[00:00:00] Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a guest today that I’ve been really looking forward to for a long time. I’ve known of him for years, and have interacted with him for maybe a little less than that. But finally, we get to meet and talk, and excited to do that.
[00:00:16] Jonathan Hawkins: So, today, we’ve got Ryan McKeen, a lot of you probably heard of him. He’s done a lot of different things over the years, and we’re going to talk about those. And Ryan, I try to count it up, I think you might be a three or four-time founder at this point of law firms and your new venture. Did I miss any or how many times you’ve been a founder?
[00:00:36] Ryan McKeen: Four law firms.
[00:00:36] Jonathan Hawkins: Impressive. We got a lot to talk about. Why don’t you quickly introduce yourself for those who may not know you?
[00:00:41] Ryan McKeen: I’m Ryan McKeen. I have been an attorney for 19 years, focusing most of my practice on personal injury. I started with a small general practice as an associate, doing anything that came in the door. I called it bus law. We were on the bus stop, and people would get off the bus, and I’d be the young associate, and they’d [00:01:00] be in my office, and handling all sorts of the world’s problems. But really a passion for representing individuals over time that grew into a real focus of all the cases I had on my desk of personal injury.
[00:01:14] Ryan McKeen: It was a kind of firm, an old school local town firm where you serve people, did their real estate closing, their will, they got the DUI, they got the divorce, they got in a car accident, all those things. Sort of the circle of an individual’s legal life. And in 2012, I left as an associate to start a firm, Freed McKeen, which is now Freed Marcroft, with my partners, Meghan Freed, and Kristen Markcroft.
[00:01:40] Ryan McKeen: And I did so at that time because, yeah, my firm was very established, respected but old. And I thought, what am I going to do for my future? At the time, the cloud really became Sam Glover from Lawyerist was in my ear all the time, just listening to him on podcasts and reading his blog post. And things like Clio had come of age [00:02:00] and Dropbox and Google Workspace, all of these things, RingCentral made it possible to start a tech-forward firm really cheaply, because you’re paying essentially for one subscription.
[00:02:10] Ryan McKeen: Many people who go into legal business with their friends, it did not work out. Meghan, Kristen, and I split up within a year. We probably stopped talking to each other, I wanna say, I don’t know, maybe within four or five months of starting the venture. And formally split in a year later. We are now friends, the story ends up working out well. That wasn’t always the case, but time has healed that. We can get into that if you want. I get an email from them on a Saturday saying, we want to split. I said, great let’s split. We didn’t really have anything to divide. It was one of these divorces without any assets or kids or anything.
[00:02:46] Ryan McKeen: So, I opened up an office three days later in Glastonbury, Connecticut as McKeen Law Firm, as a solo. Got that off the ground, started focusing my practice much more on personal injury. And [00:03:00] ultimately, I got some really big cases and some death cases and decided that what I wanted to do was handle them and not just refer them out. And so, I started really investing on becoming a trial lawyer and how to handle these kinds of things and training with trial lawyers across the country, which really gave me confidence to handle some of these cases.
[00:03:21] Ryan McKeen: Ultimately formed a Connecticut Trial Firm. Where we focused exclusively on Connecticut Trial Firm and ended up growing that from two of us to about 40 of us. And ultimately, in May of this year, left that firm, and I started Best Era Consulting. I have what I call the world’s tiniest personal injury practice. I have McKeen law is born again. So, this is where the fourth firm comes in because I get so many referrals. I basically refer cases out, but if some friend or family wants me to handle their case, I’m committed to not handling more than, five cases.
[00:03:59] Ryan McKeen: I’m [00:04:00] handling three right now on the personal injury side and otherwise, I’ve partnered with some of Connecticut’s best firms to make sure those people are taken care of.
[00:04:07] Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. We’re going to dive deep into a lot of these things. But backing up, you started out doing bus law, you did a little bit of everything and then you ended up narrowing into personal injury law. I get a lot of questions from lawyers. I’m sure you do too, about choosing a niche. I’m a big believer in focusing on some niche practice area, maybe one or two. But you need to go deep, I think, on an area. You become a better expert, become more comfortable, you can do more things with it, it’s easier to market, it’s easier to tell people what you do.
[00:04:38] Jonathan Hawkins: There’s lots of reasons. I get it. Some small-town practices that you got to do a lot of different things. But one of the things that sounds like you got to do and people ask, how do you find the niche? And it’s often in my opinion the process of taking away things, you try a lot of things and you start taking away things you don’t want. So, maybe tell us your process of how you landed in personal injury [00:05:00] and why that versus something else?
[00:05:02] Ryan McKeen: I think for a few reasons, one of which is, I think it became a lawyer. Because I was in a car accident right before I went to college. And I saw the unfairness, and I liked the fighting for the person. I went to law school not wanting to represent companies or be a government lawyer or prosecutor. That wasn’t really what I wanted to do, I wanted to help people. And I think a few things really excited me about personal injury law. One of which was like, it was obviously very relatable, I had gone through that. I had been a client. That was my only legal experience. The only time I had ever met a lawyer was as a result of that.
[00:05:36] Ryan McKeen: And also, I think it was a space where I could be creative. And also, that creativity of building a case. Because it’s what you have to do as a plaintiff’s lawyer, you have to build your case. I also like that this was separated from billable hour work. I’m never going to be one who’s point six, point one, that has never been who I am, [00:06:00] or what I want to do, I would have found that very oppressive. The fact that I didn’t have to bill hours, I could be creative, and if I was able to, I could help people, and if I could work up the case, I could make good money on a contingency fee basis.
[00:06:12] Ryan McKeen: More than certainly my clients who were getting off the bus. Who were charged sometimes with varying degrees of peeing where they weren’t supposed to more than they could pay me. So, it was a trifecta of those things and I think on my desk, when I had a whole bunch of different cases, they were the ones that I wanted to work on the most.
[00:06:31] Ryan McKeen: So, I think it was an intuitive thing where it’s like, Hey, I enjoy this. I don’t get excited about a new divorce. I don’t get excited about criminal court. But I get excited about the car accident. And just listened to that and explored that, and went deeper there.
[00:06:45] Jonathan Hawkins: Now before you became a lawyer, were you a teacher?
[00:06:47] Ryan McKeen: I went to Framingham State College, which is the first normal school in the country, the first school to train teachers. Christa McAuliffe, supposed to be the first teacher in space, was a graduate of Framingham State, so she’s got a strong [00:07:00] teaching background. And I wanted to teach history. But very quickly through talking with some teachers, and some guidance counselors, I really realized that teaching high school wasn’t going to be for me.
[00:07:13] Ryan McKeen: I can’t sit still enough. I need to be out of the classroom doing things. So, I abandoned, that my freshman year, and got really involved with doing student government, and that ultimately led me going to law school.
[00:07:27] Jonathan Hawkins: The teacher thing never quite left you, we’ll get to that later. Back to your first firm. You had been at a firm for seven or so years, and then you decided to go out. What was the spark? We talked to a lot of people that said, Hey, I want to do it one day. And then you talk to them and they say, no, I’m not doing it. And then others that they knew from day one. Where do you fall on that spectrum and what drove you over the edge to do it?
[00:07:50] Ryan McKeen: Two things. One of which was a Burberry scarf. My wife and I had just had our first daughter, our first child, our only daughter. We didn’t make much money, but I had saved up money and I [00:08:00] had bought her a Burberry scarf for Christmas, my thing was I was going to use a Christmas bonus to pay for that. My Christmas bonus just never came. There was no bonus that year. I don’t know why like I was billing and doing good work, but that was never addressed.
[00:08:16] Ryan McKeen: There was no bonus that went out. So, it really left a bad taste in my mouth. And like my bonuses at the time weren’t massive bonuses. I was making $65,000 a year and maybe a good bonus would be about $5,000, $2,500, you know, anything. I was a small firm, I wasn’t in it to become wealthy. And a few weeks later, I happened to be on vacation in the Bahamas, I was reading the Steve Jobs’ biography and I had a few Bahama Mamas and some cocktails. What I just said, I’m 32 years old, and I feel like my world is becoming too conservative, too small. I don’t think this is going to be the rest of my life.
[00:08:59] Ryan McKeen: [00:09:00] And I texted my friend, Meghan Freed, and I said, Hey, Meghan, do you want to start a law firm? And this Meghan at the time was working as an inside counsel for an insurance company here in Hartford, and that probably couldn’t have been further from her mind. And Meghan being the free spirit that she is was like, really? And I was like, yeah, really. And she’s like, let’s talk when you get back. And so, we started talking and that’s how we started the law firm.
[00:09:26] Jonathan Hawkins: So, from the time you’re sitting by the pool, having your Pina Coladas until you actually opened the doors, how much time went by?
[00:09:33] Ryan McKeen: We opened our firm within six months. Opening the doors was a little bit of a challenge. We ran into all sorts of construction and electrical issues. And we once got shut down by the city of Hartford. We were supposed to open, but Superstorm Sandy came through, that created a problem. And then shortly thereafter, a pipe burst in the building, flooding our office which caused all sorts of damage. They fixed the damage, and what [00:10:00] happened again in the spring, somebody turned on the water, water comes gushing through again, does more damage.
[00:10:05] Ryan McKeen: All of which, if there’s any lesson in this, is to say, sometimes the universe is trying to tell you something. And the universe was trying to tell me very much that I was not supposed to be in this place. And I think I’m probably a little bit more stubborn or goal-driven that I maybe should be in some ways.
[00:10:24] Ryan McKeen: And so, to another person, there would have been some other signs along the way that this wasn’t for them. But the universe just dumped water literally on my dreams.
[00:10:33] Jonathan Hawkins: So another question I have is, you knew you wanted to start a firm. Why not just go it alone? What was the thinking in your head about bringing on or starting it with some other people?
[00:10:41] Ryan McKeen: I think it was that I was scared, I am also a social person. I think the worst part of my actual career was actually being a solo. Going into the office all by myself was like, this is not my zone of comfort. It was the idea of building a team, a [00:11:00] vision for how I wanted to collaboratively build a business and practice law. And I think, having two free spirits along with me and Meghan and Kristen who were bold and believed in big things helped me believe in myself.
[00:11:15] Jonathan Hawkins: Now today, and over the years, you are a teacher of law firms, vision, growth, hiring, all these things. And I want to talk about all those for sure. But back then, was that on your radar? Or is that something you learned later? Did you have a vision when you opened the firm with those two partners?
[00:11:33] Ryan McKeen: No. This is like the first chapter in my first book of Tiger Tactics where I talk about this. Our vision was really, ultimately, it manifests itself in a lot of different ways. But ultimately, the lack of vision and then maybe the lack of alignment of vision between us caused a whole host of problems.
[00:11:53] Ryan McKeen: Our vision which I’ve got the book Traction right next to me here as I hold it up for those listeners. Was basically, [00:12:00] we want to be a really cool law firm. I hate to break it to anybody out there, but that’s not enough. If you can learn something from me being cool or fun or modern or new. Yeah, it’s fun, but it doesn’t actually create what you need to have a viable firm or business.
[00:12:18] Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a great point. I have a lot of folks come to me saying, we want to start a partnership, what should we be thinking about? And I send them a list of questions that have nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of a practice. And it’s more about exploring vision. What do you want out of life?
[00:12:32] Jonathan Hawkins: All these things, because people ask me a question, I get a lot. One reason that I’ve lived through is a divergence of the vision of the owners or the partners. And vision can change, people change over time, but if you’re not on the same page in the beginning, you’re not gonna be on the same page later, in my opinion.
[00:12:48] Ryan McKeen: You are absolutely correct. Envision is, I think, the number one, two, and three reasons why firms break apart. Most of the time people are able to cobble enough money to keep it going. If they so [00:13:00] choose, not all the time, but a lot of the times. But it’s really the people wanting different things.
[00:13:05] Ryan McKeen: And I think, we had never really decided what we wanted to do except be like a cloud-based firm. I write about it and I say, here I am quoting myself. This is awful, I shouldn’t be doing this. I wrote about it and I said, it was about for us, we’re gonna be an awesome firm. It was like setting out on a voyage, building an awesome ship, and then being like getting out from port and being like, where are we gonna go?
[00:13:27] Ryan McKeen: Okay. We gotta sail, it’s hard, there are waves, we’ve got scurvy, all these different things. So, we really did not have that destination in mind and ultimately, time reveals the truth. Time is a great way for that, and they really wanted to be family lawyers, and they’ve been very successful. They’ve grown probably the largest family law firm in the state, I did not like family law. And I wanted to do personal injury work, and really, there’s no reason in 2024 for a personal injury lawyer to [00:14:00] have a firm with a family firm. They’re very different models, very different client bases, different systems, different software, different everything, different marketing. So, it was far better that we went and did our own things.
[00:14:11] Jonathan Hawkins: You guys eventually diverged. You want to do PI, they want to do family. Going back to the beginning, were you already divided that way? Or were you all doing a little bit of everything in the beginning?
[00:14:21] Ryan McKeen: We were all doing a little bit of everything. Look, you talk about money, our capitalization of that firm was $2,500 for me and $2,500 for Meghan. We took the Steve Jobs’ Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish thing to heart. I was selling properties for the court on people’s lawns for foreclosures. We were taking criminal cases, representing the city of Hartford in zoning appeals. We were trying to survive. That was priorities one, two, and three. And that’s a very tough phase for a law firm to go through.
[00:14:52] Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a common story I’ve heard before. You’ve got people that come together, they’re nervous or afraid to be on their own. And so, they [00:15:00] get together with some friends or people that they respect. They all have different practice areas, and they think maybe there’s going to be some sort of synergy that they’ll figure out later. And they’re scrappy, you gotta get dollars in the door to pay the bills.
[00:15:12] Jonathan Hawkins: But because you’re pulled in every direction. Back to what you said earlier, you don’t have that guiding light to go towards. I’ve seen it many times, it just doesn’t work in the end.
[00:15:23] Ryan McKeen: There’s like these memes where it’s like 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, we’re all awesome. 2, we’re gonna work hard. 3, question mark. 4, it’s going to be awesome. That’s the thing, and it’s really the step number 3 that where people fail, because people go into this with the best of intentions, they are often hardworking, and the 3 being the question marks often does not lead to 4, which is awesome.
[00:15:49] Jonathan Hawkins: And the other interesting thing about starting a firm nowadays, in my opinion, it’s never been easier to start a firm in terms of the technology and everything you need to actually start [00:16:00] it, has been easier than never been easier. Which is why you really need to focus on the other pieces to be successful.
[00:16:06] Ryan McKeen: No question. It’s never been easier, it’s never been more cost-effective. And also, there’s just never been more advice on how to do it. Even in 2012, when I started this, the real piece of advice out in the wilderness was, you had Jay Foonberg’s How to Start a Law Firm. I had Sam Glover and Aaron Street out there in Minnesota doing stuff with lawyers.
[00:16:29] Ryan McKeen: Carolyn Elefant doing her blog, Lee Rosen would go out on Twitter and do some things. But that was basically the source that I had to understand how to create a law firm. Lawyers weren’t talking about EOS and traction and KPIs in ways that I think are pretty commonplace right now.
[00:16:50] Jonathan Hawkins: Back then, there weren’t that many resources. Today, there may be almost overwhelmed with resources and people don’t know where to start. What’s your view on that?
[00:16:59] Ryan McKeen: [00:17:00] Start. I’m a slow baba in some ways, sometimes it’s the voice that you hear it from. So, it’s different people out there are going to respond to different other people. I think, human nature. And the second is the timing. Sometimes, I hear something years ago, and I keep it, but then I hear it now, and I’m like, oh, yes. On my journey, or in my place, or facing my problems. I’m ready for that lesson. My thing is just to keep engaging, and keep listening to podcasts like this. Keep looking at the suggested podcast, look in Facebook groups, and read books.
[00:17:32] Ryan McKeen: Maybe Stephanie’s Book really resonates with you or maybe Tiger Tactics does. But I think it’s finding those things for you is really important and different people are going to get you to different places on your journey. It’s not a forever thing, no one person is going to, no matter how good or well-intentioned they are is going to be able to give you everything that you need. Because it’s all new level new devil, so engage.
[00:17:58] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I’ve had [00:18:00] multiple coaches over the years. At some point, you outgrow them and you get all you can out of them and you need a different perspective.
[00:18:05] Ryan McKeen: Yep.
[00:18:06] Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So, let’s go back. Your first firm, you guys decided to go your separate ways. So, then all of a sudden you’re on your own. What was it like starting over from scratch? Although probably, you’d at least had a few lessons under your belt at that point. Maybe you got started a little bit easier the second time. Tell me about that.
[00:18:24] Ryan McKeen: Yeah, a lot easier. Because if you suffer a setback out there in your career like this, which you will or in business, you are starting from experience. You’re not starting over. How to file an LLC? I didn’t get scammed by the company that files FEINs, I got it directly from the IRS.
[00:18:43] Ryan McKeen: The first thing that Google’s gonna pop up, it’s not the IRS website, okay? It’s gonna be somebody who charges you like $300 to do something the IRS will do for you for free. I understood corporate leasing. I understood how to set up bank accounts. I understood the chart of accounts and QuickBooks.
[00:18:59] Ryan McKeen: I had an accountant [00:19:00] lined up. All of these things were lessons that I had learned. And so, really it took maybe six months for us to launch Freed McKeen. Six hours for a McKeen Law Firm to be a thing to have a logo, to have a lease, to get furniture. So, I was able to move much faster based upon what I learned. And that’s been true every time I’ve started over.
[00:19:21] Jonathan Hawkins: And when you started McKeen Law, was it PI exclusively? Had you gone all in yet?
[00:19:27] Ryan McKeen: I was doing real estate at the time, and I was doing general litigation. I had some PI, but I didn’t have a volume of PI. I probably had like under 10 cases, but I had some family cases. I had some commercial litigation companies just suing each other. That’s what commercial litigation is, Ryan. I took some election law cases. I loved being in court. I loved the fight. And that’s what I did a lot of, and I used real estate to bring in some cash which was fine.
[00:19:56] Jonathan Hawkins: That’s huge. You got to get cash in the door. That’s one of [00:20:00] the questions a lot of the new PI firm people ask, how am I going to float this? Cause you’re looking at 12 to 18 months typically before the cash starts coming in. So, I guess you were able to transition out. You had the paying clients that you could slowly move into the PI or did at some point, did you just jettison everything and go, I’m all in PI?
[00:20:18] Ryan McKeen: No, it was a slow. It was a slow intentional process. I just didn’t have the money, and for people out there looking to do this, as we grew Connecticut Trial Firm from start to payday on average was 529 days. And every case you take on was debt. I’m paying lawyers, I’m paying experts, I’m advancing expenses, I’m doing work, I’m not getting paid.
[00:20:42] Ryan McKeen: And look, some of our cases, they would settle within months. And in other cases, we still have one going on, the $100 million verdict, where it’s still up on appeal. It’ll be argued before the appellate court sometime this fall. So, that’s seven years of handling that case. But on average, 529 days [00:21:00] and you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to survive?
[00:21:04] Ryan McKeen: How you’re going to pay not only your internet and your Westlaw but how you’re going to pay your mortgage? And so, your personal finances become a huge issue for us. It was keeping personal expenses very low, driving very modest cars like a Honda Civic, living in a house that we bought from outside of law school, and really trying to be frugal personally. Invest, but at the same time make the investments that I needed to make in the business, which was largely investing in my skill set, infrastructure, and then marketing to ultimately grow a PI practice.
[00:21:40] Jonathan Hawkins: You had a lot of good stuff in there. One of the things that really stood out is, I love that you knew it was 529 days. That’s diving deep, I like that.
[00:21:49] Ryan McKeen: One of the things if you’re building a firm, my advice to you is to build it right from the start and build for success. So, we started using Filevine in [00:22:00] 2017. We were like client number 17 for them, and we started organizing our data even when we were very small.
[00:22:07] Ryan McKeen: As we grew, matured, and scaled, and were able to bring in people, and hire people, we were able to go back, use that data, create dashboards through using Domo and visualization. So, every morning, my day as CEO of that firm would begin looking at the dashboards. Are we getting faster, or slower? Where are our log jams? And being able to really understand what was going on in my practice.
[00:22:31] Ryan McKeen: So yeah, those were numbers I live by both average case value and dollars. Because if you can know those two numbers, you can do some very basic projections. Which are very important for personal injury firms to understand, because you’re like, okay, I signed, 50 cases this month. The average fee is $20,000, it takes me 18 months to pay it. If it’s a June 1st, 2024, maybe in July of 2025, I should have a million [00:23:00] dollars in income.
[00:23:01] Ryan McKeen: And then, that allows you to make marketing budgets, hiring trends, all sorts of different things that you can do some basic forecast. So, that’s why those things become very important.
[00:23:09] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So, take me through the evolution of McKeen Law, or the beginning of Connecticut Trial Firm. How did that happen?
[00:23:15] Ryan McKeen: The biggest thing that happened is that I was training at Keenan Trial Institute down in Atlanta. And a younger lawyer had reached out to me and said, I have an interest in trying cases. I said, Hey, why don’t you come down? They offer a scholarship, I’ve already got a hotel room, so why don’t you just come down, pay for your plane ticket, and go learn?
[00:23:35] Ryan McKeen: One is the loneliest number in business or trial, and it’s very hard to do trial, I don’t know that you can do trial work without a team of people. At any sort of good level. There’s just too much that goes on, too much that goes into it. So, he and I started really believing that basically, some of our colleagues were settling their cases very short.
[00:23:54] Ryan McKeen: And we knew that if we put them into litigation, and were willing to go to the math, a case that we may have [00:24:00] settled pre-suit for $10,000 would go for $50,000, and we were willing to put in the work. And so, that is how Connecticut Trial Firm grew. And in part, as we kept going to these things, we started meeting trial lawyers from around the country.
[00:24:15] Ryan McKeen: And the reason why we named ourselves Connecticut Trial Firm, is so those lawyers would know where the hell we were. So, when they got a Connecticut case, or they knew somebody who did, they would think of Connecticut Trial Firm because it’s who we were, what we did. And so, that is how our practice started initially landing larger cases.
[00:24:33] Jonathan Hawkins: I love the trade name. I’m a big believer. I try to get people to do it. It’s becoming more common nowadays. There are lots of reasons why, but it sounds like the reason you wanted it was to say, Hey, we’re from Connecticut, if you have a trial, think of us. We’re the only game in town, right?
[00:24:48] Ryan McKeen: Exactly. And these were lawyers who were connected. These were presidents of their state TLAs. They were involved and they would send us business. So, that’s how we did it, and we wanted to make it as [00:25:00] easy as possible.
[00:25:00] Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So, Connecticut Trial Firm basically started with you, one attorney. And at the end, I think you said you had 40 people.
[00:25:07] Ryan McKeen: It started with me and a partner. So, there were two attorneys, and I had a part-time assistant who worked with me nine hours a week. So, that’s really how the firm started.
[00:25:16] Jonathan Hawkins: And how many attorneys now?
[00:25:18] Ryan McKeen: I think when it ended, we were up to eight or nine attorneys. As we kept growing, it became like, oh my gosh, somebody works here. Rapid growth, it’s been a long week, if I said eight or nine, we can go 8.5, Jonathan, it’s good enough for government work here.
[00:25:33] Jonathan Hawkins: Growth is hard, finding people, you break things, it gets messy, the old systems don’t work anymore. And then you’re busy doing the trial work and the client work. How did you manage that fast growth?
[00:25:45] Ryan McKeen: I think the biggest things that we did were a few things. One of which was in order to do great trial work, we really needed to have a great business. Because if your business isn’t running well, it’s very hard to devote the time, energy, money, resources, [00:26:00] everything, you giving an opening statement, so to speak.
[00:26:02] Ryan McKeen: So, we started very early on trying to invest in people, software systems that would allow us to scale. Like really, our 5th hire was an office admin which was Allison, my wife, and she was the one who handled insurance, taxes, bookkeeping, basic HR, making sure people had things.
[00:26:23] Ryan McKeen: All the things that we would never do because we were busy being lawyers. And as I see it, that’s a huge pain point for a lot of firms. You can get to four people and be okay, but if you start going beyond five people without being a full-time hire, you’re going to be in for a rocky road.
[00:26:39] Ryan McKeen: It’s ultimately going to drive down your profits. So, we did that. We built out, we used a private internal Wiki, a database for every question that we would have. We built out like 850 pages ultimately over time and how we do things. We invested in tech, and automation, and just a whole host of things that really led [00:27:00] to our growth.
[00:27:00] Ryan McKeen: And we really focused on the product. We focused on getting good results for our clients and providing a very high level of service. Because we didn’t have money to be up on billboards or TV, so our best sources of business generation were existing clients and colleagues who we would get the results for. And then ultimately, really fully implementing EOS, working with coaches, developing a leadership team. All sorts of corporate structure that sort of helped take us from about 25 to about 40 in there.
[00:27:32] Jonathan Hawkins: So, you mentioned a little earlier this $100 million verdict you got, which I know you’ve talked about a bunch. We’re not going to get into all those details, and I know you haven’t clucked it on it, I know how this works, they always appeal and it just drags on forever. But regardless, that is an impressive verdict.
[00:27:49] Jonathan Hawkins: Anyway, you look at it. And so, congrats on that for sure. But the thing that’s interesting to me, you’ve talked about this before. At some point, you created sort of a goal or a vision, wherever you want for the firm to [00:28:00] hit a $10 million verdict within a certain period of time. And you exceeded the amount and you brought up the time or you reduced the time significantly.
[00:28:08] Jonathan Hawkins: Tell me about what the goal was, and then the bigger question or the bigger thing is the importance to others out there to create these kinds of goals, almost like the traction method, you create the goal. It gives you something to work for.
[00:28:20] Ryan McKeen: Yeah. Just as I said, my first firm, we were building an awesome ship but we had no destination. And at this firm, I learned that lesson, we were gonna build an awesome ship, and we were gonna have a destination. Lee Rosen had sent me the book Traction, and what really struck with me was, the first 78 pages, 80 pages of Traction about vision. And then the Traction worksheet, the VTO.
[00:28:41] Ryan McKeen: And so, we just started doing the VTO, and it was two of us, and we said, where do we want to be in 10 years? We want to be the best trial firm in Connecticut. And that’s like a better version, a slightly more specific version of saying, we want to be awesome. And because that’s not measurable, right? There’s no way [00:29:00] to actually say that you are.
[00:29:01] Ryan McKeen: And so, we started looking around at the firms that we thought were top tier, and saying, look, if we get a $10 million jury verdict, that puts us in the conversation. That’s very high, Connecticut is a pretty conservative state when it comes to these things. And we’re like, let’s get a $10 million jury verdict. We didn’t have a case probably worth $100,000 at that point.
[00:29:22] Ryan McKeen: So, it seemed very far-fetched. But 10 years is a long time, people often underestimate, what they can do within a period that long. So, we set out to get that verdict. And It helped inform a whole series of choices because you’re asking yourself fundamentally when you know where you want to go, does this get me closer or further away? If you’re going to the trial college on cross-examination, that gets you closer, right?
[00:29:50] Ryan McKeen: You’re getting better at what you do. If you’re building software, we decided months later, two months after we did that, we did that March. By May, we had Filevine [00:30:00] because we knew we needed software to support a personal injury practice. Then we knew we needed to fix the finance piece, we needed to hire a good paralegal if we’re going to do this.
[00:30:10] Ryan McKeen: If we hire a good paralegal, we need a receptionist intake person, because we don’t want our paralegal just answering phone calls all day. And what it did is it allowed us to build in a way that got there. And then, we met our client, Mikey Cruz that September, who we ended up getting the $100 million verdict for.
[00:30:30] Ryan McKeen: We knew at that point that this wasn’t going to be a case that we were going to refer out. We knew that we believed in ourselves. We believed that we could provide high-level legal service. We knew it was going to be a lot of work. We were going to have to learn a lot. But then that allowed us to say, we’re going to keep this and not just kick it out.
[00:30:50] Ryan McKeen: And what we’re going to do is we’re going to do things like, improve our financing. So, we worked with Advocate Capital to get case [00:31:00] financing so we could bring in the experts. And so, all these things stemmed from and steamrolled from that main decision as to where it is that we wanted to go. We weren’t asking ourselves, what do we want to do? Is this for us? Is it not for us? It was like, nope, does this get us closer or further away from where we want to be?
[00:31:18] Jonathan Hawkins: I’m a big believer in the BHAG, and I’m with you. It serves almost like a filter, your decision-making filter. It reminds me of that if you say no to something, you’re saying no to one thing. If you say yes to something, you’re saying no to a lot of things.
[00:31:33] Jonathan Hawkins: So, you want to make sure you know what you’re saying yes to. That vision, the goal is the filter that helps you there. So, quick question about verdicts in Connecticut. I’m just curious. You said it’s a conservative state before this, and this was in Connecticut, the 100 million, right?
[00:31:47] Ryan McKeen: Yup.
[00:31:47] Jonathan Hawkins: And before that, what are some of the bigger verdicts in the state?
[00:31:51] Ryan McKeen: The biggest verdict in the state before that was like $33 million. And that was an extreme outlier. That was probably three [00:32:00] times like the next ten highest verdict cases at least. Verdicts over $10 million were very rare. I want to say that there had been maybe one or two, there was like one or two $10 million verdicts. And then a $33 million verdict and nothing else above that.
[00:32:15] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. It’s interesting, in Georgia where they’re popping big verdicts all the time, big ones. So, although I think that may be coming to an end, there’s a big push for tort reform.
[00:32:26] Ryan McKeen: I think, one of the things is even since we did this, there have been more bigger verdicts here. And I think, what has happened really post Covid is a change in jury demographics. And so, people who were of the baby boom generation are aging off juries. Those people were really tort reformed for better or worse for the past 30 years or so. At least maybe since 9/11, trial lawyers haven’t been the main enemy of America.
[00:32:54] Ryan McKeen: We’ve had all sorts of other things, terrorists, and just all sorts of other things that [00:33:00] occupied the political space, and not trial lawyers. So I think, the jurors who are on these juries are more distrustful of big companies. They’re more pro-people because they essentially know that the process does not favor the individual.
[00:33:17] Ryan McKeen: However they come at it from politically, you can hear the same messages. I remember in 2016, really listening to Bernie Sanders and Trump, and they were getting at the same thing, which is it’s not fair. These companies, these entities. And so, I would say that current jurors are more situated towards individuals and they’re not afraid of tagging companies for money.
[00:33:36] Jonathan Hawkins: That brings us to your new venture. I get the sense that you like to build things. You like new challenges. Like we said, you’re a four-time founder now, and your new venture is Best Era. Why don’t you tell us what that is?
[00:33:48] Ryan McKeen: Best Era is really born out of the Connecticut Trial Firm. And so, one of the things that we did is we learned a ton of lessons along the [00:34:00] way. In every aspect of running a law firm and growing a law firm. And what we decided was, there was a market need for us to step into, and to teach, and to also build products, and connections, and all sorts of things that we wish we had when we were growing our law firm.
[00:34:19] Ryan McKeen: And so, that is the position from which we started Best Era. We got started in June, our vision here was in 10 years to help 25,000 people in the legal space. So, we serve lawyers and law firms, we serve legal tech companies, and we serve companies in the legal space. Those are the basic things that we get involved in, but we want to serve 25,000 people.
[00:34:42] Ryan McKeen: We don’t intend to grow, the largest team possible. That’s not what we want to do. So, what we need to do to scale is we need to create sort of different entry points and different opportunities for people to engage with either us in a community-based way, educational-based way, or product-based way. And [00:35:00] at the very high level of things, rolling up our sleeves as we do with companies and firms, and getting into the nitty gritty. And really helping them navigate the greatest opportunities that are facing them, and ideally help move them into their best era. That’s the long and short of what we do.
[00:35:18] Jonathan Hawkins: When I saw the announcement for the Slack group, I immediately got off on LinkedIn, and I signed up and it’s a cool place. So, I’m one of the early folks in the community there. And you keep dropping all these hints about stuff that’s coming down the pipe. It’s a tease, what’s coming that anything that has not been announced yet that you can tell us it’s coming?
[00:35:39] Ryan McKeen: What we do and what is coming. It’s also just a business struggle for us in the sense that, if you’re not taking care of things on your business, it makes it hard to do the opening statement in a trial. We have a whole host of projects that we have set out to build as part of our quarterly rocks, that we [00:36:00] are working on building while at the same time, serving clients and at the same time doing things like this podcast.
[00:36:05] Ryan McKeen: And what we want to do is, we’re starting from a good position both in terms of the experience that we have in financially, and we’re not looking to rush things to market, to get them there. We want it to be right. So, a few things on on the product side of things that we’re working on, we have a book called The Way, which is a very simplified operating system for law firms, really designed for law firms under $5 million in revenue, which is the majority of them.
[00:36:34] Ryan McKeen: To help them run their businesses better, not necessarily just scale but it takes away some of the complexity and issues that we had with EOS. And it was things that we put into practice that we wanted to refine, and we’re using at Best Era to help grow our firm. The way is going to be a big thing. It’s been through several drafts. We are working on getting that published and it will be out probably in September.
[00:36:59] Ryan McKeen: It’s [00:37:00] in August now, I’m guessing by October 1st, that’s that sort of thing. Number one, with the way we are also building some support tools for it. So, we’ve got some planners that we’ve built for lawyers, law firm owners, and paralegals to help them organize their days and their quarters. We are building an online class that we call The Fundamentals of Running a Law Firm that’s going to have materials and videos and it’s going to go into the way.
[00:37:31] Ryan McKeen: We are building card decks for lawyers, and law firm owners. So, a lot of times lawyers struggle with like where to start. So, we’ve got like marketing card decks that are prompted to ask them questions. We’ve got operational ones. We’ve got LinkedIn ideas to help things. When I managed lawyers, they would want to post on LinkedIn, but staring at the blank screen was pretty hard.
[00:37:53] Ryan McKeen: So, they wouldn’t want to read a book, because they’re busy human beings, and reading a book about LinkedIn sounds like some form of punishment. [00:38:00] But the idea that they could just pull a card, like a tarot card, and then they would have a prompt, and they could write once a week would be good.
[00:38:06] Ryan McKeen: We are building out software like Ninety.io software for the way, specifically to tailor it to what it is that we want to do. We are building out software to help build systems for law firms. That’s a little bit early on in the experimental phase of it. We want to host 12 law firm owners in the Hartford area on December, 8th, 9th, I think it is, or 9th, 10th, one of the two. And what we’re doing is we’re bringing in like a tax attorney. We’re bringing in Jason Hennessey, we’re bringing in an employment consultant.
[00:38:42] Ryan McKeen: Not only are they talking, they’re going to get reports on their websites. They’re going to get ideas for their own tax planning, things that they can take back to their accountant. So, the idea there is to start, to end 2024 strong, start 2024 stronger. And it’s going to be a lot of New Haven pizza.
[00:38:58] Ryan McKeen: So, we’re going to go [00:39:00] down, there’s a course you can take about making how the New Haven folks say, pizza. We’re going to hit up some Sally’s and some Pepe’s and maybe some modern down there. So, they can enter the debate that rages online about which is the best pizza in New Haven.
[00:39:14] Ryan McKeen: We are also doing offerings. So, we have very limited offerings for coaching consulting. The basic tier, which gets people access to the Slack community, gets them access to the course, and some downloadable content, and that’s at a very low price point. And then we’ve got some mid-tier pricing, where we are going to work with 10 firms in this tier, help them do quarterlies, annuals.
[00:39:39] Ryan McKeen: Help them with consulting in between, and then we have a premium package where it’s very weekly engagement, much smaller law firms. And with that, we are doing a package for a Think Week, where they will stay at Nobu Residences in Cabo San Lucas, or they’re opening one in Punta Cana as well. But Cabo San Lucas [00:40:00] for now and get a week with their family, loved one, or whatever in a very posh, upscale area of the world and experience real five-star service.
[00:40:09] Ryan McKeen: So, we’ve got a lot going on, Jonathan. We’re action-oriented, we have a real bias for action, we work really hard, we love what we do, and we’re very excited about all that’s to come.
[00:40:20] Jonathan Hawkins: So, when do you get to sleep?
[00:40:21] Ryan McKeen: I sleep well. My Apple watch tells me that I need to start preparing for bed at 6:10 PM. It’s fun to be a founder, this is a fun phase of the business where we are small, we know each other like we’re scrappy, we’re building, not all of these ideas are going to work out, some of them are going to work out better than we thought.
[00:40:44] Ryan McKeen: The Slack community, we were like, maybe we can get 35 people in. We were doing an offsite for a law firm. Allison and I do an offsite in Provincetown, Mass, about a four-hour drive from where we are. And by the time I got the Provincetown, I checked my phone, we had 37 signups. And I was like, I guess we [00:41:00] have to invest in building out our slot community more than we thought. Cause initially, I said, okay, we’re going to limit it to 15 firms, but I couldn’t kick you out.
[00:41:08] Ryan McKeen: I couldn’t say, Jonathan, sorry, sign up number 16. I said, okay, we’re just going to roll with this. And then that grew and look, we’re committed. Our belief is, look, if we can add as much value to the world, and to the people that we serve, everything will take care of itself.
[00:41:25] Jonathan Hawkins: So, have you capped out that Slack community?
[00:41:27] Ryan McKeen: I think the community will cap out. We’re 177, what’s interesting about that community is, which is probably true of most things is, there’s a small number of people who are really pretty engaged. And then there are a whole host of people on the sidelines. But these people will DM me and I’m like, oh my gosh, you’re in this group? I get so much from this group, thank you so much.
[00:41:48] Ryan McKeen: Look, we’re trying to figure out ways to engage. We’re gonna do like a weekly Newsletter, we’re gonna add to like some of the highlights that we did for the week, or some of the conversations they may have missed. [00:42:00] So, I don’t feel like it’s too many messages at this point. So, I think we’ve got some room to grow, eventually, we will cap it. We’re not looking for this to be a thousand-person SOC group.
[00:42:09] Jonathan Hawkins: I’m in there. I’m more of a lurker and it’s more because I’ve just been super busy now. I haven’t had that much time to participate, but I check it every day and read the messages and it’s great, there’s some good stuff in there. So, anybody listening before he caps it, you got to sign up now before it’s too late.
[00:42:25] Ryan McKeen: And our goal with the community too, Jonathan, is to offer our products first to the community. So, discounts and early access because we’re not going to go publicizing our pizza thing if 12 members of our Slack community don’t want to do it.
[00:42:38] Jonathan Hawkins: And so, real quick to round out the Best Era. You mentioned, lawyers, and law firms, but you said some non-law firm companies that are law firm adjacent or what legal adjacent. Give me some examples of some of the stuff you’re working on there.
[00:42:52] Ryan McKeen: I’ve worked for months with Brett Trembly at Get Staffed Up, and his team to build a PI vertical for staffing. Brett said I [00:43:00] can tease this, I can’t go full in as to what it is we’re doing just yet. But that’s one of the things that I’ve helped them take a product-to-market, which is like, what is the need? What is this position? What does this position do? Who do we hire for? What is the training? Those kinds of things, so it’s helping take that life.
[00:43:17] Ryan McKeen: We have a tech company who’s a group of lawyers looking to build an app, and I am taking them from the idea phase into the minimally viable product phase. And helping in that way, too, and there are just various other projects that companies in the space have consulted with us or hired us for.
[00:43:36] Ryan McKeen: I can’t talk about as much but, it’s not just lawyers or law firms. And I think it helps us a lot because we can have relationships with people be on the cutting edge of things, and help connect people in our community, individual users, with some people who are doing some pretty cool things.
[00:43:55] Jonathan Hawkins: I think that’s really cool. It sounds overwhelming. I know you’re busy, but that’s not [00:44:00] all. You’re teaching a course at the law school, and you’re running a small law firm too.
[00:44:05] Ryan McKeen: Yeah, I am teaching a business of law. It’s a legal entrepreneurship course at the University of Connecticut. Eboni Nelson, who’s a Dean of UConn Law, and just a wonderful human being. Got sick of everybody saying, we should teach the stuff that you talk about, Jonathan, in law school.
[00:44:20] Ryan McKeen: And she’s like, Ryan, come teach us. Take all the stuff that people say we should be doing, and come and teach it. So, I am very enthusiastic about that. I think, this is a good lesson for those people out there, which is, if you’re doing the things that you love, it is energizing.
[00:44:36] Ryan McKeen: I’m so excited about this class at UConn. I’m going to leave that Wednesday and just be, I’m going to be up till 11:30 at night because I’m just energized by that work. So, find the thing that does that and not the thing that drains you. If I’m looking at spreadsheets, and QuickBooks, and accountants, and I’m in that phase of things, I’m drained, I’m bored. But find the things that excite you and do more of them. I [00:45:00] think, the great thing for me is it doesn’t feel like work.
[00:45:03] Jonathan Hawkins: Great advice. I want to talk about your two books, Tiger Tactics 1 and 2. I’ve read the first one. I think the CEO version is a newer version. Maybe tease out the two books and the differences between the two. I know it’s a collaboratively authored book, but what are the differences?
[00:45:19] Ryan McKeen: The biggest difference is, that Tiger Tactics, the first one, was written in 2017. And really what happened is, Billie Tarascio, Jay Ruane and I were all in the Rosen Institute, and Lee was like, you guys are nuts, you guys are the freaks. And so, he corralled us off and put us in our own private Slack channel. So, Billie, Jay, and I would just talk about this stuff all night, all day, forever. Because we’re all equally driven weirdos, I would say, in the best ways. At one point, I just said, look, we should turn this Slack channel into a book.
[00:45:51] Ryan McKeen: There is so much here about how to do this. And if we can speak about it, honestly, and we can not write about it in a how [00:46:00] to do this? But where the pain things are? Where are the things that hurt and connect with people on an emotional level? I think we can add a lot of value. From there, Tiger Tactics was born. We went out and we got William Umansky to join us and Teresa Rose DeGrey, and we decided that we wanted diverse authors to write about different things.
[00:46:19] Ryan McKeen: Because different voices may connect with different people in different ways. And we didn’t all agree on different things, but we set out some, I think we set out about 10 chapters and each wrote about a thousand words on every chapter of different things like vision, finance, intake, that kind of thing.
[00:46:35] Ryan McKeen: And then, what happened is, that book never made any money for us, but it took off in like a way that we never imagined it would. It still continues to sell, I still continue to get emails about it and it was published in 2018. And what was happening then was people were like, are you going to do a con?
[00:46:54] Ryan McKeen: I’m like, no, we’re not doing a conference. Like we really don’t have any sort of profit motive for this. And what had happened [00:47:00] in the interim is all of our firms, because of the things we talked about in the first Tiger Tactics. And so it became time for all of us who had transitioned through, being a lawyer and a business owner to really being CEOs. And then connecting with other CEOs of law firms across the country to write about the journey, not just from start to say, $2, $3 million, but write about the journey from like 3 to 10 and above.
[00:47:26] Jonathan Hawkins: I need to get that one. That’s on my list. So, we’re almost done here, you’ve had a lot of experience. You’ve taught a lot, I know you’ve talked with lawyers, you’ve got Best Era now, you’ve grown in your own firm. You’ve done a lot of things. You started several firms, you’ve started a business, consulted with a lot of folks. For people out there that are maybe thinking about starting a firm or maybe in the early stages, they’ve just started a firm. Do you have any tips? Maybe a top three, what skills they should work for? what sort of mindset maybe they should try to strive for?
[00:47:56] Ryan McKeen: Yep. First thing, you should go to therapy. The [00:48:00] stress, the anxiety, and also understanding that being an entrepreneur is a crucible. It will change you, it will expose you, the ghost of your past. You think we’re buried are very much alive in your future decision-making. Get in touch with yourself, know yourself. It doesn’t have to be an expensive coach. Find out who is on your insurance plan and talk through some of the anxieties you have.
[00:48:25] Ryan McKeen: Because your beliefs about self-worth, about money, about possibility, all of those things are maybe the biggest business challenges you face. Because firms and careers rise to the levels of growth of their leaders. And if you’re not, if you’re still trying to run a business, and I’m guilty of this to this day, it’s not a process like I can say I’ve gotten through. Some days I fail my business because I’m bringing 9-year-old Ryan to work.
[00:48:56] Ryan McKeen: And I’m trying to deal with 44-year-old Ryan’s problems [00:49:00] from a 9-year-old mindset. So, I think you really need to do work on yourself. Look, listen to podcasts like this. There’s a bunch of free information. Message me, I’ll send you a copy of Tiger Tactics. Not a problem, but engage in some of this free stuff.
[00:49:17] Ryan McKeen: Listen, engage, and also find community. That’s really like the 3rd thing like there are others out there. You are not alone in your struggles. Find people who can listen to you, you can learn from, and find people who will learn from you. So, be a little bit vulnerable and find your people.
[00:49:37] Ryan McKeen: 1, work on yourself through therapy. 2, consume books, resources, podcasts, anything you can get your hands on. Relatively very cheap, if not free. And 3, find your people, whether it’s your local bar association, a Facebook group, like the Maximum Lawyer Group, or Lawyer on the Beach, find your people.
[00:49:55] Jonathan Hawkins: So good, Ryan. So, for folks out there that want to find you, what’s the best?
[00:49:59] Ryan McKeen: LinkedIn. Find [00:50:00] me, Ryan McKeen on LinkedIn. Friend me, follow me, message me. I check that stuff and I will engage, slide into my DMs, and answer what you have.
[00:50:09] Jonathan Hawkins: Ryan, I appreciate you taking the time out this morning to meet with me and spread your knowledge. You’re really teaching, like we said, maybe that was your destiny from the beginning.
[00:50:19] Ryan McKeen: Very much, just took a 20-year detour.
[00:50:22] Jonathan Hawkins: Thank you.
[00:50:22] Ryan McKeen: Thank you, Jonathan.
