Blaise Patzkowski

Kevin Daisey:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another live recording of the Managing Partners Podcast. My name’s Kevin Daisey and I’m your host. Also the founder of Array Digital. We are a digital marketing agency that helps law firms grow their case pipeline through digital marketing. Today, I got a special guest coming in from California. Blaise, welcome to the show.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Thank you very much. You didn’t even take the risk of trying to say my last name. Smart.

Kevin Daisey:

Well, I guess I didn’t, I thought I figured it out and I was like, well, maybe I’ll mess it up. So for everyone, it’s Blaise…

Blaise Patzkowski:

Patzkowski.

Kevin Daisey:

Patzkowski. See, it’s easier than it looks, but-

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah, it’s intimidating, but it’s not so bad.

Kevin Daisey:

Well, just for giggles, you had mentioned something you had done as a visual for people to remember how to say your name. You told me that backstage.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Well, it took me a while to learn how to spell my own last name and learn what my own last name was. So I had a picture as a kid on the wall of my room of a cow on skis and that was Pat’s cow. So Pat’s cow ski.

Kevin Daisey:

Yeah. That’s awesome. So that’s an easy way to remember though. So just to carry that around, but that could be your logo for your firm.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah. I have to give that a little bit more thought before I go live with it.

Kevin Daisey:

I wouldn’t. Yeah, maybe not. So everyone, if you’re tuning in and watching the show, thank you so much for tuning in. We’re here to learn from Blaise, today. He’s going to have a unique story to tell us about how he got started and he’s one year into his firm. So I think again, learn a lot from someone that’s gone out on their own. One year in and so we’re going to have a lot of cool takeaways I’m sure today to hear from Blaise.

Kevin Daisey:

If you want to go check him out, you can go to the website address below on the screen, patzinjurylaw.com for those that are listening on the podcast and that’s P-A-T-Z injurylaw.com. Nice and short, I like the domain. You may go check him out while you’re listening and you also find ways to connect with him there too. So Blaise, always my first question is, why’d you become an attorney? What was the big trigger or turning point at some… What made you become an attorney?

Blaise Patzkowski:

Sure. Yeah. So my path was that as a kid, I was always really interested in politics and what I kind of imagined for myself in the future was going into politics, going into government work in one way, shape or form or another and once I started to do a little bit more research into that and think about it more, I was like, “Well, if I just graduate from college with a bachelor’s degree in political science and I go into politics, I’m going to be the bottom of the totem pole. I’m not going to get to do anything exciting or interesting. So maybe it would be a shortcut for my future plans, if I add on that and go to law school, and then I go into politics.”

Blaise Patzkowski:

As I started to think more about that, I realized, well, it’s silly to go to law school when your goal is not to become a lawyer and just do it for another purpose and so shifted focus, realize that maybe practicing law rather than doing that as a stepping stone to something else was the right course of action. And I’ve now been practicing for 10 years and I no longer really have that interest in going into politics, I want to be a lawyer and this is what I do.

Kevin Daisey:

Excellent. That’s interesting way to get into it and I love hearing people’s stories because they’re all different and just everyone has a different path. Well, get us caught up then. So you’ve been practicing for 10 years, but in your own practice, on your own, for one year. Give us a little background on, I guess, what made you make that decision? And then we can get into some of the specifics of business and what you’ve been doing the last year.

Blaise Patzkowski:

I think that just about every lawyer thinks about the idea of opening their own shop. A lot of people may never pull that trigger and actually make it happen. So it had always been something on my mind. I spent the first, almost 10 years of my legal career working at law firms for other people. I’ve always done the same thing, I’ve always practiced plaintiff personal injury law, but finally realized that it was the time to make what I thought would be an ideal thing to do a reality and pull the trigger and make that happen a year ago. So next week will be my one year anniversary being my own. I also opened my doors February, 1st of 2021.

Kevin Daisey:

Well, congratulations. We’re almost here for the one year anniversary.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah, exactly. This is almost on the dot.

Kevin Daisey:

Well, good time to have you on the show and in that first year, a lot happens. You start to reflect on what you did right and wrong, and how you’re going to improve it, I guess. So I guess, give us a little bit of… Especially you’re in a pandemic too. It’s pandemic, let me start my own company.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah. Brilliant idea, right?

Kevin Daisey:

It’s a great idea. So give us a little bit of what was it like kind of starting and where are you at this point and some of the successes maybe you’ve had, but maybe is also some of the things that you’re like, “I could have done that better or definitely something I learned from.”

Blaise Patzkowski:

I think that the thing that always held me back from going off on my own and opening my own practice was where are the case going to come from. I knew that I know how to handle the cases. I’ve been doing this long enough. I worked at great firms where I got fantastic experience and had a lot of opportunity. So I know I handled the cases, but if I go off on my own, where are the cases going to come from? That was never my job to bring in the cases, somebody else brought in the cases and they would assign them to me and my job was to be the guy to work the cases and resolve the cases and do good work for my clients.

Blaise Patzkowski:

The first thing that I did, step one for me was, I’m in my 30s, I’ve been on Facebook at this point for 15 years or whatever it is and I probably have 1500 Facebook friends that are people that I went to middle school with, people that I went to college with, people I went to law school with, people that I met at somebody’s house in 2008, whatever it may be-

Kevin Daisey:

I would call that your power base.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Okay. Yeah. Now I have a phrase for it. So step one was educating the people that are already in my network to make sure that they know what I’m doing and that if they’re ever in a car accident, they know somebody and they should call me rather than going on Google or asking their cousin if they know somebody.

Blaise Patzkowski:

So that was step one and all of my marketing has really been organic over the last year and I would’ve never anticipated how effective that would’ve been a year ago, but I think that it’s like they say, “If you build it, they will come.” And so doing this and making sure that people know what you’re doing and then it just keeps building and snowballing and getting bigger.

Kevin Daisey:

I think a lot of people miss that and even within a company, if you make changes to what you’re doing exactly… For us, we’ve had some changes with my company over the years. We now a niche in the law and that’s not always been the case, but assuming that everyone knows what you’re up to is a mistake, I think for anybody. In sales or that they own a business or whatever, just a assuming that everyone knows what you’re up to. So sometimes I think it’s good to go back out and say, “Hey, I want to reach out and let you know what I do? What are you up to? And you just don’t know if that’s going to be like, “Oh well, I had a friend yesterday who needs exactly what you do.” So I think that’s a really good move on your part there, to just re-educate like you said, people on what you’re actually up to because your friends will go out of the way and if they have someone or they get someone that’s asking them for a referral, then hopefully they’ll think of you.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Daisey:

Excellent. So I love that. So as far as… So where’s your exact location?

Blaise Patzkowski:

So I’m in Costa Mesa, California, which is in Orange County.

Kevin Daisey:

Okay.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Just South of L.A. One of the most competitive legal marketplaces there are in one of the most competitive practice areas that there is, personal injury, but the moral of the story is, you could be a small fish in a big pond, but if you find your part of that pond and the other fish that you associate with, and that are good matches for you know, you could still eat and you could eat well.

Kevin Daisey:

That’s great. No, that’s a competitive market for sure. PI in that area is competitive, but for good reason, there’s lots of opportunity. There’s lots of people in need of your service. So it’s just about breaking in, finding your little niche, starting to make some waves and get noticed. But yeah, that’s a competitive area to be in for sure. So what is, I guess, if you were to say your main focus, what you’re best at, what you focus on versus maybe some areas that you don’t focus on, what is kind of your sweet spot when it comes to personal injury?

Blaise Patzkowski:

So most of the cases that I handle are auto accidents of one way, shape, or form, or another, whether it’s car hitting a car, a car hitting a pedestrian, a car hitting a motorcycle. Year one for me was an awesome start in July of last year. Another attorney brought me on board to help him litigate a major case that he had and we resolved that case in July for 1.3 million dollars, it was an auto versus motorcycle case. So that was an awesome way to kickstart the practice and get things going and prove the concept. So that’s my main focus. I don’t… One of the things that I decided early on is, I’m a personal injury lawyer and while maybe somebody could come to me with some other legal issue and maybe I could do some research into it and experiment and try and figure it out, I don’t do that.

Blaise Patzkowski:

So I get somebody who comes to me with a potential case and if it’s not a case that’s right up my alley, I refer them and if I don’t know somebody, I’m going to spend the time to do research, make phone calls and find somebody who I could refer them to and my goal is always to refer people to other small firms, solo practitioners, if possible, where I think that they’re going to get top level service like I provide my clients. And now I’m developing a relationship with some other attorney, in some other practice area, and maybe the opportunity will come back where they’re going to have a need to refer a personal injury client to somebody and they’re going to think of me. So-

Kevin Daisey:

Absolutely. Yeah. That’s… It’ll come back for sure, I think. But I think it’s starting a new business, a new firm, that’s a hard one to do and I think it’s the right thing to do, is to say, “Hey, this is what I do. This is what I’m good at. These are the clients I help.” And not just take on random cases for different areas of the law that you don’t really practice. But when you’re starting a new business, it’s easy to say that until you need the business, but if you can and stick to your guns and refer that out, that’s the best way to go, for sure.

Blaise Patzkowski:

And I think the same thing is true, even in your own practice area, in year one, I think that a lot of people are tempted to take flyers on some cases where they think, “Mm-mm (negative), not a great case, but maybe I’ll give this a shot, I need more cases, maybe I could make a little bit of money on this. I’ve really resisted that temptation. I’ve said no to a lot of cases where I probably could have done something.

Kevin Daisey:

Yeah.

Blaise Patzkowski:

But I’ve done that so that I focus my time and my energy on the biggest, most significant cases and results like that 1.3 million dollar settlement don’t happen if you’re going through the motions on a case like that, that happens from pulling out all the stops, doing everything that you possibly can on the case, and I can’t do that if I have too many matters. So I’m being selective-

Kevin Daisey:

Love it.

Blaise Patzkowski:

… So that… Because I have an obligation to the people that I accept as clients, and I want to do everything I can for those people.

Kevin Daisey:

No, I love it. And again, kudos to you for being able to do that in your first year because I think a lot of people, they like, “Well, where am I going to my cases?” They just start taking whatever they can and then they’re stuck in the minutia and I’ve talked to attorneys where they work seven days a week, and they’re in their 50s and they’re the only attorney, they do all of it, everything and they’re a general practitioner, they just do everything that gets thrown at them and they have no real way to control what comes in so they have to take everything.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Right. [crosstalk 00:14:04].

Kevin Daisey:

In my 50s I don’t want to work seven days a week.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Right. You’re working too much and at some point you’re going to have to deal with what’s developed into an issue or a problem that you regret stepping in into on day one. That’s one of the joys of running your own business, is you get to choose what to work on and you get to work on what you want to work on and the cases that you believe in. So that’s really improved my enjoyment of my work, is I don’t have any cases in my caseload that somebody else thought was a case that merited taking where I disagreed with them, but I still have to deal with it. Every case that I have is a case that I want and that I believe in.

Kevin Daisey:

That’s excellent. Again, I think that’s a huge takeaway from this episode with Blaise right now is, for anyone starting their own firm or if you just started your own firm and you’re not doing what he’s doing, then I would seriously think about that. I think… And with that though, if you’re going to start your own firm, I actually just had an interview earlier this morning with another attorney with a different practice, a family practice, but he was saying the same thing. He was very selective, turning down cases that weren’t a fit because this is going to… The client’s not going to have a great experience and neither will he, so it doesn’t make sense. But, if you’re going to start your own firm or maybe you’re considering it, look at, do you have clients to take with you? Do you have some work lined up? Do you have enough savings? Because you need to start with being able to say, “I want to only do this and I can say no to these things.” But if you’re scraping pennies together, it’s going to be very hard to do.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah. You’re exactly right. That takes preparation. So I worked at big firms for 10 years. I had an opportunity to get myself into a good financial situation and learn how to recognize a good case and a bad case. It’s not always obvious on day one, you learn that from experience and seeing the cases and then seeing how they end up panning out. It takes confidence to say no to a case because you have to have the confidence that I can say no to this case today and another opportunity is going to come up down the road so that everything’s going to be okay, but you don’t know that today, you have to have that confidence and that belief that’s going to happen in the future.

Kevin Daisey:

A 100%. No, I love it and I think, again, huge takeaway if anyone takes nothing else away, that’s the biggest thing, especially if you’re going out on your own, the niche is the way to go, that’s what I call niching is, you’ve decided that this is all I’m going to do and that’s it. I think it can be scary for people at first to make that commitment.

Kevin Daisey:

So let’s talk about a couple of different things. So anything systems, books, things that have helped you, anything you would recommend, I always recommend this book, which I’m reading myself, Can’t Teach Hungry, John Morgan from Morgan & Morgan PI firm, trial attorneys out of Florida, but this is the… He wrote the book on how to run and build a multimillion dollar, personal injury firm. So it’s really good if you haven’t read it, but is there anything that’s helped you, systems, software, things that you’re using in your first year here that have kind of helped you get to where you are?

Blaise Patzkowski:

Part of my focus in year two is utilizing technology more to make my processes more efficient. One of the time consuming parts of a personal injury practice is, “I need all of my clients’ medical records.” So I need to get their medical records and their bills from each provider that they saw and if you have a client who saw 13 different medical per providers, that’s a time consuming task to get all those. There are more and more companies that are kind of filling these voids, allowing you to outsource some of these things. So I’ve been experimenting with some of those, there’s a company called ChartSquad that does that. There’s a company called ChartSwap that provides similar services. So I’ve been using some more of that technology.

Kevin Daisey:

Excellent.

Kevin Daisey:

I have all my files saved in a cloud, so everything is, I could access it for my phone and all that which is great, but I’m constantly looking for ways to utilize technology even more, and so I’ve heard that book, maybe it’s something I should check out. I think it’s not being scared of trying new things. You get used to doing things in a particular way, even if you’ve only been doing it on your own for a short period of time, but there’s a learning curve and it takes time to change your processes, but that’s one of my focuses and goals for ’22, is to lean into those things and find things that are going to make the practice run better and more efficient and trying.

Kevin Daisey:

Well, I think another important thing you said is processes and that even if they’re on a piece of napkin or a piece of paper that you have a process and document processes, technology can just improve and streamline things, but your process is still there, whether it’s written on a piece of paper or on a document, but to actually have some written process, especially with a one year firm, you want to hire a bunch of people, add more attorneys, associates, paralegals, whatever, what are they going to do? How are they going to know what to do, how you do it? That’s a big project for us in my company this year is, I have a full-time project manager, who’s literally interviewing our operations people and sales teams and documenting everything that we do and trying to have processes really dialed in which gets way harder, when you’ve already grown, it’s way harder to do that, retroactively.

Blaise Patzkowski:

I think the other thing that really helps with is with training people in the future, so having those resources for them, whether the processes are already committed to writing and they have a reference and a source to refer to and to learn from. I actually just hired an intern and yesterday was her first day, so that’s an exciting step for me and one of the first projects that I have her, I said, “I’m going to be really generous with my time and I’m going to teach you everything.” She’s never worked in the personal injury field before, she’s never worked at a law firm before, she’s starting from scratch. And I said, “I’m willing to start from square one and teach you everything. I want you to take really detailed notes of everything that I’m teaching you and I want you to create checklists and steps, so that the next time I bring somebody on board to my practice, it will not take me as much time because I’m going to have the reference of these step by step checklists and processes that you and I have developed together.”

Kevin Daisey:

That’s huge.

Blaise Patzkowski:

So trying to get those things taken care of early on, rather than waiting until you’re big and you have a lot of people then trying to backtrack to figure that stuff out.

Kevin Daisey:

Yeah. You don’t want to be around that where I’m at sometimes because well, we have a little over 20 people, but even with that, it’s when you want to make a change, it’s a lot harder to do, so what you’re doing there is awesome. So first off, someone who’s a blank canvas versus someone that has experience sometimes is better. You’re going to be able to brain dumb and figure out what makes you good at what you do and how do you do it.

Kevin Daisey:

If you had someone that had a bunch of experiences, assistant or a paralegal, they’re going to have their own ways of doing things, so this is a blank canvas. They’ll get to learn, the fact that they document it too, hopefully she stays and that’s the plan, but what if she documents all this stuff and then she’s like, “Okay, I got some other opportunity.” Or for whatever reason, “I can’t stay here.” Now you have that and you’re not just starting over all over again and trying to teach some other new person.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Exactly. I’ll never have to spend as much time training somebody as I will spend training her, so that’s the trade off. I knew that taking somebody who doesn’t have any experience means that I’m going to have to spend more time training them and I’m happy to do that, and I’m happy that my intern wants to go to law school and I’m happy to give her this experience and to work with her. My parents are educators, that’s my background. So I’m happy to do that, so long as somebody is a blank canvas that has the capacity and the aptitude to learn and to do great work. So [inaudible 00:23:16] merit, that time and that attention, number one, and number two, they’re going to stay long enough to not just be somebody that I’m spending time training, but to actually be able to put all that to work and help give back to the practice so that it could be two ways I’m helping them and they’re helping me also

Kevin Daisey:

Yeah, a 100%. And actually my project manager, he’s actually got his PMP. He’s a certified project manager. He started as an intern in college and he’s been with us for, I don’t know, eight, seven years or something like that, but now he’s project manager, oversees every project in the whole company, process for everybody in the whole company, so started as an intern and we have some of our best employees are interns when they started. We have had the few that we’ve taught a bunch and they go start their own company or something like that, but still friends, they refer us work. We refer them so it’s you can’t always get it perfect, but if you document at least all that time and energy is for something and makes a ton of sense. I love it.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Right. And in such a tight job market, where employers are having a difficult time finding talent, taking college students as interns is an opportunity to potentially find somebody who’s really talented that you may not have the opportunity to get in some other channel, but taking a chance on somebody because they don’t have experience that somebody else may not be willing to invest the time and the energy into.

Kevin Daisey:

I think it’s smart. It’s really smart and again, you just started. But I don’t think it’s just to save money, I think it’s a really good way to go either way. I think as you… For my company, we have specialists that are experienced in certain areas, those, we have to have a certain amount of experience like, “Hey, we’re going to plug you in and you need to be able to roll.” But outside of that, we prefer to do internships and bring in people that are fresh or things that we can grow them up through the rank. So we like to have a good mix of each of those, but I think for anyone starting their own firm, what you’re doing, processes, selective on the clients and the cases, documenting in processes, you got the right things in place to grow a good firm.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah and there’s a lot of people who have this real singular focus as lawyers on growth. Growth is something that I think will happen over time, naturally. I’m not hyper focused on that. My hyper focus is on doing excellent work for my clients. I don’t need a huge caseload, a small quality caseload that I’m cultivating right now is more than enough and if that caseload develops organically to become a bigger one, I’ll let that bigger caseload help determine which decisions I make in the future, but I think that a lot of people let the cart steer the horse by getting this big caseload and then trying to figure out what in the world do I do with this and a lot of those cases may be cases that are ones that may not be the best fit for the practice.

Kevin Daisey:

Yeah. I think I had a gentleman recently tell me that was at the… That tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins runs the race and a lot of firms have gone crazy, balls to the wall growth, and they get out of business or they implode. So I think controlled growth makes a lot of sense. And most of the firms that are successful had that organic growth and they grew naturally through their good work and that’s going to be the best way to go.

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yep, exactly.

Kevin Daisey:

Well, Blaise, I really appreciate you sharing everything with us today. I think there’s a lot of great takeaways here for anyone listening, especially if you’re starting your own firm and taking that leap of faith, try to be selective, try to… What’s your ideal customer look like? What’s your ideal client and case look like? Try to stick to that. Be prepared financially so that you can stick to that and then sort of document everything you do, so that if you have that next person come on board, they’re not in the dark about what’s happening. So all good tips. I think it’s great. I’ll fill your website back up here too. So the website address is at the bottom of the screen. If you’re tuning in, it’s P-A-T-Z injury law.com. If you’re on the podcast and listening in. Blaise, what’s another way if people can reach out to you and honestly is there anything else you want to share? Anything big coming up, any projects or stuff like that?

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah, so the first kind of non-organic marketing that I’m doing is I have a new website in the work, so it’ll be coming up in the near future. So that’ll be cool and got new logos and letterhead and all that. So everything kind of visually is going to be updated for me. So that’s kind of the the first real marketing move that I’ve done. It’s probably not going to do a whole lot in terms of making me more visible to people, but the people that find me, I’m going to have a much better online presence. [inaudible 00:29:10]-

Blaise Patzkowski:

So that’s going to be exciting.

Kevin Daisey:

I’m an old school guy. I give people my cell phone number, all my clients have my cell phone number. They text me, they call me and I share it openly. So my phone’s always ringing, but I’m always happy to talk to people. So my cell phone is 9493425120. Other than the website, that’s the best way to reach me.

Kevin Daisey:

Excellent. Well, I appreciate… Yeah, I think… New website, fresh logos, all that stuff, it’s all important. It’s that you’re serious about what you do. You care about your appearance and that says a certain thing about… To your potential client that, okay, this looks like a reputable firm, so it’s one big piece of the puzzle. That’s for sure.

Blaise Patzkowski:

And it’s a long term investment, so that was part of what figured into things for me is, you do this now early on and then you’re going to have this logo, and this letterhead and this website for years to come, so you might as well do it earlier. So there’s more time that you’re going to benefit from it and it’s going to be working for you versus using the old, not so great website, way beyond it’s lifetime.

Kevin Daisey:

Yeah. That’s how I… When I’m talking to prospective clients about SEO, I’m like, “SEO’s an investment. It takes a lot of time, but man, once it starts working for you, you have it for life.” So it’s one of those things, but a hundred percent. You’re right to put your money into that first, if you were to go advertise and do all other stuff without those things, it would be a big waste of money and you would just bewasting it pretty much on those efforts.

Blaise Patzkowski:

You could help people find you and then if they find you and they don’t like what they see, it’s not going to be you very much good, right?

Kevin Daisey:

Yep. For us, their website is like the tip of the spear, you drive everyone back there and the experience isn’t good, it doesn’t load fast, they don’t like what they see, whatever. Then you’re wasting potential dollars there. So a 100%, love it. Well, Blaise, anything else you want to share or before we wrap up and say goodbye to the audience today?

Blaise Patzkowski:

No, I think that about covers it.

Kevin Daisey:

Excellent. Well, again, appreciate you coming on to share your story and your first year in business. Congratulations to that, coming up here in just a couple, well, about a week or so, right?

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey:

February 1st, is that what you said?

Blaise Patzkowski:

Yeah, exactly. So we can halfway.

Kevin Daisey:

Almost there. So congrats again on that. Kudos to you for taking the leap. Hopefully, a lot of people can learn a couple of good takeaways from this episode and connect with Blaise, if you feel like there’s a good relationship there, maybe potential referral partners. We always encourage that. This episode will be up on our website soon, as well as our newsletter and featured on social media as all over the place, but you can go check it out and a lot of other episodes as well at thisisarray.com/podcast.

Kevin Daisey:

We also have a filtering feature. So you can filter by state or practice area or both. So if you wanted to find a personal injury Managing Partner episode in California, let’s say, then you’ll see, Blaise would actually come up in those results, but we’ll be getting close to exceeding 200 Managing Partner interviews on this show and so if you have a family practice and you want to see what other Managing Partners of family law have done for their business, you can easily, you can filter for that and see what help you can get from it.

Kevin Daisey:

So to look forward to that, and of course with us, what Blaise is talking about website, visuals, SEO, marketing, advertising, that’s what we do for attorneys. If you need that kind of help, check us out. thisisarray.com, reach out to me or anyone on my team, even if you just have questions and that’s it. Blaise, anything else before we go,

Blaise Patzkowski:

It’s been a pleasure.

Kevin Daisey:

Yeah. I appreciate it so much and have a good day. Everyone. We’ll talk to you soon and see you in the next show.