Why the Midwest’s Largest PI Firm Makes a Podcast About Sandwiches

Welcome to episode 62 of The Earley Show, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is joined by Ed Herman, managing partner of Brown & Crouppen, the largest personal injury firm in the Midwest.

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

Ed and Chris — who, it turns out, grew up in rival towns in Rockland County, New York — go deep on how Brown & Crouppen grew from $7–8 million in revenue to $82 million over 25 years: the casual lunch that ended Ed's caseload and put him in charge of the business, the weekly one-question pulse survey that reads the firm's morale, and the culture matrix that explains why you sometimes have to fire your highest performer. He also explains why the firm hires for nice and work ethic over resumes, why the public thinks about PI lawyers about as often as they think about roofers, why the Midwest's largest PI firm makes a podcast about sandwiches, and what he'd do if he were starting a firm from scratch in 2026.

About our guest:

Ed Herman is a managing partner of Brown & Crouppen, the St. Louis-based personal injury firm that has grown to roughly 240 employees and $82 million in annual revenue. Born in Manhattan and raised in Rockland County, New York, he captained Spring Valley High School's mock trial team to a New York state championship before earning his law degree at Washington University in St. Louis. He joined Brown & Crouppen in 2001, handled cases for about a year and a half, and has spent the 23 years since running the business — starting with building the firm's intake operation. He co-manages the firm alongside Andy Crouppen, hosts the firm's Three Lawyers Eating Sandwiches podcast, and stars in the Emmy-winning series Ed Vs.

Connect with Ed:

Visit the Brown & Crouppen website

Watch Brown & Crouppen Television

Topics covered

• Growing up in Manhattan and Rockland County — and discovering he and Chris were rivals from Spring Valley and Pearl River
• Winning a New York state mock trial championship and knowing early he'd be a PI lawyer
• Food stamps, public assistance and learning what a wrecked car really means to a client
• John Morgan's You Can't Teach Hungry and the PI lawyer "origin story"
• Should clients know your backstory?
• Culture as policy, not platitudes: maternity leave, bereavement time that covers pets, and weather flexibility
• The firm-wide Thanksgiving, and the staffer who made stuffing for everyone
• The weekly pulse survey: one question, every Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
• The culture matrix: plotting every employee on performance vs. cultural buy-in every 90 days
• The "toxic box" and why you have to fire your highest performer
• Change management and the real cost of being an early adopter
• From $7–8 million to $82 million in 25 years
• The lunch with the managing partner that ended Ed's caseload
• Mastering intake before the industry was talking about intake
• A day in the life: Litify dashboards and the executive committee
• The biggest challenge in PI: constantly replenishing the pond of cases
• The roofing company analogy
• Why the firm makes a sandwich podcast instead of a legal one — and why the clips are the product
• Brand as the tiebreaker at the bottom of the funnel
• Hiring nice people with a good work ethic — and why Eagle Scouts almost always get hired
• The $10 million case that came in on Halloween
• Appreciation costs nothing and gets you everything
• KPIs are a report card, not the work
• Starting over in 2026: direct mail, referrals from bigger firms and trackable digital marketing
• Building a brand authentically through education and entertainment
• Why measurable marketing beats the "squishy stuff"

People and resources mentioned

• Ed Herman — Brown & Crouppen — getbc.com
• Ron Brown — Brown & Crouppen co-founder; the managing partner whose lunch with Ed changed his career
• Terry Crouppen — Brown & Crouppen co-founder and the face of the firm's commercials
• Andy Crouppen — Ed's co-managing partner
• John Morgan — You Can't Teach Hungry; two-time Earley Show guest
• Mickey Love — previous Earley Show guest; source of Chris's quarterly morale survey
• Angel Reyes — recent Earley Show guest; in a mastermind group with Ed
• Dale Carnegie — How to Win Friends and Influence People (required reading at Brown & Crouppen)
• Rudyard Kipling — "If—"
• Three Lawyers Eating Sandwiches — Brown & Crouppen's podcast
• Ed Vs. — Ed's Emmy-winning series, at bctv.com
• Litify — case management and dashboards
• Adriana's (the Sloppy Guiseppe), Blues City Deli (the Sicilian) and La Pizza in Clayton — Ed's St. Louis food picks
• practicetipoftheweek.com — Chris Earley's free weekly email list for lawyers

Learn more about Chris' practice, the Earley Law Group, here!

Check out Chris' book "Scaling The Wall" here!

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

Interested in learning more about Answering Legal? Book an appointment to speak with us here!

You can also give us a call at 631-866-0801.

Episode Transcript:

Announcer (00:01)

The Earley Show is brought to you by our friends over at Answering Legal. For more than a decade, attorneys have trusted Answering Legal's 24/7 virtual receptionist service to keep their phones covered and their clients cared for. Now they're raising the bar with an AI-powered intake chatbot, live translation services in over 180 languages, and 76 seamless tech integrations. Answering Legal's goal, make running a law practice simpler while helping you capture every new client opportunity. And don't worry, their receptionist team is still the best in the business at turning first-time callers into loyal clients. Find out what's possible by visiting answeringlegal.com. You'll find a link to the site in the description of this episode. Now, let's get to the show.

Chris Earley

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Earley Show, sponsored by our friends over at Answering Legal. I'm your host, Chris Earley, and as you know on The Earley Show, we always bring you the very best and brightest in the legal industry. Today is absolutely no exception. We have Ed Herman from Brown & Crouppen. Brown & Crouppen is the largest PI firm in the Midwest. I've seen Ed on the conference uh trail. I had a conversation with him at a recent conference, and I thought we got to get this guy in the show. He's seen a couple things, which I'm sure can give us value. So as always, be sure to sharpen those pencils with plenty of writer-downers, I'm sure, on this episode of The Earley Show. Ed, welcome to the show, my friend.

Ed Herman (01:27)

Hey, thanks for having me. Been dying to get on The Earley Show, mostly because I love the name. I'm like, it just was so perfect. It was like sitting there right for you. I would have been angry if you hadn't done it.

Chris Earley (01:37)

Well, like you, I'm all about the brand, you know? So what can I say?

Ed Herman (01:40)

It it was right there. Sometimes the universe just cooperates.

Chris Earley (01:43)

Totally. So it's really good to have you. Excited to, you know, geek out with you and learn about your your your story. Could you take us back? I like to always do that. You know, upbringing, mom and dad, brothers and sisters. Where'd you grow up? Just bring us bell.

Ed Herman (01:57)

I I was born in New York City, uh, which uh yeah, I in Manhattan. Um obviously eventually I would make it to St. Louis, but I was raised in New York. Um, I have I'm the youngest of three kids. Uh my parents stayed married until I was about nine. Uh, they got divorced. My dad still lives in New York. My mom came out to St. Louis uh when I was uh 18 uh through her work. And uh I went to undergrad in New York, but then I did law school at Washington University in St. Louis, and then that's what brought me out here permanently. Uh growing up, you know, is a very uh typical New York Jewish household. So it was uh uh a lot of we didn't I didn't know any different, you know. My household was filled with a lot of conversation, a lot of discussion, a lot of debate. And uh from early on, people always said, uh, you know, this is our lawyer. He's gonna be the lawyer. I was one of those guys. And not because I was uh just a big pain in the butt, although I am sure I was that, and a bit of a wise ass, you know, at school, and I know I was that. But everyone always kind of respected where I was coming from. And uh, you know, because they thought, uh, like, he's a jerk, but he's making some good points. That's what I think it really boiled down to. And they were right because eventually that's what I did.

Chris Earley (03:12)

Was it in your Manhattan or or different part of New York?

Ed Herman (03:15)

Manhattan is where I was born, but we actually moved to the suburbs when I was three.

Chris Earley

Okay.

Ed Herman

And we lived in Rockland County, which is just north of the city.

Chris Earley

Okay, stop. I grew up in Pearl River.

Ed Herman

Oh my god, no.

Chris Earley

I'm not shitting you.

Ed Herman

I'm a gr I'm a graduate of Spring Valley High School, class of 89. You guys were rivals.

Chris Earley (03:32)

I knew we were gonna hit it off, man. I told you. I knew it.

Ed Herman (03:35)

You know, Pearl River is where we did our 4th of July fireworks every year was the Pearl the Pearl River Fireworks.

Chris Earley

This is too much.

Ed Herman

You know that little old movie theater that you had in Pearl River. It used to have the Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight every weekend, and that was a big thing for my friends and I. We would go at midnight on the weekends and we go to Rocky Horror, right? In Pearl River.

Chris Earley (03:55)

And this is really funny. I just I'm gonna be honest, I thought you were always in the Midwest. You talk about New York City, I'm like, I don't know if I grew up in New York City or born in New York City, raised in the burbs. Um, so that of New York City. So that's that's crazy.

Ed Herman

Yeah.

Chris Earley

That's that's crazy. I so I was in Pearl River until like eighth uh beginning of high school, where we moved. Long story short, ended up in Boston, got married, planted a flag down the ground, had kids. Anyway, that's my journey. Back to you. So that's fascinating. So the Rockland County thing is strong. So tell us about eventually you you you got into law school. What brought you to law school?

Ed Herman (04:30)

I did mock trial in high school in New York. They have a really good mock trial program in high in the New York school. 660 different high schools participate in it. It's a really big deal. And I did it all three years of high school and won the state championship in my junior year. And that was a great experience for me. I know people say, oh, gee, it was high school. I'm like, let me tell you, the trials that we had in high school were every bit as complex as the stuff that I've had in my career. I mean, they really had a fleshed-out program. And I was the captain of that team. And when we won the states, it was a real confidence builder. I mean, at that point, people had always talked since I was little that I'd be a lawyer. But at that point, it seemed like the universe was saying, yep, we're gonna make this one easy for you. This is not mysterious. This is what this guy's gonna do. I I just knew that that I'd wind up in law school and I knew I would do personal injury law. Like there was never in my mind, that was that's what it was to be a lawyer. I I never thought about contracts, mergers, and acquisitions or anything else. The only areas I ever considered for myself were uh becoming like an agent, like doing the Hollywood thing or the sports agent type of thing, because I'm a big sports fan and I was a big entertainment industry guy. You know, I grew up, you know, nonstop watching television, yeah, going to the movies every weekend. So I was really into that whole industry. So I figured I was either gonna go that route or personal injury, and and mostly just because, you know, I always connected with the underdog, you know, with the victim. And I thought, well, I want to represent victims. And I know there's a lot of areas of law you can do, but I also grew up pretty modestly. Uh uh, we didn't have a lot of money, especially after my parents divorced. So I'm not gonna lie and say that money wasn't a big factor. We had some, when my parents got divorced uh and I was nine, at the time, my mom, you know, she was a stay-at-home, my dad was a gym teacher. So we had no money to begin with. Then they get divorced. My mom didn't have an education, she didn't have a driver's license, but she was a bright woman and a very capable woman and still is. Um, but we had about a three-year period where we were, you know, living on public assistance and going through the challenges of food stamps. But you know, that that really I don't, I it was very challenging at the time. But now I'm in my mid-50s, I look back on that and I see that as such a valuable experience having gone through my ability to relate to my clients and connect with what it is to live paycheck to paycheck to understand how your car is your livelihood. And if and if it gets wrecked in an accident, it's it's not just about, you know, getting a lump sum. It's a it's about how am I going to provide when I don't have my car. And I never lost that. You know, I I always uh I own that time of my life. Uh I have I've developed pride in that time in my life. I didn't feel it at the time. At the time, I felt a lot of shame because I was just a poor kid. Um, but then you get older and you you succeed, and then you look back on that and you you do kind of wear it a little bit as a badge of honor. Um, because you recognize that whether you realize it or not, you were tested. You didn't realize it was a test, but it was. Everything is. And you passed and you did pretty good. So now I look back on that with a lot of pride, but at the time it didn't feel like that.

Chris Earley (07:58)

So we have even more in common. So, you know, I like you grew up in in uh in Rockland County. My father became and I talk about this a lot on the show. I actually wrote a book about this. My father, when I was around the age that your parents got divorced, was homeless in Manhattan. Like literally, it was a high-level executive, and he was a really, really, really high-level alcoholic. He lost his whole world. My mom suddenly was a housewife. She had shoes thrust into making money. So, like, I'm nodding my head aggressively hearing you talk because it's like you and I uh have this unfair advantage because we've seen struggle, smelled struggle, experienced struggle, so we have credibility with our clients because we're not some like high in the clouds lawyer, right?

Ed Herman (08:39)

Well, and I I think it does make a difference. And personal injury law is filled with people that have backstories like ours.

Chris Earley

Yeah, totally.

Ed Herman

And if you read um John Morgan's original book, You Can't Teach Hungry, he talks about this very clearly in the first opening chapters that he believes, and I agree with him, and maybe I only agree with him because it matches up with my personal experience, so it's easy to agree with it when you've lived it. But he does believe that people who grow up and have experienced hunger, uh, you know, they come at these things very differently. And they're they are motivated and aggressive, and they make the right personality to be a personal injury lawyer.

Chris Earley

A thousand percent.

Ed Herman

Um and and it does, it makes sense. And and really, quite frankly, most of the truly successful personal injury lawyers that I've met all have some type of story like that in their in their background. It's just like how superheroes have a certain type of origin story that always seems to come up there. They lose a parent or something, uh Superman or Spider-Man or whatever. Yeah, it just I think it just comes with personal injury lawyers.

Chris Earley (09:41)

Here's your question. I honestly, John has been on this show, John Morgan, twice, and I really look to him as inspiration. You don't have to be born wealthy to become wealthy. There's only so many people in our industry that achieve high levels, right? Um, I I look at you as as one of them, right? Really big firms. But I don't really know unless you tell the public that they would know that about us, that we speak the language of like turbulence, insecurity, right? Like we have we have different experiences, you and I, but it's still a shared, like authentic relatability. And I don't know how many people out there know that. And that's why I like to market that to to the outside world. Is I'm not just I'm not an ambulance chaser, and I actually like a decent guy and want to help your family out if you got hurt in a wreck or whatever. What is what is your take on that? Like, do you think people have a misperception?

Ed Herman (10:31)

I think the people they definitely do until they've experienced what it's like to go through something and and and they get treated well, like by our firm. But I think that it informs whether they know it explicitly. They know it implicitly through the treatment that they get, through the way that they're communicated with uh and advocated for. Um, so it definitely impacts how everything happens. It impacts our entire culture at the firm, too, you know, because all of the culture comes from, you know, comes from the top and and that person's experiences. So we I we don't ever come right out. I don't ever come right out and tell the public my story because I think, you know, I don't know, you know, I I I the fact that that I I was once in those in those shoes. Yeah, I'm not sure how much, you know, people like I know that it makes a difference. I know that it makes a difference for me.

Chris Earley

Right.

Ed Herman

But I always wonder if it to the public, would it really matter because I'm no longer in those shoes.

Chris Earley (11:30)

Right.

Ed Herman (11:31)

Like now I've I've successfully left those shoes and and now I'm in nicer, fancy shoes.

Chris Earley

Yes. Yeah, yes. That's it.

Ed Herman

But I do think that it it it they definitely feel it. They may not know why, but they know there's a difference there.

Chris Earley (11:47)

Does your how many people in your organization have Brown & Crouppen right now?

Ed Herman

About 240.

Chris Earley

Do they know your story, all of them, or no?

Ed Herman (11:54)

Not all of them. Some of them do. You know, and it's not that I I don't hide anything, but I also I'm not one to I'm not looking at like curate a you know an origin story that makes me seem heroic. I mean, I'm a flawed person like anybody. I definitely those experience in a lot of ways help me. Um in you know, in other ways, I'm I'm I'm sure they they are are probably detriments in some ways.

Chris Earley

Absolutely.

Ed Herman

Um unfortunately. So yeah, I'm people get to know me, they they they find out things. I don't hold back. If people ask me questions, I answer them. But if they don't ask, I never assume that people are interested.

Chris Earley (12:30)

So I want to ask you, you mentioned culture. There's an expression, the fish rots at the head, right? So culture comes down, good or bad, right? Good or bad.

Ed Herman

Yeah.

Chris Earley

So it sounds like you are imbuing good good culture, right? And that's really important to me in my firm. How do you do that? What does that look like to you in your firm?

Ed Herman (12:46)

You know, you can't just talk about things like work-life balance. You have to have systems in place that actually provide for those things. You know, you it's not enough to with you can't just have platitudes. You you need to actually build a system that allows people to know what is valued by the firm. So it could be as simple as the idea that uh, you know, having certain policies like having uh understanding your people, having a good maternity policy is is one of those policies that speaks a lot about your culture. Having a good bereavement policy speaks about your culture. Let me tell you what I mean by that. And and these are small examples, but I show these because they're concrete. They're not just platitudes. We say bereavement. That's in addition to all your regular PTO. It started off as, and if you, you know, if you lose a member of your family and you have to take some time off, um, you know, you you you'll get paid for it. And that's a nice policy that not all places have, but then we expanded on it and said, you know, for some people, it they don't have a traditional marriage, but they have somebody that means a lot to them. For some people, they may have have a good relationship with a favorite aunt or a favorite uncle. They're not in their immediate family. So then the policy expands to, you know what? If this person, we trust our people, if this person meant enough to you to where you need some time off so that you could reset yourself, you'll take it, you'll get paid for it. We don't sit there asking, you know, delving into how close their relationship was. You got to trust people to not overly take advantage because it's a good thing to have. And then we expanded it even further to include the loss of a pet.

Chris Earley

Oh, really?

Ed Herman

And that that caught, well, listen, people love their pets, and more often than not, they have to be the one to put their pet down, which in and of itself is a very emotional uh circumstance. So if you need a day or two because of that, like that's reasonable, that's human. Having policies like that, they scream about who you are in your level of care. Um, so we have a lot of things like that built into our policies, a lot of freedoms and flexibilities, a lot of trust. Like, even with like weather, everybody knows we never want people risking their safety just so they can do their job. Now, nowadays, everyone, because of work from home and the pandemic, we all are set up to work wherever we want to. But forever, we've always had the policy of use your best judgment. Don't, don't, don't risk it. If you can't get in because of the weather, try to work from home. If you can't do that, don't worry about it. But, you know, that it doesn't count against PTO. You know, the key is hire good people that aren't going to abuse you. And then that allows you to have very generous, flexible policies and build a really nice culture.

Chris Earley (15:37)

I I love that.

Ed Herman (15:38)

You know, it can't just be the celebrations, although we have all of those too, of course, all of the parties, the Christmases, and we do a Thanksgiving together every year that is so meaningful to me. That's real. Because we still do it like a big family. We do it with sit-down, with the turkey, and the stuffing, and we but we do it firm wide. People talk about what they're thankful for. I mean, it is really um very familial.

Chris Earley

I love that. That's a lot of stuffing going around, right?

Ed Herman

It is, it's a ton of stuffing. And you know what? Uh, just to show you what what the culture does. Okay, so the place that caters are Thanksgiving. Turns out, we learned this not this past Thanksgiving, but the one before, that they don't do stuffing, traditional stuffing. They did turkey and potatoes and green beans and mac and cheese and everything else. And it was nice, but everybody was like, it's a real shame that they don't do stuffing. This year, this year, one of our staff people took it upon themselves and made enough stuffing to feed the entire firm. You know, uh we still catered using the same place because everybody loved their food, but they regretted no stuffing. This person didn't ask ahead of time and didn't didn't check. We didn't ask her. It just shows you that people, they just have a motivation to pitch in and and and and go above and beyond and play their part. And then, of course, we reimbursed her for the money she spent uh on all of the um uh the the ingredients. But you know, but that really it speaks volumes about how you know if you're doing it right, everybody plays their part. It's not just a one-way type of culture where you're just doing a bunch of nice things. Like they're motivated to to bring the best version of themselves into the office.

Chris Earley (17:22)

That's cool. That's a nice story. Those examples you gave, I never really thought about a pet policy. I had a um a team member, a key team member, uh, leave very recently. And I asked her, I said, How would you rate the culture in this firm? She gave it a nine out of ten. I posted about that on LinkedIn today. I encourage the audience, pull your team, ask how's the culture? Because as the owner, a lot of owners, entrepreneurs on this on this call, on this podcast, right? Listening, you don't know unless you ask. So it sounds like you're in you're sensitive to your culture and promote.

Ed Herman (17:56)

You have to, and you know what I'd recommend, Chris, is and we do this once a week, every Thursday at about 10:30 in the morning. Uh, we do a pulse survey.

Chris Earley

Really?

Ed Herman

And it's just it's just a one question scale of one to 10. In this exact moment in time, what is your level of contentment at the firm?

Chris Earley

Really?

Ed Herman

And yeah, it's just one question, and it's and it's literally, and they're instructed, it's it's not an evaluation of how you felt over the last year or where you think things are going. It's as you sit here in this moment, what is your level of content at the firm? And what happens is every week we get an average score. And it allows us to judge the overall morale of where the firm is so that when we do have to announce some major shifts, we then can look at that thing and say, you know, how much did it throw us off? How much did it take out of the morale?

Chris Earley

That's cool.

Ed Herman

We had a an employee, uh, a partner actually decided he was giving up mass tort and didn't want to work in the industry anymore. He'd been with us 25 years, almost 23 years. And so that people were stunned. I was stunned. I didn't, you know, expect it. And it was nice seeing on that pulse survey like what the impact of that was going to be. Like, did that frighten people? Did that, you know, make them sad? Uh so seeing that half-point drop uh in the morale uh made sense. But then more importantly, you can then see when it rebounds.

Chris Earley

Right.

Ed Herman

And, you know, firm-wide, you know, you want to stay, you know, eight or higher if you can, but you have to also be sensitive. You can't turn a blind eye to if you have um a handful of people that are consistently unhappy. And we do have, you know, I'll admit this, I'm sure it's probably true anywhere. And maybe it's a testament to how comfortable people feel in being honest. But in any given week, you're gonna have some people who put zero or one down because they're just not in a good place. Um, they might have just uh gotten fired by a client uh that, you know, and they are feeling whatever, or they might have lost something. They might have had their best friend lose, get terminated, you know, for some reason. You never know what throws off a person's energy, but it's good to know at any given time how many people you have that are feeling some level of um unhappiness. And even though it's done confidential, you know, confidentially, we are able to, you know, kind of go out and remind people, hey, you know, if if you're down in that zero or one or two area, you know, something is interfering with your comfort and your happiness here, reach out to your supervisor or to a friend or to one of us and let us make it better. You know, we don't I don't want anybody coming in on a weekly basis unhappy. I want them to get better. The other thing we do, Chris, and you might want to consider doing this, and we didn't not invent this. We didn't invent the pulse survey either. I please don't take anything I'm saying like we came up with it. These are things I've learned from other firms that I've incorporated into ours, and the stuff that works, I keep, and the stuff that doesn't, we don't keep.

Chris Earley (21:03)

Right.

Ed Herman (21:03)

But we do for every employee, and we have their supervisor do this every 90 days. Uh, we call it our our, you know, our culture matrix. And it's just a graph where on the vertical side, it's one to 10, 10 being the best. How good are they at the performance of their job responsibilities? And then on the horizontal axis, one to 10, 10 being the best, how well do they fit in and promote our culture? The total buy-in, how good of an ambassador are they? You know, do they elevate the people around them? And then you plot out where these people are. And and what it does is it puts them then in four quadrants. You're either going to be in the upper right, meaning you scored a six or better on both um things. And for those people, that's your A box. Those are the people that you want to build around. They're the ones getting it right, doing it right. If you have an upper right hand box, where you have people that are at least eight by eights, those are the best people in your firm. Those are your superstars. Those are the ones that literally, if you were a baseball team, that's your number three and four hitters. They're going right up there. They're doing everything right. But then you have your lower right box. These are people who they love the firm. They're ambassadors. They have buy-in on the culture, but the performance isn't there. This is the box you really want to focus all of your training efforts on. You want to take these people because you know they're good people. You know they want to be there. You know they're bought in. They just need to learn how to do the job better. So you really want to invest in that lower right box and train those people up to get them to the top right box. Now, the lower left box, that means that there are five or less in performance and a five or less in culture. Sadly, that's the box that you need to replace. It's just not worth the time or effort to try to get a person from the lower left box to the upper right box. It's just too much there. And it's a fool's journey. So, as tough as it is, if you have people that are in that lower box more than a quarter or two, you probably need to look at what it's going to take to replace them. And then you get the most challenging box of all of them, Chris. And that's that upper left box. You got people who, from a performance standpoint, are killing it, but they are not good fits culturally in your firm. And this is the challenging box. This is the box that messes firms up. This is your toxic box.

Chris Earley

Yes.

Ed Herman

And people want to keep the high performers because they think, man, they're bringing in $2 million a year in revenue when we don't want to lose that. Let me tell you something. They're not bringing in $2 million a year in revenue. The cases are bringing in $2 million a year in revenue, and the cases are yours. They're yours, and you'll assign them to whoever you want to assign them to. That box right there, that's the box preventing firms from being all they can be. Because that's the box that you have to fire those people, and you don't want to, but you have to. And the firms that realize that they have to are the ones that get to the next level. And the firms that think that they can't are the ones that are held back.

Chris Earley (24:16)

I love that. I love that. That's really, really good stuff. So you're really breaking this down for us. I would argue most firms will keep the upper left box because it's it's generating, you know, seemingly, you know, we're we're we're making money. But really, like you said, you're being held back. I think firms, you know, good high-performing firms like yours, you know, have that data can isolate that segment as being uh an impediment. And I call it setting people's future, setting them free, setting people's future free, opening up their future for them. They're maybe not a great fit at the firm. At your firm, his from her, or from whoever. Set them free. Let them go somewhere where they can thrive. Why hold on if it's not a great match? But once you can identify the match or mismatch, I love that. I want to share one thing we do. I love the weekly pulse. I'm gonna start doing that. We do a morale survey only once recorded, but I'm gonna do that. I stole this from Mickey Love, we work with um, you know, how's the morale? It's anonymous, right? So, Ed, how would you rate our morale? How do you feel about you know how you're treated? I like that. So that's a that's a macro pulse quarterly. I want to go more micro pulse weekly. So I really love this stuff.

Ed Herman (25:22)

Yeah, no, I I think weekly will give you a much better, you know, every quarter, too much changes in a quarter, you'd never really be able to identify, but what was it that shifted the morale? If you're doing it quarterly, you'll never know the what caused it. You'll just know what it is.

Chris Earley

Yep.

Ed Herman

You'll get the grade, but you won't get to see any of the work. But weekly, it becomes much easier to know, well, what happened this week, what shifted this week.

Chris Earley (25:47)

And they they know you care because you keep answering. And I that's the biggest thing for you. When they know you care, they're gonna be, you know, raving, you know, lunatics and for like, you know, in a positive way about culture, about like what we're doing here together. I feel cared for. My boss has my back. I love it.

Ed Herman (26:02)

Right, right. And it's a big part of change management, which is in our industry, I think the biggest challenge we have with our staffs is managing the nonstop changes. They are being asked to do things differently constantly. They're being introduced to new platforms, new softwares constantly. You have the challenge as a firm, you're either going to be an early adopter, or you're gonna run the risk of always trailing behind. The problem is if you're gonna be an early adopter, I tell them this. I tell this to our firm. I say, listen, we are early adopters when it comes to technology.

Chris Earley (26:38)

Definitely.

Ed Herman (26:39)

And and the upside of that is we will always be on the cutting edge. We are not ever going to be left in the dust. We are always going to be forward-thinking. That's the upside, but there's a downside to being an early adopter. It means every platform that we try out is not going to be perfected. They're not going to be ready. We are going to have to actively work with these developers, work with these companies because they don't have it yet. They're still figuring it out. But, you know, if we can just be patient and recognize that it's an opportunity for us to be able to help them craft their product to fit our needs, like that's a benefit to us and it's a benefit to them, but it's it's hard work and and it's aggravating. And you do have a lot of people who they're slow to adapt because, you know, let's face it, with most of these platforms, for the first few months, it's slowing you down, not speeding you up.

Chris Earley

Right. Yeah, that's right.

Ed Herman

And then eventually, when it when it clicks and you get it and you master it, then all of the benefits come, the the benefits of the efficiencies that you were hoping that it would provide. But it's really hard for people to accept that fact. That, like, no, no, no, it's it's gonna slow you down for a while until we get it just right, but then you are gonna launch forward like a rocket ship.

Chris Earley (27:58)

Right.

Ed Herman (27:59)

And that's part of change management. So um, you know, being able to let people know that and and then looking at those pulse surveys, you can see what happens. Because it's always, you know, we switch over to a new platform, we change a major protocol, and morale dips. It just does because people are they're scared. People are very nervous about themselves. They want to feel like they have their job down pat. So whenever you say, well, now this is gonna be asked of you instead of that, it leaves them feeling unsteady. Like, man, I just got my job down and now I don't have it down. Now I got to master something else. But that's the job. You know, that that's it is what it that's what it is.

Chris Earley (28:39)

And that's our challenge as the entrepreneur to have that buy-in. That head has my back, he's not doing this because he's willy-nilly, he's intentional. I gotta trust the process. So we as the leaders of our firms have to just make sure that the buy-in stays there long enough until a traction happens. Or maybe we have to eject and and and jump ship um out of the platform, whatever it it may be.

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Chris Earley

I have a question, but first I want to ask, how big was Brown & Crouppen? You entered what was it 20 years ago or no?

Ed Herman (29:49)

I entered 25 years ago in the summer of 2001. We we were good size, but small in terms of like our revenue. I think the first year I was there, maybe maybe the firm's revenues were seven or eight million dollars that first year. It wasn't very, you know, not that that's a small amount, but it was much smaller than it is now. Last year, uh last year we were at 82 million in revenue. So, you know, um yeah, 10, 10, 10x on on that. And and that's not unusual. That was not an unusual year. We've been steadily in a growth pattern. I think in the years that I've been, especially in the years that I've been in more in leadership and um where I've access to all the numbers. You know, I didn't have as much access to the numbers, obviously, when I first started off. I was just a practicing attorney. But in the time that we've had access to the numbers, there was only one year where it went down from the previous year, and that was '22 because that was uh impacted by, you know, the pandemic. Everybody in our business, we saw the delay about 18 to 24 months after the actual shutdown for where we saw a little dip. Other than that, we have steadily climbed for 25 straight years, uh uh just bigger and bigger. And, you know, where we but we never stop. I mean, that's that's the thing, is is the industry changes all the time.

Chris Earley (31:09)

Yep.

Ed Herman (31:09)

And that's good. It keeps it interesting for me. A lot of people in this business, you know, we have short attention spans, and we need we need the we need the challenge. We need the juice.

Chris Earley (31:19)

A lot of juice for sure. Let me ask you this. When do you stop handling cases, or do you still have a batch of cases?

Ed Herman (31:25)

No, I I stopped. I this actually part of this is really my my origin story. Um, I'll give it the the the brief version. I had been handling cases. I this wasn't like my first law firm that I worked at. I handled cases for three other firms uh before I came to this one, just finding myself figuring out what I wanted to do. I handled cases for about the first year and a half at Brown & Crouppen. And then I had uh what was just gonna be a casual lunch with the managing partner Ron Brown uh upstairs in our building. I had no motive or or game plan. It was just lunch. But during the course of lunch, I said, you know, I love this business. I really feel like I understand what this business is about. But I gotta be honest, I feel like if we just did a handful of things differently, we could make so much more money without spending any more money. And of course, his ears peeked. Those are magic words for business owners. What? We can make more without spending more? How do we do that? So, you know, I rattled off a few ideas that looking back just feel like low-hanging fruit to me, honestly. But they sounded revolutionary at the time. We finished our lunch and I went back to work, didn't think much of it. About two hours later, he comes into my office and he says, I've reassigned all of your files. Starting tomorrow, I want you to start working on the ideas that you talked about at lunch.

Chris Earley (32:45)

No kidding, man.

Ed Herman (32:46)

And I was like, I was stunned. But he saw something and he got excited about it. And I guess he figured if it doesn't work, we could always just give him his files back. And that was the last I handled of a file. And for the last 23 years, I've just been running the business.

Chris Earley (33:03)

Did you feel pressure at that moment to come through?

Ed Herman (33:07)

You know, I was so confident that that I was right.

Chris Earley

Okay.

Ed Herman

Uh that I really didn't feel any pressure. I really thought these things were so rudimentary. I was surprised that they weren't really doing it. But I mean, they really, they had like nothing was nothing was on computer. Uh they were still doing paper files. They intake, they had no software for intake. There was nothing at all. They were, they didn't have an intake department. So had like receptionists answering the phone and desperately trying to get Terry Crouppen on the phone with people because he was the guy in the commercials. And they thought, well, that's who they want to talk to. It was just like they were losing more than they were getting. And I felt like if they just tightened up their net a little bit, they they'd have so many more files to work on. And that was those were the low-hanging fruit things that I kind of started with were addressing intake. That was where I kind of made my bones in the business was being one of those early people that recognized that mastering intake was the key to having a profitable firm.

Chris Earley (34:05)

Well, I think you were ahead of the curve on that. Now it seems like everyone, everyone's grandmother, you know, is talking about intake, but I think you were obviously uh a little quick on that adoption, which is good, right? Being an early adopter, right? What does your day-to-day look like now? Generally, what do you you just is it data, brand, building? What do you do in the world?

Ed Herman (34:23)

Yeah, no, you know, we're on Litify. So we have dashboards for everything with real-time data. And at some point in the day, I will look over all of those things just to get a general sense of where things are. My my schedule is mostly dictated by meetings with the various departments at the firm. Every department will meet with the executive committee. Some of them meet once a week, some of them, it's only once a month. But that fills up a lot of my schedule. So our executive committee, we have two managing partners, me and Andy Crouppen. Andy is uh Terry's son, but Andy's been there for uh 22, 23 years as well. So he and I work very closely. And then uh we have actually three people who hold the title of chief operating officer. They oversee two of them kind of work in concert with each other, and then the other one handles different aspects of the business. But the five of us collectively become the executive committee, and we meet uh with intake every week, we meet with Work Comp every other week, uh, Mass Tort every week, we meet with PI every week, we meet with accounting every month, you know, HR every month. And, you know, so in between those meetings, I go to a lot of conferences, I speak at a lot of conferences. Uh we, of course, we do our own internal podcast, but you know, uh unlike yours, who keeps it nice and professional.

Chris Earley (35:45)

Oh, that's—

Ed Herman

Ours is Three Lawyers Eating Sandwiches.

Chris Earley

Generous description. I know I'm gonna ask you about that. But I I'm fascinated before we go there, because I want to talk about your approach to brand building. I want to ask you two questions. What right now is what has been your greatest challenge since you walked in the door back then, turn of the century, right? What has yeah, what what looking back, what's been your biggest challenge?

Ed Herman (36:07)

The biggest challenge in a PI practice is constantly replenishing the pond of cases. I mean, the thing is, is it's not like other businesses where you can build up and and create loyal customers. The challenge in our business is number one, you can't create demand. And that makes it very difficult to judge how good your marketing is. Because if I sold hamburgers, I could judge my marketing very easily. I put on a new commercial. If I sold more hamburgers, my marketing worked. If I sell less, it didn't work. But with what we do, there it may be that there are a million people out there who, if they testified under oath, would say, I love their stuff. I love that company. I love what they stand for. I see them all over at events, working out in the community, giving back. I see them on TV. I think they're funny and relatable, and I love their sandwich recommendations, but they just never need us. And they could all be out there swearing up and down that if they ever needed a lawyer, we'd be their pick. But we'll never know that because they'll never need us. So that's a challenge. And then the other challenge is for the people that do need us, 90% of them are only going to need you one time. You know, you're a one-time use client. I often compare what we do to the roofing industry. I look to that industry for guidance because I say, you know what? And this is to go into what I'm guessing your subsequent question will be about why we do a sandwich podcast as opposed to a legal podcast. I owe I go to groups, and one of the one of the talks that I give is I ask uh rooms full of lawyers, how often do you guys think about roofing companies? And of course, they never do, right? Nobody does. And I tell them, I know this is going to be a crushing blow to you and your ego, but you think about roofers about as often as the average member of the public thinks about personal injury lawyers. They may get bombarded by us a little bit more than they're bombarded by roofers, but they don't think about us. It's not part of their life. It's not part of what they care about. It's not their family, it's not their job, it's not their priorities. They don't care about us until they need us, just like you don't give a crap about a roofing company until you've got a leak or you need a new roof. Now, also like roofers, they're out there trying to market themselves, knowing full well that people don't need them today, that people may only need them once in their life, maybe twice, but probably just once, if at all. And so then I ask the room, I'm like, can you name any roofing companies in your market? And most people can't think of any. Some people can think of one, and a handful can think of two. I can think of two in my market. And then I'll ask them, why do you remember that one or two? Like, what is it about them? And then you get to the crux, and I say, okay, that's what worked in their marketing. What worked in someone's marketing is that which you remember, that which we you quote back. You know, that's how you know. I always say, when people come up to me in public because they recognize me and they they'll say something about the firm, I say whatever they come to me with is what's working. So if they come to me and they say they love the sandwich podcast, I know the sandwich podcast is working. I can't tell you how many cases it gets, but I can tell you it's working because the goal of that podcast is to develop an affinity between the public and our law firm. And it's much easier to build an affinity when it's over something everybody can relate to and share in today. They can't hire us today because they don't need us, but they can share a sandwich. They can go to the place that we recommended and try something, or even just like the fact that, hey, these are fancy lawyers, but they're eating in the same places that I'm eating at. They're having the same lunch today that I'm eating. They're just eating a turkey sandwich. They're not eating some fancy sandwich I've never heard of because they're some rich lawyers. They're just going to Blues City Deli and enjoying the Sicilian, just like I do. And I do think that that makes a huge difference. I think that that's the part that that connects people. So that's a lot of answers convolutedly into sort of your, I think what your query kind of was going for. Yeah. Is our biggest challenge is always replenishing that pond. And the way that we replenish it and the way that we build the brand is we build a brand that is designed to make us a little bit more favorable than a person they've never heard of. That's really all the brand really is, right? Brand is an excuse for you to use one company over another company, even though they provide the same thing. So why does a person buy a pair of Nike sneakers instead of generic sneakers or some other competitor? For whatever reason, they trust that brand. They want that brand. That brand means something to them. Maybe because of Michael Jordan, maybe because of Tiger Woods, who knows? But the point is, is whatever they did is what created the differentiator between them and their competitor. So when the time for a choice came up, people chose Nike. Our hope is that when people go to the bottom of the funnel, and nowadays when people go on Google, right, they're going to the bottom of the funnel. Who is the best personal injury attorney in St. Louis? Whatever their search query is, right? You're going to show up and a bunch of your competitors are going to show up. In that moment, they're making a choice, a bottom-of-the-funnel choice. What is going to influence that choice? And whether they recognize your brand name certainly will make a difference. Whether they already have developed a positive opinion of your brand name, that's everything. So at that moment, even though they're doing a bottom-of-the-funnel search, if if they see our name and they think, oh, I love those guys. I watch their podcast all the time. People will say that. Nobody actually watches our podcast all the time. What they are watching all the time are the fun clips that we're pulling from our podcasts that we're then blanketing all over social media. I don't know anybody that's going to the actual podcast and listening for 45 minutes about us talking about whatever nonsense we're talking about. But the clips, the clips they're watching all the time. And it makes them feel like they know us. And to some extent, it's not an illusion because we are just ourselves on that podcast. They're getting a very accurate picture of who we are.

Chris Earley (42:25)

Yeah, yeah.

Ed Herman (42:26)

Whether like it or not.

Chris Earley (42:27)

Well, you know, almost like kind of intimate, like, you know, peek behind the curtain. If he's just like me, you know, and talk and he listened to you. It's like relatability and use the A-word affinity. That's a massive word. Let me ask you this, because that that does fascinate me, but I'm really curious what's been your greatest success. I guess your biggest challenge is what's been your biggest success since you walked in the door, you feel like?

Ed Herman (42:46)

Honestly, that I found a way to be very successful within my personality. I did not have to become a different person to achieve great levels of success. I had to be uh lean into my own uh personality, my own strengths, have tremendous self-awareness of the areas that are not my strengths, so that you make sure you hire the right people within your firm to be there for you. I think that one thing we've done extremely well, that if I had to point to it and say, well, of all the things you guys have done, if you had to point to one thing that made the thing a success, what would it be? And I would say it was the decision we made a long time ago that the two biggest things we were gonna look for when we were hiring people, we were gonna look for nice people with a good work ethic. Those two characteristics, nice and work ethic.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Ed Herman

So I don't care about where they went to law school, and I don't care if a paralegal has been practicing for 10 years. I don't I don't care about any of whether they've ever used a particular piece of software. Like none of those traditional resume things matter. Some people use the expression hire traits, not resumes. And I agree with that. But to me, there's just two things that you cannot teach. You can't teach a person to be a nice person. You know, and in our business, our clients, they need nice people working on their file. They just do. They've been through really hard times. They're dealing with a lot of bad stuff. And they simply are living in a cruel world that has very little sympathy for their circumstances. And they'll be damned if they're going to work with a place that isn't going to be the opposite of that. Like the people that they they deserve it. You can't teach nice and you can't teach work ethic. So certain things we look for, if like if I see if a guy's applying and I see that they're an Eagle Scout, they're almost always going to get hired. Because I know that people who are Eagle Scouts have a phenomenal work ethic. And, you know, they've been raised with code and duty and they tend to be nice people. So like to me, that's the perfect paradigm. But in the course of an interview, that's what we're looking for in an interview.

Chris Earley

I hear you.

Ed Herman

Is whether the person's nice and whether they're whether they're we're I'm looking for things that show me that they've got work ethic. You give me that, and I and everything, everything else can be taught. And we started doing that very intentionally about 15 years ago, and now we find ourselves with 240 people, and they are very nice, and they are very hardworking, and it's a pleasure to be around on our on the on a daily basis. It makes it good for everybody. You don't have to look around and feel like you're doing all the work and somebody else is slacking. No, everybody's doing all the work. And you don't have to go around thinking that you're going to be treated poorly because everybody around you is acting like a big D. No, that's not going to happen in our place because we went out of our way to get people who were nice. So our lawyers do not abuse our staff. They worship our staff, they appreciate our staff.

Chris Earley (45:55)

Yeah.

Ed Herman (45:56)

Our staff likes working with our lawyers. Nobody throws stuff. Nobody yells. You know, I we hear horror stories at other firms.

Chris Earley

I know.

Ed Herman

People yelling, people belittling, people throwing things, people feeling entitled to act like a loon. Like none of that behavior would ever be remotely tolerated in the world.

Chris Earley

No. Hell no.

Ed Herman

We do not operate with a sense of hierarchy. We operate with a sense of like this is a chain. We're only as strong as our weakest link. Everybody's job here is crucial. When a big case settles and we talk about it like at our all-hands meeting, we don't just lather the play the praise on the attorney that that got the $2 million settlement or even the staff that directly worked on that file. We go all the way back to intakes. Who took the original call? Who got the contract signed? You know, who did who did the the initial workup? You know, and and and we really talked because all of the role, even the marketing, like how did we attract that case? How did they, how did they plant the seed or or uh bait the hook?

Chris Earley (46:58)

Yeah.

Ed Herman (46:59)

And we look at the the whole history on that case. One of the biggest cases we ever had uh came when a when a when a postal truck hit a construction worker and it was a $10 million case. We got that call on Halloween, in the middle of our firm doing a Halloween thing when everyone's dressed in costume and we're having our fun. But just because it was Halloween and it was a fun day at the office didn't mean that we could shirk our responsibilities. And the person who took that call, they immediately recognized whoa, whoa, I know it's Halloween and everyone's having fun, but this case, this is a potential monster case. And Andy Crouppen himself, even though he was probably casual and in costume, he immediately threw his suit on, got in his car, drove out, signed that case up personally, brought that thing back into the office, got it done, and you know, a year or two later it's settled for $10 million. That's my point is you know, you got to be a place that everybody understands the mission, everybody gets the significance of that. You can praise the lawyer that got the $10 million, and clearly he did a great job. But I want to make sure that we recognize the person in intake who didn't, you know, treat the day like it was a pseudo day off and recognized immediately we've got something here, and praise my partner who also recognized, yeah, I'm here as a leader and I want to participate in Halloween, but we got it, we got a $10 million case that I got to go sign up now. So Ed, you you you stay here with the troops, I'm putting a suit on, I'm getting it signed up. But that and nobody had to tell anybody.

Chris Earley

Right, right.

Ed Herman

You know what I'm saying? Nobody had to remind anybody this is important, this is what we do. Everybody just gets it. They understand this is what it takes to do our job well.

Chris Earley (48:47)

Well, no one had to tell that other team member to make the stuffing, but she took it upon herself to bring the stuffing.

Ed Herman

That's right.

Chris Earley

Right. So I really like that. Now you have me thinking, I think it's really important to get attaboys. You know, attaboy John for getting a case on attaboy Ron for for the marketing uh campaign that brought that in. We have to get more attaboys, right?

Ed Herman (49:04)

I you You have to. It costs you nothing and get you everything. How many things in life? Think about it. How many things in life can I say this isn't gonna cost you anything, but it's gonna get you an enormous amount? And they're gonna say, Well, what is it? I'm gonna say appreciation.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Ed Herman

It costs you nothing to show some appreciation, but it gets you everything because it is the food that our working soul needs to thrive, to survive. It's it's it's the hunger that your workers have. It's not just to make a paycheck. If it is, you're not getting the best out of them, and and you're not getting, you know, they're not as happy as they could be. But no, it's they they they need to know that they're doing well. You gotta do it sincerely. You can't you can't do it phony baloney. But we are big believers. Andy and I are both people who early in our careers we were lucky enough to read um How to Win Friends and Influence People, the Dale Carnegie, the definitive book.

Chris Earley (50:10)

Everyone has to read that if you haven't already.

Ed Herman (50:11)

On it you have to. It is it's required reading at our firm.

Chris Earley

Yes.

Ed Herman

Every new employee that comes in—

Chris Earley

That's cool.

Ed Herman

We give them a copy. We give them a copy and we say, I want you to read this uh for a couple of reasons. One, I want you to understand that this is the philosophy that we manage this firm with. Like this is what we believe in. This is a good representation of our value system. Um, but I also want you to have it as a gift because it is a gift for you. And it's something that will help you in your life in all of your relationships. You'll parent better, you'll be a better spouse, you'll be a better child to your parents because it really is about humanity and communication. It has nothing to do with influencing or having friendships. It's just a shitty title.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Ed Herman

Excuse my language. It's a bad title.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Ed Herman

But it is gold.

Chris Earley (50:59)

I agree. I read in college, my mom gave it to me. I now I understand. Like, wow, this is timeless.

Ed Herman (51:04)

I there are two things that I always point to that teach you everything you need to know: the poem If by Rudyard Kipling and the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you can internalize and understand the lessons of the poem If, and the lessons of How to Win Friends and Influence People, you're gonna do real well in life. You're gonna be a happy, self-satisfied person with a really good chance to reach self-actualization. You're gonna be a person that people speak well of, that they want to be around, that they speak well of you, whether you're in the room or out of the room. Um, and and uh that's really honestly, it's all you need. Those two things.

Chris Earley (51:45)

I love it. That's so good. That it this isn't about KPIs, right? The KPIs follow, they happen once you have the soft skills in place, the right people on the bus, right?

Ed Herman (51:55)

Yeah, KPIs are nice to to look at to detect if there's a problem. But years ago, I got a great piece of advice from um a good friend of mine, and and and she said, um you know, you don't lose weight by getting on the scale, and you don't make money by checking your bank account. You don't run a successful business because you looked at your KPIs. The the those things are a report card that shows you where things stand, but but the mere act of looking on the scale to know how much you weigh is not the process that makes you in better shape.

Chris Earley

Right.

Ed Herman

And looking at your balance in your bank account is certainly not the process that one uses to increase the dollar figure in your bank account. Looking at a KPI as a number is not in and of itself that which is going to get that number better. It's the process. You have to focus on the process, and then every so often you look at the indicator for the to for the report card. Did it work? Did it get us what we wanted to? But but the act of looking at the result is not the process. And I think that that gets confused by a lot of people a lot of times.

Chris Earley (53:08)

I'm with you. It's like a laggy indicator. It it's a result, it is as opposed to a a driver or lack of driver, right?

Ed Herman (53:16)

That that's right. It is a look back, not a look forward.

Chris Earley

100%.

Ed Herman

Um, and so it's valuable, but but should not be confused with doing the work. The work is the thing. You know, the KPI is a product of the work.

Chris Earley (53:29)

No, I'm I'm with you. So let's go back. You know, you're you're a brand new lawyer, all right? Your brand new lawyer, it's 2026. How would you go about, as we wrap up, how would you go about branding yourself? You know, being competitive. You you don't have a lot of money, just out of law school. You know, you're not, you know, high on the hog, like you don't have a lot of dough yet, right? So what would you do to get cases? Like, how would you do it?

Ed Herman (53:54)

Brand yourself. How? If I was starting brand new today, knowing everything I've learned in the business, for one, I would market uh probably exclusively digitally if I was just starting out, other than direct mail. It's old school, but darn it, it still works and gets you some nice cases. So I and it's and it's cheap. If I was starting out today, there are three things I would do to grow my business. Number one, I would still do direct mail. It there's not, you're not gonna get a ton from it, but it's it's cheap and it's easy, and and you're gonna get some. The other thing I'm gonna do is I would approach larger firms and try to get them to send me the cases that they're not handling. Because all of the larger firms, if they're good, if they know what they're doing, they know their math, they've drawn their lines, they know the cases that they can make profit on and the ones that they can't. And they all have a tranche of cases where they're getting calls and they're not taking them and they may be referring them out, they may not be doing anything with them. But I would be reaching out to those firms and I would try to get those cases because there's a lot of them. Uh, and I'd work out a very favorable uh fee split. I think that that still would be gold if I was starting out. And then the third thing I would do is I would market myself digitally. And in terms of building my brand, you got to build it authentically for the for not just because people can smell BS.

Chris Earley (55:12)

Yeah.

Ed Herman (55:12)

And not just because, but it's easier.

Chris Earley

Oh, yeah.

Ed Herman

It's easier being yourself than than being somebody that you're not. So you have to see what your personality will allow for and what it won't allow for. I think the best thing to start with is sort of like where where you started earlier, Chris, by saying, you know, you came out and said, hey, you know what? I'm not an ambulance chaser. I'm a good guy. You know, I'm just trying to get you a good recovery. I think this is important, right? In those couple of words, you may not have realized it. It may not have been intentional, but you stated what your brand is. You know, you, you know, I am the I'm the anti of these big, you know, turning wrecks into checks, personalities that maybe you associate with this. I'm just a decent guy trying to do good work. And that's an angle, you know, that's going to appeal to certain people. I think you figure out what that is and you take your message directly to the people. If I were starting out with no money, I would start on TikTok. I would do those videos where I introduce and I try to provide something of value. And something of value to the public could be in the form of education, could be in the form of entertainment. Those are the two biggies. And that's why everything we put out digitally is either under the umbrella of education or under the umbrella of entertainment. Because we we weren't trying to invent anything. We looked at people's behavioral patterns as they currently exist, and we say, well, what are people looking for when they're scrolling? What are they scrolling for? They're either looking to learn something or they're looking to laugh, you know, or or be entertained in some way, charmed. We when we did that, we said, well, people love the food. They love food porn. They they can't get enough of it. They're taking, you know, remember, I mean, from the beginning of Facebook, like forget videos and TikTok. People just taking photographs of the food that they're about to eat and posting it.

Chris Earley

I know.

Ed Herman

And and people are loving it. So when we started with the sandwiches, that was sort of the idea was like, let's meet people where they already are. They're already on there looking at stuff just like this. They want recommendations, they want to try something delicious, they want to be, they want an insider saying, This is what you want to order when you go to this place. This is the best thing they have. Give them something of value.

Chris Earley

Yeah, man.

Ed Herman

And then they will tell you in sales psychologically, when you've given somebody something of value, whether they realize it or not, they they feel slightly indebted to you.

Chris Earley

100%.

Ed Herman

And so when they do that search later on and three different firm names come up and they recognize your name, a little piece of them on a subconscious level feels like that's the firm that entertained me, or that's the firm that taught me about what to do if something like this happened to me. I just did a series of videos talking about tips on rideshare for women to avoid situations that might lead to sexual assault, since the New York Times did that article saying that there's sexual assault every eight minutes in a rideshare. And that series of videos organically did unbelievably well. Women were very um grateful over the fact that somebody was even caring about their safety and their issues and the fact that I had something of value to give them in terms of advice. Very appreciative. I do believe in that. I believe that later on there will be people that need our services and they choose us because they feel like we've already given them something, and now they're gonna give us something back. Reciprocity is is legit legit and real.

Chris Earley (58:37)

So as I know we said we're wrapping up, just one last point I want to make is that I think not only are we both from Rockland County, but I think we have found, I want to impress upon the listener, if you could find the intersection of how you're different than everyone else, um and how you are authentically different, not just to be like a client, like I want to be different this way, like your authentic uniqueness and lean into that hard in your marketing, you will do so you don't have to do billboards, you don't have to do TV digitally, you can probably just start getting cases online, but find that sweet spot and go hard. What do you think about that?

Ed Herman (59:14)

I I I think you're dead on. And I I think that the reason I you want to start digitally, if I were starting from scratch and you're seeing even the well-established brands like ours are starting to migrate, we're we're just tired of the unknown in our marketing dollars. Our marketing budgets are so big, and everybody says, you know, 50% of my marketing is working, but I don't know which half, which 50% it is. And and and we all laugh about that, but the reality of it is none of us can afford to waste half of our marketing budget on stuff that's not working. And in the digital environment, the ability to trace and track and attribute is is so much better than traditional marketing. So broadcast television and billboards and radio are just we know they generally work, but you, you know, you have a really hard time in pinning exactly what you're getting from uh your billboards. And so if you're starting with your marketing dollars and you're brand new, don't start off in those areas that are squishy that you're not going to be able to really identify if they worked or not. Like, start with the stuff you can measure and keep pouring money into that as long as there's an opportunity to grow there. But stuff that you can measure is always going to be more valuable than the stuff you can't. So, like, I think you have to start in that environment. And, you know, if you're lucky, you could stay in that environment and just grow your business to the size you wanted to without ever having to go into the squishy stuff.

Chris Earley (1:00:46)

I I love it. Angel Reyes is on the show last week or two weeks ago.

Ed Herman (1:00:49)

He just like He's the perfect example of that.

Chris Earley (1:00:52)

Dropped it, dropped the outdoor immediately, almost like instantly.

Ed Herman (1:00:55)

He dropped everything that you can't measure. And I'm in a in a mastermind group with Angel, and he's one of the guys I learned from. And he's a big believer, and like if he can't trace it, he doesn't want to spend his money on it. Yeah, and I can't blame him for that. You know, it makes sense.

Chris Earley (1:01:10)

Yeah, enough is enough, right? Of wasting half. You know, I could talk to you for hours. I I really appreciate the insight, the humanity, the authenticity, the success, the lessons. So thank you for joining me. I really appreciate this.

Ed Herman

Man, anytime.

Chris Earley

You have a lot of knowledge. How can people get in touch with you, Ed?

Ed Herman (1:01:25)

Our law firm is Brown & Crouppen. Our uh web address is getbc.com. Uh if you want to see our entertainment uh uh stuff, if you go to bctv.com, so Brown & Crouppen Television, bctv.com, that's a repository where you can find all of my Emmy winning episodes of Ed Vs., in addition to all of our live, like not say live, but our in-person episodes of Three Lawyers Eating Sandwiches. Those all existed before it became a podcast. And then, of course, you can find the podcast on there and all the other fun stuff that we do.

Chris Earley

I love that.

Ed Herman

Um, that's that's that that I like that better. That's the entertaining stuff. The legal stuff I find a little boring.

Chris Earley (1:02:05)

What's your favorite sandwich, bud? Very important question.

Ed Herman (1:02:08)

You know, the best sandwich in St. Louis is the Sloppy Guiseppe at Adriana's.

Chris Earley

Okay.

Ed Herman

That's an Italian-style sloppy joe with beef and pork and peppers and onions and this nice little sweet tomato sauce served on a parmesan encrusted garlic bread. And it is just spectacular. Just spectacular. Just it it just brings a smile to the face.

Chris Earley

Now you're making me hungry for one.

Chris Earley (1:02:33)

I gotta ask you a really tough question. Can you find a good slice by you? Because Manhattan is like, you know, pizza, pizza, the—

Ed Herman (1:02:41)

It is. Uh, you know, we have a place out in Clayton called uh La Pizza, and they do a New York style slice. And and you know what's nice about that place? They don't just do the slice the way that New Yorkers do it. Going in there is like going into a New York pizzeria where it's very common in New York. You'll go up, you say, I'll take two slices of cheese or whatever. They give it to you, you eat it, and only afterward do you go back up to the register and pay them.

Chris Earley

Yeah, like that's very common. Yeah, yeah.

Ed Herman

It's it's unusual. I I can't think of any other food establishment that kind of works like that where you're going up to the register and you're ordering, yeah, they're handing you your food, you're eating it, and then you're going back up to pay after. It just doesn't happen. But La Pizza does it like that in St. Louis, the only place I know of, and I'm like, that's just how the pizzerias in New York were like. It's almost as if if you didn't like it, you know, you're not expected to pay for it, but you always like it, so you always pay.

Chris Earley (1:03:37)

Well, I think they they like their chances, right? So they put the product quite so confident. Ed, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining me today. Thank you so very much.

Ed Herman (1:03:45)

Any anytime, be good. Thank you.

Chris Earley (1:03:46)

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, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.