Office Hours: The Future of Legal Tech and AI, How to Cope with Financial Stress as an Entrepreneur, and Why Young and Ambitious People Should Move to a Global City

Support for property comes from another podcast. If you've ever wanted to sit down and conduct a candid conversation with the marketing leaders of the world's biggest brands, then the folks at the current podcast have you covered. The podcast will conduct exclusive interviews with the experts and trendsetters who are shaping the face of digital advertising so you can get the information you need without the traditional BS. Subscribe to the current at thecurrent.com or anywhere you get podcasts. Welcome to the project pod's office hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at prop2media.com. Again, that's officehoursapprop2media.com. I have not seen or heard these questions. First question. Hello Scott. My name is Grant and I'm an attorney focused on plaintiffs litigation and criminal defense in the Midwest. My question is about innovation in the field of legal services. I recently read a Twitter thread about hospitals and doctors providing high-end concierge services advertised as executive physicals. The idea being that for a cost of several thousand dollars a year, a patient can get a customized physical in a luxurious setting that gives them information about optimizing their health outcomes that might be more in depth than a run of the mill physical. Are you aware of similar products or services that are offered in the legal arena? If you don't know of any examples, is there a legal product that you think is missing from the market? Love the podcast. Thanks for answering. So like demographics are destiny. You talked about health care and I'm more comfortable talking about health care because I know more about it or I think I know more about it. I think two enormous trends are one AI into income inequality and if you were to try and figure out where those or where that heads, these concierge services, I don't know what you call them, the IP medical services. So I'm in that market. I read about something or a friend recommended me or referred me to something called, I think it's called the Atticus and it's basically the super high-end Gatica feeling health clinic and I think you pay like 80 grand a year and that's for you and your family and you get a health scan and they're just all over anything and basically the way I would describe it is taking health care from a defensive disease-driven industry to an offensive health-related industry where they say we're going to look at everything and just figure how to optimize all of your levels, do all your blood work and say you know we're going to solve problems before they evolve into something really serious and we're going to just try to optimize your life and I love this guy Peter Atia and I like what he says that basically people shouldn't be focused on life extension, they should be focused on the quality of life and he says show me the last 10 years of your life when you're healthy versus unhealthy and I'm going to show you an entirely different decade of life. So the health care system, the top 1% all leads to these VIP AI generated services, what have you. In the legal field, in the legal field, I have no idea what's going on here. It seems that AI is going to do a lot in legal services, document review, translating, reviewing and summarizing documents, drafting first drafts of legal, I'd hate to be just a mediocre regional lawyer or somewhere that doesn't have very strong relationships because I can go to chat GPT and say draft me a lease for a retail client in a residential strip mall with annual increases of 3% and I just give it all these parameters. It'll spit back a first draft that a paralegal or a lower level lawyer would spit back. So at the same time, if you have good relationships are creative or smart, understand the nuances at the specific tax code or legal compliance or zoning requirements, you can use AI like a freaking going from a spirit or a howards are going to become an incredibly productive lawyer. So it all comes back to the same place. AI is not going to take your job. Someone who understands AI is going to take your job. So the best lawyers are going to make a lot more money. This is kind of what happens with technology as you create sort of a winner take most and the question is what do we do with that additional income or prosperity. The mistake we've always made is we don't use any of it to kind of retrain or focus on services where the people left behind. Anyways, I can't imagine that the legal industry isn't going to be upended by this. I can see an environment where using AI and some really talented people they say, okay, you're in this white class, past this annual fee individual, wealthy individual or corporation and we're just going to we're going to give you a flat fee and although we won't make as much money, it'll be more robust. What do we mean by that? The cash flows will be more predictable because you're on subscription. The way it works is with Foley Hoag is they would give me all sorts of kind of free money losing advice when my company was small and then when L2 got sold for 158 million, they charged me like one and a half million dollars to do the deal. That's where they made their money. That ecosystem is a little strange. I think it's better if they just say, okay, startups, 10,000 a month, M&A deal when it happens, we're going to charge you, you know, supplemental fee of a quarter of a million, but we're just going to keep as you get better, charge you a monthly fee. That way their revenues might not be as great, but they're more predictable. It feels like the legal market is kind of ground zero for AI and as happens in any real innovation that people understand the technology and can incorporate it into their into their practice, end up garnering or having access to cheaper capital. They pull away from the rest of the competition and those folks get rich and the people who kind of sit on their hands and make excuses for why they are immune to this technology shift and don't incorporate it into their everyday practice, end up slowly but surely bleeding out and that's the problem. It's slow. They'll find signals that they're doing okay. They'll have one good quarter but slowly but surely the oxygen will be sucked out of the room in some, in some to situate yourself between consumers, wealthy consumers and law and healthcare is a good place to be and also to situate yourself between AI and how it's going to disrupt you to the healthcare or the legal industry is a fantastic place to be. Fantastic question. Fantastic question. Thanks for your time. Question number two. Hi, Prof. G. My name is Matt. I live in East Village, Manhattan. I'm a longtime listener for my question. I'm a fairly long time small business owner. I work in the real estate space but always kind of did it as a bit of a side gig from my full-time W2 sales job which was a pretty decent paying job even in New York but I've recently quit that job and gone all in on my business. The question for you is somebody who's run numerous businesses is how do you manage your finances when you go from this steady W2 income to strictly business income where some months you may absolutely brush it and make a ton of money and then other months you know your personal burn as well as your business burn maybe higher than the income that you bring in. Thanks for your help. Thanks for your question Matt. I appreciate your transparency and this is something every entrepreneur deals with a couple things. Everyone's got to play to your advantage. At the end of the day strategy is just answering one question. What can I or we do that is really hard? So your strategy, what can I do that is really hard? It is really hard to start a business. You know it's also really hard living below your means and if you're a young person and you don't have kids what I would argue is that the greatest wealth generator is to partner with someone who's competent is either making money themselves or manages finances really well and just be as fruitless possible when you're young and I know that's not popular and I know it's like live life, live for today but boss I'll tell you the thing that saved my ass was I for the most part lived below my means and that as I never got into debt I always tried to spend less than I made. The reality is if you are starting a business you are going to have financial stress. So I thought I was rich when I was 30. I had just started profit. Profit was making profit was almost profitable from day one because it was a service is coming. That's a nice thing about a services company is that you know all of the expenditures are people and quite frankly people are easy to fire or they're much easier to get rid of and cost around R&D or infrastructure. So a services company is client driven you can be profitable from day one but when I started these companies. So I started profit made good money. I thought I was going to be rich boom divorce and divorce took the majority of my assets away not because of the divorce itself but because I wasn't diversified enough divorce typically means I have to become a forced seller of assets it always comes at the wrong time. I think I was a bit arrogant kept doubling down on companies kept not spending more but investing more in my companies when I should have been taking money off the table and diversifying a little bit and then clawed my way back to financial security and then boom the 2008 financial crisis hit and that was about the time my first kid came marching out of my girlfriend and that was a very stressful time and then I decided to start L2 and I had I think I don't know a million bucks my name which no one's going to feel sorry for but I thought at that point I'd have a lot more money given all the risks I'd taken and success that I'd registered and it was cost me a hundred thousand dollars a month to fund L2 and we got profitable in about seven or eight months but I ripped through the majority of my savings that is hard and it's stressful. There's no magic formula here there's a couple things one if you have a partner be transparent with your partner about the risk you're taking and what his or her role is in financial support for the household to throw nickels around like their manhole covers that you're existing business don't kill yourself don't work 16 hours a day because you think that the world is going to recognize you're working 16 hours a day but work efficiently and productively and very hard and find revenues set up some real benchmarks and that is if this company is in break even by this date I'm going back to getting a steady paycheck somewhere because the real stress happens when you enter into consensual hallucination that your business is working when it's not and it begins to put pressure on the household it begins to put huge pressure on relationships number one cause of Doris is not infidelity it's not sickness it's financial stress and pressure so from the outset if you're in a relationship and you didn't say if you were or not you want to be very transparent and approach it a team a team attitude your super power is a young person you sounded young is to just quite frankly not spend any money and then a super power as an entrepreneur is to be really really cheap and realize that expenses and spending money doesn't create a business I feel into this trap all the time my most recent business I raised a shit ton of money and then I went and raised 8000 and then I went in at least 8000 feet in a supertony office and it's like what the fuck was I thinking you know it's revenues to make a business not expenses but there's no secret sauce your boss and then maybe at some point trying to diversify some of that risk by raising money I always started businesses with partners because I found a just psychologically it's less stressful to have someone else you're talking about this with and also is to share some of the risk you share some of the upside but if a company is successful there's going to be enough to go around for a lot of people and then having a group of people around you who can be honest with you about whether it's time to move on or time to raise capital put together a kitchen cabinet I think being an entrepreneur sort of a young man or a young woman's game when I speak to people so I'm going to go to work here for a while get the credentials and then maybe be an entrepreneur I'm like no entrepreneurs are kind of born they're not made and also being an entrepreneur at least initially unless you have a lot of money or rich parents involves living pretty you know pretty frugally pretty thin and it's much easier to do that when you're young once you have kids it is hard to live really frugally because guess what that kid is really annoying and wants his own or her own bedroom and schooling and clothes and you just you want to feel like a failure don't be able to provide for your kids or be worried you're not going to be able to provide for your kids then you really feel like you're failing on a cosmical level what is the algorithm for wealth focus find something you're good at that people will pay you for there's a big difference something you're good at that people will pay you for spend less than you make create an army of capital that you can deploy then diversify it diversify it and then let time take over and don't trade anyways I think you can apply those same things to building a business thanks so much for the question map from Manhattan thanks for the kind words and good luck with your business we have one quick break before our final questions stay with us support for property comes from intel world changing ideas have to start somewhere and intel believes that exceptional engineering can provide the foundation for real solutions intel technology has empowered innovators around the world to push the boundaries of what we thought was possible assistive AI offers new solutions for those with disabilities super computing is helping scientists discovering galaxies business owners have relied on edge analytics to propel the smart factories and open manufacturing has supported a more sustainable supply chain but these stories are only just the beginning of what intel has supercharged the quantum computing revolution the next generation of AI experts the renewable energy grid liquid cooling data centers early diagnosis for cancer water restoration farmland protection these solutions all start with intel technology the examples are countless the impacts are endless but the foundation is always the same it starts with intel learn more at intel.com slash stories support for the show comes from the podcast business wars from wandering business wars delves into some of the biggest corporate rivalries of all time and the award-winning podcast is coming back with a brand new season and this time they're covering wait for it AI starting in the 2010s the dream of artificial intelligence became a real possibility big tech companies google meta etc knew they'd have to harness it if they were going to win the AI race in fact some company saw this key to their very survival the researchers within each company sounded the alarm that if they'd move too fast the consequences could be devastating it's the newest season of business wars the rise of AI where tech behemoths fight to dominate the artificial intelligence space and reckon with the costs join host and veteran public radio journalist David Brown is a guide to you through the real stories of artificial intelligence follow business wars wherever you get your podcast you can listen ad-free on the amazon music or wandering app welcome back question number three hey prof g how's it going i'm Nico messaging from portofino in italy i'm a big fan of your content and i've been following you since you published the four i'm 23 years old currently working in data analytics consulting in Milan and i would like to ask for career advice so last year i did a summer internship at an investment bank in London and got a return offer for an equity trading job which will start in a few months the trading job in London sounds really cool the salary is great plus of the brexit is not easy to get a company to sponsor your visa however i've heard that trading is sort of a pigeonhole and it will be hard to change industry in the future on the other hand i'm not really enjoying the current job in Milan and overall it doesn't offer too many opportunities so here's my question should i move to London and risk getting pigeonholed or stay in Milan and keep the consulting job i'd love to hear your thoughts thanks so this is a very personal decision and you have to take into account things that you you know i don't know do you have a sick mother are you in love are you you know what is it do you get 90% of your emotional reward from your family which all and and they all live together i mean there's some there's some nuance here right having said that based on what you told me my brother moved to London moved to London generally speaking for people who are very ambitious one of the key paths one of the key algorithms to um financial security and influence is to one get to the biggest city in your country and then and then get to a global city and Milan isn't quite there in the world of fashion it's a global city but despite the fact i think it has about i think it's it's 10% of Italy's GDP um but the bottom line is Italy is sort of gone sideways the last 10 or 20 years uh and that is the the amount of economic growth two-thirds of all economic growth is going to come from 20 cities and Milan isn't one of them but London is and the notion around trading if you're at a big investment bank or a big bank trading is a fantastic way to learn the markets uh my ex-girlfriend went to Goldman Sachs and FX trading or FX sales i think she was in it's no longer even there it's all computers now but guess what she got amazing skills and she had the Goldman Sachs brand on her forehead and learned talent to people and understood the markets and could leverage those skills for the rest of her life so the opportunity to move to London and typically when a bank moves you to London they do they do it the best way and that is they pay for everything and they oftentimes have people or who will help you find an apartment sometimes they'll even give you an expat package the opportunity to be in London you speak fantastic English uh oh my god my brother my brother i'm going to see you at an arsenal game because unless there's something i'm missing you should absolutely get to London and i can almost guarantee you that even if you at some point move back to Milan even if it doesn't go well you're not going to regret having moved there to be young to have the opportunity to move to another country especially a super city being sponsored by an investment bank oh my god stop with the existential hand ringing my brother my brother this is London calling this is London calling this is a fantastic opportunity congratulations do you realize that 99.9% of young men in Italy and Milan want to be you right now let me get this you're going to move to one of the second best city in the world i still think New York's the best city in the world but a close second London come on pub culture incredible incredible clubs incredible restaurants the one of the greatest concentrations of wealth and the history of mankind right because of private property laws put in place by Tony Blair you are in a fantastic seat and to not take advantage of that opportunity to head to London i just think you would regret that the rest of your life everybody wants to be you everybody wants to be you take time to pause and register your blessings my guess is there some people who are rationally passionate about your well-being that you owe a lot to that you grew up in a great culture that you probably have a great education a lot of it is you but most of it is not your fault and that is other people and state-sponsored education or the incredible democracy that it's in Italy or whoever for God's sakes encourage you to learn English so fluently you are just so blessed so take time to pause and recognize your own achievements and how blessed you are that you have the opportunity to move to London and make a life for yourself there well done my brother well done thanks for the question that's all for this episode if you'd like to submit a question please email a voice recording to office hours prop to media.com again that's office hours of prop to media.com this episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director thank you for listening to the prop to pod from the vox media podcast network we will catch you on Saturday for no mercenomalus as read by George Han and on Monday with our weekly market show support for this show came from American Express business you've seen your business go from just an idea to a success now it's time to find a partner to help you grow it even more American Express is here to help American Express business cards are built for your business with features and benefits like the ability to earn membership rewards points on select cards the power to pay for big business purchases and 24 seven support from a business specialist built for your business amics business terms apply learn more at american express.com slash business cards