Matthew Gruber

Matthew (00:34)
so you could say, I have a lot of experience in, getting out of the way of what a lot of people are, are stuck in. And, one time was very unintentional and the firm imploded and the other time was very intentional and I did well.

Kevin Daisey (00:46)
I mean, yeah, that screams experience right there. One, not so favorable. Learn from what you did and had a successful exit. And now Matt teaches people and works with them to have successful exits in law firms. And we're going to dive deep into some of that and got some great things to cover here. Matt's got a great story. One of the things that I kind of seen was in some of his content that struck me was

Matthew (00:48)
you

Kevin Daisey (01:11)
If your business can't run without you, then it's bleeding value. I thought that was pretty powerful because, know, I feel like as entrepreneurs, as business owners, we're busy, we're running around, we're successful, we're doing things and you, just, you know, you're not looking at those things. You're not, you think you're fine. and you think that everything's just great, but what if something happens to you? What if you have to step away for awhile?

what happens then, right?

Matthew (01:40)
Yeah. And if a great opportunity comes along and somebody wants to invest in what you got or buy you out or be a partner, are you ready? And if it's all dependent upon you, then your value is way through the floor.

Kevin Daisey (01:52)
100%, 100%, I love it. So, well, let's kind of deep, you know, go into maybe your background story and let's learn more about you. And then again, I got some good questions here for you. So, you know, more of the mechanics of what you do and how you help and how our law firm owners that are listening can take notes and then know how they can get some help.

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Matthew (03:29)
Sure. So I started out, I've always been here Miami, which is kind of unique. Most people end up here at some point, either at just a stopping point in their life or they end up moving down here later on. And so I've always been here. I always was been involved in the community and did business school, did law school and pretty quickly started practicing with with my father and we had a thriving practice.

And that was the first business that imploded and it wasn't supposed to. were scaling during the recession and doing, you know, phenomenally. And it was actually a two headed monster between the two of us and we were scaling and we didn't have a plan in place for his terminal diagnosis. And I was in, you know, chaos there and trying to help the family run things in the business, make sure no mistakes were made as, as lawyers. One of the biggest things that

you know, we, we think about the minute that something bad happens is how do I not screw up? How do I not make any mistakes on the files, not get sued, not cause big problems, right? Because there's just certain industries where you gotta be, you gotta be more careful than others. You know, we're not selling widgets and yeah, so that, that became that huge focus there and ultimately we had to shutter the doors and there was a lot of intergenerational

stuff going on there anyways that I think a lot of people out there are experiencing between a boomer, you know, father and a millennial son working together. but yeah, after, after that all kind of imploded, I rebuilt and it went very differently the second time.

Kevin Daisey (05:05)
Yeah, I can imagine why that was rough to go through. But it probably give you a lot of the insight and well, at least knowledge of things that you shouldn't do and as you had to get that restart. Luckily, you had that opportunity to restart and build back up.

Matthew (05:20)
Yeah, it was tough. It was definitely tough to pick up. It took years to work on myself, get the therapy, do all the things because lawyers don't typically feel good about failure, feel good about things not going as planned. And, you know, I was a planner and I was I was a business law attorney and an estate attorney. Right. So you think that we had everything covered. My dad had a will. He had a trust. He had

I mean, was, know, everything was in place except the logistics and a transitional plan, you know?

Kevin Daisey (05:55)
Man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, I talk to law firm members all the time and it's, you know, to, to see some of the, you know, chaos behind the scenes and yeah, you just don't think lawyers would be in that situation. You think that, you know, they're, they're by the book. They train, they plan, they, they're risk averse, you know, they have systems in place. would think not the case across the board for sure.

Matthew (06:18)
No, no, not the case for almost all of them. And it makes sense. They're so busy taking care of others. They're taking care of their clients more than ever. They're taking care of their staff now, right? Because we've seen this crazy stuff happen in, you know, the human resource department over the last five years. Right. I'm sure you have. I mean, I've watched your videos. You've got so many different interdisciplinary people coming in talking about

the unique things that law firms face, they're not taking care of the back end of things. And there's a lot of money there. And that's what they don't realize too. 97 % of them have never done evaluation of their business and know what it's actually worth. They just know how much money they take home every year.

Kevin Daisey (06:56)
Yeah. mean, and how many law firm owners are even think that they can exit, whether they can sell their law firm. you know, I hear a lot like, well it's, you know, the law firms me and, they're not really thinking about building it that way. So.

Matthew (07:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And when it is them and they don't allow for processes and procedures and relinquishing power and control and planning for that type of stuff, then they do just give themselves a job every year and that's okay. But you're never going to get what you should get out of it in the long run. It's just you've had a job.

Kevin Daisey (07:27)
Hehehe.

Yeah, understood. then if you're leaving that to family or partners or whatever, know, leave it to them in a way that runs without you. You know, even if you're not trying to exit necessarily, I think that's how we run things here is we're not selling, but run it as if, you know, you are, and it's going to be worth as much as possible.

Matthew (07:51)
Right. And you're not planning to sell right now. But if somebody came along right now and gave you a number that you weren't expecting. Right. And you've got things, Kevin, you're an entrepreneur, you've got other things cooking in the background. Right. And so most of the successful businesses that you and I get to engage with have other things in mind that they would want to go do. But there's no way they're getting out from behind that desk of being the CEO of their law firm if they're not ready.

Kevin Daisey (07:59)
Yeah.

Matthew (08:18)
So that opportunity that comes along will pass.

Kevin Daisey (08:20)
Sure, 100%. Yeah, so I guess you've had an interesting background, interesting story, and you are where you are and very successful at that. I want to focus on your company. So, COtingency what do you do? How are we helping some law firm owners up?

Matthew (08:34)
Sure. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great question. So what we do is we start from a place of cloning founders. We want to take everything about what they know, who they know, how they know it, how they do it, what's their secret sauce, everything granular from where passwords and two factor authentication and accesses to everything to long-term planning and who would be right to sit in different roles.

And we want to just clone their mind, document it all in different mediums. And then we build emergency access and transitional team responses, kind of like in the movies when you see the president go down, everybody knows what to do. It's well orchestrated. So we built that for business owners. And it happens that a lot of our clients are law firm owners. And so in doing that, also, we plan for the immediate exit and a longer term exit strategy.

so that they have something to work toward. But it all starts from the place of cloning who they are.

Kevin Daisey (09:38)
Interesting, very interesting. what does it really mean to clone a founder? How are you gonna clone me? What does that really come down to? What does that look like? What are you doing to that?

Matthew (09:48)
Sure.

So you know a lot about what you do,

Kevin Daisey (09:51)
I think so, yeah.

Matthew (09:52)
Okay? Is

anybody prepared right now to step in and actually run this podcast for you in this moment?

Kevin Daisey (10:00)
No.

Matthew (10:01)
Okay, and that's one of your duties, right?

Kevin Daisey (10:03)
One of many.

Matthew (10:05)
Okay.

So first we would get a very high level conversation. And, and let me be clear. Most of these things start off as very relaxed, longer conversations because our founders are very busy. They're creative. They're ADD. Very few of them are implementers. Most of them are visionaries. Right. And so, yeah, there, there you go. Right. So we want to understand all the things that you do and start to dig a little bit deeper.

Kevin Daisey (10:24)
That's this guy for sure. Yeah.

Matthew (10:32)
Who helps you with those things? What systems are you using? Who can you trust with certain things? How you best operate your operating system. You and I were navigating a technological issue going into this, and you knew how to operate it from your end. But if somebody stepped into your shoes, even if they had the legal authority to do so, because you had your documents in place, they don't know how to operate your machinery for this one session of your day.

So we want to look at what your day looks like, your week, your month, your quarters, your annual, things that you do regularly, things that you do that are intermittent, things that you know about your partners that are not in an HR file, right? Because if someone's going to stand in your shoes, there's a lot that lives up in your head that just isn't documented. And we will use different mediums to document it. It will not just be in print.

Kevin Daisey (11:23)
That sounds deep.

Matthew (11:25)
It's deep, it's deep and what's really cool is it's highly efficient because

we've built our own software and our own AI to streamline the whole process while you're only engaging with humans.

Kevin Daisey (11:35)
We are I when you put it that you know, just like you're like, what about this podcast right this second? Yeah, you know, because we have processes right we I have a documented process for this podcast I got You know staff that helps do everything but this piece of it, but no one's gonna do this piece of it Yeah

Matthew (11:39)
Yeah

And they might not do it well too.

I mean, there were things that you did off script prepping me for this going into this podcast. Someone's gotta know how to do the off script stuff.

Kevin Daisey (12:00)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I love it. It's good stuff. A lot to think about, right? And you got a plan, right? So if you want to exit in three years, you better, five years, you got to start. I've always been told that, but that's interesting.

Matthew (12:15)
Yeah. Yeah. We'd like

to go even further out. We'd like to go 10 years out.

Kevin Daisey (12:20)
And you know, some of these folks, mean, right now you're deep in it if you're in your 40s or 50s even, like no plan, you know, to exit. But things look a lot different if you're in your 60s or 70s.

Matthew (12:32)
Oh, yeah. Well, I think I think we got kind of two different camps, right? We've got we've got guys and and and gals in their 60s and 70s who we know are going to exit in the next 10 to 15 years. They actually they own about 50 percent of America's businesses right now. I'm not sure of the exact number of law firm ownership, but but we can probably extrapolate that to the law firms as well. And they are going to exit. So that's going to be a great opportunity for

a lot of our listeners to acquire either their book of business or their business itself. And that's something that a lot of law firm owners don't really understand. The whole law firm doesn't have to be sold the way mine was. You can do a really kick ass asset sale, inventory, client lists, things, and do a transition that way and still make millions if you do it right. So you got that first camp, that's the older group. And then you've got, you know, your, Gen Xers and your older millennials.

the burnout rates are higher with them than were the bloomers. They don't want to stay in law forever. And I think that hopefully this resonates with a lot of your listeners. If they're going to get out of it and they're going to go scratch that entrepreneurial itch, they got to have a plan to do it. And it's usually going to be way before the retirement age. Why not make money on the way out? And there's going to be a lot of transacting of businesses over the next 10 years.

Kevin Daisey (13:49)
That's pretty, yeah, that's a lot of opportunity out there. think, yeah, most law firm owners don't think selling or acquisition or things like that. It's just in my world of marketing agencies and things like that, it's very common. Oh, this agent just got bought and that one just got bought. This one got rolled up over here. And I have contacts at tons of private equity companies and have been approached many times ourselves. It seems a lot more normal, but.

Matthew (14:03)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (14:18)
In the law firm space it seems like, that doesn't really happen around here.

Matthew (14:22)
And you brought up a great point. Private equity. Private equity has not been allowed into the world of law firm owners yet. Okay, right now we allow for non-attorneys to own law firms in Arizona and there's provisional allowance for it in Utah and Washington DC. Right? The rest of the states are gonna... What's that?

Kevin Daisey (14:39)
I didn't know about Washington.

I didn't know about Washington, so.

Matthew (14:44)
Yeah, and it's not full yet. It's like Utah. just it's it's the trying it out. That's what I understand. The rest of the states will follow. Because it's good for the public, it's good to be able to bring in money and better systems and people that are good at running businesses, because sometimes lawyers are just really good at being lawyers or good at being, you know, other things. So once private equity steps in in the next 10 years after all the laws start changing everywhere and and they'll get it right because

Kevin Daisey (15:07)
Mm.

Matthew (15:12)
They're powerful group. If they're lobbying to change all of the ethical rules in every state, they'll get it eventually. And that's an opportunity to get bought out. And for all of the lawyer listeners and law firm owner listeners, how many opportunities do we come across with our clients to go do something really cool? And we're like, how the hell did they make so much money? Or they grow into do this or they... And you get inside information and you get opportunities to work with people that already trust you. You can run with it, but not if you're not ready to exit your own practice, not if that thing is strangling you.

Kevin Daisey (15:41)
100%. Yeah, I've thought to, you know, but yeah, I agree with you. I think it's gonna be going that way. When private equity gets their way in, that's what they do. They buy up, they roll up, they sell for more and then they do it again. Yeah, seen it across a lot of other industries for sure. I own an HVAC marketing company and the HVAC.

Matthew (15:52)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

right?

Kevin Daisey (16:08)
not the marketing side, but the HVAC businesses, I mean, it's been crazy, crazy numbers, $50 million, $100 million for local HVAC companies with vans and trucks on the ground. And these private equity companies are buying them up like crazy. yeah, it's just a matter. And some, they'll keep the brands in place, or they might roll them up and try to, depending on what company it is, but...

Matthew (16:14)
Yeah.

Okay.

Kevin Daisey (16:34)
But yeah, you already see big brands out there like Law Tiger or Sweet James and some that are kind of semi acquiring brands or folks and bringing them in on to their brand. You know what I mean? I don't really know what they're doing or how they're doing it, but it's a similar tactic, I guess, if you will.

Matthew (16:39)
Yes.

Mm hmm. Yep. And you make a good point about branding too. That's something that law firms where where this where the states that allow them to change the name away from a partnership name and go with a trade name is something to look into well in advance of your sale of your exit. I had no intention of exiting the second time that I exited and I sold for profit. I mean, I did well. But one thing I had done three years before that was I had rebranded

away from a law firm that had my name to one that had an incredible trade name. And then just started pumping that out in marketing. And it made my business worth so much more. And I did it by accident. You know, now people can really plan for this.

Kevin Daisey (17:36)
Yeah, that's pretty cool. yeah, I mean, I know there's some states you can't do that, but, um, and I have a client that's trying to scale up the whole East Coast And I was, I told, like, he didn't even know. was like, there are some of those states that you can't, you know, use that, that trade name in. So, you know, depending on how you want to scale or grow, but, um, and I don't know how many states don't allow it, but something to look into, I guess, but,

Matthew (17:40)
Correct. Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's just

a microcosm of planning, right? Like that's just one aspect of many things that they can do well in advance so that if somebody comes knocking at your door and you're like, you know what? I've had it today. I don't want to go hire three more paralegals, two attorneys, one legal assistant and deal with like all these clients that are banging them. don't like. If somebody wants what you got, you can get rid of it.

Kevin Daisey (18:19)
That's the numbers, right? You know, you can, uh, and as entrepreneurs, mean, I don't care what you say. uh, we're looking for other things to do. I, you know, we just like to start new things and dabble over here. Even if it's with our own business, we're trying to like recreate it all the time because we're good. We get bored. So someone's going, Hey, here's 50 million or a hundred million or 10 million or whatever the number is. You can go do some of other stuff that you want to do. It doesn't mean you're going to.

Matthew (18:37)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (18:46)
going to work anymore. But it's that opportunity, right? The shiny object.

Matthew (18:47)
Right? Yeah,

almost all of our clients that we're helping plan for an exit are not planning to retire. They're moving on to the next best thing. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (18:59)
Interesting.

That's good insight. So you do do this for law firms and you've done it for yourself, for own law firm. How is this different than like having estate planning done?

Matthew (19:04)
yeah.

Yeah.

Sure, so estate planning, like I said earlier, my dad had great estate planning done. had his will, he had his trust. We had the operating agreement in the business saying that I was to take over and all that kind of stuff. Like we didn't have to go to court for any of the issues. But what all the legal documents do for the most part is they address standing. They give legal authority to somebody else.

to legally impersonate you in different scenarios. So in a will, it's after you're dead. It gives somebody the right to stand in your shoes and be in charge of your things. And it says who gets to actually own it. Same thing with a trust, but a trust can happen during life and death. The power of attorney allows somebody to legally impersonate somebody in most situations outside of the hospital. Healthcare surrogate allows you to impersonate somebody and act on their behalf inside the hospital.

For anybody that making cringe, I'm really simplifying this, right? There's obviously a lot more these documents do. But they just give somebody the right. Kevin, if you gave me the right right now, I mean, I'm an attorney, I can draw up all the documents, and you gave me the right to go do all the things on behalf of you, both at home and at work, how successful would I be tonight?

Kevin Daisey (20:22)
Oh, it'd be pretty easy. think no. Um, yeah. I mean, I get what you're saying. Like it's you had the right, but you don't know how. And you've never done it. So even if you had a, even if you had a process doc, you still, you've never executed it before. Right.

Matthew (20:30)
Don't know how, you don't know what, you don't know who, don't know.

Absolutely. And you may never have executed it inside of their systems either. Wouldn't it be nice to have a tour of all of the software, the way an owner uses it, or, you know, an immediate password wallet transfer that allows somebody access without having to figure out how to get into everything and navigate it. I mean, these are very small things. They get bigger and bigger. Like, who do you trust the most? Who do you have alliances with in your organization? What outside partners do you have? Who are your advisors?

How do they work together? Do they know each other? I think everyone thinks that like, if something happens to you, your attorney, your accountant, your financial advisor, your coach, all of them just gather in a room and they're like, okay, you do this and you do... That's not addressing your estate planning documents. And it's certainly not something that people do.

Kevin Daisey (21:24)
Sure. then, okay, so basically, the way it's like, if you haven't built your company where you aren't necessarily, you aren't needed to be there, then you're at big risk because not one, you can't exit, but number two, when you exit because of other reasons, things are not gonna remain. So you're talking about your partners or your friends or your family, the employees and their families, everyone's affected by.

you know, whatever may happen to you because you didn't put things in place.

Matthew (21:52)
Yeah. And I and I and you make a good point. I've really been addressing more of. The lawyer who's more involved in the day to day or the founder or the CEO that's more working in the business. What we do is tailor slightly differently for those that are on a higher level, usually firms grossing more than let's call it seven to 10 million where the owner gets to work as a minimum, right, as a floor where the owner gets to work more on the business.

And when I say seven to 10 million, I'm talking about gross revenues, not the value of the business, right? That's when we start to see more of a passive owner, but there's still so much that they know and orchestrate with the higher level management that if that knowledge, if we don't create playbooks for their family, if something were to happen to them, then the business runs away without them because the people that are calling the shots inside of the business can start running rough shot.

And so it becomes a lot more high level strategy as opposed to the smaller guys who are looking to figure out who gets to pull what levers and operate the machines.

Kevin Daisey (22:56)
Interesting. Get it. Okay. That makes sense. So that's the kind of firms you're looking for the best to work with. That makes sense. Um, if you got a solo running around, uh, probably not a good fit to be, uh, to be looking at stuff. But, know, I just, that's why I this podcast though, cause I'll have solos on here. I have people that really figured it out. They play the CEO role and they've kind of stepped out of things, but all those are, we're all looking for the same thing to get better.

Matthew (23:20)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (23:25)
right, to improve things, to be better next year, and to work ourselves closer to what you're saying. And I think most don't even think about what you're bringing to the table as an outcome, you know? It's more just, I want to work maybe less and make some more money, and they just end up, you know, maybe making more money, but they're definitely not working less.

Matthew (23:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, they're tied. They're tied to the machine.

Kevin Daisey (23:49)
Yeah, 100%. So I wanted to ask a couple of things here. One big one. What are some advice for law firm owners that are listening that are looking at selling or scaling?

Matthew (24:00)
Sure. So if they're looking to scale, you've got to invest in great personal and professional development. You've got to get great coaches and advisors and really spend on that. And if it's not the right fit, then change. That's fine. It's okay to change. But like a good therapist, it really starts with what's going on in your head, how you structure your day.

so I would say that was the thing that allowed me to grow and scale very quickly. another thing I would say is get comfortable with using the technology if you're not already, and keep your eyes out for opportunities. I do believe that the, landscape is going to change a lot over the next 10 years, the legal landscape. so I would say that in terms of, of scaling,

And in terms of exiting, I would say as quickly as you can start creating time in your calendar, get a great operations type of person in the organization to start documenting the hell out of everything and get it centralized and get it to make sense because that becomes the framework for your organization and becomes a lot more sellable.

Kevin Daisey (25:08)
Yeah, great. Good tips there. We've, we've done that. We've built a, like an internal team, if you will, that oversees process documents. I, I own three agencies that it'd be like owning three law firms, totally separate, different brands, different teams, different focus, areas. but they have, we have a central unit that documents everything centralizes HR billing.

Matthew (25:14)
.

Kevin Daisey (25:34)
payroll and could start another one tomorrow with almost a copy paste type system. And I don't manage all, I don't manage any of the companies really at this point, but two, I don't even know about what they're doing until I get a financial meeting once a month and see what the profit was and what my distributions are. So it's, we've worked hard to build that system out and be repeatable.

And yeah, how can a law firm do that? think also is acquisition, like a part of this equation of of scaling and selling as well in the legal space.

Matthew (26:08)
Yeah, I think I think it can be. I think that a lot of the younger firms out there could acquire some of older ones and they can get a good deal on it because law firms are not typically transacting left and right. They're usually something that somebody wants to leave to somebody or something that somebody wants to just leave behind. But there's a great opportunity to make money, especially because we're going to see private equity come into the mix over the next 10 years and you can make money on this. You know, there's going to be all of a sudden.

buyers out there that don't have rigid, overly analytical, frustrated minds of other attorneys. And that's part of the problem too, in transacting law firms. got lawyers dealing with lawyers, right? That's not the way to get anything done. So once you get private equity in there, you're gonna have an opportunity. everybody needs to be prepared in building what they're building to get out of there and cash in. But you also need to be prepared on figuring out what's next. And that's a tougher thing too, because

for so many lawyers, their identity is tied up in that. You Kevin, you're an entrepreneur that has varied interests, and if I told you two other businesses where you could make millions and help people and do great stuff, you'd be listening, because you're tied to that. Your identity is not tied up in being a lawyer. And that's something that they're going to have to separate, I think, over time, is to have a healthy understanding of that part of who they are and then figure out what's next.

Kevin Daisey (27:27)
Yeah, interesting. I was hurting someone the other day. Just was like, I've this before, but like, you know, it could be like a lawyer is what I do. It's not who I am. and I think, yeah, but in the legal space, the lawyers are very passionate about being lawyers and that's, that's awesome to see. And, and they do great work and they help a lot of people. And so I, but I think they can get, they can get too tied to that. And then they don't want to be a leader or owner. they still want to play lawyer.

Matthew (27:44)
Absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (27:51)
And that's fine. You know, some, some take that choice. Some partnerships I've seen where, Hey, I'm the lawyer. I'm to be the best lawyer. And then the other person's like, I'm going to be a business owner. And, you know, that's a good, a good combination to have too. But I just think, you know, cause I've been on both sides of the fence. I've owned companies for many, many years, almost 20 some years. And what Matthew is selling us here and building to exit.

regardless if you're going to sell or whatever, it'll run so much better for you and it'll be so much more fun and you'll get to see your team have leadership opportunities and grow. just because you're positioning things to exit, again, doesn't mean you have to, it puts things in place and allows people to grow and take charge and allows you to pull back and do what you do best.

And if you get sick or something happens, you know, things won't crumble.

Matthew (28:42)
And just to add, lawyers have to be extra law firm owners, which are lawyers in, like we said, 48 states.

You can't leave it to your spouse who's a non-attorney. Right? And you got to be licensed. That's what's very different from any of the businesses that you have. You know, you get to... Your business documents and your estate documents can be very creative. Theirs are very restricted because the public's interest is at the heart of it all. Right? We want to make sure we protect the public. But then we also got to make sure that we protect the law firm, the business. And then we also need to protect the family.

Kevin Daisey (28:53)
Yeah, you gotta be licensed.

Matthew (29:17)
And those are sometimes three competing interests. And so when lawyers do their planning, you have to be more precise. They have to do a better job. They're put in a harder position to do, to effect unintentional transition than other businesses. And we help with that.

Kevin Daisey (29:33)
Yeah, definitely more complex. Um, I think it's all complex, but, uh, that sounds way more complex if you're a law firm owner and things to think about things to do. Uh, I was actually at, uh, I was at a conference. Right last may. can't remember what it was, but anyway, one of the guys that had some ups and downs and crazy stuff happening and, uh, kind of fought back a few times, you know, had some, some really bad times and almost went under. but anyway, he's.

He had like his domain for his website was in a trust for his family. And he had just some interesting things that he had done, I guess, to kind of, you know, protect the family if something happened to him. And because the firm was still kind of, you know, doing well, still required him to be there. And, know, it was an eight figure firm. Um, and he had just, he was doing some things I never even heard of. Like, again, the website domain for the firm was in a family, like in the trust.

Matthew (30:05)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Daisey (30:28)
You know, and putting that value on that, which I thought was interesting. I know what the outcome would be if he died.

Matthew (30:34)
I think based

on what you're telling me, it sounds like he stripped away certain very valuable assets that were within his law firm and put them to be owned by his trust because maybe he didn't trust the people in his law firm enough to run it and to give all the money and all the value to the family. So that's a nice way to buffer and put stuff back in their pocket. That's the kind of stuff that we see when we dig deep on this kind of this kind of stuff. Sometimes there's just not, you don't trust your partners or your junior partners or your people in the firm.

Kevin Daisey (30:57)
Okay.

Matthew (31:02)
Or you trust them enough to leave it to them but not that they're gonna pay the family everything that the family should get over the next five years after you're gone and So how do you mitigate that you start stripping away certain assets? They're legally allowed to own and it's creative

Kevin Daisey (31:15)
Interesting. I heard it and I was like, that's interesting. Obviously, we do marketing and websites and we put a big value on those assets and I thought that was interesting.

Matthew (31:23)
Yeah. Yeah, if

you had a ton of traffic going there and that was, you know, worth tens of thousands a month, why not?

Kevin Daisey (31:30)
Yeah, I mean, we have some that are hundreds of thousands a month, you know, valued at. it's, you know, lead sources coming in from those properties you built up. I've told people that in the past that if, I remember it was like 15, 20 years ago, I had, was a dental, a dentist reached out and they were trying to a new website a long time ago. And their business broker reached out to me and it's like, yeah, they just need a new website. Cause he's going to sell like in a year and he's never had a website. I was like,

Well, you know, so I was like, well, have you thought about valuing the domain and the website if we could build up traffic and leads and and they have the broker I was like, never thought about that before.

Matthew (31:59)
Yep.

and tell everyone what happened in the dental space.

Kevin Daisey (32:06)
Private equity.

Matthew (32:07)
Right. And it

used to only be owned by dentists, right?

Kevin Daisey (32:10)
Yep. Practicing dentist that went to school and got a, I guess the license to be a dentist. Right. So.

Matthew (32:16)
just as important as lawyers on the food

chain. And so they're next.

Kevin Daisey (32:20)
Yeah, interesting stuff. final thing I just wanted to touch on is, you you've kind of touched on a little bit, but is there any other trends or any things that we keep watching? Obviously, there's ownership by non-lawyers in, at least in Arizona officially. Any other trends that you're seeing, things that other than like the boomers and some of the opportunities that are coming up, anything else that you're looking at?

Matthew (32:44)
well, don't forget 10, 10 % of the businesses in the country are still owned by the silent generation. They've been holding on for dear life. So, so tack that onto the 50 % of the boomers. yeah, so there's, there's gonna be a lot of transitioning.

I'm trying to think about what aspects of artificial intelligence are going to greatly impact the law because we all know that it's going to happen. You've had some smart people come on already talking about that. And if you guys haven't, you know, listen, go back and listen to some of those.

Kevin Daisey (33:11)
You might have covered it all.

Matthew (33:12)
I think I'm good. Yeah, I feel like if something comes up, I'll let you know, but there's a lot of things happening.

Kevin Daisey (33:20)
Well, Matt, I appreciate you sharing some interesting things that unpack there. We could obviously probably dive into a lot of those conversations a little bit more, but contingency. I mean, what's the best way that people can reach out and connect with you if they got questions? I hope they do. What's the best way they can connect with you?

Matthew (33:37)
Thanks.

Yeah, two ways. One, they can go through the website and just submit a message and we'll respond right away. It's cotingency.com, C-O, like we're doing a contingency plan for a company. So there's no N in there. Or they can direct message me on LinkedIn. It's Matthew Gruber. I'm in Miami and pretty easy to find.

Kevin Daisey (33:58)
Awesome. appreciate that. Yeah. If you all, me and Matt are connected on LinkedIn. So if you need a intro, leave a comment. If you're watching this anywhere on YouTube or LinkedIn or wherever, I'll make an introduction as well. So, I'm wondering, yeah.

Matthew (34:09)
Thanks, Kevin. And the other the

other part I just wanted to plant to is we work with a lot of estate attorneys and business law attorneys to help them work with their business clients and doing the legal work. Because we work with clients all over the country. We're not as a consulting group. We're not limited to one state. So for any estate or business law attorneys who are looking to maximize on the legal work but don't know how to have the conversations.

with their clients on what they should be doing to plan for exit. Happy to work with them and help them out and coach them a little bit on this process.

Kevin Daisey (34:46)
Yeah, that's excellent. And they don't have to be, they don't have to be a law firm, obviously. So, well, I'm learning a lot just talking to you around this podcast. So, you know, this is intriguing to me. It's interesting always. And my partner's bigger into this side of things and finance and private equity and just kind of learning the landscape. Again, I think it's fascinating. I think lawyers should be building their firms to be sellable, regardless as they're selling them.

That's how you should run them. And, you know, it's few out there that I know that they're really doing a good job of that. So, but that's why we had you on the show. Yeah, Matt, everyone. Hey, connect with Matt, check him out, ask any questions in the comments. We will get back to you and, look forward to having him on a future show. I'm sure, we'll have more questions as well. So thanks everyone for tuning in as always.

Matthew (35:20)
Thanks Kevin, appreciate it.

Kevin Daisey (35:35)
to the podcast, I appreciate it. Always looking for great guests and different topics to cover if you have any that you'd like to see or a guest that you'd like to see on, or if you want to be a guest, you know, reach out to me and we will make it happen. So that's all we got. So everyone, see you, Matt. Thanks again, I appreciate it. See y'all

Matthew (35:53)
Thank you.