The Financial Mistakes Costing Law Firm Owners $50,000 a Year

Episode 77 of the "Everything Except The Law" podcast has arrived! This time we’re speaking with Frank Rekas, Financial Planner at Palm Wealth Partners.

The Everything Except The Law podcast can be found on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In this episode, Frank and host Nick Werker discuss the financial blind spots many law firm owners face, why improper business structure and retirement planning can lead attorneys to overpay thousands in taxes each year and how building a coordinated team of trusted advisors can help create long-term financial confidence.

About our guest:

Hundreds of law firm owners have worked with Frank Rekas to cut their taxes, protect what they’ve built, and create financial freedom on their terms. They call him The Wealth Guardian — because his superpower is helping attorneys keep more of what they earn and build a financial foundation that lasts.

Rekas helps law firm owners simplify the complex — so they can stop tipping Uncle Sam and start building lasting wealth. No cookie-cutter plans. No pressure. Just smart strategy that fits your life and your firm.

To connect with Frank Rekas, email [email protected]

Learn more about Palm Wealth Partners here!

See the previous episode of “Everything Except The Law” here.

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

Episode Transcript:

Hey everyone, welcome back to Answering Legal's Everything Except the Law Podcast. I am your host, Nick Werker. If this is your first time tuning in, this is the podcast where we share expert advice on all the parts of running a law firm that attorneys weren't exactly trained for back in law school.

With me today, I have Frank Rekas, who I'm very excited to meet, who is a financial planner at Palm Wealth Partners. We have a lot to get to in this episode, and I don't know anything about finance. So, let's start by learning a little bit about Frank and then obviously talking about uh the world, which I probably need more help than I am willing to admit. But Frank, I follow you on LinkedIn. I follow a lot of people on LinkedIn, but I do see your post a lot probably because we're in similar circles. And I noticed that in the bio of your account, it says you are a hockey, baseball, and Chicago lover. So, I'm going to break the ice today with a two-part question. Is it safe to assume you're a fan of Chicago sports teams? And what is your favorite sports memory or least favorite, most memorable?

Well, I was born and raised in Chicago, so that's why there's the Chicago love. Um, love hockey, love baseball. Yes, I'm a Chicago sports fan. I'm a Cub fan. I'm a Bears fan. I'm a Blackhawks fan. I think one of the famous or greatest moments in sports that I was at live, so to speak, um, was the NHL All-Star game in 1991, and that was when we were in the Gulf War. And uh the thing that made it so impressionable on me is that the national anthem that when it was sung at the old Chicago Stadium, it was so loud you could feel the building shaking. And it was already known for having one of the greatest anthems in sports. But that particular day, and you can look at it on YouTube and look it up, I mean it was tremendous. And I will never forget that. Uh I think it was a Sunday afternoon being in that building and listening and being part of that.

That's very cool. I am also a fan of a sports team of a place that I'm not from nor have I ever been. But long story short, uh my friends wanted me to play fantasy hockey a few years ago and it was the same year that the NHL did the expansion to Vegas and the Vegas Golden Knights. And I was like, I'm not a fan of hockey. I don't know anything about hockey, but sure, I'll play in your fantasy hockey league. and they're like, "You can be a fan of the Vegas Golden Knights. They're an expansion team. They're going to stink and uh like you could just be like a bandwagon fan of them because like there's no way that they could be any good." So, what I did was I drafted all Vegas Golden Knights players because I was like that well I'm a fan of this team and I don't know anything about hockey and I w started watching them. I loved it and I went to the cup first year. And so all my friends are very mad at me and I'm a bandwagon fan but I think for a good I was kind of peer pressured into it. So, I I don't think that that's front running. Maybe you'll give me a pass.

Uh, you know, everybody kind of jumped on their bandwagon initially. Uh, and I think now people are kind of angry at them because they're, you know, they're still so competitive early on. So, uh, but they're a good hockey team and they're really tough to play against.

Kelly McCrimmon is the best GM in sports.

Um, he's done an excellent job for sure.

So, I'm actually I'm really eager. So, I'm going to I'll I'll go in order because I'm an eager beaver. Can you tell us a little bit about your background in the financial world and then how you came to start working specifically with law firm owners?

Okay. So, I started in financial services in uh 1991 back in Chicago when I was about five. Um and uh I started with an insurance-based company, moved to South Florida about a year and a half later and I didn't know anybody here. I mean, I didn't know a soul. Probably not a smart thing to do, but I guess I've always been a little bit of a risk taker, and I knew deep in my heart that I'd make it work. Ultimately, it did, but you know, I had typical bumps and bruises um along the way. Um moved to a couple different firms along the way. And at one point uh the most recent firm I was at before I became an independent um I went there because of the opportunity to go into management and be an adviser. The other companies that I was with it was either be a manager or be an adviser. I didn't want to give up the adviser role. So I thought well let me do both. I get myself into management and I can still work with my clients. And after about five years, four years of really being into it, I discovered, you know what, this is not it's not for me. It's not what I thought it was.

And no offense to the managers that are doing it, but I found it to be glorified babysitting. It's just the way I'm going to describe it. So after I uh resigned from that and promoted myself back to advisor, as we like to joke, um I took a look at my my client base and I wanted to see are there any commonalities? Where is everybody from? What does everybody do? There are two or three either industries or professions that my clients are from. And it turned out that more than 60% of my clients were attorneys, law firm owners, people who worked with them. So I decided, all right, not that I'm going to reinvent myself, but if I'm going to do some marketing, if I'm going to do some promoting, if I'm going to do some networking, I think it should be with attorneys and law firm owners. And that's it. It just happened organically over a period of time. I didn't just wake up one day and start cold calling attorneys. It just that's exactly how it happened and really enjoy working with them.

I find myself I feel I feel a similar way and I kind of fell into it a similar way. I just like got a job and everybody was just telling me we're going to start working with attorneys and I I didn't know anything about it and I just really started enjoying it. Um, and now I've gone too far where I'm like really protective of lawyers. And if I know any lawyers, I I'm like, I want to help you. I want to connect you with the right people. I've taken it way too far. And if I drive past a law firm that I've never heard of before, like say I'm uh I don't go into what we affectionately refer to on Long Island as the city. I don't go into the city often, but I'll be like walking past, I don't know, down a street and I'll see a law office. I'm like, I wonder what they're doing in there. It's just silly.

But I'm kind of the same way. And you know, I'll see a sign, a billboard. Do I know them? Have I heard of them? Is that wonder if that's some I wonder if I know somebody who works there. It's just I don't know. It's not an obsession, but it's like you just tuned in. I guess probably the best way to say that. There there is. Have you heard of you know Christopher Earley?

Of course.

Well, you know, his tagline and his billboard, call Earley before it's too late. I think that's like brilliant. That's just I love it. Fantastic.

He's got the jingle now. And then he has a similar ad actually which is um I'm friends with him and he posts he posts this ad. It is you wouldn't trust you wouldn't trust somebody to do like your your doctor's exam or something like that. So, why would you as another attorney think that you could do a personal injury? Refer your case to Chris Earley today. And it's very it's it's out there, but you know what I mean? Like, you gota you got to get out there. You got to make a statement. Can't just be boring. Got to be a little creative. Take a shot. And he is I could go on and on about Chris Early. I love Chris Early.

Anyway, I want to ask you about the solutions that you provide. Um cuz we could talk about lawyers and and what they do right all day long, but I'm actually I'm very curious because I got to admit to you I do have I wouldn't say like a financial planner, but uh one of my really longtime friends is a very successful insurance and money manager person. I don't even know what title uh I would I don't know I don't know what his title is or or anything like that. But um so like what do you provide to growing law practices as it pertains to finances and all that? I really have no idea. I'm not I'm not asking this. I don't I have no idea.

It's okay. Um and we have a lot of titles. There's insurance agent, financial adviser, financial planner, financial professional, what investment advisor. There there's all sorts of titles out there. Sometimes I refer myself as a personal CFO as opposed to a fractional CFO because I'm working with the attorney on their personal um finances. Yes, the business finances do come into play, but it's mostly focused on their personal. So, Got it. Um we have, I guess, what I'll call a five-step process where we focus on minimizing your taxes, right? Both currently and in the future. We protect your income, assets, and your uh life with various life insurance, disability insurance, and long-term care insurance products and strategies.

Then we grow your wealth either individually through investment planning or on the corporate side where we're talking about corporate retirement plans like 401k profit sharing or for people who are making significant money cash balance or what we call defined benefit plans where you can put away up to six figures into those plans and save significant dollars on your taxes while building up a huge, you know, pile of money for your future. Um so those are like the product or solution areas that we that we work in and we also will do financial planning and that can be done as a standalone or it can be done in conjunction with you know we we find a gap. Here's how to fill it.

Hopefully you like us enough and you do it with us or you can go do it on your own but that's probably not going to happen because you haven't done it up until now. Um, or you know, we'll just do a standalone financial plan and not touch anything because a lot of the attorneys that I work with, they just want to know, am I headed in the right direction? I have all this stuff, for lack of a better way to say it. I just want to know if what I'm doing is going to get me to where I want to go because that's with a lot of the attorneys that I work with, that's the ultimate question. Am I headed in the right direction? What where are the gaps? What's missing? What do I need to change?

So in a you know I guess a very high level view that's that's how we operate but most of the time the relationship will start by doing financial planning with an emphasis on the taxes because I'll talk to 10 attorneys six or seven of them are going to say Frank you know another CPA is the one I'm using isn't proactive enough they just tell me what I owe and I write the check and like you know that's not tax planning that's tax reporting so yes I do know people I know people in different parts of the us and I'm happy to connect you with one that, you know, works with attorneys and understands your world because that's the best kind to work with because they understand you.

I feel a little bit better because I do have I have life insurance. I have long-term disability that's like coincided with the life insurance. So, I feel you made me feel a little better that I have that at least.

Um, and those are the two things that nobody wants to talk about. Well, sorry, but I'm going to bring it up. You may not want to hear it, but I'm not doing my job if I don't talk about it.

I'm gonna ask you about that in a second because I'm I'm You know what? No, I'm gonna ask you about that now. So, okay. When I bought my life insurance, I was in my early 20s and I just, it's not that I didn't want to talk about it. It's that I was like, I don't need life insurance. But I was about to get married. I got married at 25. 24 or 25. I don't remember. Uh I I don't even know how old I am now. And I'm… This is a very good friend of mine who I consider a mentor and uh and he like put me through this plan and explained it to me. And my hesitancy was that I didn't think I needed life insurance because I was like I'm 23 that or 24 whatever I was.

What you you you're kind of alluding to people don't want to talk about it. How what do you tell them and and why is it important?

Well, the younger you are, obviously, the less expensive it's going to be. Number one. Number two, you're never going to be as healthy as you are at that young age. And I've got story upon story upon story of people who've waited to either increase their coverage, buy their first policy, who now have a health condition that prevents them from getting the best rating, prevents them from even getting insurance. to me. I'm having people in their mid to late 30s and early 40s and I'm struggling trying to get them the best offer because of some health condition where had they bought insurance earlier, they'd at least have that coverage at a much lower rate. Um, depending on what kind they bought, whether it was term or permanent. We don't need to get into that if you know we don't need to.

But um it's it's a difficult conversation because when you're younger, you're not thinking about dying. And I know you're not thinking about dying, but someday it's going to happen. I did the research. Everybody dies 100%. It's going to happen, you know? So, why not get the coverage when you're younger and it's less expensive? Now, there are people who feel that they've bought enough coverage. And sometimes I pull out this old statement that one of my first sales managers gave me.

I'll just give you an example. You're making half a million dollars a year. You have a million dollars of coverage and you think you're covered. Great, Nick. What's going to happen after year two? Are you coming back to life? We've insured two years of your income. Do you want your spouse to go to work because she has to or because she wants to? What about your kids? What if you have to move? Well, they can sell the house and move. Great. Go to a new school, get new friends. They're not going to be thinking too highly of dad at that point because their life has been um uprooted. So, it's not an easy conversation. And a lot of people, they don't want to hear it. They want to put it off. And I, you know, I don't try to scare people. You know, that those old days of those conversations, um, I think are gone and they don't really work today where Nick, what if you get hit by a truck tonight and don't make it home? I don't do that. That's not… that that doesn't help. It It's more trying to figure out how to fit in the right kind of plan, the right amount of coverage at the right number.

That's really what it's all about. and doing doing the right thing for you and for your family. And it's not just about death. There's living benefits of life insurance. You can be the primary benefit beneficiary of your life insurance policy if you have the right kind of life insurance policy and it's set up. You can be that first beneficiary if you do it right.

Yeah. That when you were talking, so I I recently my wife is pregnant. Um and I talked to my friend who manages my money all the I actually I'm supposed to call him back. I didn't call him back and he's like, "Oh, I can like we can expand your coverage and get you more and and this." And he showed me and I was like, "Oh, I wish I would have bought more when I was younger, man. This is crazy. He wants so much money."

Uh, it's all good. It is what it is. You… I agree with you. I'm already sold and I think you've done a good job of explaining it. So, I want to ask you because we were talking about taxes, but then I I got sidetracked. I wanted to ask you about life insurance. I think I saw this post from you and it says something like the the IRS loves law firm owners because they're paying or overpaying for like by $50,000 a year. So that's crazy. I don't care who you are, right? $50,000. I don't want to give the IRS $50,000 that I don't got to give. So, what are what are some of these mistakes that you can identify uh that would lead to this savings and like what's happening?

Well, without giving too much tax advice, again, I'm not a CPA.

Oh, yeah. That's right. My bad. My bad. My bad.

No, no, no, no. I can… we can go there. I'm not a CPA. You know, a lot of But we have the ideas. I know how to read a return. I'm not going to file a return. But a one of the first places we look at is the structure of your company. How are you set up? Are you, you know, and with a solo, you could be a sole proprietor, but there's a point where you should probably consider being an S corporation, right? You can say, "Well, I'm an LLC." Okay, that's great. But are you an escort or are you a sle proprietor? How are you established? So, that's that's potentially one area. And that's more I mean, I can give someone when I'm talking to them a rough idea of what that looks like and when that makes sense based on the income level that they're at. um you know, are you paying yourself W2 income or is it all straight 1099 K1 distribution? That's kind of a red flag.

Um, but the other thing, and probably one of the most common areas, and that's where this $50,000 tax bill can come into play, is either you don't have a retirement plan or it's not set up properly, or you don't have the right combination of retirement plans as part of your strategy. That's usually the the nail in the coffin right there. I'll give an example. There's a firm owner that we've been working with about 10, 11 years now. We've saved him over $400,000 in taxes by doing just one thing every year for the last 10 years. And he's accumulated close to $2 million by just doing this one thing. Aside from everything else that he's done or we've done together, but just one move every year has saved him that kind of money.

That's a lot of money. It's an awful lot of money that's in your pocket. So, you know, it's not just what you make, it's what you keep. And try to keep as much of it from Uncle Sam as you can.

I will not even tell you how much I agree with that. Uh, but so the whole point of why we started this podcast. Well, I got to be honest. I would like to be honest and transparent. Two reasons we started this podcast. Really, three. Number one is I thought it would be really fun because if you take one look at me or you can hear me talk, I like to talk to people and I definitely use way too much caffeine. So, we might as well put that to uh good use. The second is to meet new people and and expand our network so that we can make recommendations to our client base and and participate in conversations that make more sense to attorneys. The third is to actually help educate lawyers because we do speak to a considerable amount of law firm owners and and thought it would be valuable to to really help them out. And I I know almost for a fact that when you go to law school, they do not make you take anything about finances. So, and actually I went to college and they didn't make me take anything about finance either, which is maybe why I'm so financially illiterate.

But have a good adviser. He'll take care of that.

Exactly. That's why I've totally outsourced that part of my brain and I'm happy to do it. Uh, shout out my friend Mark if I clip this up and send it to you. You're a good dude. I love you. um from like over the years of speaking to law firm owners and people in general, how how uneducated are people and then how can being educated in this in this matter like help your law firm's growth?

It's not limited to just law firm owners because I do work with other, you know, other people, but since we're talking about law firm owners, um I think it's it stems from not being exposed to what you're supposed to do or what's available to you to do. Look, when you're a law firm owner and you're running your own practice, yeah, you're in trial, you're in court, you're working your cases, you're managing your books potentially, you're you're doing you're doing research, uh you're out trying to network, you're trying to get business, you're doing all the things that you need to do to bring business in. Sometimes the last thing that you're looking to do is work on your personal finances. A lot of times what happens is people buy things here and there. It's kind of like a hodge podge.

I call it the financial junk drawer. Yeah. I bought my life insurance from my college roommate's cousin. Okay. I bought my disability insurance from my neighbor's uncle. I got my IRA with uh my wife's best friend from, you know, sorority. All of a sudden, you have all these things. Nobody's talking to anybody about how they coordinate. So, it's really having a setup of having a set of trusted advisors and that should be, you know, your financial advisor, your CPA, your business attorney, uh, fractional CFO, most likely a business coach, someone that helps you with your marketing.

There's, you know, four or five people that you need to really have on your team. And it's hard to do that, especially if you're first starting out, like, how much of this stuff do I need? Well, depends on where you are at the income level, but you need that well-rounded group of people, and they have to be talking to each other. And you really can't have five different financial advisors. You can't have the insurance guy. You can't have the disability guy, the retirement plan guy, the tax guy. They never talk to each other. If they do, it's very rare situation. Not that you, you know, should have somebody that's one-stop shopping, but what I'm seeing from more and more law firm lawyers that I talk to is that they really want to talk to one, maybe two people about their finances because they don't have the time to talk to five people.

So, by not having the time or making the time, things really don't get accomplished. And then all of a sudden you wake up and you're 55 or 60 years old. You're like, "Wow, I guess I got to keep working because I didn't do some of the things that I should have done, which they didn't teach in law school because they don't teach it in law school."

I read a crazy thing today. I don't know where I read it. It might have been Apple News. Apple News comes up on my phone. I get Perplexity. I get all sorts of news. I read that a major Oh, it was Bernie Sanders posted this. Okay, so this is Bernie's fault if I misquote this. Uh, the average American has less than $950 saved for retirement in like any sort of retirement savings.

And I know I talk about LinkedIn a lot. I love LinkedIn, man. I'm always on LinkedIn and so is Joe who produces this show. And you made a post about your your aunt Mary um noting that she worked for 50 years and her retirement never came. And so this I think that we're talking about this financial literacy thing and a lot of people don't know about it. And you're right, it's not limited to just the class of law firm owners, but yeah, I think when it comes to law firm ownership, it's that there's money coming in and there's money going out, right? And you want to be as organized as possible with it to make your own life easier and to get, you know, have some savings and then prepare for everything that we're talking about. Walk me through this a little bit.

Like I I obviously know that it's important to save for retirement, but what I'm trying to get at here is why are people maybe not focused on it and what can they start implementing, especially law firm owners to just get started and then uh like when I shouldn't say when should they speak to you, but how do they sort of go about this engagement with a with a financial planner or or a or a partner in that way?

Well, I think one of the first things that they need to overcome is the feeling of being financially undressed. You're making good money. You talk to an adviser, they start asking you questions. We have our discovery meeting. You know, how much do you make? What have you done so far? And a lot of them are just now starting to make good money, but they're spending it on advertising, Google, and ads, marketing, this and that. Oh, yeah. I'm making good money, but I don't have any. and they're I think not embarrassed but they don't want to show that and I'm not here to judge anybody because I have seen a lot.

So the the thing that you need to do is start even if you're starting small and the best thing to do is automate some of your programs meaning you know monthly uh contributions to your retirement to your life insurance your disability insurance to your brokerage account to I recommend to a lot of attorneys have a have a tax account being it's like a slush fund to pay your taxes when your taxes are due. So that you know, nobody likes paying taxes.

One, number two, you get the bill and you're like scram, oh man, where am I going to get this money from? You know, you don't want to borrow it. You don't want to take it out of your retirement plan because you're going to pay a penalty and a tax. So have a little bit of an account where you're putting a percentage of your money away. Just take a little bit of time to work with someone and get that set up so that you have the money available for when you need it for the various things that come up. But put it to work for you.

I've come across people who have seven figures sitting in a checking account. Why is that? Well, I didn't know what to do with it. Well, okay, here's what we're going to do with it, right? We're not going to, you know, throw it all in an aggressive account, but you need to put it to work for you because right now you're you're way behind the eight-ball. You can turn that money into more than what it's really worth, but just doing a couple things that are not overly aggressive, you know, and it's it's the biggest thing is taking the time to sit down with someone that you know, like, trust, and have confidence in to get the work done for you. It's just having an open mind.

You know, I'm willing to talk to any law firm owner. You want to chat with me for 15, 20 minutes and find out if we like each other, if I can work with you, I'm happy to do that. You know, am I for everybody? That's for us to decide on a call. I think I get along with most people. I like working with my attorney clients. You got to be ready. If you're not ready, that's fine. You can come back when you are. Uh, but I think people need some structure and they need to actually say to themselves, okay, it's time to do this because if you keep putting it off, you're next year, same boat. Year after that, same boat.

You know, everybody has these great ideas in January. One of them might be, I'm going to finally get my finances over. Then, you know, the New Year's resolution falls off the table. Then you get to the February funk and before you know it, it's March and you know, spring break with the kids. April's here. May comes, Memorial weekend. June, the kids are out of school. Let's go on vacation. Fourth of July. August, the kids are getting ready to go back to school. Before you know it, the year's up and you're still in the same place that you were before.

You got to take the time. And it's not a heavy lift, especially at the beginning. We I work at your pace, but when you bring us on or you hire us, you're kind of giving me permission to have my thumb on your back a little bit. Hey, Nick, I need these documents. Hey, Nick, I need this last statement. Hey, Nick, we need to get on a call. I'm going to be doing that because I want to get to where you need to be and show you how we're going to get there.

I have one more major question for you because this is based on my own personal experience and I like to do this type of thing because I don't know I just I like to understand people. I think that's why I got into marketing is I really like to understand how people think and address their concerns and and get aligned right and I know from my experience first of all I am not as close to retirement as I would like to be. Not that I wouldn't get bored and figure out something else to do.

Um, but like two years ago, my wife and I bought a a new house. We moved. It was an upgrade. We sold our house, made some money on it. And I remember when we were buying the house, uh, she came to me and was like, "Hey, I really love this house." Um, she referred to it as her dream home, and I told her that if you call this your dream home and we buy this house, you're never allowed to complain about it. And she's held up that end of the bargain. I'm only kidding.

Uh but she had some financial anxiety and was like, can we afford this? Um like what's our income? Uh if we make this down payment, can we do this? I think there's another thing that I don't have is like financial cocksureness where it's like ah I have all this money and so I don't even need to worry about it and the tax I'm fine with paying all these taxes and all of that. So, does that happen to you often that people come to you and they're like, "I'm totally fine. I don't really even need this. I'm just checking in." Or that they have this financial anxiety and that they're cuz you said like they don't want to be financially undressed.

Is this… are these the hesitancies that you kind of deal with? Because I'm trying to get I'm trying to speak to the person who might be watching this that says like I kind of need that for this reason and I identify.

Yeah, it's it is a lot of I guess the uncertainty and the financial undressing so to speak. I think for a lot of people it's just hard to have the conversation of I know I need to do this. I know I need to start putting money away and a lot of the law firm owners that I work with, they're putting pouring so much back into their business to grow it, right? Whether it's, you know, you know, I'm sure you talk to enough of them, they want, they need to hire an associate and they panic about it for months on end like, you know, can I afford to do this? Can you afford not to do it? Right? You know, what about what about support help? I mean, I walked into a a law firm partner's office a few years ago and he's writing checks like, "What are you doing? I got to pay some bills." You you charge 500 bucks an hour. Is this $500 an hour work? No. So, why don't you have, you know, so and so do it? I don't know if I trust them.

Well, then that's a problem you got to fix. So, sometimes the mindset or what they tell themselves prevents them from doing what they need to do. Just have to have an open mind and be comfortable with the person that you want to work with and have that open relationship. I mean, I I I've heard stories. And I had an attorney, you know, a client call me, you know, we're looking to buy a house. This is how much it's going to cost. What do you think I should do with the current house? I need to get out. I'm afraid, you know, we went through the numbers and it turns out that, okay, you can make this purchase, put the other house up for sale because you don't want to be a landlord. You don't have time to be a landlord. You want to you want to get a phone call three o'clock when the a pipe burst and you got to figure out how to fix it. No, I don't want to do that. Then that should be your answer.

So we deal with a lot of different situations. I try to give, you know, here's the consequences of if you don't do this, here's what happens if you do do this. So that they can see both sides. I think an educated person makes much better decisions than someone that just is shooting from you, you know.

I love it. Uh, I am going to try to quote my friend Delisi Friday and ask you…

Delisi is great.

Yeah, she is.

I love what she's doing. I mean, the referral marketing thing is that's the right and it's so neat. Who else is doing that and helping attorneys actually foster these relationship?

When when I like I don't know came across her or was introduced to her, I don't even remember anymore. I was like, "Oh, this is gonna work for and she's so good at it and has the the right personality and is so uh welcoming and warmth. I could go on about the least forever. I won't." So, if I want to refer somebody to you, what is the best way for me to to get them in contact with you?

So, I share this with everybody. Share this with people that I network with. Share this with my networking group that I have. I have the mastermind group down here. I call it and it's I didn't think of this name, but I call it the email handshake. You email me and you email the person that you want to introduce to me. You know, hi Frank, this is Nick. Nick is a personal injury attorney. He's looking for someone to help with AB or C. You know, Nick, this is Frank. Frank's a financial planner. He specializes in working with law firm owners. He specializes in two or these two or three areas. I think that at least you you two should at least talk, have a conversation, and then someone makes a move, whether it's him or it's me. You know, we make a move, we get on a call, we have a conversation. If we're local, maybe we even get in person for, you know, coffee or lunch. And then it either goes from there if they're ready, if we're the right fit, or, you know, when they're ready, they come back.

That's the email handshake works. If I would have been contacted by every single person who allegedly got my card or my phone number in all the years I've been doing this, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation because I'd be on an island somewhere, you know, sipping sipping something. So, the handshake works the best for me.

Got it. And one day I will meet you on your private island.

Yes, gladly.

Awesome. Well, that's all we have time for today. So, thank Frank. Thank you, Frank. Thank you for joining me and uh thank you to all of our listeners. We hope you enjoyed this conversation and we will be back with another episode of Everything Except the Law soon. Be sure to check out previous episodes of our show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel. Links to everything covered in today's conversation and every single way that you could possibly get in contact with Frank or if you want to email me and I'll do an email handshake uh can be found in the description of this episode. We will see you next time, everyone.