38: From Free Speech to Pet Law (w/ April Goodwin)

Foreign. Welcome back, everybody, to the name and creative show. Just to make sure everybody knows who I am, my name’s Josh Naiman and I’m your host. I’m also CEO and founder of Naiman Creative, and we produce podcasts just like this one.

And today’s guest is a special one. As everybody is who comes on this show, you have to be special in order to come on the show. Just to let you know.

And this is someone who’s turned a love of spirited debate into a powerful legal career and a thriving business. April Goodwin is the founder of the Goodwin firm, where she helps small businesses and pet professionals navigate the legal landscape of employment law, pet disputes, and beyond. If you’re a business owner trying to do the right by your team or your furry clientele, April’s definitely someone you would want in your corner.

And we’re going to dive into why. April and I got connected through networking, as it often goes. And after meeting her, I understood why people are drawn to her.

She’s not afraid to get into a healthy debate and has the ability of making complex legal matters somewhat understandable, at least for my end. And we’re also going to experience that to end it. She’s a passionate advocate, a pet lover, and by her own admission, a master of argumentation.

So today we’re going to just see what makes her a great debater, what makes a great debater, how she’s built a business around that, and why small businesses cannot afford to ignore the law. So I really appreciate your time. Abril, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here.

All right, so to start out, let’s. Because I’ve had Nick Fantino on who ran for judge. I’ve had Doug Jackson, who’s a lawyer, on.

I really enjoy talking to lawyers. I don’t know why that is. Not a lot of people say that.

And hey, I’m glad that I can. It’s it for me, it’s fascinating. And so a big part of that is what gets someone into a legal career.

So if you could maybe lay out the, you know, the landscape of why you got into law in the first place. That is actually an interesting story, probably for most, well, some lawyers, maybe it’s like I know people. I didn’t know what else to do.

So I went to law school, but that’s not me. So back in high school, I’m going to date myself here. But the 2Life crew was popular, like my junior senior year in high school, I think, maybe, maybe a little younger with their, you know, their lyrics, and they got in trouble.

They got arrested, actually, in Broward County. I was up in Ohio. But they got arrested and made national news for their lyrics.

So I, you know, got interested in free speech that way also Tipper Gore and, you know, all the pmrc, the labeling and the restriction of music. And I was right at that age where, you know, teenager music is, you know, super important. And I, so I started, you know, just being interested in free speech and, and the Constitution and things like that.

And that’s, you know, back in high school, I decided that’s, you know, what I wanted to do and what I wanted to fight for. I changed my mind a couple of times and wanted to be a psychologist. My.

I just joked that I wanted to be called counselor, but one way or another was going to happen. But yeah, so I. Then I went back to, you know, the law after. I actually worked after college as a social worker and worked with lawyers about, oh, I can do that.

So that’s what I ended up doing. But yes, it was always for free speech and music, but it was the Two Leg crew, Luther Campbell, you know, got me interested in the law and that’s what did it. That’s awesome.

Well, I thank you for that because free speech is huge. You see what’s going on in the world and even here and, you know, sometimes you look around and you go, well, that’s a little scary. I. I wasn’t meaning to go here right away, but what do you think about, you know, free speech in relation to what’s happening in our political and, you know, just government landscape of.

Of what people are doing? Yeah, I would imagine. Absolutely. Yeah.

I can’t so. Well, you know, unfortunately, and it is actually kind of a passion of mine to, you know, help lay people understand how the legal system works and how, you know, kind of explain it for them. Because all regular people have to go on unless they’ve been involved in the system somehow they’ve had a case is tv, movies, and they get so much wrong.

Right. And they. Or whatever they read on social media or TikTok or something like that.

So really, free speech is, you know, the government or, you know, government agent restricting you from speaking. It’s not Facebook restricting you from speaking. It’s not somebody telling you, well, you can’t say that it’s racist.

You know, they might say, quote, you can’t say that, but really you can. There’s just, you know, consequences and repercussions to things. So that is so.

But it’s the government saying, you can’t, you know, say that. And how does the government do that? They arrest you if they. If you say something, they issue an injunction that keeps you from saying something.

So that’s really, you know, how that would play out. You know, again, two Life crew got arrested for their. For their lyrics and their music.

So that is what is really an attack on free speech. And I think we. There’s a fear that we’re seeing some of that.

I don’t know that that’s reached down to regular people. But certainly the press, which is also part of the First Amendment and part of freedom of speech, there are some restrictions on them. And the current administration has been smacked down a little bit.

You know, every administration has their favorites in the press. I think maybe this one just is a little bit more overt about it and isn’t so neutral about it. You know, it’s not just, I don’t like Bob, It’s.

I don’t like the New York Times. That’s. There’s a difference there, you know, and, you know, Bob maybe happens to work for the New York Times, and, you know, that’s one thing, but.

But if it’s, you know, I don’t want the New York Times or CNN or whatever, and that is, you know, certainly a problem legally. Then of course, there’s the moral implications of that, meaning, you know, undermining the press, you know, from a moral perspective and undermining what people say and dissenters, you know, from a moral perspective and, you know, calling names and, you know, being, you know, derisive and things like that, you know, with them. And that is, you know, from a public person, .
think that’s, you know, morally a problem.

Is it legally a problem? I don’t know that that’s been litigated, but certainly, you know, keeping them from, you know, covering a politician or shutting down stories and things like that, that’s legally what the issue is. Yeah, it feels like it legally should be wrong, like what’s going on, but there it seems like with what’s happened recently, we’re exposed to these gray areas where it was like, oh, there’s been decorum or a moral standard or this kind of a standard, however you want to .
it. I think for you and I, we would dip into the moral standard where.

Right. Come on, guys. But it’s.

It’s interesting that all this gray has played out. And I think as I learn about the law more, that there is a lot of gray. And it’s what you.

How you utilize the current structure with you know, in laws that have been set or precedent that have been set to navigate uncharted war waters. But, and, and, and maybe book bookmark that. But I, I really quickly wanted to say that if someone is telling you that you can’t sing a particular lyric or you can’t report on them or speak freely, in my opinion, you have shown your hand.

It is so telling when someone does not want you to question what they’re saying. Right. My right, Absolutely.

I mean, that’s nobody. Yeah, that’s exactly true. That that’s how, you know, obviously this country in particular, you know, was founded on, you know, pre flow of ideas and even then they, you know, had their issues back then and we had had to navigate these waters and we still do as to, you know, how we’re going to frame all of this.

But certainly if somebody says you can’t say this, whatever the this is, or you can’t question me, that is whether you’re a boss or whether you are, which wouldn’t be a First Amendment issue. Bosses are allowed to say that pretty much. But.

Right. Or, you know, the boss of the, you know, the leader of the country. That’s a different story.

We have the First Amendment to protect that. And, and so I think that is absolutely. That’s time we don’t say that to people who we want to talk to, you know, and who we don’t share what they know.

Right. That’s universal. Exactly.

Yeah. And I think that’s why debate is so important, you know, and it’s interesting because debates on the, the most public debates are not good debates. And I know, you know what I’m talking about there.

I’ve got, because I’ve watched so many debates on like religion and culture and society, a lot of religious debates. That’s what I fall into because I’m fascinated by it, about the apologetics of these different sizes, sides and like how you come to grips with the reality that we live in yet, you know, a very old structure and set ways. How you justify essentially diving into epistemology, like why.

Why do you really believe that? And I think debates are just so important across the spectrum, yet we don’t really see it play out. Especially now. It’s their arguments.

They’re not, they’re not back and forth to try to understand better which a debate is intended to do is to provide an understanding. Ah, I. Let me steel man it for you. And then so I can understand it even better and then we can find what’s wrong with it together.

I just, I Don’t know why I, I kind of do. I feel like I do, but. Why it’s hard for people to debate.

I think, you know, people have their biases and they don’t want to be wrong. But, you know, from your standpoint of, of being interested in debate, why do you. What’s, what’s the thing holding people back from indulging in this really important aspect of making sure that speech is free and that, you know, we, we understand the reality that we’re living in better.

Yeah. There’s a book that I got, Geez, I think they got in college, even by a, A free speech advocate. Not a lawyer, I think is a journalist, but Nat Hettenhoff, and It’s from the 90s, and it’s called Freedom of Speech for Me but Not for Thee.

And it talks about how each side of a political, you know, debate or, or any kind of debate says, you know, oh, you, you know, I want, I want to be able to say what I want to be able to say, but I don’t want you to be able to say what you say, you know, and it’s kind of like, you know, how each side accuses the other one of being a snowflake or triggered or whatever. You know, it’s like everybody has something. Right? Yeah.

So each site is, you know, that way. So that is. So I think that’s it.

I think in our, you know, maybe we were this way before we just didn’t know it. But I think social media has amplified the fact that. Or just online, you know, before there was social media, people would argue in the comments on blogs.

Right. And news articles. But, you know, that there’s this thing where there’s a depersonalization of it some.

I think you don’t see that the other person, especially in those, you know, earlier days when. Or on Twitter or something now where it’s not even somebody’s real name, real picture or anything, and there’s just this. I, I have to dig in and prove my point and the other person isn’t real.

And I can’t, you know, sense that they’re, you know, what their demeanor is or if I’m upsetting them or anything like that. And you don’t get that in person or even, you know, on, On a screen kind of debate. And I think that causes people to dig in.

And, you know, there’s studies out there that when you have, when you try to prove somebody wrong, facts don’t actually work. They start for you force them to defend themselves, then they buy into their own argument even more. And, and I see that even in litigation, I tell people that all the time.

You know, we’re engaging in pre suit negotiations and my client says, well, forget it, let’s just sue. And I said, well, wait a minute. That puts somebody, that puts them in a defensive position.

The minute they get served with that complaint, they start getting defensive. And I think that happens in, you know, in debates as well. You know, especially online when you’re talking to people who just everything is personal because it is all about them.

The other person really isn’t like there. I think that can be a problem. Yeah, it certainly is.

And that, that cascades across a lot more, whether it be relationships, you know, in general and how you speak to each other or I’m, I can’t imagine dating right now. No. Yes.

I would never. For multiple reasons. Yeah.

But I, you know, to, to add, I think a tactic that seems to be proving very effective in many ways happening in society in, in our public discussion is that people love to set lots of little fires when someone’s talking to somebody. Oh, but what about that? And now we are not talking about what we were here to talk about because you’ve lit all these fires that now people feel like they need to address that have nothing to do or maybe a little to do, but it’s not the bulk of the, of the .
debate or conversation. But they’ve lit these little fires that you feel obligated to pull out, put out.

And now it’s, it’s a matter of what do you do with the prioritization of what was just said. Right. That’s, Trump is really good at that in debates.

He’s really did that, you know, before, I think, you know, I can’t remember which debate it was with Biden or Harris, but this last election season I read an article about that and about how he is really good at, you know, kind of the Chewbacca defense. If you’re a South park fan of like, look at this monkey over here. This is, you know, this is, look at this thing over here.

You know, and it’s, it’s actually, lawyers use that term a lot of, you know, I’m going to a red herring basically, is what it is. And I’m going to argue this other thing and you’re not going to, you’re going to forget that, you know, my client, you know, really did kill his wife or, you know, you know, sure. You know, that’s.

And that happens, you know, and certainly. And where we all have, you know, kind of shiny object syndrome. And, and it’s easy to be led astray with that.

And you really have to stay the course and bring them back. And I do think lawyers might be in a better position to do that somewhat, because we, you know, when somebody does that more cross examining them, that’s part of what we have to do, is bring them back to, you know, where they are, somebody does it to our client, then we have to get back up and bring them back. Right.

You know, we can do that, but that’s in a situation where we are. Situation where we are more in control, you know, in a courtroom. And it’s different out there in the line.

Answer the question person. Exactly. Yeah.

Answer this question and you. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, it’s.

It’s interesting, like thinking about those different realms where it’s like, okay, a debate, like the presidential debate versus what it looks like as facts and things play out in court. And actually it gets me to a question that I’m kind of interested in your perspective on is, you know, obviously our legal system and the courts and juries have been designed in a way to try to extract the truth as best as possible with an objective framework. If I, I feel like I’m correct about that .
of the attempt at that, my question is, okay, so that’s good to confirm.

Yeah. And my question to you is, what, where, from your experience, where do you feel like the holes are in this system are, do juries work? Is it good to have one judge? Maybe you could just kind of talk through your thoughts on that. They are throughout the system.

It’s a system designed by humans who are imperfect, and therefore the system is imperfect. And it has all of the same issues that humans do. Same thing like they talk about with AI.

So, for example, doing employment law, one of the things we talk to our clients about who want to use AI for hiring. Hiring is you have to be careful because humans built AI and the humans who built AI might, you know, or they do. They have, as everybody does, inherent biases, and then that comes out in the AI, Right.

So that’s the same with the system. It’s the people who designed it. Then some of these biases come out and also the holes come out.

I don’t know of a better one. I don’t know if anybody’s ever come up with a better. Everybody thinks, yeah, put me in charge and then be all great, right? But not me personally, April.

But that’s what people think. I think that you think that everybody thinks, well, I could do better and it really isn’t. And it is frustrating because it’s hard to advise clients of, you know, okay, well, this judge in this county did this thing, but this judge with the same issue in another county might do another thing.

And if you want to figure out who’s right, then the appellate court tells you, and that costs a lot of money for them to tell you that. Or this jury says this one day and another jury could say something another day. It is really, you know, with the exact same, you know, trial, same thing said and done that happens.

And again, it is an imperfect system. I do think jurors try. I’ve never been on a jury.

Every litigator wants to be on a jury at some point, and, well, you don’t want to spend the time on it. But if we could somehow do it and, you know, not have to be stuck there all day, I think we would love to do that. But that is a.

But, you know, it’s my. My experience is that they take it seriously and that they are. Do the best that they can.

And same thing with judges. And when they have to make a decision. So again, they’re people and they get wrong.

So the holes are. Because it’s people and it’s just everywhere. It’s not.

I can’t. It’s just. Yeah, it’s everywhere.

It can’t fix the system right now in this conversation. We could try, I guess. I don’t know.

Maybe. How about this? Yeah. And that’s the best we could do.

How about this? What is the number one biggest thing that you feel like could be changed, that you would change, that would affect the most change. Oh, wow. I. And then I might be coming at that.

Well, again, we all have our implicit biases. So I’m coming at this from what I’m dealing with and what a lot of civil litigators in Florida are dealing with right now. And that’s.

In Florida, they changed all the rules on us in civil litigation. Not all the rules, but a lot of rules. And so.

And the idea was to be that they were supposed to be more uniformly applied. You wouldn’t get ruling one way and from a judge in another way. That’s one of the ideas.

Because they really made a lot of mandates that the judges are supposed to do. Xyz. Well, who’s going to tell the judges that? Right.

Like, if they, you know, one judge is like, well, you know, I know it says I’m not supposed to grant continuances, but I’m going to know, do that. So I think that, for me, is the biggest problem is that there’s not a lot of uniformity forget about it within a state, between the states, between counties, between judges, you know, there’s just not I can’t tell you if you have a case with me, you know exactly what to expect from a case or what a judge is going to do because, like I said, this .
might be doing one thing, and even if the rule says they’re not supposed to, they’re the what are you going to do? They’re the judge. Your only, you know you know, way to fix that is to appeal it, and that’s not a guarantee, and there’s higher standards to appeal, and again, it’s expensive.

So I think that’s the biggest issue is there’s not a lot of uniformity in the way things are handled between judges, you know, right next door to each other, let alone across counties. You know, one county, something might you know, this might be, you know, a case that one side wins and the other county, the other side wins it, and not just because a jury would do something, but because of the way the rules are applied. That’s that’s, for me, if there’s a way to fix that.

And I think the you know, the Florida Supreme Court and the you know, the people who make the rules are trying that, but it’s tough. Again, it’s humans you’re trying to get, you know, and humans who are used to being in charge of things, these judges, so they’re right, you know, from being told they can’t do something, you know, a certain way. And again, what’s the what’s the fix to that? Well, you gotta you gotta take it up, you know, to the court of appeals, and not everybody’s gonna do that.

And now you’re taking it to judges who don’t apply the same thing to more judges, you know. Ms. Yeah. That is like the system.

So to change the the system that determines the system. That’s an interesting, like, dichotomy. Yeah.

And it’s a very it’d be a really shift in in the way we do things, too, because I know one of the things again, the current president, other people, you know, on either side of the political political spectrum, you hear, like, quote, activist judges. And what that means is this judge didn’t do what I wanted them to do, but or what I thought they should do. But the we do have a system where judges create law.

I know, you know, that’s something people don’t think they think the legislature creates the law, or I guess in the case of executive orders, that the president does it, which isn’t supposed to be the way either, but that is. But really judges do. It’s a common law.

It’s based on old. England and other countries in Europe have civil law where it is more black and white. Um, so really what I’m saying needs to be done is probably changing our entire system.

But I do kind of like our system. I make money from it, so that’s good. The uncertainty is good for me, for me and my business.

Yeah, but it’s tough. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you’re. You’re in this position within the world. And that, I feel like, is so difficult because you’re at, like, the crossroads of everybody who are in arguments and.

And determining outcomes that affect people’s lives in pretty deep ways, whether it be employment, like with business or with their pets, which, you know, for me, my pets have been. They are family, and I’m sure you hear that all the time. So they’re equally as important to humans, if not more important than many humans.

Spend a lot of money. People always surprised that we can, you know, make money doing pet law. But pet owners.

Yeah. And it is. It’s.

Yeah, it’s. It’s a. It’s a growing area.

Absolutely. So how. How did you get into the.

The pet area of law? I would imagine that because lyrics and. And the free speech aspect brought you in and pets don’t speak necessarily, so. Oh, mine do.

But. Yeah. Well, how.

What brought you into that specific realm? Yeah, well, you know, there’s not. You can’t really go apply for jobs after law school and say, yeah, I want to fight for obscenity and, you know, and hip hop lyrics. So.

So there’s not really a lot of jobs out there, so you got to find what works. But I was doing. Working for a bigger law firm that did mass, you know, tort class actions at the.

During the Great Recession, and I read an article that said the pet industry is recession proof. I, as a lawyer, I hate that word. Things supposed to something, something proof.

But yeah, so I say resistant, but. And I read that and I thought. Didn’t say anything about lawyers, but I thought, oh, I wonder how I would, you know, combine that.

I wonder if you could combine that with being law. And I remember even telling the person who ended up being my coo, now for the firm, I get to figure out a way to marry this with law, you know, pets and law. Of course, I love pets, but in animals, but, you know, I was thinking business.

So. So when I went out on my own, I threw it up on the website. And now 10 years in, I can tell people this.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea. I put tet law on there, and I thought, people will call me and I’ll figure it out.

And that’s what happened. And it’s, you know, it’s property law, it’s, you know, disability law, it’s things like that. So it was some things I had, you know, experience in, just not as it pertained to pets.

And so, yeah. And so the cases started coming in, and now, you know, like I said, 10 years down the road, I’ve done it all several times regarding pets, but that’s how I got interested is I just thought it was a good business decision. And it.

I tell people and they go, oh, that’s different. And I’m. I don’t do anything the easy way, Josh.

I don’t do anything that everybody else does or I try not to. So, yeah, it’s. That.

That was part of it, too. I have to admit. I kind of like the, you know, the questions and the attention.

You get that when you tell people. That’s what you do. Yeah.

Well, it. It certainly gives you a unique edge in law, which is important to how. How do you stand out with all the noise and all the different firms.

And, you know, for us, like, yeah, we do websites and branding and things like that. But when I tell people, yeah, we produce podcasts, too, they’re like, oh. And so that can kind of give us an edge, which is fun.

It’s also super fun. Like, here we are having fun. Right.

I hope you’re having fun. You’re having fun. Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. Well, okay, so with pet. Pet law, can you.

I’m sure you’ve got, like, a plethora of interesting stories and, like, and cases that you’ve been involved in. Maybe you could you highlight one of your favorite. Or let’s just do this.

You the craziest one, and then you’re like, favorite success story. Yeah, craziest one is. Oh, my gosh, that does.

It’s hard to narrow down. Pet people are. And I say this as one of them myself, are crazy people to begin with.

Like you said, we value our pets sometimes more than we do other people. Most of us do that. There was a study maybe several years ago, within the last 10 years, where women with pets, I think was dogs in particular, but like their dogs better than their spouse or their kids.

You know, there’s A certain percent. Yeah. And feel that their dogs like them better than their spouse.

Yeah. I forget what the percentage was, but it was like 40 or something. It was super high.

And I’m like, oh, yeah, the dog doesn’t talk back, I guess. But the, you know, the craziest story I think I have that kind of coming to mind right now is I had a case where it was. Came to us as being a breeder situation where a breeder breeders will often.

So they can have more, you know, pets and so. Or, you know, more breeding pets. And then also so they, you know, those pets can have good lives as they’re in their breeding years.

Won’t contract with other people to have them out there, you know, taking care of the pet or whatever and live with the dog, lives with them as a family member. But people get attached and they don’t want to give it back, you know, and things like that. So it was one of those.

But it actually was exes turned out to be. And there wasn’t a contract. There wasn’t anything in writing.

There was. So then there became a fight and there’s all this emotion behind it more than there would be a regular case. And ended up being.

My clients were ordered before I got the case. I came in partway through order to give the dog back. They were refusing to do that.

And there was a warrant out for my client’s arrest. Wow. And we were able to get that off.

And they ended up dropping a whole lot of money on us. And I can’t say the number, but a high, high, higher number that I would ever pay to be. To settle the case, to be able to keep the dog.

They actually, you know, asked me, like, would you. What would you do? Would you this? I said, no, I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t do it, actually, first of all.

But even if I wouldn’t, you know. So that’s. Yeah.

So that was probably. That’s one of the craziest one. And that was like extended family members.

And it became, you know, just this whole whole thing. But, you know, we do. The one area we can get into free speech as a lawyer regularly is defamation.

And because of the pet industry, pet cases we’ve had, we’ve gotten into. We have defamation, little side practice, I guess I would say, you know, we don’t have a whole lot of defamation cases, but we do handle them of any kind because we’ve had. The only defamation trial I’ve actually had was a pet case, so.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

What did they say, if you can say it was. Oh, she. Oh, my gosh.

So again, this is exes. And he. My client, His.

Her ex kept the dogs and took them to another country. So we couldn’t do what we usually do to get them back. That has to be within the country when we do that.

Wow. And it was a whole big thing. Yeah.

I had to use a Hague Convention again. Served and everything. But she went online, started a Facebook page of yo, bring my dogs home.

And him. All kinds of names and things like that and accused him of crimes and. And things like that.

And. Yeah, you can’t. Don’t do that.

Please don’t do that. Yes. Yeah.

Wow. For defamation. Yeah.

Yeah. And did you win that one? Yeah. No, we did not.

Unfortunately, the dogs passed. So her getting the dogs back didn’t, you know, when they. That they were older and then.

And then. Yeah, you can’t. She did not win.

You cannot go on Facebook and, you know, call somebody a criminal when they. You don’t have any, you know, they. They were not convicted of a crime.

Right. That’s a tough one to defend. Yeah.

Yeah, it was a tough one to win. Yeah, it was a tough one to win, but she wanted to get. So we did, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s interesting within debate, like, I don’t know if you’re ever in debate club. I. I wasn’t, but I’m just fascinated with debate.

No, you weren’t. No, we didn’t have it. We didn’t have that in my life.

In Ohio. Yeah. Yeah, from Ohio.

Okay. I’m from Indiana. Yeah.

But I think. I think they did have some debate clubs, but I just never was into it at that time. But anyways, I always thought it was interesting that the, like, one of the practices that you do is.

Okay, we’re like, we’re gonna do this exercise where you don’t know actually what side you’re gonna be arguing for until that moment. So you have to be kind of prepared on both ways. And I always thought that was like, that’s really interesting because you could still, like, figure out how you would argue the other side, even though you believe one way.

And I imagine as a lawyer, maybe it’s sometimes difficult that you get a case where you go, man, this person might be in the wrong. How am I going to defend them? How do you. How do you deal with that? No, I charge by the hour, so that helps.

But the. But seriously, though, I mean, listen, I, you know, despite the fact, and I tell, you know, clients this A lot of times when I’m telling them they should settle, that I’m talking myself out of business. And really, I. Lawyers want to win.

I want to win. I want to win. I want my clients to win.

I don’t want them to spend money on a case that is futile. So I’m constantly, you know, talking myself out of business, whether it’s at the beginning, when I’m doing consultation and telling them they don’t have a case, or when it’s, you know, time to settle or right before trial or whatever. But, you know, it’s tough to tell people that.

But we have to. We have an ethical duty. You know, you don’t have to.

You. Somebody comes to you to, you know, build their website, and really, they don’t need a website. They’re not, you know, or whatever.

For some reason, it’s not in their best interest. I have a website. I don’t know what that would be, but let’s say that now, it never is.

As a person who cares about your clients and potential clients in your community might tell them that. Right. But really it’s, you know, you’re not ethically responsible to tell them that, you know, you don’t walk into a store to buy an outfit and it looks bad on you.

They don’t tell you, like, no, no, no, don’t get that. Right. You know, your friends have to tell you that later, you know.

Right. So. So that is, you know, so it’s an interesting job where a lot of times we’re taught we have an ethical duty to talk people out of hiring us or staying with us, continuing to sit with us.

But that is what it is. We do have to see all sides, and it makes for an interesting rest of your life to all constantly be thinking about, you know, hope for the best, plan for the worst. Right.

And planning for the worst and what might come up. And. And it’s.

We do. It creates a lot of things crazy throughout your life to always be thinking of what could go wrong. But.

But we do have to think that. And it is hard. There’s a bias.

I tell my clients that, too. Like, listen, I think you’re, you know, this is the way I see things, but that doesn’t mean somebody on the other side who’s thinking differently than me or a judge or jury wouldn’t see it differently. Right.

Yeah, I do have a bias, you know, towards my clients. That’s why I, you know, you know, like, working with them or why, you know, it’s not just about money that you Know, we offer clients to, you know, hire us. It’s.

We, we get along with them. It’s, you know, we do feel for their cause and we, we like them as people and think they’ll be good fits for our firm. Sure.

Yeah. It’s just such an interesting career because of all of that dynamic. Yeah.

That, like, you had mentioned, you know, like, it can weigh on your conscious in certain ways in. At. At different times throughout the process.

Not just there, like. Yeah. A personal life.

Like, you know, my husband doesn’t, you know, text me back for 20 minutes and I’ve got him, you know, he hit his head on the cabinet. He. He’s unconscious, he passed out.

He died. He’s on the kitchen floor and the dogs are eating him alive, you know, because I didn’t hear from him for 20 minutes, you know, my brain goes there. Oh, okay.

Yeah, no, that didn’t really happen. Yeah, it’s like, wait, good. That’s my point.

It could. And that’s where your mind goes. Yeah.

But it always goes to the worst. Or catastrophizing, you know, everything. And it’s.

It’s a. It’s an unfortunate side effect of being a litigator is because we have to maybe even other kinds of lawyers, too, because we have to plan for the worst constantly, which means we have to think about what the worst could be. Ah, geez.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It’s.

It’s the only job, too, that I can think of other than an athlete, where somebody. It’s your job to, you know, do whatever it is you’re doing. And then there’s somebody who’s being paid on the other side to keep you from doing your job.

Right. And it’s also your job to keep them from doing their job, you know, so that I guess, you know, an athlete would have that situation, but I don’t know, really, you know, in a competitive sport. But I don’t know, I can’t think of another one where it’s.

It’s works like that. Right. There’s going to be one winner and one loser, and that’s.

Right. But inherently, by what we’re involved in. Right.

Well, sometimes there’s two losers, to be honest with you. Sometimes. Really? Yeah.

Yes. You get a piece of paper that says this person owes you this money, but they don’t have it. So.

Yeah, well, I, you know, we do good here with 99 of our clients, and there’s, you know, a bad apple that came to us and then didn’t want to pay, and we were Contractually, we had a contract and, and a system of automatic payments, and there’s certain things that I worked with a lawyer on, and they’re like, okay, we’ve gone this far, and they’re not adhering to the request. And do you want to even move forward with this because you’re going to spend more money? And even if we get a judgment .
they the judge, which is likely because it’s all played out. It’s all in the contract.

It’s black and white. So you would win. Okay, but you still have to then get the money from them.

That’s a whole nother process. And I was like, no way. And I just hadn’t thought about that.

Yeah, you could still. You could get a judgment and then you could still not. They don’t have to do that.

Yeah. All right, don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back after this.

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Thanks for sticking with us. Now, back to the conversation. So, you know, people ask me all the time, can somebody do this? Can I fire somebody for this? Yeah, you can.

You probably going to get sued, but you can do it, you know, and if you get sued, are you going to lose or win? But, yeah, so. But, yeah, so technically, quote, yes, they have to. They’ll get an order that says that they have to do this, but if they don’t, you know, the ramifications for them.

I mean, we don’t have debtors, prison, you know, other than for child support, basically. But, you know, so we don’t have that. You’re not going to, you know, so that’s.

They’re not going to go to prison for this. And you’re going to have to go and, you know, chase them for it. It’s 20 years.

It’s good for 20 years. Chase them. You can do that.

That costs money, too, to do that. Time and stress and. Yeah, so there’s all of that.

And people underestimate, you know, until they’ve gone through it, the stress of litigation. It’s better than to have, you know, a lawyer doing it for you, than you doing it yourself. But even then, it’s stressful and you’ve got this thing hanging over your head.

And, you know, the other sides would have been rent free in your head for however long and maybe forever because they don’t have the money to pay the rent. So. Yeah, that is absolutely.

Yeah. I had a client who told me one time that he said, you know, I’ve. I’ve won cases and, you know, got a handshake and said, congratulations, you won’t, and here’s my $50,000 bill for trial, you know, and the other side didn’t have money, you know, or you were on the defense, you know, and then you’re not going to get anything.

The win is your. Is what you get. Yeah.

You’ll have to pay even more. So that is. Yeah.

And that is the reality of it. And that’s another reason why, you know, I try to be real with people about how much, you know, stuff is going to cost. And unfortunately, that’s not all in our control either.

The other side is difficult. The lawyer is difficult on the other side, you know, whatever. The judge rules ways, we didn’t think they should rule, and now we got to fight that.

And, you know, there’s so many unknowns. It’s the gray area, you know, as you were saying before, and litigators love the gray area as far as, you know, being able to, you know, make money. But it is sometimes difficult to predict for our clients, you know, and especially dealing with businesses, they want a predictable outcome, and it’s just very tough, certainly.

Yeah, yeah. It’s just not always as black and white as you want it, because even in my case, it was black and white. It’s right there in the contract.

It’s so obvious. And yet there’s all this gray because, okay, what. What do we do now? What’s your choice now? How much? Not it.

You are so on the nose. Because it wasn’t necessarily about the money as much as it was hanging over my head. It was so stressful.

And so we got to a particular point where I go, I’ve done what I can, and. And I. That’s the best I can do. I want to continue down this road, even if it might be worth.

To afford it, although it would have zeroed it out. And then it’s like, what’s the point? My stress and my time and my sanity of thinking about that for another minute was not worth it compared to just, all right, that’s the end. And, and, and I’ll write it off as a loss because not everything is perfect in business, and I don’t have many losses.

And that was one. And, and you learned a lot. My lawyer, you know, you learned from it.

Yeah, I learned from it. And my lawyer said you’re. You’re at a position where this was inevitable.

As you scale your business and grow, not everything is going to be perfect. You’re going to run into a bad apple. So here we are at, at this milestone.

And so that helped me feel better too, that I’m not alone. It’s done. Also, I don’t wish bad on anybody, but I don’t think that person’s going to do well in their business.

And I don’t want that because I was working to help build their business. But now I honestly don’t believe that someone who acts in that way should succeed because that isn’t good for the community or others as a whole. Right.

Yeah. Sometimes you gotta let karma do its thing. Exactly.

That was the one I was gonna bring up. But, yeah, I, you know, I kind of believe in it. I kind of don’t, but I do believe in it overall.

Yeah, it’s gonna, it’s gonna work itself out for that person. And they can feel how they’re gonna feel about that situation, knowing because it’s black and white they weren’t on the right side of it. And so that weight is probably lingering somewhere.

Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, I mean, listen, you know, a lot of people and, you know, you got to think about, you know, that too, is as a business owner is, you know, who I piss off.

My know, somebody who I want to make sure doesn’t get pissed off or my customers or things like that, you know, so that is. Yeah, you never know. Yeah.

Well, I can tell you one person that I won’t be referring. It’s that person. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. With the other side of, you know, your firm.

Not pet. Maybe this opens a bigger, a wider net on stories. But, you know, in general, what’s the most, like, wild or unexpected or surprising case that you’ve been involved in? You know, I think for, for me, because I used to actually represent the employee side.

So I started doing this when I worked for a firm and do an employer side. Then when I went on my own, I thought, well, these big companies, because that’s who I represent when I work for the other firm, they’re not going to want to hire me. Then I remembered, like, oh, I’M a small business owner.

They’re small business owners too. So I went back to the business side, but so I’ve seen from both sides. So actually I think the craziest one was an employee one where he came to me and he was convinced that he had been not been given proper FMLA know, notification to come back to work.

That’s black and white. Okay. And I get these emails and you know, oh, there’s all the email.

They didn’t give them the right paperwork, whatever. And we end up in, in a deposition with him. And he was just getting ready for retirement from this company, but was still had some time.

So it wasn’t a super valuable case. He wasn’t going to get a whole lot of money. But it was something.

And, and I thought it was black and white. So we end up in this deposition and the other attorney who is a nice guy, says, so you called HR at like months and months before he even hired me and said you were retiring, right? No. Said, yeah, you called HR and said you were retiring.

Not that you, like, weren’t coming back to work because you were. Because you end up getting fired. So you got.

Because you weren’t coming back to work, you know, because you were fired. It was. You called before that and said you were retired.

No, no, no. Plays of voicemail it’s clearly my client in the deposition. That’s not me.

Not me. Wasn’t me. Gave the shaggy defense, you know, and I’m sitting there thinking, like, what is going on? And because we did depositions early, I didn’t have, I hadn’t heard this yet.

So that, for me, as a. Yeah, that was a crazy experience as far as that goes. That’s not really like, what happened.

It was kind of, you know, how he ended up. And, you know, talking to me in the first place is kind of mundane, but. But like that in the middle of a deposition, you know, saying, yeah, no, no, wasn’t me.

I didn’t do that. As far as, you know, what happens a lot in employment cases is, you know, the employee site, they don’t, they don’t know somebody gets fired. You don’t have, you know, sometimes they have email saved and things like that, but they don’t have their performance reviews, they don’t have that.

So when they go to a lawyer, they don’t have all that information to give them. And you know, as a lawyer on the plaintiff side, you can’t go trust them. And so, you know, I’ve had cases where they complained of sexual harassment and you know, the.

My boss said all these things to me that I ended up getting fired. Turns out they got fired because they lied on the. They lied about, you know, when they were on the clock.

They had. We see all these texts between them that they initiated with their boss that are sexual, you know, and you’re just like, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So stuff like that is. Is always an interesting thing. But I. Yeah, I think from on the employer side, it’s just dealing with that.

On the other side, you know, we have a case where the employer had paid in cash because the employee. Her employee asked for it. And then they worked overtime, and they paid him overtime, but they paid in cash, so they couldn’t prove it.

You know, so, you know, there’s just things like that. Yeah, yeah. It’s a wild world out there.

That’s for sure. Yep. Yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah. But, yeah, as far as, like. Yeah.

Super crazy. I mean. Yeah, the criminal defense attorneys, they have, like, those super, you know, crazy.

Those are where the wild stories are. Family law attorneys. Oh, my gosh.

They could go on and on. Yeah. Employment is.

Has some crazy stuff, but it’s. To me, the stuff that’s interesting. Like, I said this crazy stuff that happens in the depositions and stuff like that.

Right. Had clients that said, you know, we’re suing for wrongful termination because of, you know, X, Y, Z, you know, they were discriminated against because of religion or whatever. In the middle of deposition.

The other side does, well, why were you fired? Why do you think you’re fired? You know, I don’t know. And I’m like, we filed a whole lawsuit saying why you were fired. Why did you say you got on the record? Yeah, yeah.

So that’s always. That’s always fun. Those are the fun things.

Yeah, fun. And. Yeah, yeah.

With scare quotes. Yeah. You get caught, like, slipping up.

Like, there’s that one show. I am at a loss. But the dude went through a ton of lawsuits.

And then he. They made a documentary about him, and that’s part of it. And then he goes into the bathroom on a hot mic and.

Oh, yeah, they believed it. It’s like the jester. It was.

It was. It’s Robert Durst. Yeah, that guy.

And he’s like, I can’t believe they believed it. Yeah. Yeah.

They got him, and that’s how they got him. Yeah, yeah. What it.

I mean, I’m glad they got him, but What a dummy. Yeah. The.

What is that called? The. It’s like the. The jinx.

The jinx. The Jinx. It is really good.

It’s really good. It is. It’s a good one.

You know, the staircase is also another one. That was fascinating. What do you think about that one? Did he do it? You know, I. So I watched the documentary first and then watched those.

A Colin Firth one or whatever later, the dramatization of it. And it was, you know, I. I think. I think it could have happened the way he said.

I. Absolutely. You know, I think it could have been it. There’s a lot of.

I don’t know if it was a owl or whatever that came in that were one, but it’s. And. And that, you know, to me, that’s one of the interesting things.

Whether it’s criminal or any kind of cases, a lot of times, you know, in the movies, the truth comes out, right? And. And, you know, you get that, you know, what I call the Perry Mason or that, you know, you can’t handle the truth or whatever moment of where somebody confesses on the stand or the truth somehow comes out on stand or elsewhere, but it usually doesn’t. And there are all these gray areas of, you know, could have done it.

Him. I think, you know, I think he could have done it. But I also think it just.

It’s a very common thing. People fall down the stairs and, you know, and. Right.

Hit their head. I mean, and that stairs was weird. And you know, and it’s so what.

She had done it. She was getting older. She was, you know, whatever, you know, her socks slipped.

You know, my mom just redid her house and got all wooden stairs from carpet. I’m like, what are you doing? Yeah. And I like to think about when I go down those stairs, is that, oh, man, I’m gonna.

I’m gonna fall in him. I think I told my mom that or told my stepdad that I’m like, you better be careful because if she falls and gets killed, you’re gonna be arrested. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Carpeting’s nice too. Come on.

Yeah, I. It’s. It’s interesting because that dynamic of that is he was a writer and wrote about like certain things where it’s like, ironic that something like that happened because of his writing. Right? And that does.

And stuff does happen. And like, look, Casey Anthony search. We were just talking about the Casey Anthony.

I was just talking about somebody. That case of where she, like, her Google search was like, how to chloroform a three year old, you know, and stuff like that. Oh, my God.

That’s a different story. Her. I think she did It.

But, you know, but the, you know, sometimes it’s just God forbid anybody search my Google thing. Every time I watch a murder documentary, I’m Googling, you know, stuff and be like, oh, okay. She wants to know, like, you know how to, you know what the.

You know how to get convicted for murder in, you know, Connecticut. Well, that’s because I was watching documentary and I looked this. Right.

Your history is probably wild. Yeah, but you know that. And I think a lot of people are like that.

But, you know, I just think, yeah, that could have been a coincidence. People. It happens, you know, now, you know, O.

J. wrote if I did it after he did it. So that’s a different story.

But yeah, but I never went down the OJ Route. But that’s. I guess maybe next on the Stop.

I’ve. I listened to sports particular true crime podcast like Dr. Death and Things like that. We watched Making a Murder, of course.

Oh yeah. You know, that blew up. It’s.

It’s wild how and, and it’s not because like, maybe that’s why I like talking to lawyers because like this crazy realm of reality. And it’s nice because like, you could see wild things play out. It’s probably real.

And you’re, you know, it’s like why people watch Jerry Springer. It’s like, okay, I feel a little better about like nothing off that stuff. But it’s wild how popular crime is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My husband hates those shows. He.

I watch those by myself. He always walks and goes, oh, here’s another feel good hit you’re watching, you know, but. And I saw some real or something this morning where the wife is like taking down notes as they’re saying like half the count of them or, you know, but, you know, I said, well, I like watch.

I like watching the ones where the prosecution messes up or the cops mess up because then I feel like, like, yeah, I could do better. Like, that’s the how I watch, you know, like, I could do better. I do like the whodunit aspect of it, you know, and the figuring out, you know, those things.

And I think that’s what people react to. And like you said, it’s like a real life kind of thing. So it is.

It expands beyond the show, right? So you can go and you can look up news articles and interviews and things like, you know, a sleuth on, you know, on your own. And there’s a whole, you know, group of people who do that. You know, a lot of people who do that and think that they’re Going to go out there and find the answer.

And I think there’s a couple wig grades they have. They have, yeah. S Town is one of those.

Have you ever listened to S Town? It stands for S H I T Town. But yeah, the journalist gets involved and that affects the story because he’s so interested in the story and then goes there and meets this guy and becomes like friends with him and really is fascinated by this person and that. Yeah, I don’t want to spoil too much, but yeah, that’s a really good one.

It’s like six or seven episodes audio and just really well done. It’s. There’s so much out there.

It’s crazy. It is, it is. It’s definitely a thing that’s, you know, popular right now.

And like I said, I think it’s, you know, it’s the Internet has obviously, you know, podcasts obviously have, you know, contributed to that. But just like us being able to go and look up public records and things like that yourself and then find other like minded people who might not be like at the water cooler where you would have talked to them before they’re across the country or across the world and so you can eat, you know, feed each other and feed each other’s addiction to those things. Yeah.
yeah.

It’s fascinating. Yeah, yeah. And here we are in the podcast.

Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. Well, cool.

I appreciate you indulging me in that because other people could connect with that. They go, yeah, I love that too. I worked with a guy, all he did.

We were in an art department and within the creative department in an art group. And all he did was listen to crime podcasts all day pretty much. Maybe a little music, but.

And then he turned me on to a lot of that stuff, like sword and scale, which is like brutal, brutal stuff. Yeah. So it’s like.

And I had to stop because I’m like, this is affecting my like perception of things and I, I would, I would start to get nervous. Oh, really? Yeah. And so I had to kind of like cut it off because I sleep well, baby when I listen to.

Because you know that’s completely fake. I will be up all night, you know. But yeah, sure, yeah.

Where it’s like totally unrealistic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

That’s funny. Well, because I’m smart. I’m too smart to get caught up in that stuff, you know, I would never.

Never. Of course, right, yeah, exactly. And even if you did, you can really defend yourself.

Well, right, right. Well, I mean, as a victim, but yes, because that’s a Scary part, I’m not afraid. Yeah, yeah.

I’ll accidentally murder somebody. Yeah, good point. Maybe on purpose, but no.

Next. See, now this will be used against me. If this is good, this is, this is why we’re doing this.

Yeah. Well, real quick, we, we have a rapid fire section, but real quick. Before that, you, I would imagine, emphasize protecting businesses before problems arise.

I think that’s just a common thing in law. Lawyers say, you know, like, get us before something happens. You know, let’s take care of it.

Contracts, contract contracts or things like that. What would be your top legal must do for an entrepreneur that maybe they don’t think about? Well, if you, before you hire employees from a legal perspective, get your policies and things like that and handbooks in place, you in every county, I think every county in the state, certainly. And around here in Tampa Bay, once you get five employees and that’s counting you as an owner, those discrimination laws kick in from a county standpoint.

And I had a client who got sued for age discrimination from the county and he had like six or seven employees. Eight. He had eight employees.

So 15. It’s 15 if you have federal or state, but they can get you through the county and that’s just as expensive. So that is, you know, that’s.

And you have, there’s certain protections you can have when you have a handbook. You can’t protect somebody from, from suing you. This is what it is.

You know, I guess there are certain things you can do from a morale standpoint or whatever that might increase it. But if somebody wants to sue, they’re going to do it. But once you get to court, you want to have those defenses, and a good handbook will do that for you.

There’s certain things that you put in there, and if they don’t follow those rules, then you can win. Even if the thing actually, the sexual discrimination or whatever actually happened, if, if they follow those rules. So that to me, that’s the number one thing from an employment standpoint.

But yeah, everything in writing. I mean, whether it’s a contract or it’s a contract with your clients, you know, your customers. And there’s so many people, especially like in the trades that are just like, yeah.

Goodwill handshake. Oh, my God. No.

Yeah. What are you doing? Yep. So that’s.

Yeah. Your paperwork, whether it’s with your employees or with, with your customers and your clients or your landlord or whoever people you do business with, with companies you do business with, they need contracts, stuff and writing and good, like hire somebody to do it. It’s worth it.

Oh, yeah. Don’t judge it. Don’t leak.

No. You could get a base, but you should not move forward with anything until you work with a lawyer. Because there was so much that I got exposed to with my contract.

I had like a one page contract for a while and it didn’t cover. I mean, obviously didn’t cover what it needed to do. And I wrote it and I was just working at.

When I was freelancing. Yeah. A while ago.

But we turned that into a many page document because that’s what it needed to be. And I go, I never even thought about if that happened. And it’s like a word that I had never heard before, but my lawyer is like.

And it’s Doug Jackson, by the way. Yeah, yeah, the contracts. And he was like, this is very particular word that we need to use for this.

And I’m like, okay, now I get it. That’s why that word like exists. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You gotta remember we see things when things go wrong. So we, we, we. You can learn from your lawyers, clients, you know, other clients.

Mistakes. Right. Yeah, right.

Yeah. That’s a great way to learn. Yeah.

That you don’t make. Learn from somebody else’s mistakes, you know, or at least be protected. Even if you don’t learn it, your client, your attorney did, and they’ll make sure that you don’t have to learn that lesson.

Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s where lawyer contracts, when you sign up with them, are 20 pages long.

We’ve got everything we’ve seen. We put them all in there. It makes sense.

Sense. Well, also, like, I mean, who, who reads it? But why Facebook or LinkedIn’s privacy policy and terms are so long. Nobody.

Very few people read those, but they, they’re there to cover their butts on anything. All right. Yeah.

That’s the other thing too. Read, read. When somebody asks you to sign a contract as a business owner, read it.

It’s not a defense that you did not read it. Nobody reads this. Okay, fine, but it’s not a defense.

I, I know people. We send out a fee agreement and like 10 seconds later I’ll get the notification that they signed up. Like, you did not read that? No.

Right. That’s a good indicator. They didn’t.

Yeah. So that is, you know, I try to go over it with them if I can before that. But yeah, but that is.

Yeah, read the contracts and, you know, and if you don’t understand something, ask about it, you know, and think about if things go wrong, can I live with this term in this contract. Well, could someone, for instance, hire you to. Hey, just can you really quickly, you know, can I hire you for an hour to read this contract and make sure you can’t hire me to read it? Do you want me to tell you what not.

You want me to go, what’s wrong with it? Oh, yeah, I read it. There you go. 400 bucks.

Yeah. No. Yes, you can we do that.

So we, we charge for our consultations, and that’s about an hour of our time. And sometimes that’s all the consultation is, is send us your contract beforehand, we’ll read it, and then we’ll tell you what, some issues with it, you want us to negotiate, you want us to rewrite it, then you can hire us to do that. But this is, you know, this is at least, you know, going into it, you know what it is, and if it’s for a particular industry or something, sometimes, you know, you might have to .
some stuff to us if we haven’t done that before.

But usually that’s the stuff the clients know, you know, it’s stuff like, you know, the legal stuff. We make sure that you’re, you know, you’re protected or at least that you know what you’re signing. Absolutely, yeah.

It’s so worth. Is so worth it for me to have done a contract with a lawyer. And I know actually I need to do a round two because there’s some holes where it’s like we never thought about that or I added a service and now that opens up some other doors.

But I have such a peace of mind knowing when I send that to somebody, like it’s actually covering both of us. So. So this is a good thing for both.

You’re going to able to hold me accountable because of this contract that I’m going to do for you and you now we’re contractually obligated to you and vice versa. So it’s like, it feels good, now we’re set. And also it’s a way like if someone is resistant to signing a contract, whether it be another business or a friend or family, that is a red flag.

So you’re weeding out a potentially bad situation. Just that action. Right.

You know, the best time to sign, like let’s say your partners, you know, and you open up a partnership, you know, business and you, oh, we’re friends or family. We don’t need all that. You do, because that, you know, where arguments happen and fights happen is when the expectations aren’t clear.

So, you know, I had a business Lawyer tell me one time that they have people put, like, you know, well, back in the day, like, where the checkbook was going to be, because they’ve had, you know, other business clients that fought over that, and that ended up being a thing. And it was like, well, there’s nothing in the contract that says where who’s going to be the keeper of the checkbook. And now here we are fighting over it, you know, so just the minute things.

Because you just never know what’s going to cause a dispute. And again, like we were saying earlier, people dig in, certainly. Yeah, yeah.

And everybody thinks they’re right. Of course. Of course I’m right.

Always. Well, I appreciate all that insight. We’ve reached a really fun part of our program today called the Rapid Fire.

All right, so the rapid fire is for me to ask many of our guests same questions, see the similarities and differences. And so the goal is for you to answer them as concisely as possible. Although I know you’re a lawyer.

Yeah. So that might not be the easiest task, but if you need to expand on something, it’s all good. Everything will be.

It depends. That’s my answer to all. I. I don’t recall.

I don’t recall. Yeah. Ple.

The fifth. Uhhuh. All right, so you ready? Yes.

Okay. Wonderful. Number one.

What’s your biggest source of inspiration? My brain. My own brain. Hey, I think that might be a first, but it makes so much sense.

I like it in ways. It goes in a million different ways. So it’s a sponge.

So. Yeah. That’s great.

Honestly, it’s you. I am. I inspire myself.

I like that a lot. Yeah. Cool.

I was wondering if it was going to be like a pet, but no. I thought about it. I thought they.

She inspires me to do some things. We only have one right now, but yes. Okay, great.

You had mentioned a book before, and we’ll have that in the show. Notes the freedom of speech for me and not for thee, I would imagine. Maybe that’s not your favorite book.

What is your favorite book? Wicked. The book, like what the play is? No. So it was based on a book written by Gregory McGuire, who started out writing children’s books, and then he wrote adult books told from the villain standpoint.

So Wicked is one of them. It’s very political. It’s thick.

It’s nothing like. I like the play, too, and the movie. It’s nothing like that.

It’s much deeper and political and. Yes. But it’s.

It’s. It’s actually kind of a slog. To read it, but it’s very cool.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Cool.

Yeah, he also did ones from, like, the Ugly Stepsister’s Point of View and. Yeah. The Witch that Gave Snow White the Apple and.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, neat. Yeah.

There’s the. The. The.

The plays or movies or shows never do the books justice. It just, like, there’s so much more meat in the books or they. You can’t cover all.

It’s hard. It’s hard. Yeah.

It’s completely. It’s a different vibe. It’s a completely different vibe.

It’s just. They went in different direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is. That’s why I like them both. Yeah, it.

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s fun to indulge in both.

Like. Like, for me, Carl Sagan’s Contact. The book is really powerful for very particular reasons, and the movie just totally blew over that.

Oh, yeah. Jody Foster. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it’s not like the movie’s bad, but when you read the book, you go, like, what? You guys missed, like, the whole point. Yeah. Because there’s one seat on the ship in the movie, and in the.

Multiple seats in the book is where all the meat happens on who? The set. Into the ship. That makes sense.

So. Yeah. But anyways, without spoiling it too much, I definitely recommend that book, but.

Cool. Great. If there is a person, dead or alive, that you could spend a full day with, who is that person? Tom Hardy.

Tom Hardy. Yeah. Well, he’s just, you know, number one on my free pass list, so I’ll just spend the whole day with him.

Ah, okay. You got one of those things. Intellectually, I think if there was one person who I don’t always spend days with, because that’s no fun, right, to say your husband or something.

But, yeah, I. You know, I think it would be. Gosh, a whole day. That’s tough.

I could. Dinner is one thing, but a whole day? Do I want to spend a whole day, like, with a politician or something? I don’t think so. It would have to be somebody who I thought was just fun.

I can’t. You know, I don’t know. I know who that image is coming, you know, to.

Maybe I’m trying to think of, like, a celebrity who looks like they’re a lot of fun, you know, Somebody like that that was black or something. Like, black or. Yeah, somebody funny.

Somebody fun, adventurous, you know. Right. Like in a.

Like the Jack. Like Johnny Knoxville or somebody like that, you know, Man. Yeah.

That would be a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I like that. That’s a great answer.

Cool, cool. But Tom Hardy first. That was.

Yeah, Tom Hardy. Yeah. All right, Good deal.

As far as business tools, do you have a favorite business tool that helps you immensely? You couldn’t go without. Well, my. The first thing that came to mind is my staff, my team, you know, is they are.

They are just the best and they. Yeah, they’re great. And I know everybody says that, but I actually mean it.

But as far as an actual tool goes, honestly. Well, my case management system, but I was gonna say like calendly or something like that calendar, because when I am left up to my own devices to do things, it’s not good. So that sets out the calendar and then I have somebody who even oversees that on my team because I will double book everybody even on.

But yeah, something like that. That is. Takes it out of my hands and lets me do my thing.

So Calendly is, you know, probably the biggest thing right now. It’s coming to mind. Yeah.

Yeah. How do you think you got on this podcast? Yeah, exactly, exactly. I have been delaying that and there’s going to be a tipping point where I just got a cave because I. You spend too much time also going back and forth and then me looking at my calendar instead of like just set these days, these times for open and people can plug in there.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you can block it off and you can have different days for different times.

And that colony does so. And they have a really cool origin story too, but. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

It’s an immigrant from Africa, first generation American. I think he’s first generation American and built it out black owned and everything. Very cool.

Neat. Yeah. But, but he.

They have. It has a bunch of different tools now, workflows and all that. And I don’t know, my case management system does a lot of that.

So I don’t use it, but I keep meaning to go in there and play with it. And you can get more than one person on your team who does things you can set up. This goes to them first.

That goes to them. Yeah, it’s very cool. Sweet.

Yeah, it’s. That’s super powerful. Like, anything to save us time as business owners is essential because it gets hectic real fast and your calendar is so important.

That’s when you show up, you know, like, are you showing up? Did you show up? Yeah, it’s a pretty big deal, you know. Yeah. I appreciate you showing up for this recording.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it’s, it’s.

It is good and it’s. I Know, it’s hard because we’re micromanagers. That’s how we got here.

You know, we, we like to have control. So sometimes it’s hard to delegate things, whether it’s to a person or to a system, but it is, it’s. It’s for the best.

Yeah, I agree. Last one. You’re doing great.

How do you define success? You know, contentment is a word I like to use. So it is. I’m happy.

Is one extreme. Right. Or ecstatic or whatever.

Maybe it’s even more extreme than that. But yeah, happy is one thing. You know, not happy, unhappy.

Stressed is another thing. I might just like, I, I just want to be even keeled. I just want, you know, I’m content, things are good the way they are and, and I’m, you know, whether that’s with my personal life, my work life, balance the business, you know, and it’s all three at the same time is freaking awesome.

So, you know, to me, that’s when I can go like, it’s all good. That’s. That’s success to me.

Yeah, I love that. There’s no better feeling than nothing. Or not too much weighing on you at one particular moment over another.

So it’s that evenness. I like how you put that. That’s huge because there’s so much going on.

Right. So if you can find that, that smooth sailing through like all this stuff. Yeah, I love that.

I love that. Yeah. Well, you have won rapid fire.

So congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for participating.

We’re gonna close it out with a couple things. So number one, where is. Does the Goodwin firm look like five, 10 years? How are you looking to scale? Where are you? We are looking to scale.

So what I would really like to do, because at this point we are one of the few animal law, pet law focused, you know, law firms. We do all kinds of businesses on the business side, but the non business side is just pet law and so, and defamation. But so I would like to expand that.

And honestly, I don’t know if this happened in five or ten years. Well, hopefully at least ten at my age. But the as kind of, you know, not John Morgan big, but kind of their model of expanding into other states and using lawyers that are already there doing things and maybe teaching them pet law and having them work as part of us, you know, kind of a thing.

So that’s kind of a dream I have because I get calls from other states and I can’t. I’m just a Florida attorney. I can’t do that.

And everybody here is. Who’s a lawyer? Just a Florida attorney. So I would like to.

To do that now. Okay, cool. Awesome.

So great to know that you’re looking. You have such big plans. I love that.

And I think the pet law aspect, you know, as far as, like, business and the, you know, like, really playing on a unique part of the industry. I think that’s great. Yeah.

So I see you going. Thank you. Bar with that.

Yeah. For people who are listening, whether they’re another lawyer or looking to get into law or not a lawyer or a business owner, young or old, what is a great piece of advice that you’d love to leave someone with that you resonate with? I. I guess. Yeah.

Read your contract. Yeah. Yeah.

If you want to be a lawyer, please don’t. I. A lot of lawyers tell people, don’t go to law school. Um, and I say that jokingly, but, no, I think it is a good profession.

But go into it with your eyes open. Don’t go because you googly blonde, your favorite movie or, you know, anything like that. Or you think we’re gonna.

We make. We all make a lot of money. We don’t.

We’re not all John Morgan. There’s a lot of debt. It’s hard work.

It’s a stressful job. It really is a stressful job. There are a lot of.

Leave it. It’s not, you know, people don’t like us, you know, so we see people at their worst most of the time, whether it’s a business case, a family law case, criminal, whatever it is. It’s not your best day when you have to call a lawyer usually.

So it’s stressful case. And there’s a lot of secondary trauma and stuff like that for people who deal with really traumatic and emotional cases. So know what you’re getting into, and you really should have a love for it.

It shouldn’t be because you didn’t know what else to do or because your dad’s a lawyer or because, you know, you like to argue or like I said, you like lawyer movies. It should be something that you really want to serve people. And I think most lawyers do, despite our reputation, really want to help people.

That’s really why we do this. Yeah. From who I’ve interacted with, and you’re no exception.

I feel that. And maybe I’m drawn towards this kind of people, but it seems that way because there is so much baggage that comes with your job. Like you said, it is stressful.

Just like thinking about being in your shoes, you Know, that’s a lot to have in your mind when your head hits the pillow. Yeah. If, you know, in, you know, like criminal cases, I just, I couldn’t even imagine.

Yeah, I took one when I first went on my own. I was a prosecutor in my early days and I took one. It was like a really minor thing and I’m, I couldn’t sleep.

I’m like, this guy could go to jail because of me, you know, even though he was never going to go to jail. It was like a probation. But I just like that I’m not doing it.

I thought I could do it because I was a prosecutor, but I don’t want to do the other side. It scares me too much. I’d rather deal with people’s money and, you know, the pets get stressful too, though, sometimes.

But yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Feels like you’ve hit like this nice, like middle ground of like, intensity and, and, and weight and helping people and pets.

So I love that. Well, how do people get connected with, with you? What’s the best way that people can hire you or just connect and get some questions answered? Yeah, absolutely. So the best ways you can go on our website, there’s a schedule.

I forget what the big button says. Talk to us, schedule something or whatever. And that’s Goodwin G O O D W I n dash or hyphen firm F I R m dot com or you could email.

Our general info is a good way. So it’s infooodwin-firm.com. our phone number is 727-316-5333.

We’re on Facebook and Instagram. You can reach out to us there and then when you get a response back, it’ll give you all the same information I just gave you. So that is, so that’s really the best way to do it.

And I think if you good. When you Google St. Pete Dog Warrior, I think we come up to. Oh, that’s a great keyword.

Awesome. Yeah. Hey, yeah, definitely at least my name.

Yeah. St. Pete Goodwin dog Warrior will get. You definitely get, get this up there.

So, yeah, sounds about right. Yeah, Wonderful. Cool.

And by the way, we’ll have that all in the show notes for everybody to, to click or copy and paste or reference. So, April, really appreciate your time. I know you’re busy helping all these pets and people, so it means a lot that you take your time to talk to me and indulge a bit.

And for you guys, the listeners, I really appreciate if you get this far in these episodes, it means a lot that you listen. I recommend when I stop talking listen to our outro song. It’s super cool so and guess what? That was written by us so indulge all the way to the end but also at the end if you hit subscribe hit like and share it with people that you think would like this episode or other episodes.

We really appreciate the support. It goes a long way and let us know how it resonated with you. Any feedback or comments is always appreciated and we love how these kind of moments land with people and or spark new connections or inspiration.

Who knows what April just inspired someone to be like the most famous lawyer in the world coming up. You just never know. So.

And if you have a you know someone that you know who has a story of their own, let us know. We can put them on the podcast and they can share their journey. So until next time, this is Josh Naiman with Naming Creative on the Name and Creative show and just reminding you to stay curious, stay kind and go hug your pet.

Sam here.