else, you know, because anybody. Yeah. Just talent is is is maybe a jump start. But consistency outperforms. Speaker 3 (00:46:51) - Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Consistency is what makes everything work. I mean talent will get you a you get you accolades and then that'll make you feel good. And then you'll be consistent in practicing. Or talent will make you slightly better than other people, or much better than other people who are practicing with the same consistency. Speaker 3 (00:47:09) - But most people who are successful if you look at them. Uh, or I believe most people are successful. Like, you know, people look at Steph Curry, the basketball player, go, oh Steph Curry, you know, his dad was a basketball player. He was destined to be a great basketball player. But does it documentary if you watch it. No he was not destined. His father was not encouraging him to do it. And he had a weird shot that kind of worked. And his dad said, nah, if you're going to go in the pros and you know, or if you want to go to college, which is his first thing, you know, you're going to need to change your stroke. And that's going to be frustrating because you're going to now start missing. And he started getting frustrated. He wanted to quit. His mom was well, go ahead, quit. You know, if you don't want to do it. But if you want to do it, I recommend you listen to your dad because he knows what he's talking about. Speaker 3 (00:47:49) - Now, fortunately, he had a person consistently around him that he could call on. But if you watch that documentary, you realize he's not as good as he is through pure talent like he had. No, you know. Aha. He's a brilliant, you know, kid, he should be on the basketball team. He was scrawny. Yet everything working against him where he is today, that's purely because of consistent, constant, high degree of effort. Absolutely. So he is an example of how far you can go with that just going for you. Speaker 2 (00:48:18) - Absolutely. And you know, I getting into this, I was really interested in your philosophy major as well. I was curious, yeah. Have any, you know, have any of your studies kind of poured into what you, what you do now? And do any of those philosophers that maybe you've studied, do you draw from them at any point in time? Speaker 3 (00:48:38) - Yeah. I mean, think what philosophy? I mean, yes, there are certain philosophers whose stuff I like more than others and, you know, but I'm I'm more enamored of philosophers who helped me do something tangible. Speaker 3 (00:48:51) - And a lot of philosophy is people just circling, you know, the bait and discussing things for which there's never any proof but philosophy. To me, what I liked about it was one. Every other discipline basically grew out of philosophy, and the origins of philosophy were like, hey, let's notice what's happening, you know, let's document it. Let's keep track of it. One branch became science, another branch became psychology, another branch became economics, and then those were separate branches. But to me, the centerpiece of all of it is like, let's take a look at what's going on. Let's notice, pay attention, pay attention with data. And, you know, write things down so you can observe them over time more clearly. And don't ignore fundamentals. Always be asking yourself, you know, like a Jenga thing. If I remove how many of these blocks can I remove and still make this work? Because whatever is at the core is the thing that drives the engine again. 8020 principle and and the 8020 principle is, is infinitely fascinating to me. Speaker 3 (00:49:56) - There's a lot of great books about it now. But if you take you know, so the idea behind the 8020 principle is there are 20% of inputs that will drive 80% of the results, like 80% of a company's sales will come from 20% of its customers. As an example, 20% of the clothes that you have in your closet, you wear 80% of the time, it's all over the place. It's once you start to see this, it's everywhere. But then the next level is you say, well, what's 20% of 20%? The answer is 4%. And what is, you know, 80% of 80. It's 64. So 4% of the inputs drive 64% of results. This is why Niching. And this is why finding those core simple things. That's what's most valuable because you're saying, well, you know, there's some somewhere in your 20% drives 80. Yeah, but somewhere in there, 4% of that is driving the 64. That's what you want to be looking for. And that to me, is what philosophy kind of awakened in my mind, is always be looking for the simplest, most powerful principles. Speaker 2 (00:51:03) - Man, I love that so much. You know, the 8020 principle is something that, you know, I've, I've looked at from like a very high level perspective, but looking at your website and reading a little bit more, it had I, I just think there's so much potential for people to, you know, save, save all this time, you know, to actually get where they need to go from, from practicing this. Um, because I don't know, I can't, I can't I can't imagine how many people are out there that are just like, I'm sure we've all felt that where it's like, where are our I'm completely tapped out. I'm doing so much. Why are my efforts either not yielding all that much or, you know, not taking me to a place of of the kind of productivity that I'd like to. And this is a really, really great structure for that. Speaker 3 (00:51:53) - Yeah. Mean you want leverage. You know, it goes back to the old Archimedes thing. Like if you have a lever, you can move a big rock to you otherwise wouldn't be able to move. Speaker 3 (00:52:00) - And then the knowledge work world you need cognitive leverage. So cognitive leverage means you need to use your thinking abilities to isolate and solve bigger problems without getting caught in the weeds and spending too much time and spending too much money. If you can solve big problems, you know 80% of them with 20% effort, or solve 64% of the problem with 4% and offload the rest to delegation and outsourcing, automation, whatever. You know, you're you're an elite athlete. You're an elite performer. Yes. And that is, in fact, how people like, you know, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, how did Warren Buffett get successful? Well, he focused on a few things he understood really well and got really good at those few things. And over time, through compounding and compounding is a wonderful thing to take leverage of, like, you know, money over time. Compounding. At first, it's growing slowly again, back to the at first it's harder, and at some point it takes off like a rocket and you're not doing anything. Speaker 3 (00:53:02) - That money's just earning interest on itself. So if you start when you're young, you can you can accomplish a lot, even making a lot of mistakes. And not even, you know, working that hard. The problem is you waste most of your energy when you're young because you don't know how to use it. As you get older, you can still accomplish a lot, but time's getting shorter and you can't afford to be making stupid mistakes. Speaker 2 (00:53:28) - And Ernie, you know from where you began and guess where you are now. What would you say is your, I guess, your your mission that you're on currently or you're kind of goal that you're, you're trying to attain right now, you know, that's been been in your brain. Speaker 3 (00:53:46) - Well, I mean, I like helping people, but I don't like helping people just in general. Like, here's a Band-Aid. Let's talk about, you know, this coffee and, you know, help, help, help. But I'm not really sure what I like to get people, results, significant results that they don't think that they could get, that are the result you know, in the direction of what they want and help them achieve that. Speaker 3 (00:54:07) - And a part of that is through automation and outsourcing. But a lot of it is mindset. A lot of it is, you know, saying, look, if you look at it this way, or if you just try this one thing and you'll start to see this result, that'll help you be more confident that you can go down that path. So it's kind of weird that in a way, if I, you know, once I decided, well, I want to help people and get these significant things. I wound up having to do a lot of what my dad did for a living. He even said I never wanted to do that right. Understanding human nature, understanding how to motivate people and inspire them and, you know, answer their questions the right way. That is a big part of it. Um, but that's also something that people can get by being in the right group. Right? So I'm part of a group, you know, I run a group of lawyers and the lawyers are in that group say, you know, that's great. Speaker 3 (00:54:57) - You help me. I'm like, well, wait, stop and look, I helped you to this extent, but what really help you was being in this group, right? These group, the group of people helping each other. That's where the magic power is. Speaker 2 (00:55:10) - Amazing. And how can people keep up with you now? Speaker 3 (00:55:14) - They can Google. Yeah, they can Google Ernie the attorney, and they'll find my website. And all of the stuff I have, you know, is available there. The resource, it points to all the resources. Um, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, on I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Substack. Think Substack is a great platform. I highly recommend Love people check out. Yeah, it's still it hasn't been ruined yet and I don't think it will be. But you know, you never know because, you know, humans can't have nice things sometimes. But it's true. It seems. Yeah, it seems to be populated by people that are thoughtful. And the writers are writing well, and and the platform is designed from the beginning to monetize, you know, help the writers monetize their work so they're not having to sell ads. Speaker 3 (00:55:57) - There's no ads involved. And so feel like Substack will take off. I see a lot more and more writers going, they're famous writers. So I like Substack. So yeah. And and my newsletter is called the 8020 principle if you want to go there because everybody. Speaker 2 (00:56:14) - Excellent. You heard it here please. Yeah. You know, I know that you're going to have some people wanting to check out more of what you do. So Ernie, I want to thank you again for for joining me on the show. This is a lot of fun and I learned a lot from you. So thanks for taking the time to. Speaker 3 (00:56:29) - Absolutely. Happy to. Happy to do it. Happy to do it. It was fun. Speaker 2 (00:56:32) - Thanks absolutely everybody. This has been an episode of the G.E.M. series. I hope you all have a wonderful day. And until next time. Speaker 4 (00:56:43) - Thank you for listening to today's episode of the G.E.M. series, where we're always here to share the goals, execution, and mindset of thought leaders around the world. Speaker 4 (00:56:51) - If you're listening to this, I'm sure that you have some pretty big goals for yourself, and I would absolutely love to hear them. Actually, here at Rocket Level, we just launched our newest partnership program where the goal is to, well, build a relationship with you guys. I want to talk with all of you coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs. This program is going to be providing free sales and marketing training, giving you access to a massive network of small businesses, and even paying you to allow us to handle the fulfillment side of things. Over the last 20 years, we've been able to learn a lot about how to handle digital marketing for a small business, and frankly, we want to pass that along. After working with business coaches and consultants all over the world, we decided, let's make it formal. Let's make this thing happen. So if you're at all curious, check out the links attached and please reach out directly. I would love to meet you all. Remember, I'm always a email, text, phone call or DM away. Speaker 4 (00:57:48) - Everybody remember to be awesome and do awesome things a whole lot more coming soon. Take care.