Taking Risks and Overcoming Perfection w/ Bobby Botnick 318

This week on the podcast Jim and Tyson chat with Bobby Botnick. Bobby was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where he now manages his criminal and traffic defense practice, The Botnick Law Firm, LLC. 

Following his admission to the Ohio Bar in 2004, Bobby served as a Cuyahoga County prosecutor for seven years, primarily handling felony cases. Bobby has tried dozens of felony trials throughout his career, including many that received special attention from local and national media outlets. 

Bobby is married to his former law school classmate and fellow attorney, Abby, and they have two children together. He is an avid technology enthusiast, a dedicated Phish fan, and a craft beer lover.

He currently chairs the Solo/Small Firm Section of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association and has served as President of the Cuyahoga Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

4:15 not the path for you
5:00 hanging a shingle in the back of a jewelry store
6:30 take pause and level up
9:25 the idea of outsourcing
10:20 parallel jeweler and criminal defense
12:14 informed and educated
13:34 taking risks and overcoming perfection
16:21 future planning
26:10 letting go of more
26:57 how to decide what it is you are doing

Jim’s Hack: Create content so someone can binge watch you and gain trust in you.

Bobby’s Tip: Crisp Email Template keyboard app: templates to throw in text in messages and email. 

Tyson’s Tip: Think of 3 adjectives to describe your perfect self - what you want yourself to look lije in 5 years. You think of those 3 each day and it will propel you towards that future self.

Watch the interview here.

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Run your law firm the right way.

This is The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.

Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux.

Let's partner up and maximize your firm.

Welcome to the show.

Jim: Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Tyson: And I'm Tyson Mutrux. What's up, Jimmy?

Jim: Oh, Tyson. Good to be back with you. Excited to have our guest on the show today. Life is good. We've been busy inside and outside the Guild, both of us, and everything's rolling.

Tyson: Yeah. Luckily, I had to be out of the office yesterday. And so, we had, you know, staff and everyone ready to step in and do some of the things I was supposed to be doing yesterday. Yeah, things have been roll-- I mean, I've been slammed lately. I don't know. I mean, like it's just crazy. It's just been nuts. I mean, work-- part of its we're migrating to a new system, but we've got a lot going on. So, a lot of exciting things both, like you said, in the Guild and outside the Guild.

Jim: I'm doing a talk this afternoon, at lunchtime, for the Texas Bar’s Immigration Committee. And it's about technology. And I've been meeting with so many immigration law firm owners lately who run their whole firms on Google Sheets and Google Drive that, I think I'm going to have to, you know, take very small steps with these guys. I don't want to overwhelm them with our wondrous processes.

Tyson: I ran into a guy in court, that you and I both know, about a week ago-- it was a week and a half ago. And he's been practicing for close to 30 years. And he just, for the first time, got his first case management system. And I was like just floored. I just couldn't believe it. Like, in 30 years, no case management system. I just don't know how you practice without it. It's kind of crazy. 

Jim: Well, let me go ahead and introduce our guest today. He's been waiting patiently at the bottom of the screen. His name is Bob--

Tyson: I wish I could see how long we could go before Bobby just says, “You know what? I'm done. I'm out of here.”

Bobby: Take a whole hour. It’s fine [laughs].

Jim: Yeah. 

His name’s Bobby Botnick. He's born and raised in Cleveland. He has a criminal and traffic defense practice. He passed the Ohio Bar in 2004. He was a prosecutor in Cuyahoga County for seven years, mostly handling felonies. He has tried dozens of felony trials. He's married to his former law school classmate which is something that I did as well. His wife is an attorney, Abby. They have two children. And he's a big fan of Phish. And we're glad to have him.

Bobby, welcome to the show.

Bobby: Thanks so much. It's great to be here.

Tyson: You know, that's a good couple of like couple names, like, “Hey, Bobby and Abby are coming over.” Like it’s just easy. It rolls right off the tongue. So, I really--

Bobby: That's why we did it that way. 

Tyson: I love it. I love it.

Bobby, tell us about your journey and how you got to where you are now.

Bobby: Well, sure. It's an interesting journey. I did not set out to be a lawyer. In fact, I am probably fourth generation in the family business. And growing up in Cleveland, my family owned a jewelry store. And so, working in the store, I was always working behind the showcase, with my dad, watching him as he worked with his customers.

And I went off to college, wasn't really sure what I was going to do because I knew I was going into the family business. And my parents said, “You’ve got to figure something out. You can't just come work for us because what happens if? What happens if the store is not there someday?” And I decided, you know what, I'll go to law school.

So, I went to law school and figured, “Well, you know, I'm just going to do this for three years. And then I'm going to go into the business. Maybe I'll become a gemologist or something like that.” But I figure, after three years of taking the classes, I might as well sit for the bar and passed it on my first time. And I figured, “Well. Okay, now that I've done that, I might as well see if I can use this law degree.” And that's when I got a job working at the prosecutor's office. I just happened to run into somebody at a job fair who remembered me from when I was in preschool. And that's how I went from being, you know, jeweler/lawyer to being a prosecutor.

And after doing that, for about seven years, it was clear that that was not going to be the path for me. At one point in time, towards the end of my career there, I remember I was talking about these bad people that I was prosecuting. And it was actually my wife, Abby, who says to me, “Why do you think that they're bad? Just because they're charged with a crime that doesn't automatically make them a bad person. Maybe they did something that was bad. Maybe they did something that was wrong, but it doesn't make them a bad person. They're still, you know, a father, a brother, a girlfriend, daughter.” And that was really eye opening for me.

And so, that's around the time that our second child was born. I said, “You know what? I think now this is time.” And so, I left the prosecutor's office, after seven years, and I hung my shingle. And I actually went back to my roots. And my dad had an extra office in the back of the jewelry store. So, for about a year and a half, I worked out of the back of a jewelry store and a little bit of a Better Call Saul and meeting with people at the coffee shops, you know, in the courthouse, things like that, telling people, “No, no, no. You don't want to be with me at the office, I'll come to you.” And you can't have, you know, suspected criminals come into the back of the jewelry store to meet with their lawyer. It doesn't work out too well.

So, that was kind of the journey there. I was in the back of dad's store for about a year and a half. I moved in with a group of about eight other criminal defense attorneys and spent about five years there. And it was everybody was an island. They all had their own practice. They shared a conference room, shared the copier, the fax. Somebody who answered the phone who was okay at her job and wasn't worth squat typing. And I said, “Okay. Well, this is fine. It's nice to have camaraderie and people to bounce ideas off of but, if I want to grow, it's not going to be here.” 

And so, about two years ago, I opened up my own office over in Shaker Heights and was really excited. And it was nice having people come to my place. I had extra offices here so that way I could, you know, I had that idea that I was going to expand at some point. And less than 12 months, after being settled in, that's when COVID hit. And so, I got to work remotely and trying to figure out how to make that work. But actually COVID was probably one of the best things to happen to my firm, which is really strange, because it caused me to take pause and figure out how to level up my practice.

And it was actually another defense attorney in Cleveland, not Will Norman, but somebody else, who introduced me to the criminal roundtable which, I guess, is like a subset or is a bunch of attorneys from Maximum Lawyer. And I didn't know about Maximum Lawyer. And it was only after talking to those people, I found out about the group, about the podcast. And that's when I said, “Oh, my God, I have definitely been doing things the wrong way.”

And, you know, I kind of modeled my practice off of watching these other attorneys in Cleveland, who just did their own thing, who didn't use case management software, who didn't use technology, who maybe they had a name because their father was also in the practice or something like that. And how could I go out and really make my own practice, make my own name? And so, for the past year, now, that's what I've been doing.

Jim: Cucumber water is for customers only. That's what the nail salon lady would say, whenever Saul tried to bogart some cucumber water.

Tyson: Terrible impression. That was awful. 

Jim: Well, I didn't want to be racist--

Tyson: But it was worth it. It was worth it. 

Jim: So, Bobby, that was a great rendition of your history. I loved hearing it. It was perfect. I'm sure most of the people who are listening might have had a different path but that they can relate with a lot of it. I'm interested, once you had that realization, after hanging out with the Cleveland fellows who knew about Maximum Lawyer, what did you focus on first?

Bobby: I think the first thing that I did was I decided--

You know, it was funny. Somebody talked about Calendly. And I didn't even know about Calendly. I think that was really just a schedule, you know, maybe it was for one of those meetings. And I thought to myself, “Oh, you can actually send something out so, that way, a person can look at your calendar and you don't have to play that game of back and forth of does this time work? Does that time work?” And it was that baby step of saying, “Okay. We can work with that.”

And then, it was, “Well, you know what? Now I have to try and figure out some other things.” And one of the attorneys in the group, Alexis Austin, she was just, you know, this wealth of knowledge. And so, she introduced me to a web developer because I realized, you know, when I hung my shingle, I knew HTML. I had done some web editing in the past. And I said, “You know what? I could probably do my own website.” I could do everything, right, because that's what you're doing. When you run your own show, you answer the phones, you do your motions, you do the discovery, you're running around all day long. And I think that was really the first big thing I said was, “I'm going to hand this over to somebody else.” And that's, you know, this idea of outsourcing. 

And I didn't really know what outsourcing was back then but to essentially turn it over to somebody else to let them, you know, optimize my website, make it look more professional, have it function better on, you know, a mobile device instead of just the desktop. And then, it was also just building out, you know, the website with content. That was something that I just-- I never had the time to do where I said, “I'll get to it.” And now to actually have somebody doing those things for me in a way that's actually going to bring in business. It was scary as all hell, I'll tell you that much, because I knew it was going to be a lot of money. And, you know, I was trusting somebody else with my baby. And I'm not looking back.

Tyson: So, Bobby, I'm looking at the parallels between jeweler and criminal defense attorney. And actually there are some, right? You want to deliver a high-level service. You're asking for a lot of money. The clientele’s obviously different but were you able to take any of what you learned from the jeweler side and applied it to the criminal defense side? 

Bobby: Absolutely. And that was the great thing about, you know, working behind the counter with my dad because I got to watch how he interacted with people. And essentially, what he did was, these aren’t just, you know, people off the street, these are customers, but he wants them to feel comfortable. He wants them to feel like they're part of the family because, again, it's that level of trust. If you're going to be taking your hard-earned dollars, investing it in something, you want to make sure that you're getting that best product.

But, at the same time, he also wanted to make sure that his customers are educated and they're informed about the decisions that they were going to make. And so, he would sit down with people, and he would explain about different types of diamonds. And so, for instance, if you had $5,000 to spend, you could spend it this way or you could spend it that way. And here's why this one might work and why this one might work. And it just really depends on what the customer was interested in.

And I'm able to do that now with my clients, where I can sit down with them and I can tell them, “You know, here's why we might want to try this approach on your case. Here's going to be the benefits of working out the deal versus taking the case to trial. Here are the pros. Here the cons.” And I hear my dad when I'm talking with my clients. And I think that they really appreciate that.

Probably the number one thing that I hear from a potential client is just how much they appreciate the fact that I took the time to talk with them. And that's one of the things I love is the intake process because I get to have that explanation. I get to talk about my experience of here's what you can expect, here's what you can anticipate. And now they become informed and educated as opposed to, you know, that's going to be $5,000 you pay me and then we can talk. That's how a lot of people do it. I don't know, but I don't think that works.

Jim: Running your own practice can be scary. Whether you're worried about where the next case will come from, feeling like you're losing control over your growing firm, or frustrated from being out of touch with everyone working under your license, the stress can be overwhelming. We will show you how to turn that fear into a driving force of clarity, focus, stability, and confidence that eliminates the rollercoaster of guilt-ridden second guessing and mistake making to get you off that hamster wheel for good.

Tyson: Maximum Lawyer in Minimum Time is a step-by-step playbook that shows you how to identify what your firm needs and how to proactively get it at every stage of the game so you're prepped and excited for the inevitable growth that will follow. Name the lifestyle that you want and we'll show you how to become a maximum lawyer in minimum time. Find out more by going to maximumlawyer.com/course.

Jim: You're listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today is Bobby Botnick. He's a criminal defense attorney in Cleveland, Ohio.

That ends the touchy-feely portion of the show. And now we're going to move into the lightning round. Actually, we're going to move into the let's-grill-Bobby round. 

And Bobby was kind enough to fill out a questionnaire before we met today. And I want to read a sentence from it. “I'm great at listening and taking in all the ideas shared in the podcast, the webcast, the books, but I have trouble actually setting, keeping my goals thinking I need to achieve perfection until I can really put something out there and allowing myself to take risks.” I raise that quote because that's something that I could’ve written myself even yesterday, so I totally get it. But I thought we could talk a little bit about that, Bobby.

Bobby: Yeah, definitely. You know, it's funny. I'm sitting here at the desk and I'm looking at the camera that I use for making the videos - the handful of videos on my YouTube page, because I feel like it has to be that level of perfection. Because, if it's not, then I don't want it out there. But understanding that that's probably what's getting in my way that, you know, I feel like whatever I do it, there's no way that it could be as good as, you know, what somebody else has already put out there. And then, why would somebody come to me? But the reality is, and I realized this, is that people are still coming to me. People are still hiring me.

The question is, how can you, I guess, broaden the net so that way you're seeing more of those potential clients coming your way? It's how to put those systems into place so that way you have that time when you're making the videos or those times when you can just set aside that two hours to focus on the on the practice, on the business, to figure out the growth. But I have a real tough time because, you know, I still have that that issue where that phone rings and I want to pick it up. I see an email comes in, I want to respond to it. And that's a tough thing of really letting that go.

And that was one of the nice things when I started using Smith at the end of last year was, I began that process of letting go so, that way, I knew somebody else was going to take that phone call, and I would get to it, eventually. I think that's kind of it right now.

Tyson: So, I want to dig a little deeper on this. Just yes or no on this one. Have you done the vision work to get to get your vision down?

Bobby: No. And I will tell you, this past week was an interesting one. So, since, you know, agreeing to come on to the show, we actually had a pretty jarring event, my wife, she's fine. But she ended up in the hospital last weekend. And she was in there for a few days. And I think that was the major eye opener of, you know, “Oh, shit! If everything is on me, right? The whole practice is on me, what happens if?”

And, you know, that scrambling of trying to reschedule things and realizing, “Okay. I know what I want to do. I know what I need to do.” And I actually started-- you know, I'm sitting in the hospital room and I've got my Evernote out. And I'm drawing out, “Okay. Where do I want to see myself in one year? Three years? Five years? 10 years?” I actually sat down and figured out like a fee chart so, that way, I'm not playing the game of “Well, how much do I think that this, you know, this type of a case is going to be, going back and forth, depending on the week or the month?” I'm just saying, “These are the things that have to be done so that way there is that system. So that way, it's, you know, it's set. So that way, when I do bring somebody on board-- 

And, now, there's a question of “Well, how much do you charge for these types of cases?” You know, somebody else knows that. Somebody else is going to be able to answer that question. But I'll tell you, I participated in the 12-week year, that there is a webcast for that a couple of months ago. And I watched it, but I haven't really implemented it. I started and I totally dropped the ball on that one. 

So, I know there's got to be that vision. There has to be the goals. I have never really had goals. It was really just a matter of plodding along, figuring out, “Okay. How are we going to get the next case?” And without a real plan, other than, well, you know, you cross your fingers, and you hope that it works. And it's been working. And it's been working for the past nine years. But that's not how it's supposed to be. There has to be a course. There has to be a plan. And that's one of the things that, you know, I'm very serious about doing right now.

And, in fact, I've talked with a couple of people in the group. I've started doing some research to try and find a coach for myself. So, that way, it's not just me sitting down with a book, or listening to a podcast. But now I can really have that professional who's able to, you know, give me those tools and say, “You need to do this.” Essentially, you know, quit digging around, get to work.

Tyson: So you give me a lot of information for a perfect follow up because this is where I wanted to go anyways. You've done enough of this vision work. You've thought about this enough. What is that next thing that you need to be focusing on? What is, over the next 12 weeks? So, let's help you out getting this going. So, over the next 12 weeks, what is the thing that you need to be focusing on?

Bobby: I think the big thing right now is, when we talk about systemising your practice, you have to have those systems in place so that way you can bring somebody on because, yeah, right now, everything is up in here. I know how I do it, but I'm not writing it down, you know, to say, “Here's what I do every day. Here's what I do in a week. These are the calls. These are the motions” and things like that.

So, I have to do that, whether it's with a tetra or some form but that has to be done. That's got to get out of my skull, onto paper or some form so that way I can bring that person on. So that way, I'm not wasting their time, I'm not wasting my time. And then, I get frustrated because they don't know how to do things.

It's like I can see it. I know that it's out there. I think it's really just taking those steps to do it. And I think one of the tough things, you know, just in my practice, in my world, you don't see that with anybody else. And so, for the past eight or nine years, you know, I'm doing it the same way everybody else is doing it. And it's only seeing the things in here, right, in Maximum Lawyer and seeing how things can be done, and seeing how it turns, you know, practices around. And, actually, the past six months, seeing the things that I've implemented so far, how that's been able to turn my practice around. That's really what I'm saying. Okay, this obviously works.

And I think it was, you know, one of the things that, you know, Jim’s talked about is either with the niching down or you're finding other people to do things and yet he's found-- you know, that's caused him to make more money. And that's absolutely what I'm seeing now is that, as I've incorporated, you know, for instance, you know, using a CRM, and automating, like documents, especially fee agreements and payments and things like that, that's caused business to pick up.

And so, I know it's possible. Things that are happening right now in my practice I couldn't have dreamt of, you know, a couple of years ago - even a year ago. And now it's like, “Okay. Take off the training wheels, we’ve got to go. We’ve got to make this thing happen because it can.”

Jim: All right. So, let's go to that stuff that you're not doing yet. And I'm just going to ask you the same question over and over. And it's a one-word question. So, why? Why are you not doing that?

Bobby: I'm a pretty lazy guy.

Jim: Why?

Bobby: You know, I think, for the longest time, I've liked to just coast. I've enjoyed coasting, not having to do all the hard work. Of course, I like to reap the rewards of the minimum effort that I've put in, not realizing the rewards that I could be reaping with the maximum effort. 

Jim: Well, so--

Bobby: And I think it's a psychology thing. I think it's certainly, you know, part of growing up, I was always, you know, kind of the lazier kid. I didn't like to go to the gym and exercise, you know. You know, everybody's on those peletons. I couldn't even imagine doing that. But I think, you know, I'm typically going to be my own worst enemy for getting my ass up and moving. 

Jim: Why?

Bobby: I don't have a good answer.

Jim: I think you're not lazy. I don't think it's lazy at all. I think you're working your butt off. I think it's about, you know, working smarter and you're making improvement.

So, you know, we have a lot of people-- Tyson and I come across a lot of people, Bobby, who want to have that cush law firm owner life but don't want to put in the work at the front end. You're doing it. I think you're being a little too hard on yourself. And if you weren't, I'd call you out. So, I think, you're doing just fine. It's just we need more of it.

So, looking at my learned colleague across the screen, I know what he's going to say is that you need to make time for this stuff, you know. And there's that catch-22. Do I hire someone so that I have more time? Do I find more time so I can hire someone and have the money to do it, you know? But I think you have to ease into it and it has to be a conscious thing.

So, you know, one thing that I've been talking to you about lately is just hiring a law student, hiring a third-year law student. I think that's a great segue, a great way of dipping your toe into delegation and supervision. And, you know, you're doing all the right things. You're on the right path. I don't think you need to be hard on yourself at all. But all that stuff about, “I'm lazy. Or this is how I was when I was a kid.” You’ve just got to leave all that stuff behind. You know, I love that quote, “Too many people spend their time, headed into the future, turned in the wrong direction - looking over their shoulder.”

So, I think it's forward. You know, today's-- you know, Abby's doing well. Abby's out of the hospital. She's doing better. And it's the 25th day of April. And here we go. Let's go.

Bobby: I think you're right. And I'll tell you, I think one of my biggest fears was, if I were to bring somebody on, you know, and let's say like it like an admin or just like a receptionist, “How much is that going to cost me? Am I going to be able to cover, you know, those expenses?” And, you know, that's really one of the things that, you know, has really scared me over the past couple of years.

You know, certainly, we have the safety net of Abby's practice and her salary. So even if things did not go well, you know, we at least had that to fall back on - her health care, for instance. But now, to have to, you know, be a real business and providing, you know, health care, right. 

Somebody else put that up in the big group, I think, or maybe it was in the Guild, talking about now that she's offering health care as part of, you know, one of the benefits of their practice, I'm thinking to myself, “Oh, my God. I'd love to be able to do that because that means now it's real.”

And when you can actually bring on people and paying them a salary. And that's one of the things that I've been definitely afraid of is, if I bring somebody on and I can't afford to keep them on, or I can't afford to pay myself, but I feel like this past six months or so, has given me that confidence to say, “Now, it's time. Now, this actually can happen.”

And I think now that we've got vaccines in arms, I certainly feel more comfortable bringing somebody into my office who could be working there. And I understand the benefits of having like a VA, and it certainly could be costing less, and not having to deal with the taxes and benefits and things like that. But, certainly, as part of like a criminal practice, I think it does help to have somebody on site for some of those papers. Especially those green papers that clients want to be able to drop off sometimes.

Tyson: So, I do want to dig a little bit deeper, because I don't like the negative self-talk when it comes to the laziness. You're not lazy. I want to get you past that. We don't have enough time today to get you past that, but I really do want you to try.

So, we're going to do a little exercise right now. I'm going to ask you to just take a second. I want you to think about, like what-- you talked about health insurance and all that. But like, five years, law firm’s running perfectly, you are who you want to be in life. I want you to think about that for a second. And I want you to tell us what that looks like, okay, both as an individual and as a business owner because we’ve to get you past this negative self-talk. So, tell me about that. 

Bobby: Okay. So, five years from now, this is something that I drew up the other day, at that point, I think I'd like to have-- you know, as a business owner, you know, I'm going to be in a different space because right now I only have three offices. And at that point in time, I want to have three attorneys working under me. I want to have at least two office-type people, whether it's an admin, an intake type person, you know, maybe a customer or client relations person.

And I want to see me, you know, letting go more, you know, that I don't have to necessarily be doing that hustle, that I can have somebody there who's talking to those potential clients and explaining what it is, you know, that I do, that I don't necessarily have to be the person doing it, but somebody else is able to explain, “Here's what we do at the Botnick Law Firm. And that way, I can focus more on whether it's those federal cases or those higher level felony cases, you know, that isn't all that-- that we're running around to traffic court. And, you know, certainly the misdemeanors and things like that. You know, that's part of part of my issue that I have with that vision is that there is so much that I do love about the work that I don't want to let go of everything. But it's how do you then decide what it is that you are still doing?

But I will tell you, in five years, I'm going to have a son who's getting ready to start looking at colleges. I'm going to have a daughter who's going to start getting ready to drive. And I want to definitely be around more for those things. So, essentially, being able to, you know, hand over the keys to say, you know, “I'm leaving early,” so that way we can be there, that we can be you know, taking that family vacation for a week or two weeks over the summer. Actually, going someplace instead of just doing the staycation. Those are the things that, you know, I would like to already have in place five years from now.

Jim: Yeah, man, you're totally going to do all those things. That is all completely doable. And as far as, you know, I think you know my philosophy on hiring people and scaling and, you know, none of that’s going to be a cost. That's going to make you money. And that right now you have enough time, I totally think you should not go the VA route and hire a full-time admin. I think that that you can probably get rid of a third of the things that you're doing every day. So, I think that'll be money very well spent. And, of course, you don't have to have the whole salary on the first day, you just have to have enough to pay him for the first two weeks.

Bobby: Right.

Tyson: All right. We're going to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the Facebook group. It's got about 4600 members. It's growing every day. There's a lot of great information being shared. If you want to join us in the Guild, go to maxlawguild.com.

And then, also, remember to go to maxlawcon.com. You can also access it through Maximum Lawyer or through Eventbrite. Get your tickets for MaxLawCon2021. It's going to be fantastic, in October. And we're probably going to sell out, so make sure you get your ticket.

Jimmy, what's your hacking week?

Jim: All right. So, for my hack of the week, I want to talk about why we create content. And Bobby was talking about creating content earlier and feeling like he didn't have enough content. The reason that we create content is for when that moment arises, where someone is thinking about doing business with us and they're all hot and ready to go, that you give them stuff to consume as much as they want.

We are a binge-watching society. Netflix rules the world. And when people want to watch one video, they want to watch 20. So, the reason that we create all the content that we have, whether it be emails, or blog posts, or videos is so that when someone is in that state where they're thinking about hiring us, they confirm their decision by listening to you over, and over, and over and seeing you over, and over, and over and listening to someone that they now can put their trust in. And that's why we create lots of content. 

Tyson: I like it. Nice hack, Jimmy.

All right, Bobby, you know the routine. What is your tip or hack of the week?

Bobby: All right. So, I actually had a couple. And this is something that was relatively new to me. For the past couple of years, I've been using Crisp keyboard which is an app on iPhone and iPad. And, essentially, you can create your own templates to throw in text into, you know, text messages, emails, things like that. And as a person on the go, you know, I found that that was great. And then it was just recently I found out about Text Expander which essentially is the same thing except its cross platform and also will be used on the computer. Text Expander is subscription based. Crisp keyboard is $1.99 one-time thing. So, I think that they both have their pros but those are great.

And if I could just throw in one more, the Webaround Big Shot is a green screen that you can throw on the back of your chair. And I just got that from Amazon for 75 bucks a couple of weeks ago. And when I've been doing my court appearances, the background looks like this. This is my actual office. But the other attorneys, the judges, they have no clue. And that's been working really great. So, $75 well spent.

Tyson: That's fantastic. Nice. I like that. What's it called, Webaround?

Bobby: Yeah, it's Webaround. Yeah, the Webaround Big Shot. I happened to find it. I thought I was just going to spend, you know, 15 to 25 bucks on something. And they were all just cheap. And this was the more expensive, but it seemed like it was the original. The others were the knockoff’s. And so, I decided, “You know what? I need something that's going to be nice. That's going to work.” And it works. It's fantastic.

Jim: Wait. Are we looking at that now or is that really your background?

Bobby: No, no, no. That's my real office. I took a picture of this for my office. No green screens here.

Jim: All right, good.

Tyson: That's what I was-- I was like, “Wait? what am I looking at?” Okay. [inaudible 00:30:58] tell it’s real. Like that looks-- Okay. because it is real.

Bobby: It’s real real.

Tyson: Okay, so I had a book I was going to recommend but we got into the confidence stuff. I'm going to do something a little different because I think this will benefit you, Bobby. To help building that confidence, I want everyone to think of three adjectives to describe their perfect self, okay?

So, Bobby, I want you to-- after this podcast episode, I want you to kind of sit down and think about it for a little bit like three words, just pick three adjectives to describe yourself - your perfect self, like what you want yourself to look like in five years. And if you sort of visualize that and really, really, you know, think about it, and absorb it, and feel it, and you think about it every single day, that'll help, you know, push you. I mean, that's not all the work you need to do to get your confidence in order but that's a nice little starter to get you moving in that direction. So, that's my tip of the week.

Bobby, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much. 

Bobby: Thanks for having me, guys.

Jim: Bye, guys. Have a good day. Good luck in court, Bobby.

Tyson: Thank you, Bobby.

Bobby: Thanks.

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