Prologue

A Story of Self-Reliance

I learned at an early age that if I was going to be happy, I had to rely on myself.

I grew up in suburban metro Detroit. I was just a normal Jewish kid from a middle-class family. My dad was a solo lawyer, doing general law stuff with an emphasis on personal injury. My mom was a retired school librarian and stay-at-home mom. When I was twelve, my parents divorced, and the world my sister and I lived in was shattered.

My dad remarried, but his new wife hated us. She would tell people when they asked her about “Joel’s kids” that they were dead to her. Lovely. My mom also remarried, and her new husband was physically abusive. My stepfather was a psychologist who lost his license for sleeping with a patient. As a result, we moved to another town, and I had to start high school without a single friend. This made me a target for some of the school bullies. They threatened me with beatings, but my cunning ability to avoid danger and talk my way out of threatening situations kept me safe. Still, this was not a very happy time in my life.

By the time I was fifteen, my survival skills were razor sharp. I started working—partly to get out of the house but also as a way to protect myself. If I couldn’t find comfort, protection, and stability at home, perhaps I could find it through work. So I took a job busing and waiting tables. This kept me busy. It’s not like schoolwork and friends were taking up any time. That’s one of the good things about working in restaurants. It is usually a bunch of misfits looking for connections and a job. My coworkers in the fifteen-plus restaurants I have worked in have always become my close friends and somehow part of my family. This is a real thing and happens in most jobs of this nature.

I’m not joking when I say that waiting tables taught me everything I needed to know to be a great trial lawyer.

Good evening, folks! My name is Michael, and I’ll be your waiter this evening.

I learned how to think on my feet. I learned how to juggle five tasks at once while keeping a smile on my face and thinking ahead to what I would do next. I learned how to read customers. I learned how to communicate quickly and clearly to chefs, hostesses, and diners. I developed a fantastic memory. I followed certain practices that allowed me to work faster and more efficiently. I figured out what type of table made me the most in tips, and I learned how to encourage the hostess to seat the four businessmen in my section and give the mother with three toddlers to someone else. I loved the pace, the demands, the pressure. I loved doing an excellent job for my customers, and I loved depositing a fat wad of bills from tips in the bank every day.

The more I worked, the bigger that wad got.

I told myself that the more money I had, the more protected I would be from bullies, stepparents, and whoever else wanted to mess with me. Because of these mistaken beliefs, there were periods when I would work three different restaurant jobs at a time. I would keep the uniforms in my trunk for quick changes. There were many days where I would go from school to a lunch job and then immediately to a different dinner restaurant. Earning money became a game. All those years of waiting tables and finding ways to make more and more. At the end of the night, the manager closing everyone out would always comment that I had the highest in total sales “again.” It just came easy to me.

Looking back on it, not only was I developing great lawyer skills, but I was also learning a thing or two about following smart business practices.

In truth, I always had a knack for business. I had a paper route when I was younger, and as a ten-year-old, I used to do odd jobs around my uncle’s drugstore. His kids hated going to work with my uncle, but I loved it. I worked the counters with the cashier, and I would interact with the customers and arrange items in a way that made the products more appealing and easier to purchase. I ran the cash register like a pro, and I often made suggestions on ways my uncle could improve customer service. I even made money at school. For instance, Bubblicious bubble gum was all the rage back then, so I would purchase boxes of the stuff and sell it for a profit out of my locker. I couldn’t help myself.

Resilience

This book is about business principles—and how I applied cutting-edge business practices to a traditional law firm and experienced astonishing results.

But the backstory for this book is about perseverance. It’s about overcoming setbacks. I was knocked down many times in my early career, and as devastating as some of those blows were, I always picked myself up, dusted myself off, and forged ahead.

After high school, I went to college at the University of Arizona in Tucson—about as far from Detroit as you can get and still be in the continental United States. The plan was to get my bachelor’s degree and then my law degree so I could work with my dad in his firm.

My father, Joel Samuel Morse, was the kindest and most loving father anyone could want. He was funny and affectionate, and he loved life and loved being a lawyer. His clients loved him. He also had a great rapport with fellow attorneys and judges. My dad was a solo practitioner, and though he wanted me to work for a large law firm, my goal was to be his partner. He made law fun. Why wouldn’t I want to work with him?

In 1989, I enrolled in the University of Detroit Law School, which I chose so I could be close to my dad. After class, I would go to my father’s law office to study. My dad would drop in while I studied, and we’d read cases together. He was very patient and explained things to me in a way I understood. Although I was a mediocre high school student and college student, I was an outstanding law school student. I started law school thinking everyone was smarter than me. I finished among the top ten students in my class.

In May 1990, I was taking my first-year final exams. They were brutal. I remember talking with my dad from a payphone in the law school lobby after one of the exams. He was in Mexico giving a lecture at a bar association conference, and he wanted to know how the exams were going. He was encouraging. We talked about what I was planning to do that summer. He had helped me get a job with the largest personal injury firm in Michigan at the time. He wanted me to learn from “real” lawyers who knew more than him. He thought that would give me a broader perspective. He was right, and I would give my daughters the same advice today.

After I said goodbye to my dad from the law school lobby, I drove to my mother’s house for a long, hard weekend of studying for my remaining finals.

My mother greeted me at the garage door. She looked pale.

“It’s your father,” she said. “He’s had a massive heart attack in Mexico. He’s dead, Michael.”

He was only forty-nine. I was devastated.

I felt lost and numb. My best friend and the only reason I was in law school had just died. I was twenty-two and had no clue what to do. I wanted to drop out of school. I wanted to run away. But I knew my dad would want me to finish and take over his legacy of helping people.

So that’s what I did.

Learning the Ropes

I graduated cum laude from law school and was voted most likely to succeed and most likely to make the most money by my classmates. I took a job with my dad’s best friend and former law clerk and spent the next few years learning the nuts and bolts of being a lawyer. I learned how to take depositions. I learned how to try cases. I learned how to bring in cases. I learned how to market myself, and I learned how to win.

And I learned how to make money. By the mid-1990s, I was making more than six figures a year and driving a shiny red BMW 325xi. I got married, and my wife and I started planning to have children.

Then, without warning and for no clear reason, my dad’s best friend fired me. I remember it well because I was fired on my dad’s birthday—September 21, 1995. He would have been fifty-five. But instead of spending time mourning him, I had to figure out how to rebuild my career.

I was fired on a Friday, and by Monday, I had my own office. I shared a receptionist and worked at a rented desk. I had no cases, clients, or steady lead generators. I had no real money to advertise.

At the time, most personal injury lawyers in Detroit advertised in the Yellow Pages. There were hundreds of full-page ads for attorneys, and those ad spaces cost thousands of dollars a month. They were not arranged alphabetically but sold on a first-come, first-served basis. Even if I could afford one of those full-page ads, I would be at the back of the book behind all the other attorneys.

But I noticed that there were small display ads in front of those impressive...