How John Morgan Built America's Biggest Injury Firm

Welcome to episode 46 of The Earley Show podcast, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is once again joined by John Morgan, Founder of Morgan & Morgan, P.A.

Check out the episode below. You can also enjoy it on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this episode, John reflects on lessons learned from failure, the power of accountability and delegation, and how “buying time” and focusing on leadership helped him scale beyond handling cases himself. He also shares candid insights on luck, swimming upstream, finding your niche, and why generosity and long term thinking continue to guide both his business decisions and his life.

About our guest:

In 1988, John and his wife, Ultima, founded Morgan & Morgan with a simple but powerful mission: to ensure that no one—no matter their background or financial means—gets outmatched in the courtroom by powerful corporations and insurance companies.

What started as a small firm in Florida has grown into America's largest injury law firm, with 1,000+ attorneys, 50+ practice areas and $30+ billion recovered for clients John’s leadership and impact continue to earn national recognition, with recent honors from Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers, 100 Managing Partners You Need to Know, and Forbes’ 2025 Billionaires List.

Learn more about Morgan & Morgan here!

About The Earley Show:

For nearly 20 years, Christopher Earley has successfully led a personal injury law firm in Boston. On the Earley Show, a new podcast launched in the summer of 2023, Christopher and other standout attorneys will be sharing their secrets to success, and discussing the law office management habits that have allowed their practice to thrive. If you’re looking to make better use of your time, increase daily productivity or even just spend less time answering emails, you’ll definitely want to tune in to The Earley Show.

Learn more about the Earley Law Group here!

Check out the previous episode of The Earley Show here!

The Earley Show is a part of The Answering Legal Podcast Network.

Interested in learning more about Answering Legal? Click here to learn more about 400 minute free trial!

This podcast is produced and edited by Joe Galotti. You can reach Joe via email at [email protected].

Episode Transcript:

Christopher Earley (Host): Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Earley Show. It's sponsored by our friends over at Answering Legal. I'm your host, Chris Earley, and on The Earley Show, we always bring you the very best in the legal industry. And today we have a treat, guys. We have John Morgan. He's sitting down for a second time with me. He's an amazing guest. He's the first guest that I ever had on this podcast. And thanks to him coming on as my first guest, the podcast was shut out of a cannon, it took off. I'm grateful for you for coming on, John. That time and once again, so as always, I'm sure we'll have plenty of writer downers on this episode, The Earley Show. She'll be sure to sharpen those pencils. John, welcome back to the show. How are you today?

John Morgan (Guest): I'm good. I'm like I told you before we came on, I just arrived here in Maui. So I'm getting used to being five hours behind, but I can do that here in Maui.

Christopher: A little bit of an adjustment, but I'm sure it's pretty freaking beautiful. Since you last came on the show, I believe you became a grandfather for the first time. Is that right?

John: I'm a grandfather for six times now. So I am loaded with grandchildren. My son Daniel just got married out here in Maui a few months ago, so hopefully he's cooking up some more grandchildren and my daughter's still not through. So I've got six done and hopefully more coming. It's the greatest gift I've ever had in my life.

Christopher: I love that. I love that. I just want to drift to the side for a quick second. You mentioned once, I heard you say, when your kids were up till about, say, 13, that was the best time of your life. What is it like with grandkids? Like, what's that like for you?

John: The great thing about grandkids is this. First of all, when you're a young guy, young gal, starting out and no money and working in cramped quarters, and you're doing this and you're doing that and you're moving around, when your kid would spill milk, it would be like, for God's sake, you clumsy oaf. And you know, you'd have an 18-month-old looking at you like, hey, with grandchildren, when they spill the milk, you're like, you know what? That's no big deal. What happens with grandchildren is spilt milk just becomes spilled milk. It doesn't matter. As a grandfather, you get everything is in perspective. You're not thinking the way you thought when Mike was born, when you're 26 and scrambling. You're much more, your perspective is better. Your outlook on life is better. And you understand that time is going by.

And just yesterday, you had these children who look like these children. But now you got this redo. The key thing is we just soak it in. We just soak it up because I don't think I'll be a great grandfather. I think I'll only be a grandfather the way time has come up. So I just enjoy it.

I soak it up. I spend an inordinate amount of time with them. And when they walk in, look, they walk in like they're seeing the greatest thing in the world and they come run to you. They make you feel so great. So second, this is unbelievable. And the other great thing about being a grandfather or grandmother is, and this has been said, this is not my line, happy to see them come. Happy to see them go. Because, you know, it is a young man. It is a young woman's game. I mean, these people, they, it is nonstop. When they come over, sometimes I have them all over for a slumber party. After a slumber party with my grandchildren, I need two days to recuperate. Yeah. So, but it's an incredible gift.

Christopher: I'm happy for you. Congrats.

John: Thank you.

Christopher: Now, you're spending time, significant time in Maui. Let me ask you this. Did you just pivoting a bit here, right? I want to get more into that stuff as well. But on the topic of Maui, did you do a Think Week this year or no?

John: I did not do my Think Week last year. I come to Maui in the beginning of January, and I leave in the middle of April. So a lot of my Think Week has turned into a Think Quarter. I just had a guy leave here who came here with an incredible idea. He was on his way to a legal conference over in Kona. So my Think Week has more turned into Think Months over here.

But I don't do that like I used to. I used to do it once a year for a week at the beach. But now as time has gone by, it's not as regimented as it was.

Christopher: Just curious, you're so far away, right? Are you working? Does the office check in with you? Do you look at data? What is your day-to-day on Maui? Or are you just really removed entirely?

John: Well, I'm never removed. One time I was with a guy who owned a place down in Key West called Sunset Key. He also owns the Bow Harbor Resort up in Maine. He owns a lot of fisheries up there. And he's kind of a guy with a lot of businesses. And I asked him, I was down there in Sunset Key with him. And I said, look, you got your offices in Maine, you got your things in New Hampshire, you got your stuff in Boston, but now you're down here. They're big hoteliers. I said, where is your headquarters? And he said, wherever I'm sleeping is where my headquarters are. So his headquarters were there. So it doesn't really matter, especially in this day and time, where I am, I could be doing this from Orlando, I could be doing this from New Hampshire.

But I've now got my business set up with so many different people. One of the things that I've said before in speeches, it goes like this, when everyone is accountable, no one is accountable. So that's a big John Morgan-ism that I've stolen.And so inside of my firm, I have many, many, many, many accountable people who are responsible for certain tasks. And every day, every morning when I wake up, I get a report on new cases, how many calls, by city. And so that's how my day starts. The new cases from every city the day before, what type of cases, the sign ups. And then I have reports that pour in constantly throughout the day, the week and the month. So I've really got my business down to, I've got so many people that are accountable, that I can probably take my email and 90% of things I get on email, I can just read and delete, don't need to do anything else with it. Or, more importantly, send it to one of my key people and I know it's handled. So that's where I am right now. And then the other remaining ones are usually the ones that don't need to be responded to at all. So I've got a pretty good system set up after all these years. I've got 1200 lawyers now in every state. There's like 7,000 people in the firm. But every single one of those people have a very specific job and are accountable for a very specific task.

Christopher: I told you we're going to get real right on this one, so I want to ask you something else. I'm curious. So I think, are you 69 or 70?

John: I'm 69. Don't rush me. But I will be 70 March 31st. And I'll celebrate that out here in Maui.

Christopher: That's awesome. That's a big deal. Let me ask you this. I'm just honestly curious.

I think this would resonate with other people. Why do you still do podcasts like this? Like, why?

When you could be at the beach right now, why do you do these speeches still?

John: Why? Well, first of all, you see me looking out right now. I'm looking at the beach. I'm looking at I'm looking at Lanai, and I'm looking at whales jumping up in my backyard. No kidding. To answer your question, I am at the beach. And at work, and when I'm in my house in Ponsonlet, I'm at the beach and I am at work. And the reason I did this was I did it for you as a favor, because we'd had our lunch that time when I came to visit my home in New Hampshire.

And so when you wrote me again, I'm a big believer in there's a book people should read called Give and Take. The premise of the book is there's givers and there's takers. The conclusion at the end of the book, there are people who give expecting something in return. And then there's people who just take a lot. And then there's a whole other subset of people who just give to give.

Because, you know, why not? The conclusion of the book at Give and Take is this, the people who usually receive the most are the people who give expecting nothing in return. And then it just happens. So you've been writing me about coming back on. You drove up to see me at my house in New Hampshire. And I thought, you know what? I arrived here yesterday. I thought, you know what? I got a meeting here at the house in the morning. I can do this podcast for you. I can give you my time, which, you know, whatever. And I just think it makes for good karma.

Christopher: I love that. I hope people are writing that down because I'm a late bloomer. Have you always been like that? Because I'm a late bloomer on being generous, John. Have you been like that for a while?

John: I'm not a late bloomer. I had a childhood where I was kind of unstable with my mom and dad and I was the oldest. And I think when you're the oldest in an unstable, alcoholic, infested situation, you become the oldest, you all of a sudden take on a role. It's unusual. You know, I was probably 11 when the shit hit the fan. And I think all of that kind of molded me to who I am. And so I've always been that way. There are certain people that are called rescuers. They want to rescue people. Now, the one thing I got to fight is sometimes in my life, I've dove into the water to save someone who's drowning in the ocean. That's one thing. But then sometimes rescuers start diving into the baby pool to pull people out who do, who are not drowning, who don't really need your help. And you got to understand you're doing more harm than good. So, I've always been that way, maybe to a fault. I don't need to rescue people who are playing in the baby pool who look like they're drowning. I just need to rescue people who are really drowning in the ocean circled by sharks. So, but yeah, I've always been like this. You're a rescuer or you're not. You're a giver or you're not.

Christopher: That was a connection we had was growing up instability, right? Kids, you know, we're both, you know, fathers and your grandfather, kids detest instability. It's like the worst thing for a child is instability. And so that's why you're a unicorn and I, to a smaller extent, because we got at we beat the odds and got out of a hard situation and can look at it in a healthy way and actually thrive to we're thriving despite that. And it's how we looked at that. So the average, you know, Jane or John, growing up in those circumstances doesn't do well in life. So you're definitely an outlier. And I think that's not lost on me. I'm very sensitive to that. So I speak your language about the upbringing being. In many ways, you had it probably harder than me in many ways. So, but to not be, for me, but to use that as like, I'm gonna help, I'm gonna give, that's higher level thinking that I encourage the audience to consider.

John: But I don't really think about it. It's like breathing. I think, you know, a lot of people wanna blame, there's a saying that we spend our entire adulthoods trying to overcome our childhoods. And I think people lean too far in to look how bad I had it. But the truth is, did I have it bad? Looking back and looking now, it seems so. But at the time, when I look at my whole life, you know, I had a ball. I had a ball and there were some rough patches and you learn to compartmentalize. But I'm okay. You know, it seemed chaotic and our greats suffered and all that. But as the oldest, I then took it on myself to say to my four younger ones, every time my dad would get fired from a job, he'd say, whatever you do, be a professional. Nobody can fire you. That was his mantra. And so with my my siblings, I was very, very, very strong, driving them to be a professional. And consequently, two of them are dentists. One of them was a mental health mental health counselor. And then Tim, the one who got hurt, he passed away.

But he worked with me. So that that childhood, that bad luck of my dad losing his job a lot turned out to be good luck because we were so impacted by him losing jobs that we all became professionals. So you got to look at, you know, bad luck can be good luck. If you make it, if you can make it good luck. And it's all in your choice.

Christopher: That's very powerful. Can we just go back? Honestly, I'm fascinated with when you struck out on your own because you, I've heard you say in law school, you didn't tend to start a firm, right? There was no, you know, we're going to get a good paying job and do well. And the guys you're working for said, you know, sorry, Morgan, you're worth this. And you had a different opinion. So you struck out on your own. I'm interested, I kind of like, I really like that come up story that you have of like just the Friday, you know, walking into cold calls. And I want to share with the audience that I picked this up because I heard you say somewhere you would think you're for kids when you walk into attorney's office is cold, right? You think those four kids and they need dad to deliver. There's no greater motivator than kids. I'm just, I'm interested to hear how you went into uncomfortable situations and got uncomfortable by being uncomfortable. Going to attorney's office is just hustling your ass off in the eighties, right? Because you had four kids, that's a lot of kids, it's tough.

John: Yeah. Well, we got pregnant on the honeymoon. My wife is a, I'm Catholic, she's a very devout Catholic. Rhythm Method, I'm here to tell people listening, Rhythm Method does not mix with booze, and you just blow right past that bullshit. So we had kids, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And throughout my life, there have been many moments in my life where I've walked into my children's rooms, especially when they're sleeping, and you're looking at them sleeping, and they seem so peaceful, and their life is so great, but it's all hanging on you. Their happiness, their comfort, their security is all hanging with you. And I found that going in and watching my children sleeping in their cribs, sleeping in the bassinets, sleeping in their bunk beds next to each other, I found that to be incredibly motivating for me. Now, as far as calling on people, before I went to law school, I sold Yellow Pages. And it was the greatest thing I ever did because it was a transition from school to the real world. And as a Yellow Page seller, and I was tremendous at it, I made a fortune selling Yellow Pages for those 18 months. But I got used to walking in to places and saying, hey, how are you? So I took that skill set and that new courage that on every Friday, I would go out to a city or a hamlet or wherever. I have a lunch schedule with somebody, but I would just cold call lawyers of between 10 and 2 o'clock on a Friday and ask what they did with their personal injury business. And you cannot imagine the business that I receive from those cold calls. And it's when you hear people say, don't ask, don't get, no kid. You're not going to ever get any new cases sitting in your office, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and reading Sports Illustrated. It's just not going to happen. Luck, good luck happens when you're looking for opportunities. Luck has a lot to do with everything, but if you don't play the bingo, if you don't buy a bingo card, you can't win bingo. You actually have to get in and do something. So that's how I built it, but that I was very fueled by my family about doing well for them so that they could enjoy a different life than I had. I wanted very much for my children to have, you know, no chaos, no financial worries, no none of that.

Christopher: John, I relate to that on every possible level. I mostly think it's an unfair advantage that we have because like if you had a stable upbringing, silver spoon, all the power to you, but there's great power in having a, in my eyes, in Mike's Maxx, a rusted spoon, you want stability for your kids. You don't want to just do well, you want to freaking crush it, right? And so that really resonates, you know, with me, but it's like white hot under your ass, let's go, because we're not going to do what we saw when we were in our kid's age, right? So it's like, it's insanely motivating.

John: Well, look, it's what I said a minute ago, sometimes bad luck turns into good luck. And the bad luck you're having, it's like, I talk about failure, you know, if failure's bad, but if you make failure your friend, then, you know, but if you let failure, if you walk away after failure, and that's just it, you've wasted one of the great opportunities, which is to take that learning from that failure and go, oh, okay, when I go through the woods this next time, I've got the trees marked with ribbons, I'm not going to have to hunt and pack my way through the forest. The next time I go through the forest, I've got yellow ribbons tied around all the trees and I'm not going to go this way because I know there's a cliff over there and I'm not going to go that way because I know there's a bear cave over there. So if you take

Christopher: I love that. I love that. Any entrepreneur listening to this is failing all the time. You should be failing all the time because it means you're going for it, you're trying. Just curious, how long did you do those Friday lunches for until you just kind of stopped doing them because you got so busy?

John: I probably did them for six years.

Christopher: Wow, that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people you met. I met a lot of people. Listen, I remember pulling into one guy's office, his name was Abbott Herring. He had been the state attorney in Brevard in Seminole County. I knew his name and I'm driving down to Sanford, Florida and I see Abbott Herring and I pull in. I walk in, there's a woman at the front desk who turns out to be his wife. She takes me back to his office and I start to talk to him. I said, look, I know who you are. You're the state attorney or former state attorney. I said, look, I wanted to meet you, introduce myself. I'm a young lawyer. I said, you may have a relationship with some other lawyers, but if they turn it down or cases they don't want, you know, I'll take your scraps. I said, who do you send your cases to? He goes, well, I've been sent on to Fisher and Matthews. He goes, but Jim Fisher just stiffed me on a referral fee. I go, really? He goes, yes. I'm never going to send him a case again. What are you doing with your cases? He said, well, we've been keeping them. Are you working on them? Well, we really should. He brings his son Mike in. Mike, how many cases do we have? Abbot Herring says that day, he says, let's box them up and give them to this guy. So I pulled in with my Nissan Maxima, with the leather package in the sunroof, flat. By the time I loaded the back seat of my car and trunked with new cases from Abbot Herring, I pulled out with my car with the back bumper rubbing against it. And I go home with 26 new cases, which was a tremendous amount of cases. And the Herrings became, from that point forward, the Herrings became big time referring lawyers to me. Mike Herring is a great friend to this day. I ultimately rented a small office from them so I could meet people when I went down to Sanford. If I don't pull in that day, I don't pull out with 26 cases in a relationship. Probably for about six years that I did that, I figured out who everybody was. I knew everybody and you can't be afraid to do it. Because some people, I remember one time a guy said to me, he goes, are you directly soliciting me? I go, I mean, yeah. He goes, is that ethical? I go, yeah, you're not a client, you're a lawyer. But, you know, he was uncomfortable with it.

But I'd always sit down, I'd always start by saying, I've heard so much about you and you enjoy such a wonderful reputation that I just thought, I saw your sign, I just wanted to see who you were and just for me to introduce myself. When you tell people, I've heard so many good things about you, that kind of like, oh, okay, this kid ain't so bad.

Christopher: Totally. I love that. That's brilliant. So you're getting busier. You're just working your ass off to get cases. You're getting a lot busier. You talked about resilience before and that's really being resilient, leading into failure. Could you, we hear a lot of success, but could you tell us about things that didn't work well? See the 80s, the 90s, looking back. I know we talked last time in our conversation on this podcast, the pandemic. Understandably, that was a terrifying situation, especially a guy at your scale. It's a little bit insane. But in the 80s and 90s, looking back, what were the hard things that you had to get through to find bigger success?

John: Well, one of the things that we had to get through was, do you advertise or not advertise? I started a firm with two guys, Terry Griffin and Paul Linder. A lot of the advertising lawyers were referring me cases. I had cold called them and they're sending me the cases they didn't want or the cases they didn't do. But I thought, I could see from my relationship with them that advertising was working and I'm like, I told my wife, I said, this train is leaving the station. My partners were very, very conservative. I mean, Terry was the general counsel for the State Republican Party. He was that guy back in the 80s and they didn't want to advertise. So, what the compromise to me was we went out of our zone. We went up north to a city called Ocala, right outside of Gainesville. We opened up a satellite office in Ocala. We hired a guy and we started advertising up there because Terry didn't want to do it in his hometown. We hired a guy who we relied on. Cases were coming in, but were they being worked? And at the end of the day, at the end of the year, it was a failure because we should have been doing it in our own city instead of 100 miles away. So that became an inflection point in my career. You come to different roads, go left or go right, so we're here. To Terry and Paul, the experiment was a failure. And they were like, okay, we've done it. The experiment to me was not a failure. The experiment to me was we had made a lot of mistakes but it wasn't a failure because what we did have was cases. Cases were coming in. We just weren't working on them. We had a guy, this was before computers and cell phones. It was back in the dark ages. So at that moment, I said, listen, here's what I think we need to do. We need to come back. We need to do it in Orlando. We need to be the ones handling the cases. We can't be relying on somebody out there. They were like, no, no, no, no, no. What they learned was advertising doesn't work. What I learned is advertising does work if you work it. It's like AA. It says, you know, they say it works if you work it. Well, at that point in time, we decided to go our different ways. I told them, I'll take the bank, because we borrowed money to do this, I'll take the Ocala cases and I'll take the bank debt and I'll take one of my associates and you all go your happy way, I go my happy way. They went their happy way and there was just two of them for the rest of their career.

Christopher: Really?

John: They did okay. I went my happy way from that failure that I made my friend, and here we are, whatever, years later, and I have 1200 lawyers and 7000 people on staff, but they saw something that I didn't see. They saw failure, and I saw success in the failure. And that's a big thing you got to look for is, is there success inside the failure? I used to own a bunch of gas stations, service stations, shell stations, and sometimes you see a shell station empty. Well, it was the wrong location. The wrong location, no ingress, no egress, curb cuts, means everything. So, inside of something like that, it's hard to ever find success in that failure because location, location, location. There are certain things that you can't find success in the failure. But in this particular case, I saw a lot. It taught me so much. And that failure in Ocala is very, very much a part of my story because I took that failure and turned it into my ultimate success story.

Christopher: When did you stop handling cases?

John: You know, that's hard to say because a lot of people want to deal with me, but as far as me having a huge inventory, you know, it's been years and years and years and years and years. I don't know exactly when, you know, there was a time where I had an inventory of 500, 600, 700 cases. I mean, I was really, I basically practiced by motion to compel. They'll motion to me to compel my, because it was like, you know, my hair was on fire all day long. Trying cases, getting motions to compel, signing up cases, not managing my time well. But I finally came to the point where, you know, I knew what I needed to do to be what I am today. And what I needed to be, and the number one thing that any business person, any entrepreneur needs to do is focus. Focus on the big picture. And then, what you have to do is you have to figure out ways to buy time, to give you more. So to buy time, you have to say, you know what, I'm going to go pay people to do things that I was doing so that I can devote most of my time to building my dream. And when you start buying time with people, and that's how you buy time. There was a litigator in our town, who your listeners have had to heard of named Keith Mitnick, who's written two incredible books. He's in trial right now as we speak in San Antonio, picking a jury. I think we turned down 40 million yesterday. But I knew Keith was great. And I took him to dinner for three years in a row, because I knew what I needed to anchor this thing. I needed somebody who was going to be focused on that part of my business. And that focus that he could give me, that I couldn't give to that side of the business, was important. First year, he told me no. The second year, he told me no. The third year, I decided, you know, I got to pull out all the stops. So I took him to Steak and Ale for dinner and with the pewter plates. And I closed it. And he came. He had to leave a pretty nice deal. I can promise you this, and I've told Keith this many times, if there's no Keith Mitnick, there's no John Morgan. We're trying cases. That's what we did. At the end of the day, you know, I can bring all the cases in I want. But if I can't go maximize the value, I can never be great. And so there are a thousand stories of Keith Mitnick's in my firm where I've gone out and bought time by sharing my profits with these people. And Keith has been our teacher inside the firm, you know, the one book he wrote, Don't Eat The Bruises. I mean, every decent trial lawyer in America has read it. But then Keith became inside of our firm, the mentor, the professor to all our lawyers. Once a week, Keith does his own deal called Brush Strokes inside our firm. And so we got a whole side of our firm where we got these great lawyers, Rick Block, Rocky Wilkins, Keith, Will, Keith, all of them focused on nothing but trying cases. I'm not focused on that at all, but I don't have to because I bought time to do what I do best and let them do what they do best. So sometimes you have to pay money to buy time for focus. And that focus is what can make you great.

Christopher: I love the Mitnick story, the persistence, because you knew who he was and you had to have him. I like that a lot. You didn't just stop at the first year out. No, let him go somewhere else. You knew what you were looking for. You knew who he was. So that's awesome.

John: All I did with Keith was, at the end of the first two years, I was like, I just want you to know that you know you're supposed to be with me. You just don't like the idea of not having your name in the firm because your firm is called Pete Mitnick. And Fred Pete was a legendary lawyer. And I said, but what I got cooking, I said, I'm going to be back. I'm going to be back. And I called him three years in a row and got him on the third try. No means yes.

Christopher: That's a big deal.

I love that. Could we talk about your leadership? Because you had to grow as a leader or else you would have stayed the same size you were. How does your leadership today compared to John the leader in the 80s and 90s?

John: John the leader in the 80s was in the kitchen, cooking the food. John the leader in the 80s was the waiter bringing the food out. John in the 80s was busing the tables after the food.

And John in the 80s was also the owner doing the books and doing payroll taxes when everybody went home. That's not a formula for a system. When you're young and you got unlimited energy, you know, like when you're young and you're starting out and looking for cases, you can be at a ball game on a Saturday and if your answering service calls and says, I've got a new case, you take it, you leave the ballgame, you go sign up the case because by God, you're hungry. Over time, as we get satiated, we maybe don't leave the ballgame. We're like, hey, do I need to leave this ballgame? Our hunger goes down. But I realized that I still needed, if somebody called me at 10 o'clock on a Saturday, I still needed to respond as if it was still me. So then I started getting hired, what I called investigators. So they called in on a Saturday, I had people who would pop out, drive to wherever, and within two hours, that case was signed up. Over time, you start buying time by hiring people. And then, over time, you start bringing in leaders. And I may have said this to you before, but there are people in your organization that emerge. They just become superstars. How do you know? The first way you know somebody's a superstar is what I call the send delete test. When you send something to somebody, and you become so comfortable with the fact that they're gonna get it done, you send it and delete it. It's done. You just know it's done. There are some people you send things to, and you don't necessarily delete it. Like a day later, you'll say, hey, did you ever do so and so and that? Oh no, I gotta get on that. You start to figure out who the send delete people are.

Once you get enough send delete people around you, who are as relentless and have as much grit as you do, then you start assigning them responsibilities, accountability for specific things.

And then once you do that, once you get your send delete people in place with their jobs, then after that, you delegate ruthlessly. And sometimes I can pile too much on certain people's plates. You gotta be careful about that. Because back to the waiter, you can only carry so much to the table. And so that's how I do it. So I've got a very defined structure inside of my firm.

I have a president, Xander Clem. I've got two COOs who are responsible for totally different things. I've got a CFO, and he's got somebody with him who's responsible for making sure who pulses the budget. You've got to make sure you have a budget that you follow and that you pulse it every month. Are we up? Are we down? Why are we up? Why are we down? And then I've got managing partners in every single big office.

Christopher: And when you have a send and delete, it's a beautiful thing, because I think most people are not send and delete type of people. When you have some, you can really run, and I love that. By your time, once you isolate, okay, I've got to send and delete, then you just leveled up. You just leveled up.

John: You bought time.

Christopher: Yeah, and then you could live in your zone of, I call living in your zone of genius, growing the brand, building, expanding, thinking. That's why I was curious about your think week. Just getting out of the weeds and just really focusing. We talk about focusing. That's how you grow, and I hope the practitioner really considers that. Let me ask you this. I'm kind of curious. I read a book by Malcolm Gladwell. It was called Outliers. He's the guy who said, basically takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. He talks about the Bill Gates of the world, certain people, the right person born at the right time. It's a thing of the universe that's almost like a perfect timing. I look at you similar because that book reminded me of you. You came out of law school time where advertising was suddenly allowed and then you had the foresight. It's like that's how I look at you taking advantage of every opportunity coming up in a hard upbringing. But despite it still, but nothing was handed obviously you had to create your luck. The book talks about, again, Bill Gates, just like these things where, so I think that's out of our control when we're born. So this is a new age we're in, AI. Who's the lawyer coming to law school? Who's that John Morgan going to be? Who's looking at AI and going to harness it to the best of his or her abilities? That just fascinates me.

John: Well, look, if Bill Gates hadn't been, he's my age. If Bill Gates was born today, he couldn't be Bill Gates. If I was born today, I couldn't be John Morgan. Why? Because we got a 40-yard head start. We were born in a time where Bates vs. Arizona was only four or five years old when I got out of law school. And lawyers who advertised, it was taboo. And I was more of the president of the fraternities. I wasn't the disrupter. So it was a hard move for me because I was embarrassed. When I first went on TV, I didn't even go on myself because I was embarrassed to be the one doing it. But I also knew it was going to happen. So, but the advantage he gave me, I've always thought about it like this, is like we were on the 10 yard line and I was the fullback and we did a draw play, but nobody thought it was coming. And all of a sudden, I've got the football and I'm rambling through this hole because nobody's watching the fullback. And all of a sudden I'm at the 50 yard line and I'm looking around and nobody's there and I'm just running without a defense. Today, it would be like playing against the most swarming defense in the history of the NFL. Yeah, Life is Luck. I have a new book that's going to be coming out in a couple of weeks called Life is Luck, The Paperboy. And it's a whole book about luck. And you're right, Malcolm Gladwell said that. He also said about the 10,000 times, the more you do, the better you get. That's about my trial lawyers. That's about the Keith Mitnick's. What he's doing all day long, he's getting better and better and better because he's picking probably 20 juries a year. One time when I was a kid, I went to a bar called Rosie O'Grady's Big Tourist Place down in Orlando. I was there with a friend of mine and it was nickel beer night. This waiter comes through and he's got a tray. The beers aren't on it, but he's spinning it like a basketball. He's walking through the crowd and he's spinning the tray. I remember looking at it and I said to my friend, Mike, I said, look at that guy spinning that tray. He goes, don't be impressed. I go, it's pretty impressive to me. He goes, don't be impressed.

I go, why not? He goes, if that's all you did all day, you could do it too. It goes to Gladwell's thing about the 10,000 times. If all you're doing is serving beer and then going back to get more beer and you decided to start spinning the tray, at a certain point in time, like you've been to bars where the guys are flipping bottles behind the back and this and this and this, and it's very, very impressive. If that's what you do all day, you should get good at it. It's just like trial lawyers. The more juries you pick, the better you get, and the more juries you pick, you too can spin the tray and toss the bottles.

Christopher: This is funny, we're talking today, because I'm actually halfway through Sam Walton's biography, which you talk about Sam Walton quite a bit. And so he talks about swimming upstream. And I feel like that really defines your trajectory, right? Going against the current, right? And taking full advantage, right? Of what you had, what you didn't have, and his book is inspiring. And if I'm not mistaken, is that what inspired you to branch out, to expand your geography to other states?

John: Well, Sam Walton is very inspiring to me. The first book I wrote was called, You Can't Teach Hungry. And in that book, the last chapter is titled Swim Upstream. And it's inspired by Sam Walton. What Sam Walton said was this, when he decided, he had a dime store in Arkansas, and he decided that he was going to move out to a pasture and build a super store in a field, and his whole deal was, I'm not going to pay that downtown rent. I'm going to go out here. Instead of selling location, I'm going to sell cheaper prices. That was the premise. Everybody told him that was a mistake, because you don't leave downtown. That's where people come to shop. They're not going to drive out into the country. But Sam Walton said, no, I'm going to swim upstream. And what he meant by swimming upstream, it goes like this. When you see people coming downstream, they're all just coming very, very fast. They're on floats. They're sipping Mai Tais. They got the cocoa butter on. They got listening to music. And they're going with the current. And sometimes they're going very fast with the current. And sometimes unbeknownst to them, the current is actually taking them to Niagara Falls. And they're moments away from going off the cliff. When you swim upstream, you're now swimming against the current. You're now swimming past those people on rafts. And as you go past them, they're saying to you, are you crazy going this way? You don't have to swim against the current. You can get an inner tube and come with us and have a cocktail. But here's what you do. If you swim against the current, and if you swim against what I call the vision block, which is telling you, don't leave downtown. Once you get to the top, once you get upstream and out of the water, that dirt there is the most fertile dirt in the world. And once you're upstream, now you're in the most fertile part of the world, the most fertile land, and you have no danger because you're up high. The other people are going sometimes nowhere fast and sometimes off the ledge. Sometimes people do go off the ledge and have great success. I mean, there's no doubt about it. But to swim upstream, I liked the same way. The first chapter of the book was called The Tortoise and the Hare. And the last chapter in You Can't Teach Hungry was called Swim Upstream.

And both Sam Walton's book and that book from my childhood, The Tortoise and the Hare, were very instrumental in everything I've done in my business lives.

Christopher: You know, looking at the people, oh, that guy must be killing it. He just had a $10 million case. That's one $10 million case I don't have, right? And just assuming that he has it all figured out or she's got it made, that's really helpful and I encourage the audience to consider it.

Could you talk about that, the danger of comparison, and how it's totally rational to make these assumptions about people?

John: Well, the problem with comparison is sometimes you're comparing yourself with something that's not true.

Christopher: Right.

John: First thing I will tell your listeners is, again, this is not my, these aren't my words, but I've taken these words, comparison is the thief of joy. Because what we do is we start looking at all these different people, and we're like, how are they successful and I'm not? How are they doing so well and I'm not? How did they get that, what you talked about, the $10 million verdict and I didn't? Now, when you cut into the coconut to get into meat and coconut, you may find that that $10 million verdict was a case that had no insurance. But they're still, they're crowing about it.

You may find that $10 million verdict overturned two years later. You never hear that part of that story. You may hear that $10 million was done by, you sued somebody who didn't even appear.

And you didn't, there was, you just wanted that to put on your website, $10 million negligence security. So the first thing is remember, a lot of times you're comparing yourself against something that's not even real. The second thing is, you see things that appear to be real. They're mirages, they're mirages. There was a guy in Orlando that used to drive me crazy with Comparisons of Thief of Joy. His name was Mick O'Brien. Very flashy, incredible dresser. He was in my building. His office was like to the unbelievable, and it was all black lacquer. It was like incredible build, incredible wheel. Mick had floor seats at the Orlando Magic. He'd come in late to the game and he'd sit down. He dated this girl who looked like the key person at Hooters and drove Lamborghinis. Now meanwhile, I'm over there driving a Nissan or a Toyota Previa van to the Magic game, with all these kids piling out, going up, not on the floor, but up high. And then I'd look down and I'm like, God, look at Mick down there. I wonder what that would be like to be Mick. Well, it turns out that one day it all just collapsed. It was all built on sand. And he really was just robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Lamborghini was leased. He wasn't doing as well as he thought. The furniture was leased. The debt was staggering. And everything he had that I was jealous of was a mirage. And I wasted all this time looking. We have some racehorses. And sometimes when you race horses, you put blinders on. Why do they put blinders on the horses? Because sometimes the horses look over instead of looking straight ahead. And when you're looking over, you can't run as fast. So when you're running with your head turned that like that, you can't run as fast as when your head's pointed. So we put blinders on the horses. And so what I would tell all your listeners is put blinders on yourself. Don't look at what you think is great because you don't know. When Mick O'Brien finally passed away and he was really, you know, we had a lot of great times with Mick O'Brien. One of the last things we did for Mick is we handled his Social Security claim for himself personally. He had gone all the way down to nothing. And it was sad because he really could have been great, but he was too busy preening like a peacock. And just remember this, all that glitters is not gold. But we spend a lot of time coveting gold that is not gold at all. It's fool's gold. It does nothing for your ultimate success. The only thing that's gonna help you be successful is work your ass off.

Christopher: I love that. I love that. Blinders is the only way. And in this PI industry, a lot of glitz, a lot of people putting on airs.

John: You gotta be careful about that because that is very destabilizing to your mental health and to the success of your firm's growth. To be looking at a mirage that's really not, and you spend a lot of time coveting that mirage that doesn't exist. What you gotta do is you gotta go dig your own well and pump your own water and then let people be envious of your true well. Not a mirage, a real well.

Christopher: I love that. I really do. I relate to that because you're always thinking the other guy or gal is doing this bang up job, doing so well. I'm going to be honest, that's how I think sometimes. It's important to just worry about your own damn boat, right? You don't know. You don't know. You have no idea. You don't know. I see people posting verdicts that they had when they were with me and they were like third chair. They didn't do anything. They were just like third chair but they go and start their own firm and say, hey, I got a $10 million verdict. Yeah, well, you were carrying Keith Mitnick's trial bag to and from the car. Again, there's so much disinformation and misinformation out there. A $10 million verdict may be a $10 million piece of paper that means nothing that you consume yourself thinking about because they got that verdict and you didn't. Let me ask you, I just want to hypothetical you just got out of law school. 2023, you just got out of law school. You're starting your practice. TV is obviously, maybe it's too late to get on TV. Where would you look? I think you do a very nice job of looking to tomorrow and maybe what's coming. What would you do if you were a young guy coming up at this time, in this age?

John: Well, if I was talking about non-PI, I would say this to everybody. Every great lawyer I know has a niche. If I was to ask you who's the best DUI lawyer in your area, you're going to probably give me just one name every single time. If I was going to ask you who the best divorce lawyer is in your town, most of us are going to say the same person or two or three. Why? Because they have a niche. They have a niche. I do banking. I do bankruptcy.

I do securities. And I believe that the more narrow the niche is, the more you have a chance to be great. Because that's what you do. In my hometown of Orlando, there's a DUI lawyer named Stuart Hyman. He's the guy. He's just the guy. I know his number by, as I referred so many cases to him, 407-896-0536. I've referred Stuart Hyman zillions of cases. Why? He's the man. Why is he the man? He has a niche. Now, if I was starting out in PI., I wouldn't necessarily say no TV. I wouldn't necessarily say that at all. What I would say is this. First, bullets before bombs. A lot of times, people like to go out and drop a bomb. I always look at it like this.

Think of a dartboard, and there's all these different scores. But the one score is, the highest score is the bullseye. So, if I was starting out, I would figure out what niche of people that I could go to that could start building my business and have as little competition as possible. The guy who came to see me today, he was on his way to the Big Island. I was telling a story about a lawyer, a friend of mine in New York, named Jerry Parker, Parker and Wake. When Jerry started out, he was in the basement of his home. You know what he did? They went and advertised on Russian TV. Why Russian TV? Who the hell is advertising? You had it all to yourself. Jerry did this thing, this program live with interpreters. People are calling in live, and Jerry is sitting there fielding questions through an interpreter. Jerry said, one time an existing client called in to complain that their phone calls weren't being returned. They're like, we hired you, but live.

But what he did is he found a niche where there was no competition, no ants on the sugar cube, and he went there. So what you would do if I was starting new is I would go find that niche, that sugar cube with no other ants on it, to have that sugar cube all to yourself. And there's all sorts of different ways to find the bullseye. When you get on the sugar cube with television and billboards, we're all on that, we're ants, we're on top of each other. We're falling off the sugar cube. There's so many ants on the sugar cube, and it's so daunting. And you advertise it and it doesn't work, and you're like, oh my god, I'm spending this money for no reason. For the people who don't want to do PI., find a practice area that is extremely specialized, and you become the man or the woman. For the PI person who wants to come out, break in with Russian television, Korean television, or whatever that niche is that you think you might be the only aunt on the sugar cube. Listen, I'm on Pandora. Nobody's on Pandora but me almost. I'm the only aunt on that sugar cube. By saying this right now, people will probably be rushing out and going on Pandora.

Christopher: That's wonderful. I love that. John, I appreciate your generosity in coming on the show. Thank you so much. I'm convinced you're so successful because you give and give and give and give and give. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you very much. I value our relationship. And you always have a friend in Boston. So if I can ever help with anything, I'm here. So thank you so much. Have an amazing time in Maui.

John: All I'll say in closing is, we have that house over there in New Hampshire. And all I can say to you today is this. I'm getting, I see my wife out by the pool right now. I would rather be in Maui than in Boston today.

Christopher: You got that right, man.

John: But I am, but listen, if you ever want tickets to the Boston Red Sox, you know I'm a big sponsor of the Red Sox. So if you ever want to have the best seats in Fenway, you have a friend in John Morgan. Just give me a call. I'll set you up.

Christopher: I appreciate you. Thank you so much, John. Thank you for everything. Very kind of you. Thank you. All right. That's it for this episode of The Earley Show. Be sure to check out more episodes of our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, The Answering Legal YouTube channel.