Tiger Tactics: My Epilogue

Tiger Tactics: Powerful Strategies for Winning Law Firms came out of a year long Slack conversation between me, Billie Tarascio, and Jay Ruane. For over a year, we shared our trials and tribulations with each other. We were candid about our successes and our struggles. And together we helped each other achieve new heights for our respective practices.

On a Saturday morning in July of 2017 - I pitched the idea of turning our conversation into a book. Billie and Jay both instantly said "yes". We felt there was a need in the market for a book of raw stories about building and operating a small law firm or solo practice. That very same morning I suggested calling the book "Tiger Tactics". To which Billie responded "that's sticky". And she was right. We tried renaming our book over the last 19 months but Tiger Tactics had stuck.

Content for the book was largely written between July of 2017 and January of 2018. It was written right before everything was about to change for my practice. I went from being a lawyer in an expense sharing arrangement with a part time employee to the CEO of a rapidly growing personal injury firm that has added 7 full time team member since the beginning of January 2018.

Many times, throughout the editing process, I thought about going back and rewriting my chapters. My story had changed. My trajectory had changed. And the skills and lessons I have learned since January of 2018 are rich and would be useful to others.

I decided not to change a word I wrote. The reason being is that I hope someone can identify with me and where I was in late 2017. It was a time when I had obtained a lot of the knowledge and skills that I would need - thanks in large part to learning from Jay and Bille who were further along in their respective firm trajectories. It was a time when I had a lot of faith that what I was doing was laying the groundwork for success. But a time where I had a lot of doubt about whether or not I would ever be able to pull it off.

It's a dreary Saturday morning in late November. The pellet stove is on. The kids are watching "My Little Pony" on Netflix. And my wife, Allison is at our kitchen table opening credit card statements and crying. Not knowing how we were ever going to pay them. I had made the decision to switch from a more general practice to exclusively a personal injury practice. And in 2017, my household income was lower than at any point since I had graduated law school.

I told her that things would be okay. It didn't seem to help. But I kept at it. I kept applying all that I had learned from Jay and Billie. I trusted in the process.

Almost a year to the day later, I would be having dinner with a fantastic team of 7 people and their significant others at a very nice steakhouse celebrating the best year of any of our professional lives by any measure. And our growth would continue into 2019 in ways that I still have a hard time believing. It's to the point where all of my thinking about the business revolves around managing growth.

And I wouldn't be here without Billie and Jay sharing their stories. And that's why I'm so proud of Tiger Tactics and my co-authors: Billie Tarascio, Jay Ruane, Bill Umansky, and Theresa DeGray. We felt there was a need for folks in our position to connect. And to stand on each other's shoulders.

It is our hope that something in this book - something in one of our stories - helps lawyers who are struggling. In writing the book, despite having different practices and different places, it was clear to us all that the challenges we face are the same.

Any success that I have had did not happen overnight. And it certainly didn't happen without help and guidance from colleagues willing to be real.

Tiger Tactics: Powerful Strategies for Winning Law Firms is now available in paperback (356 pages) for $19.95 or Kindle Edition for $9.99. We priced this book to be affordable. I started my practice with $2500 comprised of several hundred dollars that I had saved in change and stored in a fishbowl. Paying $100+ for a book at the time would have been a significant burden to me.

If price is an issue, send me an email: [email protected] . I'll send you a free copy.