Arash Homampour, Top Trial Attorney With $500m+ in Won Restitution | How to Take on Large Corporations and Win

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot podcast network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to start and grow a business. HubSpot podcast network hosts act as on-demand mentors, the entrepreneurs, startups and scaleups through practical tips and inspirational stories. Listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot podcast network at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. Today, my guest is Arash Humm and Poor. Arash is one of the most notable pre-eminent trial lawyers in the state of California if not the entire United States of America. He is sought out by attorneys and clients to take on the most challenging but righteous cases. His firm exclusively represents plaintiffs in catastrophic injury and death cases. His firm is taken on the biggest and most formidable dependence including Volkswagen, Lamborghini, Toyota, Nissan, Sunbeam, the state of California, Costco, farmers, insurance exchange and all-state. His firm specializes in what they call underdog or David versus Goliath litigation, where they represent individual clients that are taking on public entities, larger employers, industry or manufacturer in an effort to change and or stop unlawful or unsafe conduct for the good of others in the community. In the last five years alone, Arash has obtained eight figure verdicts for seven figure verdicts in a wide array of trials involving dangerous products, roads, driving and premises, including a record setting, 60 million wrongful death product liability verdict in Orange County and a 30 million wrongful death verdict in Ventura County. What we spoke about was David versus Goliath cases, how everyday citizens can take on giant companies and when we spoke about how does he win these cases, the mindset and the strategy when other lawyers don't even take them on, we spoke about how he grew his law firm into an age figure firm by doubling down on a unique niche. We spoke about not letting his past dictate his value and to set your own value, how to be an outlier in your field and to leave the pack, as well as the importance of foundation. We walked through his entire origin story as well, which has led him to this point. This is Arash, home on poor, an incredible notable preeminent trial attorney, one of the largest in the United States of America. Well, I mean, basically I think it starts with being the child of immigrant parents. That's a big, you know, common denominator and a lot of success stories is that you come to America with kind of no idea of how things are. There's no concept of rules. I was telling someone that like my rich friends, I grew up in West LA and we were very poor, but my rich friends, you know, in high school would go on ski vacations and go to fancy restaurants and like I never went on a ski vacation. I never went to a fancy restaurant. And so kind of my perception of what limits there are and what how life should work was kind of open ended. So I think it gives you more opportunity to sort of grow and be even bigger than you ever could imagine. No, I, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the childhood of being poor, you know, with immigrants, knowing you're different just by appearance and by name, my name is Arash, I'm a poor. I think being the weirdo today is considered a good thing. It's good to be unique and stand out and sort of make your own path and not live by how others live their life and trying not to look like other people, but just be yourself. And so I've always had that sort of approach. I was voted most unique in best highs in high school. And then, you know, I went to USC back then it was not hard to get into. Now it's a top 10 school. Back then, you went there when you couldn't get into UCLA. I had good grades, but they just weren't good enough for a state school. So I went to USC, kind of had no idea what I wanted to do. It wasn't ready to enter the universe as a professional, decided to go to MBA or law school. Said, well, law school seems more interesting based on the TV shows that were on back then, LA law being one of them. And then I knew how could argue. In law school, I really had no idea. Most people in law school back then wanted to do like entertainment law and music law and something fancy. But I didn't have that opportunity because I just wasn't getting the grades and didn't get the sort of internships that would let you do that. So when I graduated, in fact, in law school, I did mood court, which is the equivalent of arguing. It's like a litigation program. The teacher said I sucked and that I should not do litigation that I wasn't good, ironically. I didn't really care what someone said. So I went to graduate law school. It was a great law school in terms of teaching you the basics, but it wasn't like a law school that's going to get you the high paying job initially. Kind of have to do that on your own. I was at a seminar this weekend and I told people sometimes the best thing is that you don't graduate from the fancy school or college because that has a sort of path and course on its own that's kind of defined. And whereas if you kind of graduate with nothing, there are no limits. You can kind of kind of you have the hunger and desire to really prove yourself. So that's who I was in law school. Really had no job, no mentor, no cases, and just basically worked my way to where I am today. One case at a time with a passion and love affair for what I do working harder than anybody else confidence on myself and then also the key to it is developing who I am as a human outside of who I be as a lawyer because you learn how to be a lawyer or a doctor or a accountant or whatever marketing person. You can learn those trades by reading and studying and going to school and then doing it in real life. But really, I think what sets you apart in all of those areas is you being the best human you can possibly be being evolved. Like the Deepak Chopra or whatever you know, whatever Wim Hof or whatever of humanity, then when you enter into those professional worlds, you kind of transcend the profession and you sort of become an outlier that stands out. You're starting off as a terrible, I love it, but you're starting off, you're starting off very high level, but I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just I wanted to I wanted to understand is that where is that when you hit the ground running out of law school, did you have that mindset because many people don't have that mindset going and coming in a law school? Yeah, very good. My best friend, best friend, like she says do something I do it in law school said, there's a program called landmark education, it's worldwide, do it. There's a program called Intro to the Forum. And basically it's a self-development program live with 500 people where through experiential learning and sharing, you learn about how humans are, you learned kind of the roadmap to human behavior and rather than living your life where you're unaware and reacting everything as an mortal human, it gives you a bird's eye view of who it is to be human so that you're less reactive, you're more in control, you have integrity and you do what you say you're going to do and actually accomplish it. So that was essential doing landmark education. There's a lot of programs like that. I highly recommend that one because it's structured and they use it with CEOs and regular ordinary people and it's effective in terms of breaking through with your own life and breaking through as a professional or in relationship. So that was the one key thing I did that kind of gave me, you know, super super powers and wings that other people didn't have. So okay, so now you're finished law school, you're going out, you're just you're grinding but you're doing it with a sense of purpose. Like this is not the traditional like first year out of law school type mentality. So I appreciate that. And what is that purpose? What directed you down the path of personal injury? Which it's interesting to hear you say why you why you had or what you had, you know, this lens that you saw life through coming out of university or college just because personal injury seems to be like the law that everybody seems to be going, I see the billboards, I see the radio at it's all personal injury personal injury but it doesn't seem to be through the lens that you're looking at it through. Right, well personal injury on billboards, that's a business. They're basically signing up cases and looking at the practice of law as a business. How can I make as much money as possible in each individual case on a mass scale? There's nothing wrong with that per se. I'm not a business. I'm a lawyer by profession. I was put on this earth to identify and hold wrongdoers accountable and make them pay for what they did and make the world a safer space on a large scale. I take on the biggest of big. It literally is David versus Goliath, the larger you are, the hungry RIM, the more evil you're wrongdoing is, the bigger negative impact you have, the harder I'm coming after you and I'm going to hold you accountable. So what I do is really a profession. It's not a business. I don't look at anything like how much money can I make and et cetera. It's really just how much of an impact can I make, how much can I transform someone who's been hurt their life and hold someone that's done something wrong accountable. So it's two different things but there's space for both. Of course, no, it's amazing. It's like Led Zeppelin versus Britney Spears. Hey, we all love a good pop song, but at the end of the day, is that enough nourishment for a true music lover? No. I want to go deeper. A twinkie, yeah, but I also want to eat some premium Toro so you need to Led Zeppelin or whatever sophisticated band there is out there that floats your boat. So you you went into law. You decided to go into personal injury law immediately. Is that the is that what you knew that you wanted to do right out of college? I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, Posty. Now, it's no lie that in the competitive world of marketing advertisers, marketers are trying to find a way to better connect and get in front of their audience. I'm trying to figure that out my entire career. You want to accelerate the growth of your company and you want to reach new customers with measurable results. But most of the existing channels are oversaturated. There's so much noise out there. So the best marketers are turning to direct mail, but wait for it. Direct mail reinvented. One of the best kept secrets in marketing is that direct mail gets close to 100% open rate and is one of the most impactful ways to market a product or service, but it's expensive and it's cumbersome. Posty is transforming direct mail. They're adding all the digital marketing capabilities, tracking, KPIs, analytics that you would normally see in Google, Facebook or YouTube paid campaigns. They're adding that to direct mail. Basically, Posty allows you to set up direct mail campaigns like a digital marketer. So it's a one-stop shop for building audiences, setting up campaigns with AB tests, approving creative, tracking results in real time. It also integrates into your CRM which allows you to build look-alike models from over 250 million US customers. You also have just as many targeting options as Facebook or as Google. And on top of all this, it's fully automated. So you are operating all these campaigns from a web browser, from your laptop, and Posty takes care of all the printing and logistics and the mailing so that you are just pressing go. It's like direct mail with an easy button. Posty campaigns allows you to attract new customers, retarget your website visitors and track conversions, re-engage your existing customers, and increase their total lifetime value. For anyone that is looking to start gross scale a business, I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the success story podcast audience. This can really elevate your marketing if you start using direct mail day one and Posty makes it really easy. It will make you stand out as a company. When you get a piece of mail, no one else is doing that. So if you want to get your free Posty demo, they've set up a special link. So go to posty.com slash success story. That is posty.com slash success story. They'll give you a free demo because Posty is direct mail reinvented for the digital world and the people that use something different, something that makes them stand out to market to their customers will be the people who win and direct mail definitely has that edge. Alright, let's get back to the show. Well, I saw that the space in which I could make the biggest impact where there wasn't really a sort of five star five dining approach was in personal injury. In other words, what you're describing with the marketing and the billboards, that's basically Carl's Jr. Fast food legal services. But when you are involved in personal injury that involves a company selling a dangerous product or a dangerous medicine or a roadway that is dangerous that should be fixed large scale wrongdoing or unreasonable conduct, that requires five star dining because before you open that restaurant and you serve a $7,000 meal or $500 meal or whatever, you need expensive plates, you need high-end chefs, you need thought, you need the you know how it looks, how it tastes, how it feels, thought out, you need artists making food that stands out, that someone's willing to pay that kind of money for it. That's what we that's what I gravitate to, that's what I wanted to do and that's what I build my career up doing. You know, started with the small McDonald's you know transactions worked up to medium dining, two star dining, three star dining and now we are, you know, the pre-aminate five star. Your Michelin star, your Michelin star at this point. We are, yeah. Amazing. By the way, I appreciate the the analogies there. Everybody can get that, everybody can get behind that. Okay, so walk me through some of these wins that you've had over your career and and because some of these stories I'm sure whatever you're able to talk about of course. I can talk about anything. Well, you know, I started trying cases meeting going into a courtroom getting in front of a judge or a jury immediately because I was literally the guy that's like, I'm Kobe Bryant, you don't know it, give me the ball, get out of my way and I would basically get a small ball, like a racket ball, they get to throw it, then I get a tennis ball and then someone gives me a volleyball and then finally someone gives me a basketball prime time on the court and I don't get times 10. You know what I mean? That's my sort of the way I looked at things. So basically what I did is I would take on any tough case that had a big upside because those are the cases they won't settle. In fact, all of my big wins are in the context of a defendant that not only underestimated but probably insulted me by offering zero to settle or offering some nominal sum to resolve that lawsuit before a jury decided, all of which gives me the opportunity to take a big righteous case all the way, try it and get the maximum result from jurors rather than resolving it with a defendant paying what they think is reasonable. So my first big case was we were suing the city of Fontana or not having sidewalks in an area that they knew children were walking to and from school sharing the road with vehicles and so the city knew they didn't know when it was going to happen but they knew based on internal documents that at one point a child was going to get hit by a car because there was no safe place for the child to walk and rather than spending they had millions, I mean hundreds of millions of dollars in undesignated funds available to be used to fix the road which would have cost about thirty thousand dollars they were not using their own money and trying to get the state to fund their own financial obligation and so it was a very tough case in that a 15-year-old unlicensed uninsured undocumented child was driving the car trying to pass someone got angry went around and hit a young girl killing her 13-year-old Karen Medina and in that case the interesting thing was the city thought the case was so dumb because of the facts and because they thought this girl had no value literally this is an ironic thing for if any attorney knows who I'm about to talk about the the the adjuster they have insurance companies that adjust claims against big cities he called me and he's like this was at the beginning of my career he goes you know you're you're okay but you're no Tom Girardi Tom Girardi being the attorney who we now know stole millions of funds or allegedly stole millions of funds from its clients and fell from you know from being one of the consider one of the territories to one of the biggest losers ever and then he also said the adjusters from the insurance company said and your client was just some Hispanic girl what do you think a jury's gonna award her and I mean when he said those two things it was literally as if like God put a lightning rod inside of me and said we're gonna show you what's gonna happen so they offered zero to settle that case and I got 38 million dollars for a wrongful death case which if you talk to any attorney is like not not a number in the stratosphere it's like outside the realm of logic in terms of how much money that is for an unknown attorney to get in the context of that difficult liability with those damages it's unheard of and what I was doing is it wasn't like you know you think your bands have one hit wonders but at one song it's like all gels and that's it I wasn't a one hit wonder literally every single year after that verdict I was hitting huge verdict sometimes four in a year of seven to eight figure verdicts meaning 10 million 20 million 30 million 50 million 60 million verdicts in cases other attorneys not only would they not touch but could not win let alone win at the levels that I was getting so I started the ground running and then just literally just kept running running running running when why is that why first two questions on that point why do other attorneys not take them on why are some of these cases so difficult to win what's what's your differentiator and in the high end I tell people if I walk into a courtroom it's me against a defense attorney or attorneys many times we have multiple law firms against us and I'm not saying this to brag or boast or anything because I really don't like operating from ego but I am an evolved human on another level right I am kind loving generous I know my my failures I embrace my weaknesses I embrace my tendency to be ego oriented I'm always trying to kill the ego I'm always trying to come from love and kindness I have talent and when you take someone evolved and put them in a courtroom next to your typical defense attorney which is you know typically a older white male or an older you know unaware person they tend not to do as well because they're not evolved they're unidimensional they're angry they drink the Kool-Aid that everyone's a fraud and a fake they tend to use artifice or trickery or deceit to win their cases hiring the same experts who come in and tell a bunch of lies to jurors or trying confuse jurors and so when you've got a defense with its bag of tricks it's deceptive it's not good it's mean it's evil and you've got an evolved person who not only can can convince the jury of what's righteous but can unravel and reveal the lies and deception of the defense it's no match the only time I lose is if I deserve to lose because the facts justify a juror finding against me other than that it's no competition if that makes sense and that applies to any space they're doing anywhere any profession if you are an evolved good fundamentally good human you are and you love what you do and you're passionate about what you do you will do infinitely better than your competition very very well said very very well said so as your career evolves now you're hitting home runs again and again and again what is your what is your current what is your current focus in your career because I feel like you have many of these stories but just at a high level what is your career progressed to now well I always wanted to create a firm where I didn't have to do everything where my talents and efforts can be more focused on the biggest possible result so right now I'm doing cases worth let's say 20 to 60 million I'm trying to transition to doing cases worth 100 million to a billion not because I want more money because I'm not about consumption simply because I want to generate as much money from this wrongdoing as possible to give back and make a difference in the universe like I set up a foundation of my you know where I funded it with a million dollars of my own money to help other people get to the next level in their life through micro grants to individuals that deserve it you know you see these attorneys and firms they do these thousand dollar scholarships and and like more power to you but come on what's a thousand dollar scholarship in the context of the marketing budget we know these businesses are spending on internet advertising it's nothing it's a joke it's actually offensive because that thousand dollars isn't going to do anything we know clearly you're using it for marketing again I want people to do these scholarships but a thousand dollars is not going to cut it so for me I'm putting my money where my mouth is I've been given this opportunity and like sort of luck luck of making a lot of money doing something I love and for me if I use it to buy a bunch of garbage for myself and things that's disgusting if my existence is to consume buy more for worries or whatever I don't have any for worries by the way that's lame I want to use the money to make the biggest impact and help other people I was we were talking about this this weekend there are so many Elon Musk's and you know other females and persons of color who have potential that never get that potential because a no one told them they can do it be there's no environment conducive that fosters that thinking they don't have the resources they just don't have the the ability to get there and so rather than teaching kids you know math and geometry only I want to start teaching kids at an early level at an early age they can do whatever they want to do literally like if you're in an auditorium we're thinking about doing this and there's a kid whose shoes aren't as cool as the other person who's not as popular as the you know homecoming person go look at you you're the one that's going to be successful you're the one that's not going to flame out in high school where your hey day is I was the prom king or queen you're the one that's going to be the weirdo that makes a difference in this universe but they don't know it many times and we don't get the benefit of it because there's no sort of structure set up to help those kids so what's my purpose bigger and bigger cases more money start donating more and making a bigger impact in the universe and helping other people achieve the success if not more than I have in my life beautiful um I want to I want to bring out some some ideas on I guess on personal development that I can hear that you get very passionate about but I just want to I still want to get a little bit more of the tangible legal insight out of your brain before we go into other stuff so I think that the most you know the the most important question would be when people take on these companies what what what do they even hope to achieve how can they take these companies on and win I guess higher you but outside outside of that I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot HubSpot is the CRM platform that is easy to implement and it's even easier to get your team to adopt and ask anybody that's implemented new technology in a company the biggest issue is not finding it or buying it it's getting your team and your company to actually use it and adopt it and when it's a piece like a CRM one of the most critical pieces of your business infrastructure and your tech stack if people don't adopt it and use it that means you're getting incomplete data you're getting missing data you're getting garbage data it could impact quite literally everybody in your company as well as it could negatively impact your customers and your revenue so how does HubSpot solve for this with their CRM platform there's two components that they focus on that allow for organizational wide adoption this is the contact timeline as well as the mobile app so the contact timeline gives a historical context for all of the data that is associated with a certain contact in the CRM that means that anybody across the organization can see all the actions and all the interactions that have taken place against that particular contact you can also use that timeline to make calls to these contacts and roll them in sequences put them into marketing or sales campaigns schedule a meeting open tickets the historical timeline makes it easy to take action as well as to track the action that's been taken against all of your contacts and it's not a pain to enter the information which means that it doesn't take somebody a long time to put in great data which can again positively impact your whole company the second piece is the access from anywhere meaning if I have a phone and I'm on the road the world's opening up a little bit more now people are traveling again I can use the HubSpot app to access my CRM anywhere on the go on the fly it doesn't matter so I have complete access to the CRM I have access to my spreadsheets my calendars my notebooks all of my contacts I can send messages across my team with the HubSpot keyboard I can access my contacts call them through the HubSpot app I can take quick notes I can take contact information I can all log it into my HubSpot app so that I can pull it up later on my desktop when I'm back at home it's simple it's intuitive it's meant to make it easy frictionless so that your team sees the value in properly using the CRM to the fullest of its capabilities and gives them the tools and the tech to allow them to do it without spending too much time and causing them more headache the best thing about HubSpot is that it can be set up for any size of business and it will scale with you if you're just starting out you can take advantage of certain features and then as you scale your business you'll notice that HubSpot will support almost anything you need as you grow so if you do want to learn how to scale your business without scaling complexity go to HubSpot.com no no so it's you know the David versus Goliath sort of framer is interesting because today a 17 year old kid can make a hit song on his laptop with three pieces of software okay a 15 year old kid can make money in cryptocurrency right on a level that the traditional bank could never make so there is an efficiency that exists today through the harnessing of technology through using new techniques through being you know a good person that will allow you to transcend and annihilate the biggest corporation because they just don't have the the ability to navigate through things as easily with the best results as let's say someone who's more nimble and more agree and so harnessing that allows you to take on Toyota because Toyota's got 50 attorneys right when there's 50 attorneys on the other side I'm gonna win if I deserve to win because you can't compare one person who knows everything who's evolved to 50 people that are like too many cooks in the kitchen you're gonna be literally that's how we take advantage we can spend just as much money as they spend in doing testing and working up a case they can't outspend us because many times these defendants will spend money inefficiently on dumb stuff I mean I can't tell you how many times we take on a big products defendant and they spend a million bucks doing something that ultimately isn't even admissible because I know what isn't admissible I know what games they are playing with the stuff that they're doing so how do you take on big corporations you appreciate the strength you have in who you are in 2021 the world is now moving away from the old paradigm and the old structures and the old narratives and it's way more receptive to the new narratives of you know inclusiveness of loving everybody of letting people define what their happiness is of not believing this baloney structure that the only thing that's good looking is white there's space for everyone to shine you know it's a different world so I think in any profession it's easier to distinguish yourself and sort of be an outlier than it was ever before and I guess my because these themes are they're so right on but why are you so passionate about these things besides the fact that it's just good to be passionate about being good and being a better person but I speak to you know just I speak to a lot of people and I'm sure that they are good people but they aren't as passionate about the things that you're speaking about they don't bring them up in discussion what what what was the cause of the trigger I mean look anytime you define happiness by yourself by what you get for yourself you're never going to be happy happiness is when you're of service to others when the circle of what makes you happy is larger and you're of service meaning that like love is not about getting it's given happiness is not about getting it's giving when you when that clicks in your brain then you realize the more joy you're going to get in your life by the more people you help I literally have this sort of analogy of I'm a candle and my job is to light as many candles in this universe as I possibly can no strings attached no expectation I don't get anything other than make the world a better place if I can inspire someone to get to the next level and be happier you know that's infectious it helps the universe it helps my children live in a world that when I die they want to live in and it really makes an impact longer than you know you're limited number of years on this earth I mean that's one thing about music I talked to people about this you know someone wrote a song in 1960 they're dead they sat in a studio with a drummer and a guitar player and a bass player Jimmy Hendricks and they just jam and that little six-minute jam has brought so much joy and like millions and millions of times people listen to that and it gets them through hard times or pump them up before they work out or pump them up before board meeting or whatever right that's the power of music that's the power of what it is to be human and so that's kind of transitioning to why I love music so much is because it just has so much power transcendental power beyond the six minutes it takes to make something I want to I also want to like I want to unpack some lessons that you've that you sort of live some of the values but also let's talk about your firm because I was listening to I was listening to another show and you speak a lot about how you run your firm and how you want to reinvest in the people in your firm and how you want them to have balance all these concepts come from this like the best way I can describe is like a mindset of abundance and that's not where I expected this podcast to go at all but that's where you know that's like your core theme if I could sort of pin it on one thing it's like giving giving so walk me even through some of the lessons that you've discovered in your firm because I think that's a smart leadership smart management style that you sort of incorporate you know it's shocking how many people don't have manners if you go to someone's house clean up after yourself if you go to someone's house respect the people around there if you go and meet someone new don't be small and go like don't matter say hello people like hi thank you manners and you take those basic lessons at home and you put it everywhere you go when the blessed boy talks to you you look them in the eye when the valet looks at you you talk to them when you're an elevator someone strikes up a conversation say hello same with your staff at work treat them like family treat them like you would treat them like you would treat yourself or any other member of your family the the world doesn't exist for you to exploit and gain them or if the world exists for you to take care of other people treat people with joy love and then the outcome of that the outflow and what comes back to you is good vibes good karma positivity synchronicities I have synchronicities in my life they're like mind blowing in terms of I think of something I want something happen someone comes along and like I cut you know six months ahead in terms of doing something why because I'm a kind loving person I put good vibes out there I treat people with respect I tend to oh I tend to actually treat people nicer if you look at how what how a treat people nicer than you would expect I should or would but I do it because that's the way I was raised that's what works and that sounds yes oh should be so same with employees I just believe in work-life balance not overworking them I never yell I'm never disrespectful I tolerate mistakes because that's part of being human um you know we have good employees who have been with us a long time and if you come to my office you'll see they work because they love to work they want to make a difference it's not a job for them it really is a place where they want to be the office looks nicer than most fancy hotels the office provides food and drink like fancy tea fancy water whatever they want to eat I pay for those things if they want to take self-help of course I pay for it if they want to take yoga I pay for it why the more well-rounded and happier they are as a human the better their productivity at work it's like win-win no brain or stuff that so many people don't understand their misers when it comes to taking care of their employees and they don't understand they're short-changing their their potential I was going to say like you know you hit the nail on the head like when it comes to when it comes to reinvesting in your own people and I was just hearing about when you did an interview on work-life balance and stopping people from working on the weekends or whatnot but if you actually look at the if you do look if you run a cost-benefit analysis of investing in your people versus even hiring and staff turnover and whatnot there's some numbers there that you really have to consider but you know you you also said it correctly I'm in alignment with everything you're saying but many people just miss the mark many leaders many managers many CEOs found to just miss the mark which is unfortunate a few other a few other points that I thought were interesting one of the themes that I was prepping when I was prepping this interview one of the themes that brought out was not letting your past dictate your value and setting your own value speak to me about that it's really simple your past is your past you have no control over it so whether you did phenomenal or you did poorly it's irrelevant who you be is who you declare you're going to be by walking to a room and I think I'm hot shit because I want a 20 million dollar verdict I'm not going to relate to anyone they're going to go this guy's an idiot a moron like we think he's hot shit if I walk in a room and go where I'm a loser because I lost four trials again that's not relatable what matters is who do I declare I'm going to be in this moment in this transaction with this human being if I declare I'm going to be loving kind generous be it now do we fail are we sometimes jerks are we sometimes ego based yes clean it up if you do something that that like you go oh why did I do that clean it up with the person forgive yourself your human everyone's done it but don't let your past whether positive or negative dictate who you be who you be is who you declare yourself to be that's it and I think that that's a smart as a smart entrepreneurial lesson as well because I think that if you are going to embark on anything like even you said you had a not so easy go about the first you know the the first part of your education and your and your life you were not raised into money or anything like that and you set that standard yourself and you sort of carried it forward and that's something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs have to deal with because they're going to have multiple failures and repeat failures and it's normal and it's common and actually hitting a home run that soon is actually uncommon I you know I know a lot of people that have gone seven eight nine ten years before they hit that proverbial home run another theme that I thought was interesting how to be an outlier in your field so how do you differentiate yourself you sort of touched on it but you're in a crowded field there's there's the you know the carls junior injury and personal injury attorneys how do you differentiate yourself besides attitude i guess that's part of it i just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode quantum metric so what quantum metric is going to do is it's going to allow you to develop a single source of customer centric truth that can help you understand how to position your products how to sell to your customers because anyone is a digital leader who wants to understand your customers better it should be a hundred percent of you you should want to understand the customer experience when they hit your website and then you also want to understand not just your customers but who else in the world is having similar experiences and how can you use that information to make informed decisions about how your business moves forward we are gearing up for an unprecedented twenty twenty one e-commerce season e-commerce sales are expected to exceed twenty twenty benchmarks even though covid is lightening up consumer behavior is change forever and with quantum metric you can prepare yourself to capture every single customer revenue opportunity so their unique approach to the digital experience that the customer has while engaging with your brand helps top retailers e-commerce outlets quickly identify and prioritize large and small revenue opportunities and they keep customers coming back so everything from page hits mouse movements scrolling typing out of the box interactions that you couldn't even think of various events API calls literally everything they quantify that data and they presented to you so that you can use that data to make informed decisions about how customers interact with your brand online so if you want to reduce customer friction if you want to increase conversions drive more revenue optimize user experience personalized the shopping experience for all of your customers go visit quantum metric dot com slash pod offer that's quantum metric dot com slash pod offer and go see if you qualify for the twelve days of insights offer using the code success the twelve days of insight offer gives you twelve days of access to the quantum metric platform with a bespoke insight report that will help you identify where customers are struggling and engaging with your online experience and your digital product some restrictions apply but for the majority of people go to quantum metric dot com slash pod offer enter the code success and you will be able to receive their twelve days of insights offer get ready to understand your customers with intimate detail they can optimize experience and revenue and give your customers an overall much more pleasant experience when they hit your site all right let's get back to the show number one be yourself so there's only one version of you don't be a version of somebody else don't mock mimic anyone else don't copy anyone's literally be yourself you like neck tattoos add neck tattoos you like arm to whatever it is again uniqueness is not defined by tattoos just be your unique your unique self and what I specifically did is I went out of my way to help people I have undiagnosed ADD I love distracting myself from the task at hand sometime so I would I was on this listserv which is just basically a subscription of let's say 10,000 attorneys in California where you send an email everyone can read it and you ask a question I literally with ADD would interrupt my day and answer 20 to 30 questions a day someone asked a question they have no idea what to do would take them two weeks to figure it out in two seconds I've answered it I've given them a sample and I've told them they can reach out to me for help that really made a difference in terms of one getting my name known to people in terms of just my willingness to help and then my results distinguished me so if you get a few score 50 points a night after you know a year for 10 games people are going to know who you are so it's results it's can be letting people know your results and then helping others look at every transaction not as an opportunity to help yourself but how can you be of service to others and then it will come back to you how that transaction can help you maybe on a bigger scale than you ever thought when you initially entered that transaction but look at things in terms of how can you help people you know it's just it's powerful coming from you in particular because you have achieved success in what many would be considered like many would consider trial attorney to be like a highly adversarial like don't mess with that guy he's gonna you know like when somebody hears that you've taken on all these car companies and all that you're like this must be some mean-ass mother you know like that's that's the general takeaway perception so I think that that's it's an important point it's an important like pay attention because there's good ways to do business and to be successful and I think you know over the past year and a half two years everybody's stressed out everybody's been in that you said it but well as the miser attitude towards business towards being frugal furloughing hoarding like just all these things that are so negative but like you're you're living proof man you don't have to you don't have to live like that I need to work on it too it's tough it's very tough I think another important aspect of my success is surrounding your yourself with people who are not toxic or up to big things who bring out the best in you I mean one of the best things that ever happened to me which so many men and women spend their time looking for is that perfect mate you know when I was 23 graduating law school I met my girlfriend who then became my wife we're divorced now but we're super close but I would not have any of the success success I have now if it wasn't for her she really elevated my mindset believed in me pushed me took care of a lot of the stuff that I couldn't handle efficiently so I could work in zane hours so I would tell people if you're in a bad relationship friend lover family get out of it and and stay alone and then surround yourself only with people who will push and challenge you who don't think small they don't have to be billionaires are successful but they need to be on the path and you surround yourself with those people that push you and you push them you will get a lot further in life than if you are surrounded with negative toxic people who are just going to drag you down so again one of the most important things was finding that special one person to help me navigate and sort of get way further than I ever thought I would ever get by amazing I have a couple I like to go into a couple rapid fire career questions and we've already gone into a lot of really great insight and that's amazing because sometimes we just really stick with whatever domain or whatnot but we brought you brought it out I think a lot of this stuff is applicable across the board was there anything that we didn't dive into or I didn't think to ask that was more domain specific any any last learnings out of law taking on corporations dealing with these types of litigations that you just want to close up with well yeah I mean just remember there's always new approaches to doing anything surgery painting music there's always a space for innovation creativity and passion you sometimes you can't you know why did this bossy song you know your mind three minutes song hit it right but you listen to it and you go there's just something about the ingredients of that song that's all high levels like food you know just stick with basics good stuff and you'll be successful same in law or any other thing start with the best ingredients look at it like an art form master it to the point that you can do three ingredients instead of 50 and still kill it and have people go wow use that approach always know their space you know if you said yourself as a guitar player I'm never going to be as good as Jimmy Hendrick's why should I play guitar right everyone would quit but when you realize there's a space for a punk rock guitar player doesn't even know what they're doing but can still create amazing music that speaks to you even if you're not technically proficient like Jimmy Hendrick's that's how you should look at life there's a space for you to shine in whatever career path you want whether you have the technical proficiency or not if you are really good at it you love what you do and you're creating something unique in a space that somebody else hasn't created. Amazing advice thank you um okay let's let's go into some rapid fire you've had an amazing career you know multiple eight figure seven figure settlements um you've had a lot of challenges what has been the biggest challenge for you personally or professionally how'd you overcome it getting over my ego you know you it's like once you start getting successful then you start believing the hype you start believing I deserve this I deserve that I work hard I should play hard and realizing that look if you've been given a talent and you are successful at it you can't squander it on personal ego based events because there are a lot of people that are living that rely on it from your staff to your employees to other consumers and then there's a lot of people in the future that will be relying on your output and work so don't squander that talent with stupid stuff it's really just killing my ego fighting my ego not being lazy really living up to my potential and living not to generate income from my own personal or family or whatever consumption but generating to help generations of humans amazing um who was one person that had an incredible impact on your life and what did they teach you I mean well first was my my father obviously my father taught me one not to be emotional which was a very sort of a bizarre sociopathic way to live your existence if you're very emotional learning how to compartmentalize your emotions allows you to swiftly navigate life without uh sort of the pushback that you would have if you're a sensitive person and then if you actually happen to be super sensitive and get up in front of a jury it's super powerful because you tend to win um so that was kind of like an unintended outcome of my father's anti-emotional upbringing he's now super emotional and very sensitive so he's evolved and now we get to share our emotional side together he also taught me the value of hard work how no one plans to be uh you know to to not win to sort of be uh unsuccessful that you have to plan to be successful it takes hard work there's no substitute for it um and then my ex-wife kind of just showed me what love and affection can produce and just being kind and nice uh really gets more sugar you get more with sugar than you do with poison uh you know those are the two people that had a huge impact on me um what would be one thing that you would tell your 20 year old self oh I would tell my 20 year old self please develop the DJ gig because believe it or not for four years you could make 600 thousand a day DJing in the south of France or Vegas and then cash out and then go to law school I saw you're you you DJ part time right I do but not the $500,000 a gig yeah I was gonna say it's just a few years ago that was amazing yeah that's a lot of fun yeah I did I did my my bet in university and I still enjoy I still have all my equipment so I really had DJ equipment around my kids it was like please one of you please let's start at able to list there's start DJing you don't know what there is yeah um uh your favorite source to learn from or it could be a book podcast audible anything you'd recommend people go check out sure untethered soul it's on amazon it's under $10 paperback I read that over and over it takes all of the Eastern Western Deepak Chopra high level human design understanding and puts it into an easy to understand really beautiful book you can open up look at any page the paragraph will apply currently to your life and give you insight it's one of the most important books I think everyone should read and reread so that they can successfully navigate this human existence what does success mean to you success means to me how much of an impact have you made on in this universe how much joy happiness inspiration have you brought to others that's success amazing and then most importantly how do people reach you uh socials website all of that yeah I mean rshukhominpoor.com is my email instagram rshominpoor a r-s-h-o-m-a-m-p-o-u-r the archer dj's my instagram handle message me I'm available to talk to anyone anytime I'm someone that makes myself available to everyone to help them when I can um you know it's really important for me to get back and help others I get more out of it than they get from me believe it or not amazing thank you that rshukhominpoor a really really appreciate you