Resilience in the Face of Challenges with Rob Schenk

Going from shiny object to support and success, guild member and lawyer specializing in nursing home litigation Rob Schenk's journey is a testament to the power of resilience and determination. 

In this episode, Rob shares his career journey, from working at an international business firm to starting his own firm and eventually focusing solely on nursing home cases. 

Rob has navigated the legal field with a relentless solution-focused mindset that hasn’t always been there. His decision to specialize in nursing home litigation was driven by a desire to work on a meaningful cause, and he's been making a difference ever since.

There are the challenges he faced and how he overcame — including specializing in a niche area of law.

Listen in to hear: 

➡️ The Power of Specialization

➡️ Overcoming Challenges

➡️ The Importance of Mindset

➡️ Efficient Systems

➡️ The Power of Networking

I invite you to listen to the full episode to dive deeper into these topics and gain more insights from our conversation with Rob.

Jim's Hack: Take a  gratitude tour, for reconnecting with people in the past and expressing appreciation for their guidance. "Be Quick But Don't Hurry" 

Rob's Hack: Have a commonplace book, a small book to jot down notes and synthesize learnings from books.  

Tyson's Tip: Implementing office hours to reduce stress and improve communication within the firm. Taken from the book "The World of That Email" by Cal Newport and you don’t get messages all day. 

Episode Highlights:

• 01:05 Meet Rob, as he shares his decision to focus on nursing home litigation only
• 02:47 From working at an international business firm to starting his own firm, and the eventual dissolution of his partnership
• 07:18 Starting over after the dissolution of his partnership and the challenges and opportunities that come with it
• 09:23 The initial struggles with negative mindset, anxiety, and financial difficulties
• 10:52 Managing cases and tasks efficiently without automated processes
• 14:31 Overcoming self-doubt and the importance of perseverance 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Rob:

• Website
• Podcast

Resources:

• Join the Guild Membership
• Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube Channel
• Follow us on Instagram
• Join the Facebook Group
• Follow the Facebook Page
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcripts: Resilience in the Face of Challenges with Rob Schenk

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

Tyson:
and I'll tell you some new tricks. What's up, Jimmy?

Jimmy:
I'm reporting live from Des Moines, Iowa. I think Becca used to live here in Des Moines. I actually was somewhere in Iowa. And I am two games in on a long tournament for the Nornator. They are 0 and 2 so far. They've got their brains beat in the first game. In the second game, they played pretty well. Then they had that notorious one bad inning.

Tyson:
It'll get you up, you know, it may not be that long of a tournament if they keep losing so that might be a good thing for you

Jimmy:
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's fun when they win, but we've been out of the house a lot lately, so there's that too.

Tyson:
Absolutely. Well, let's jump right in Jimbo and our guest today is guild member Rob Shank. What's going on Rob?

Rob Schenk:
There we go. Let me unmute myself. It's going very well. Thank you, gentlemen. How are you guys?

Tyson:
Fantastic.

Jimmy:
Great, great. Let me go ahead and give a quick bio for you for all of our listeners. Rob

Tyson:
Well,

Jimmy:
Schenker,

Tyson:
Jay,

Jimmy:
yeah, no, it's fine.

Tyson:
do you want me to do it, Jim? It would be easier if you want. OK, OK. Cool. Go.

Jimmy:
Rob Schenck represents families of those injured or killed in nursing homes all across Georgia since 2017. Rob has been the host of the Nursing Home Abuse Podcast, a video podcast dedicated to educating residents of long-term care facilities. Rob, thanks for joining us.

Rob Schenk:
Thank you so much again. Looking forward, been looking forward to this for a while.

Tyson:
I actually have too as well, Rob, but I want to hear, you know this, I always ask people to, talk about their journey and how they got to where they are, but give us the details, give us the dirty, what led you, because I really want to hear, what led you to joining the guild, right? What was it that led you to join the guild? What in your journey led you to that?

Rob Schenk:
I think that it's probably the same journey as a lot of the Guild members. I was and still continue to be spinning many plates. And, you know, every time I hear a podcast, I go to the next shiny thing and wasn't accomplishing anything. And and I just needed a place where I could I could hear fresh ideas, get good ideas and have people that would be a sounding board. So just people that. kind of in my situation and just get feedback from them and learn from them. That's kind of, that was what precipitated it. And I knew a few people, I think Ryan Locke was the one that was like, hey, you should check it out. But I'd been a long time listener of the podcast itself for a long time, so.

Jimmy:
Well, let's go all the way back. Talk to us about when you graduated law school, what happened career-wise up until you sort of started your own firm.

Rob Schenk:
I graduated from Georgia State in Atlanta in 08. Went to work. at a international business firm that's kind of based in Paris, did kind of cool business transactional business litigation stuff for a couple years, but realized that I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to be able to be the one that picks what the printer is going to be, you know, that makes all the say so of what the website's going to look like, what I want to do, that kind of thing. But originally, because of the experience that I had at that firm, I started off as business litigation. So bridge of contract stuff. But it was too difficult for me because I might have a case in which I have to learn about how companies sell debt to one another because I'm suing somebody about a breach of contract and debt selling. And then the next day, I'm trying to figure out why somebody is being sued in Florida for failure to build, you know, a metal staircase correctly with whatever welding materials he had. I was I was taking on too many things. And so after a little bit, I. I started doing personal injury because I wanted to get court time and I felt like that would allow me to focus on kind of just injury work as opposed to having to come to work every day and learn a new industry. And then at some point I paired up where I was sharing expenses but not profit with another individual. We finally ended up partnering together and then doing all types of injury work and then home work and that partnership and which it continued to and then at the end of 2021, beginning of 2022, that partnership dissolved. We separated and I've been solo still just doing nursing home work since then. I've been really doing nursing home work only since about 2017.

Tyson:
All right, so there's a lot of good juicy nuggets in there that I want to ask you about, but I want to start though with the decision to get rid of the injury stuff except for the nursing home, which for many firms is a very difficult thing to do. It can be painful even. What was that decision like?

Rob Schenk:
I, to me, it was not a decision. It had to be done for the exact same reason that I had so much stress at, at the beginning of my career with the business litigation. It was difficult one day to figure out how uninsured motorist coverage would stack on liability coverage one day. And the next day, try to figure out how to get surveillance camera footage from the Kroger for a slip and fall case the next day, et cetera. So I knew that we had to do something. It just so happened that my partner was a CNA in nursing homes for 10 years. So he had kind of inside knowledge of how that industry worked. We got a couple of cases just fortuitously at the beginning of that injury career. We did well on them. So it was kind of like, if we're going to pick something trucking, slip and falls, negligent security. I think nursing home is as good as any. It's a great cause. Like it makes you feel good at night to having done that as opposed to some other areas. So we knew we had a niche down. It just so happened that the kind of the force has aligned us to the nursing home industry.

Jimmy:
So how did that partnership go and then what was sort of, I don't know how much you want to get into it, but what was sort of the decision making to go out solo solo?

Rob Schenk:
Sure, I mean he's still like my brother. I mean like we're great friends. We have a great friendship. We had a great partnership. I think that the issue for us was that… were so similar that it seems to me that when two people that are so similar to are together, the strengths are exponentially increased and the weaknesses are exponentially increased. And our weaknesses just it seemed as though we were never able to get to a next level and we were spinning our wheels in certain areas. And so with my own issue like with my wife, It just seemed to me that it would be better to see if we could do it ourselves. And so that was kind of the impetus in a lot of ways for the dissolution of the company. But we're still on great terms. The Atlanta legal community, to the extent that we're known at all, still kind of associates us together. We're still great friends. There was no animus. It was completely amicable.

Jimmy:
Are you both still doing the same practice area? Are you both still doing nursing home litigation or did he take something else?

Rob Schenk:
He continues to do nursing home, but he also is bringing on other, to my knowledge, he's bringing on other injury practice as well, so he kind of broadened back out.

Tyson:
All right, so in 2020, you have this reset. I think you said 2020-ish right around there. What was it like going out on your own and being able to reset everything? Because you had gone through this process. Jim's had a partnership before. I've had a partnership before. You kind of go through this process where you try to kind of meld together and then next thing you know, you're separating. But it is a really good opportunity for a reset. So what was that like and how has it gone so far?

Rob Schenk:
I feel like this time you're a little bit more. Road wise, I don't know if you've messed up word, road weary plus wise, I don't know. But

Jimmy:
Mm-hmm.

Rob Schenk:
so that the problems weren't as shiny. Like when you're when you do it the first time, it's like, oh, awesome. Let's go get a printer like or hey, this is awesome. Like let's get a laptop and, you know, blah, blah. And it's fresh and new. And it's fun, even though it's sometimes can be tedious. This time it's like, OK, I got to do all this again. And it was kind of a bummer. But I know that. there's still light at the end of the tunnel for me. So that's kind of what got me through the initial process of like, all right, now I gotta do this thing again or start this thing over, start this thing over. There's still an objective to move towards. So it was an okay process. It wasn't too bad. That's kind of how I approached it. I think I myself, and I'm not sure like, you know, but. I was also already going through issues anyway, which thankfully to you two, I can plug the Maxim Law Guild that helped me through a lot of issues as well to get to get through that hump.

Jimmy:
I think a lot of people like the idea of a second chance of sort of resetting things. I think they get sort of excited about looking at something in a new way. And I'm wondering, Rob, if you remember any of the things that you were like, hell yes, I'm keeping this and hell no, I'm getting rid of that.

Rob Schenk:
So I think for me, there was a mindset of when I was with a person, you're thinking in the idea of we need to have a system because if we have an assistant or a paralegal or whatever, they have to understand that it's one process even though there's two people. And we'd never achieve that in reality with our processes. So with this, with, with being out of my own, now I have more than one person. So even though it's not another attorney, I still have to have processes that everybody understands no matter who's got the assignment or where it's going. There's one way to do things. And so that's got me breathing a sigh of relief that there's one, I'm developing one process for all these tasks. So that's kind of a, that's kind of something that I'm that I'm happy about with the transition.

Tyson:
So what are the

Rob Schenk:
That answered

Tyson:
things

Rob Schenk:
the question.

Tyson:
that you…

Rob Schenk:
I don't know. I think I forgot the question towards the end of it anyway. I'm sorry.

Tyson:
You got it, you got it. So what are the things that you feel that you're struggling with these days?

Rob Schenk:
Initially, I and initially I was struggling with the mindset. I was doing a lot of negative talk, a lot of toxic talk, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot. And so with the help of the guild, I watched a lot of the Jason Selk talk, did a lot of the, you know, the relentless solution focus, got through that hurdle. got through the initial crunch because I was in a money crunch as well. So it was the mindset and money crunch were my two greatest hurdles at the time, which was interesting because at the time I joined the guild, I didn't know that mindset was a problem. Like I was one of those people that's like, whatever, I'll just crush it. The anxiety with my mind vice, which was, which was not working for me. And it was causing me to, you know, not be as productive as I should have been. So the, the money crunch mindset I worked on and after about eight or nine months, almost a year, I think I'm in a better place in both of those. I have, the finances are working out for me. So it's allowed me to kind of not necessarily let off the gas, but it's allowed me to focus a little bit more on these other things. And so what I'm seeing now, at least, I don't know what I don't know, but I feel like my problem now is systems and how I feel like I'm what I'm saying when a case comes in, I have all the operations. I have all the processes. How you take from the case from one stage one to stage five. But there's no set person. There's no there's it doesn't auto populate in terms of like these are the due dates for everything. So I have to literally check every case periodically to move things to move different tasks forward. So I don't know what that's called, but that's what I feel like is a huge drain on me that would could easily be solved, but I just don't know how to do it.

Jimmy:
You're listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today, Rob Schenck, he's a nursing home warrior down in the ATL, we're glad to have him with us. Rob, talk to us about that mindset shift, and I'm interested, did the mindset shift come before the finance shift or vice versa, but what was your mindset before you had the breakthrough and then what sort of turned you around?

Rob Schenk:
The mindset that I had was that I'm a failure that if I could get a settlement check in, but instead of being like this is great for the client, this is great for my business, I'm saying to myself this is not going to take me to the next level. This is not going to be enough to do this. Just a lot of being extremely hard on myself. That was the mindset. What got me through to the other side is… I did a lot of journaling thanks to Mr. Hacking giving me that advice, doing a lot of journaling, a lot of reading, coming to realize that, you know… It's not the outcome that matters. It's the process. It's the it's the work that you put in every day. That's where you draw, at least for me, what I've learned is that that's where I draw the happiness from. So even if I were to have to shut my doors down, even if the firm were to close, which obviously I don't want that to happen, but if the firm were to close and I would have to go and be an employee somewhere else or, you know, somebody quits, one of my employees quits or whatever the case is. That's going to happen. It's it's how I react to that and the things that I do on a day to day basis that I draw the satisfaction from. So that's kind of. And again, like I'm not like I haven't been to the Hill and back. I'm still I'm still getting angry and mad and stuff. But I'm not in the place that I was. And so that's kind of what got me to the other side. And what makes me happy about that is that it's not a huge settlement check coming in and I get happy because of that. I'm trying to get beyond that, whether it's something good that happens or something bad that happens, I slow down and allow myself to have the rational reaction and work through the things and then express that.

Tyson:
So Rob, I just looked this up. When your hot seat was, it was October 25th of last year.

Rob Schenk:
25th,

Tyson:
And

Rob Schenk:
October 25th

Tyson:
you.

Rob Schenk:
and the six the six month deadline was April 25th.

Tyson:
You were really hard on yourself. It was, to see the transformation between then and today is quite amazing. So kudos to you for putting in that work. Like you put in the work, that's amazing. There's a line in your pre-show questionnaire that I want to say, I want to read out. And the question is this, if listeners only learn one thing from your interview, what would you want it to be? And you write simply, don't give up. Where does that come from? Because that's powerful. Where does that come from?

Rob Schenk:
I think it comes from Winston Churchill, isn't that right? Like, well, that's the, isn't that the,

Tyson:
Well,

Rob Schenk:
he,

Tyson:
I'm talking about internally

Rob Schenk:
no,

Tyson:
from you.

Rob Schenk:
I get you, I get you, no. No, I mean, so from October 25th of 2022 to April 25th of 2023, that was a crunch time for me. I had to do a lot of soul searching. And so there were times in which I would, just I would say to myself, I'm just going to refer out all my cases. I'm going to get out of this. I can't handle this. And I would journal that and then I would sit on it for a few days and then, you know, this too shall pass. And so, um, That happened a couple of times. And if I would have gone with that automatic reaction to an obstacle, to bad news, I wouldn't have a firm. I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. So that's where the don't give up comes from. So there were times where that's about as close in the 15 years that I've almost been out of my own that I've come to just taking the shingle down and going to work for somebody.

Jimmy:
In the seven years or so that Tyson and I have been putting out our podcast, we have not met too many attorneys who have their own podcast. I would say it's very, very few. Out of the 350 people we interviewed, I'd say it's less than 15. So talk to us about how you use your podcast in your overall marketing scheme and sort of how it has worked for you.

Rob Schenk:
So I started with the idea of who was the podcast for. So I wanted to make the podcast for the actual person who has a loved one in a nursing home, as opposed to making it for other attorneys or whatever. I wanted it to be, if somebody needed to know how to order a private autopsy, for example, after their loved one had died from a nursing home. they could search that on Google, find that there's a podcast about that and listen to it. And so that's kind of how I approach it. So it's, it's not episodic. Like, it's not like I'm trying to build an audience. I don't care about an audience. I only want each episode to stand alone for a specific instance of that one of my clients is going through. Whether or not they want to know what to say at a care plan meeting or why pressure injuries keep coming back. There's an episode for that. And so that's kind of how I've approached it from a content standpoint and from a marketing standpoint. So you Google a question and that podcast is gonna come up and you're gonna see my website, the transcript is on there. It's got links to everything that we've talked about, the whole shebang. And it's been very beneficial for me. I've learned a lot. Because I mean, I don't know anything. So you have professionals on. We were weekly. That got to be too much. Then we were twice a month. We've been on hiatus for a while because of the dissolution of the firm, but I'm about to start it up again. But it's been very helpful to me in learning my industry better.

Tyson:
Let me ask you for my last question. Let me ask you about your remote and you've worked in person before, but you're remote now and I have noticed sort of a trend where people seem to be going back towards getting into the office. And I wonder if you think you'll stay remote into the future or if you think you'll return.

Rob Schenk:
I hope to stay remote forever. Unless a client wants to see me, which is fair. Unless I mean, obviously I got to show up for court appearances, but I don't know. There's something about me that work is work and your life is your life. And so like I want to give the benefit of my employees that like, hey, as long as you're getting your work done. get it done and you can spend that time with you however you want to do it. I don't know, like go to the tracks, spend time with your family, whatever you want to do. So it's kind of, that's kind of how I approach it. Like I don't, I see the benefits of having people all around a water cooler and talking and doing those types of things, but I don't know. I like the freedom to be able to do what you want and I think that you get that from remote. That's just me though. I could see both sides of that.

Jimmy:
You talked earlier about the discomfort that you felt having to learn new things every other day and being in completely different fields of inquiry and lawsuit types and all that stuff. Talk to us about what the benefit has been for you to be focused solely on nursing home litigation, not so much from a referability but more from a developing an expertise standpoint.

Rob Schenk:
I love it. I wouldn't change it for the world. So, I mean, you could imagine like in any area of law, you could go down the rabbit hole as long as you wanted to. So with nursing home, it's no different. So from one day, I might be spending time trying to understand the difference between choking to death and aspirating to death. And then the next day, I'm trying to figure out how long it takes to develop a pressure injury. But these are all things that are kind of just more closely related than two disparate areas of law. On top of the fact that nursing homes are regulated both from the federal level and the state level. So you have sometimes competing regulations. So you're keeping abreast of those things on top of the legal skills as well. So… The fact that I can just spend my time learning that one area, I mean, it just makes me feel much better and I feel like I'm a better attorney for it.

Tyson:
I love the fact that you've niched down so much. David Terry, another Guild member, he's niched down to completely nursing out. I think it's just fantastic. It makes it so you're so much more referral-able. I think it's just great. But we do need to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the Guild with great people like Rob. Go to maxlawguild.com. If you're not ready for the Guild, join us in the big Facebook group. Just search Maximum Lawyer in the group and you'll find us in Facebook and you'll find us. A lot of great information being shared there every day. Just to help spread the love, if you don't mind giving us a five-star review if you're getting something from this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what's your hack of the week?

Jimmy:
I read this great book, it's called Be Quick, But Don't Hurry, it's by somebody who was a student athlete for John Wooden and in there he talked about time he spent with Coach Wooden much after his playing career had ended. And I have been on sort of a gratitude tour of going to former mentors and taking them out to lunch. I had lunch with my favorite English teacher who was also my advisor during high school. I had lunch with my old student activities board advisor from St. Louis University. I'm going to take out some old lawyer mentor friends. And it's really powerful. Each time I've gotten into the car after those lunches, I've said to myself, man, that was good for my soul. That just, having that reconnection to who I was and to see where I am now, it was just really, really powerful. And the other thing is, it was really appreciated by the people that I reached out to just say thanks. And they were all a little bit nervous. They're all like, something wrong. My English teacher said, Jim, usually when I have a lunch like this, it's because somebody has cancer. So I'm glad you don't have cancer. So highly recommend a gratitude tour for the people in your past who've helped elevate you.

Tyson:
Oh my gosh, that's great. That's a wonderful idea. I really like that. That's good. All right, Rob, we always ask our guests to give a tip or hack of the week. What you got for us?

Rob Schenk:
My hack of the week is probably something that's been mentioned on this podcast before, but I've been reading a lot of books lately. And the thing that's really helped me is having a, I think what's called a commonplace book. So as I'm reading, I'll jot down the notes or I'll start something that I like, underline it, but it gets captured in a book. Just a small book that I keep with me all the time. And then even through that process, I synthesize it and it goes into one kind of hardback book, that I've got with me that it's basically a hard drive for my brain because I've found that even through journaling that I'm forgetting things like I'll think of something for the first time 10 times even in a six month period. So having that commonplace book as a repository of what I've learned in these books is has been very beneficial for me.

Tyson:
I like it. Jim, I don't think we've had that tip before, so I think you might be the first.

Rob Schenk:
Okay,

Tyson:
So, very

Rob Schenk:
okay,

Tyson:
good.

Rob Schenk:
very good.

Tyson:
Awesome. Well, for my tip of the week, it's something that I guarantee that Jimbo's probably going to be skeptical of, but many people are going to be skeptical of because we're all lawyers. We implemented something from the book, The World Without Email by Cal Noport. And it's been going on for about a month or so. I think we're right around a month and it's office hours. And so you're not, you don't send any messages throughout the day. Like, so a lot of people use Slack, right? We used Click, which is equivalent to Slack. And before we, like people were messaging all day and it was just a flood of messages and things get kind of lost in the shuffle. But now if you need to send a message, wait until the person's office hours, like minor, Monday through, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 2 45. So 2 45 to 3. So just 15 minutes. And if you want, the default is you want to actually not send a message, you actually want to make a phone call or you do a video message to them or video call. And that way you can get the context of what's going on instead of just sending a message. So you want to, you want to, you want to prioritize, That's what we've been doing. So everyone in the firm has office hours. And if you need to speak to someone, you go to them during their office hours. And it is reduced, at least I'll tell you, my stress has gone on quite a bit. The number of messages I get is hardly, it's basically nonexistent for the most part. It seems to be working pretty well. So tip is office hours. It's, I think it's a great, it's actually really great for stress, I can tell you that. Because instead of getting messages all day, at your time, you handle those things at that time. and you really don't get many because usually what happens is people, whatever the question is or whatever the issue is, it resolves itself because they kind of figure it out. So it's actually a really cool thing. So highly recommend it. Rob, thank you again for coming on. And like I said before, amazing work that you've done just to change your mindset, awesome stuff and just love having you in the Guild and love having you on the show.

Rob Schenk:
Thank you so much, guys.

Jimmy:
Thanks buddy. Keep it up.

Rob Schenk:
All right.

Tyson:
See you, Rob.