William Umansky:
So my purpose was to help people and it will never change. And the idea of money is only to keep these people here longer.
Chris Dreyer:
Your purpose does not need to be complicated to be effective.
William Umansky:
Passion's good. But if you can focus on your purpose of why you are doing something, then on the days that you feel low, you get out of bed and you do the thing you have to do so that you could satisfy your purpose.
Chris Dreyer:
You're listening to Personal Injury Mastermind, where we give you the tools you need to take your personal injury practice to the next level. Passion is good but purpose is better. In the highs and lows of owning and growing a firm, passion will take you on an emotional rollercoaster, but sticking with your purpose will help you weather the storm. Bill the Lawman Umansky believes that following your purpose, anything is possible. His values have guided his firm to seven figures and are working their way toward eight figures. What began as a solo practice has grown to five locations with nine attorneys and 30-plus staff. Today, Bill dives into anchoring your firm values, how he discovered his purpose and the importance of second chances. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Being at the forefront of marketing is all about understanding people. So let's get to know our guest. Here's Bill Umansky, owner at the Umansky Law Firm.
William Umansky:
Once you switch that mindset, it's always painful to go back because it's just like you don't really want to remember it. I think it's human nature, at least if you're an optimist to forget the things that were negative. But I know the shift happened when I was about 13, my father leaves. It was everyone else's fault. I blamed everyone for everything. So I went to three different schools, were thrown out of three different schools and had major issues. I was getting involved with drugs and alcohol at a early age, continually getting in trouble. I feel like part of the shift a little bit was when I went to an all Black school where there were very few white children and experienced the prejudice that actually came back. I had to really figure out a way to navigate that school because my first day I was beaten up and because of my color.
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
William Umansky:
Imagine being beaten up on your first day at school and trying to figure out how every day was going to be after that. So there was fight after fight after fight. What I did was I just used my sense of humor. So the new targets were the teachers, which is probably what explains why I got thrown out of schools. I used a lot of humor, and I would go after the teachers. I'm pretty sarcastic guy. I got my classmates and even the people that beat me up to laugh over time. I became very, very popular for who I was, considering that I was an outsider. Now, that didn't change my whole mindset, Chris, but I think what it did was I realized through that experience that I was not acting like a victim. I didn't realize this of course at the time. I was young and dumb. But I think it prepared me for the future. What happened was I realized, wow, I used to get beat up by these kids because of the color of my skin and had nothing really in common. But through time, developing a sense of humor, developing a strategy essentially of survival, I crossed that and actually became friends and learned a lot about culture and a lot of other things I didn't know. I think underneath all of that, Chris, was the fact that I was preparing myself to not be a victim and blame anyone. Because I could have gone to school and just keep my head down and just be afraid and have fear. When I got to college, I had worked full time, worked full time all through college in the restaurant industry. And the service industry is almost like wrestling. It's one on one. You got a table that complains to your manager, you may be in trouble. If it's second, third, fourth, you're out. There were those situations, man, where I just, when someone would say the wrong thing, it didn't matter about my job anymore. That customer became, I was ready to box. You can't navigate the world that way. So I had to learn through getting fired a lot, getting into fights and losing a lot, and really learning that it was all on me, not anyone else externally. Met a college student. It's really funny because I'm really very good friends with her. I think she's in her late 70s. She just was at my in-laws' 60th anniversary party. Can you imagine going to college? You're there, you're 18 years old. I don't even know how ... She's probably going to be pissed, but she's definitely 20 years older than me. She's maybe 38 or 40. To me, when you're 18, they seem like they're 60. I'm sure my kids think that about me now like, "He's 80 or whatever." But she was there and she was in a psychology class. I remember we became fast friends and she became almost like a second mother to me. But what was great is because she wasn't my mother, she didn't have the baggage of history between us. She was able really to get me on track by explaining the principle very, very early on, "Take charge. If you want to change your circumstances, be the change yourself." Really if you feel like you're a victim, if you feel put upon, if you feel insulted, if you feel all of that stuff, that's on you. I think gradually through the years in college, working full time and doing a lot of self-help, therapy, books, religion, faith, spirituality, all of that stuff, I started changing. I still was a pessimistic person, Chris, and I don't remember when it switched, but it really was, I'm noted for saying, "Flip it like a pancake." But there was a day and I don't remember when, and I think that's when my business started to really grow. I mean, it was one person. We're about 30 people, nine lawyers now. I don't have plans for growing much further than that. But I stopped thinking about the glass half empty and started thinking about the glass half full. Those cliches are cliches, but I can just tell you it's amazing, if something negative comes up now, I keep thinking to myself, "The glass half full." Since I've been able to, and I think there was years of coaching and therapy and all that other stuff, but I was able to come to the simple slogan for myself to basically say, "What are you going to think about in life? Are you going to be a pessimist or an optimist?" That's it. Religion came into play a little bit later, just recently. But I mean quite frankly, that's kind of what did it for me.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible. It makes me think of that Jocko Wilco book. It's fully total accountability and starting to have this awareness. Because I imagine back then you probably didn't have the awareness that it was occurring. Then you had these individuals that gave you a different perspective, which is amazing that you had that.
William Umansky:
It's only amazing because really it came down from a deep-seated insecurity I had about myself. But you could choose to be a victim of a lot of other circumstances or choose not to be. Once I realized that all that flowed from inside from a deep level of insecurity and not accepting myself for who I was, the world changed after that. But really that's what's awesome about it was that accepting and being accountable for the fact that I was not feeling good about myself. Does that make sense?
Chris Dreyer:
Absolutely makes sense. And it didn't just change in a small way. You didn't just go to law school. So you graduated cum laude, and you had this drive that came within yourself. And now you have the second chance lawyer, where you talk about taking control. So I'm curious, how does your experience translate to how you help your clients get from the victims of circumstances to the masters of their own destiny, and what goes into that?
William Umansky:
My original reason for being a lawyer was in sixth grade and there was no other reason but feeling powerless. Powerless about my parents' break up, powerless about some of the stuff that my mom was going on a personal level, powerless about my father getting into a new relationship. I became maybe a lawyer for the wrong reason initially because I decided one day, without seeing any courtroom drama or anything, "I'm going to be a lawyer." I know that the deep-rooted reason for that was to have power. But that's the reason why I became law school. And what made me driven, again, was probably for the wrong reasons, was to just gain power. But back then, I was driven and killing myself inside because I was driven to succeed, to make up for a lack of who I felt for myself inside. And that's changed. So to answer a question about second chances, simply put, there have been people in my history who've given me second chances. An employer, for example, that allowed me to stay on after I really screwed up in the kitchen and went after another employee in the kitchen, and really spent time with me, gave me a chance. A professor that gave me another chance when I turned in assignments late because I was just a schmuck and didn't want to do it their way. There was plenty of people that gave me chances and I wish I could give you one big story about a second chance. There was all these little examples of people in my life that were really trying to help me change. So when we deal with clients that have been injured in accidents and seriously injured, they really need to get a second chance. The more injured they are, Chris, the less focused they are on obtaining compensation. I've been doing this 30 years and it is never changed.
Chris Dreyer:
Have never heard that. That's incredible. That makes sense.
William Umansky:
No. Yeah. We advertise a lot of criminal defense and do a lot of online advertising for that, but we do not, I mean, we have some PI stuff on our site, but we don't really market PI because what we're looking for are those people that really deserve a second chance. That comes usually in, you could play the numbers game of course and get them that way, but usually comes in through other lawyers, vendors, people, community service, people that you've dealt with in the community. Then on the criminal side, that's even easier, right? It makes sense, if you've made a mistake, obviously you could be innocent, not made a mistake, but if you made a mistake, it's about getting you that second chance. That is very, very important. It comes from grace actually. People showed me grace. So we need to show other people grace and being grateful for what we have.
Chris Dreyer:
There's so much here, and I know that you're a follower of Alex Hormozi because I saw it in your Instagram stories earlier. I don't know if you caught the episode with him and Ed Mylett, where they were talking about in marketing, they were talking about linear equation. You do more ads, you get more leads, you do more content, you get more leads. But then they talked about referrals. Referrals are exponential. You help someone, they might introduce you to two. Those two introduce you to a few. What's interesting about what you're saying is really given a second chance and really targeting these people and caring and trying to show that value, I mean, that's where you're getting those referrals, that's where you're getting that exponential returns that quite frankly you can't compete on a marketing perspective, on a cost per case perspective.
William Umansky:
I learned this from a very wise lawyer. I'm going to give him credit. Hopefully I'm not making a mistake because I am facilitating one of his masterminds, John Fisher. But I try to call my PI clients on their birthday. And I have a list. It's not consistent, unfortunately. But I do, I mean, I may be the only guy calling someone five years later going, "Hey, happy birthday." I know a little bit about the client because I either remember them or given notes from our representation of them and remember them. So that is a very, very powerful form of marketing. I think unfortunately though you're still dealing with a sea versus an ocean or a lake versus an ocean. And if you're a pool, how many people who are focused on getting better versus getting compensation are actually out there getting into accidents again or having people like them get into accidents again? So it makes it tough because the hustle and the grind. It would be nice sometimes to think of having a stream of baseline of clients. But like you said, Chris, you can keep getting new blood into your firm, but the best blood is marketing to your old clients.
Chris Dreyer:
Is this what you're referring to on the keeping the lights on the building versus a thriving practice? Does this tie into that?
William Umansky:
That's interesting. I think what keeps the lights on in our practice is, I'll just be up front with you, is having a vision, having a mission, having a set of corporate values that you're consistent with. And last of all, going back to John Morgan again, you can't teach hungry. So you're either hungry or you're not. But if I was to answer it in one question, it's because I'm hungry. I'm hungry for different reasons now. I mean, I used to like meat and still like meat actually. But I think my tastes are more refined now, and I don't mean that in a boujie way, but just there's different reasons why I want to eat now than as opposed to before.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that makes sense and thank you for that. I think that hunger, when you have it, it helps you overcome adversity, helps you take those licks, and you keep battling, and you keep finding new ways to do and better ways to do things and serve your clients. You're in the book Tiger Tactics, and I'm not sure who the author is, but there was a few other heavy hitters in there. I believe there was a mention that there is no business model for the modern law firm. I was really intrigued by that because that statement itself is very divergent, very contrarian. So first, can you explain that? And how is your business model shifting as the industry evolves?
William Umansky:
Yeah, that's a great question. That was one of my co-authors that wrote the book. There's several of them and a lot of them are business coaches, lawyers who are business coaches who all have, I believe all of them have seven and now some are working on eight figure firms. They have employees that are happy and everything. I think that statement in my mind refers to the fact that things are changing so quickly in marketing, in employment, in our generation's changing. You have baby boomers, Gen X, millennial, but even those generations are changing quickly. It's almost exponential. Change is happening faster and faster. So to have a playbook for the modern law firm is very difficult. Having said that though, there are systems that will never change unless we are replaced all by artificial intelligence, which is possible, robots. But business principles, no matter how you slice them up, or no matter what way you phrase them, or what coaching program you have, or whether it's an MBA or not, still deals with the common elements of a business, which is tech, which is process and systems, which is having a vision, putting the right people in the right seats. There's a book called Traction by Gino Wickoff, it's EOS system that we implement in our office, data, having data to make decisions. Those things never change. You can have people that are not coming to work anymore and are on Zoom. Well, you better find a way to engage them via Zoom, which in my mind is still difficult, but you better find a way to do it. That's an evolution, meaning there's no modern blueprint system, but the business principle's still the same. Your team member wants to feel appreciated, right, Chris? Your team did a good job with this question. Probably be a good idea for you to say, "Hey, the guest said that you guys did a great job, and he actually spent time preparing because he's like, 'Man, he put time in this, so I'll put time into preparing for the show.'"
Chris Dreyer:
I think so much of that, and we're a traction agency as well, so we follow a lot of those same principles and we have a chairman that helps us. I just read The Motive by Patrick Lencioni, and it was talking about what's the CEO's job, what's the CEO's job? And it's like, to be a servant leader, take care of your people, to grow your people in quantity and quality. I was blown away because at the beginning of the book, it was just tactical. Maybe the CEO was micromanaging a little bit. But I couldn't agree more with what you're saying. Your people have to know that they're rewarded and that you care about them and their interests, and I think that makes them want to work harder for you and go to war, so to speak, with you.
William Umansky:
I actually would extend it a little further. It is not to get your team member or your employee to work harder for you, but ultimately to work harder for themselves, even if that means separation. It's almost like a Buddhist thing, which is like, "I want you to be as great as you can be. I'd like you to stay here," especially if it's a rock star. "But I'm willing to let you go with love and affection." And what I mean willing to let you go is obviously not keeping the employee here, but in your mind, my mind as the owner, willing to let them go, meaning I'm at peace with them leaving, even if they're going to compete with me, because all I'm here to do is to and really get other people's lives, in addition to my own, to be enhanced and to grow. Those are recent revelations to me, but they're revelations that are important. I feel I've done it subconsciously with lawyers that have been here because they ... I just gave a lawyer, I gave a speech for lawyer who used to work for me for three years. Most of my guys have been here five, eight, 10, 12 years. But there's some guys and girls that, girls and gals, women and men who want to open their own practice. No matter what you do, they just need the itch. Although I will tell you, if you have a good system in place, they'll stay longer, and they might choose to stay because they love the system you're running. And that, as you know by being a traction guy is that if you have a gal or a guy or a woman or a man lawyer who's in here and they burning to open their own thing because you are not doing it the way they expect versus if you take their ideas, be open, transparent, understand, show them the clarity and vision of where you're headed and where they play into that situation, then they may stay. You got to be authentic about it because they'll smell through the bullshit. So it's either you authentically care for them or you don't. So I would just say I feel like I've ... And I'll tell you another thing, I'm going to give a shout out to this guy Stu Wolf, who's my traction coach. We were going through some hard times and I was like, "I can't afford your fee to come down here." This was six months ago. I probably could have afforded it and he probably understood that, but psychologically I felt like. And he's like, "We've been on this journey together with you and your leadership team. Don't worry about it. Pay my fare and my hotel, you'll get me back."It was a couple more times until we started getting back on our feet a little bit, which taught me that's what traction is about. It's actually pretty emotional because that aspect of my coach being willing to put himself out there is how I would like to be for all my employees. It's tough because criminal's a low margin business, which means that I'll still do criminal pay the bills, but my PI is definitely something I'm really focused on, which is tough when you're in your 50s, most people are ready to wind it down after 30 years of practice. Even if I'm not practicing anymore, I got to build it up and ramp it up for my employees.
Chris Dreyer:
To ramp up your practice, you got to get leads. Few lawyers have their own podcasts. I wanted to know how The Lawman's Lounge fits into his marketing plan.
William Umansky:
There's no magic playbook for the modern law firm, right? Podcast today. No podcast tomorrow. YouTube today, YouTube shorts, they'll probably be around for a long time. But everything's changing. So I feel like, I was listening, I'm just going to be up front, I was listening to a sermon. The fact that I even have to say I'm going to be up front, to be afraid to talk about religion because I'm a Jewish guy that married a Muslim woman and now we're all Christian, and I still believe in some Buddhist principles so I'm really confused. But I would tell you that I was listening to a sermon because my dad had taught me, "Follow your passion, the money will follow." I was listening to this sermon the other day, and it said the exact opposite, which is if you follow your passion, you're going to be prone to the highs and lows. And the days that they're low, your energy may ebb and flow because your passions are that emotional. They're like a kinetic energy that shifts. What you should be focused on is finding your purpose. Passion's good. But if you can focus on your purpose of why you are doing something, then on the days that you feel low, you get out of bed and you do the thing you have to do so that you could satisfy your purpose. So the podcast, for example, my purpose was simply to help other lawyers in a constructive way and also provide a outlet where people can sometimes laugh, just do some funny stuff on our podcast. My purpose was to educate other lawyers and to make them laugh and to educate them. Very simple. Nothing more, nothing less. What I would tell you as a result of that, you asked, the other question that you asked is "What do you get out of it?" I think when you have some guests that come on, I won't mention who they are, they may have their own reasons, but sometimes they'll comp you for these 1,500 to 2,000, $2,500 conferences that you want to go to. Not because you ask, but they sense the authenticity that you're not monetizing your podcast and that they feel the real authenticity. So they just help and they give advice. So there's a guy in a huge coaching program, who started a huge coaching program for $150 million plus firm. And you know the term "integrator." Now this coaching program is built off attraction for lawyers. If I call him or even if my integrator calls him, he answers the question no matter what. So I think the podcast was a way of helping and giving back to other people and providing other people a platform to get their message out and do it with goodwill and friendship. That's why I do the podcast.
Chris Dreyer:
It's so powerful what you said, and I haven't heard that, and it makes me immediately thought of that Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. Because it just talks about those that go through those struggles and they have a purpose. Those are the ones that survived during the Holocaust and just terrible times. It was a really intriguing book, but I've never heard that because I've always heard the other way of, "If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life" type of thing. It's easy to say those type of taglines and cliches, but I think the purpose when, geez and what a discovery to identify that. What is your purpose?
William Umansky:
Yeah I mean, and Chris, you're pretty amazing because you read all these books and you remember them. I read books and I can never remember the authors. Every author you mentioned, I've read all the books except for one and I've read other books by that author, Patrick Lencioni, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly. But I feel like from reading all that stuff, there's some kind of universal truth. Just like I said, there's systems running a business that will never change. I think that's the advantage of just getting older, right? You start soaking stuff up and learning lessons and paying attention to what you're doing and living with intention and purpose. What my purpose was for becoming a lawyer was not a good one. But as it developed in time and I developed getting out of that victim mindset, by the time I got to law school, I understood very simply I wanted to help people. That sounds cliche, but it played out in 30 years of practice because even though I made some money over the years, I never really understood how to monetize anything I did because I was more focused on helping people. It's only in the last 10 years and now really since we implemented EOS that even though I'm making less money myself right now, I am really now looking at the ability to try and make more money for myself. But really in the end it's mainly to help my employees make more money for themselves so they can provide their families. I'm more interested in the finished product. So my purpose was to help people and it will never change. The idea of money is only to keep these people here longer, so they want to stay here because we have great environment, great structure, a lot of things that we never used to have. On and off. We used to throw great Christmas parties, but we never had systems for anything. But what I found is that I got to do more in the sense of I got to pay these people. That's why I'm on a journey and a mission to get more PI cases, so that is where you get ... I have good lawyers and they'll do the good job. So as long as I can get those cases in, I can then take that fee and start doing other things and more for my management team lawyers and especially the paralegals, the paralegals, the management team, the person that answers the phone, doesn't matter. But you got to get the cases. It's a strict business.
Chris Dreyer:
That's selfless. I applaud you for that and thinking about your team and your employees and your staff and their well-being, and it's going to be a rising tide effect. I'm very confident of that. I got a couple final questions here, Bill. The first one I want to ask about is in addition to all that you do for your firm, you also have a foundation. So you have the Second Chance Foundation. If you could speak to that and what does the foundation mean to you?
William Umansky:
Chris, it's funny. Again, I think I've mentioned this nine times. So I think from a mindset, maybe some of your listeners will get some stuff from me, but don't know how to monetize anything, including a foundation. When I started the foundation, the idea was to brand ourselves, "Everyone deserves a second chance," and then that would allow us the opportunity to get into churches and fairs and so we wouldn't have to, I didn't want to personally ask for business. It's a foundation that's very simple. You got to get over a 3.0 and you have to write an essay on what a second chance means to you. Frankly, it's that second part that is where the decision making, whether we're going to grant these education stipends of scholarships for. So when I started the foundation, I had strict rules about what I wanted to do and what I wanted it for. It's transformed now because I realize that running a foundation can take full time. And until I get my PI practice, even a 56 on board, it's going to be hard for me, although I've found other outlets to try to get people through the years to run the foundation, but I realize it's like running another corporation. But what it means to me is that very simply, two children who born with money, hardworking, educated, great kids, I love my boys. I just got back from playing poker with my son for, we were on a guy trip for 15 days in Barcelona. He's 20. This is his first live tournament because he can't play in the States. But I would tell you that in watching them grow, I thought about all of the other kids I've seen, children who've lost their parents in a horrible car accident, other children who've lost their parent because they went to prison. You think about these children who have had the death of a family or the death of a parent or their parents have gone to prison, and they are still able to not only survive but thrive. That spoke to me and it continues to speak to me. I mean, I'm giving two awards out next week. I just need to get more money and think bigger. So now I'm starting to go to corporations and saying, "Look, can you give me five, 10 grand" because I just want to help out maybe 20, 30 kids a year, otherwise it gets too out of control. But these kids are amazing. I think it's not selfless. I think it's selfish actually. Because every time I give out a stipend or a scholarship, it reminds me really of who I am, and brings me back to where I started and why I'm doing everything. So because you just feel great doing it and the kids you're rewarding, I don't think it's the scholarship so much as what you say to them and how special they are.
Chris Dreyer:
Bill, this has been amazing. I got one final question here. What's next for Lawman and the Umansky Law Firm, and where could people get in touch with you?
William Umansky:
I used to have a vision that was great, but it was more affirmational, meaning it was things that I wanted to see. Now a law firm based upon, as you are, traction-based stuff, we use a value system called Positive Vibes, Ownership, Work as a Team, Evolutionary change and Relentless. That's our values. Our purpose is service with impact, which we defined as we strive to obtain outstanding results and move clients forward in a positive direction. So I'm telling you all this because we have our picture, and our picture's to become an eight figure firm. We're already a seven figure firm, but we want to be an eight figure firm. And this vision is on our VTO, which is your vision traction organizer that some of your guests may understand. So I'm only bringing the money up because it's immeasurable and I'm getting into the measurable. So I would say the next three years, not only do we want to reach that eight figure platform, it's also important to take all of these things like values and our focus and continue to create systems in place that encourage all of those values and hammers in the focus. I want to continue to evolve this project that I call a law firm, where this my own personal laboratory so that we can continue this, to continue to evolve it. As I said before, the best thing in the world would be before I leave law, would be able to create an environment for my employees and team members to really thrive, where they understand that their income is tied to their ability to either do their job effectively, but so much more, bring in business to help their families and to change how they view things in life. I think it's so important if the Umansky Law Firm basically, I wish I never named it that, but it is what it is now and it's hard to rebrand it. But if at some point I can turn it over to some younger lawyers who have that same vision, and believe me, I'll sniff out bullshit, but turn it over where I can then coach full time would be a wonderful experience. That may be more of a five to 10-year plan, which that makes me 65, but I don't plan on ever retiring. Of course young people say that, but I'm not young. So I think I know what I'm talking about with that. But that's it.
Chris Dreyer:
Even though the industry is changing quickly, some systems remain the same. Have a vision, use data to help you make decisions and put the right people in the right seats. No matter how big your organization grows or how the blueprint evolves, your team needs to know that they're respected and appreciated. They will work hard for themselves, the clients and the firm. I'd like to thank Bill Umansky from the Umansky Firm for sharing his story with us, and I hope you gained some valuable insights from the conversation. You've been listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer. If you liked this episode, leave us a review. We'd love to hear from our listeners. I'll catch you on next week's PIM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to master personal injury marketing.
