What drives a man from a tiny Appalachian town to boldly reinvent himself during a global crisis? In this episode, Mitesh Patel reveals how his journey—from cold calling as a financial analyst to launching Blue Sky Law amid chaos—redefined success. Curious how loss, grit, and humor can transform a career? Tune in as we unpack the raw, unfiltered lessons that challenge you to ask: if you want it, will you go freaking get it?

Surround yourself with superstars. these people are phenomenal. I mean, every time I get together with them, I am in awe of them.

I think having a peer to peer group is invaluable.

I've had one in some form or another for 15 years and I would never own a business without having some type of peer to peer, whether formal.

We were doing virtual happy hours and most of our discussion, my recollection of it was telling each other that's going to be all

Jonathan Hawkins: What was going through your mind?

I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't just like, well, I guess I got to do it again. Or is it, I've been here before I can do it. Or were you nervous? I mean, tell me what, what was it like?

Let's dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Hawkins. I'm honored to have today's guest, one of my good friends here in Atlanta, Mitesh Patel. He's the founder of Blue Sky Law, which is a business and real estate law firm here in Atlanta. Mitesh, welcome to the show. Glad to have you. Why don't you introduce yourself?

Tell us a little bit more about your firm, what you do, how would you characterize your firm, how many lawyers, all that good stuff.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you had a pretty interesting and varied legal career, which we're going to get to. But as I was getting ready for this podcast, I learned some new things that I didn't know about you. So you got a really interesting pre law career background. And I had no idea. I've known you for a long time now. I had no idea.

So we're going to talk about some of that first. So I guess first thing is, you know, you're here in Atlanta, but where are you from? Where'd you grow up? Ha

It's technically in Virginia, but that actual county, that town, Where it's taking place, it's a real place. It's like five minutes from where I grew up. So, it didn't shock me really as much as I think it has. A lot of furniture. Anyway, that's, that was home. I mean, it was a tiny little town. We really had television.

We just did outside redneck stuff, know, back, it was a great place to grow up. It really was. I could not wait to get out. It just felt very confining to me. Now, I'd go back and work.

Jonathan Hawkins: I gonna move your law firm there. That's next place.

Mitesh Patel: Don't know if they have internet in town, but we'll see. I would if I could.

Mitesh Patel: No, I did, my undergrad was at the University of Tennessee, and it was in finance, and I worked in for a few years. A a number of other things. I guess we'll get into that, but law school was University of Florida down in Gainesville. I spent only just that time in Florida there for school. Florida is great. People are looking great.

It's just too hot for me. And frankly, I wanted a big city, kind of that backlash, probably from that tiny town where I grew up. I wanted to get that big city feel for a while. So I came straight here to Atlanta and I had a couple of really nice offers. I was very lucky in that sense. And so I was able to get the ground running once I got here. Grab running

Jonathan Hawkins: cool Okay, so you went to Tennessee. You got a finance degree. So that's part of your background So before law school you were a financial analyst, is that correct? And so what does that mean? And what did you do?

My job was to keep up with. Scrap loss, job costing, product costing, all these things that are really important to massive manufacturing companies is there every fraction of a penny that they can save times billions of products that they produce is a lot of money for them. So that's Casa. It's horrendously boring and so I didn't last very long.

Jonathan Hawkins: before you go move on to that I want to sit on the executive recruiter thing for a while. So How and why did you go there? what led you to that? And was there a specific industry niche that you took care of or how did it work? I mean,

Mitesh Patel: I did. Yeah. So, you know, I went there really out of not not really being sure what I wanted to do. I wanted to have more control over my career and over earning power. So I love that. I love the fact that my efforts, if I was able to play somebody, bring in a job, etcetera. that I would get a big piece of that.

And I was primarily placing CFOs and controllers in manufacturing. So it was very niche, uh, it was a very niche area.

Jonathan Hawkins: so as part of that job. Was there a lot of cold calls? I mean, is that when you say sales, is that what you mean what you're doing? Cold calling?

Mitesh Patel: This is cold calling. You know, I'm going to date myself. This is cold calling when the internet is just coming out, right? Which means that very few companies at that time had websites. I'm talking like 10%. And the ones that did were like massive publicly traded companies. I remember specifically in undergrad, I did some little project on the Callaway Golf Company and Nike.

People were friendly, but they were just like, sorry, son, but

Jonathan Hawkins: Bless your heart.

Mitesh Patel: bless your heart. You're doing this right.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So were you, were you calling on companies or are you trying to track down like the executives to place at companies or both?

And I think it's probably more prevalent now to see that kind of investment. I mean, we're right now in the heyday of employees and employee empowerment, you know, but, at that time it was, it was tough. It was to companies to try to find out if they were hiring. Occasionally you'd see an ad place. You'd be like, let me try to call in there and see if I can get that business.

Jonathan Hawkins: we'll get to it later, but you know, I've always sort of thought of you as a good business developer in the law. And maybe, maybe this is why or part of why, you know, the resilience, the, you know, like you said, the consistency, 50 calls a day to hang up, you got to keep going, and you got to figure out how to talk, right.

Talk around the gatekeepers and talk to people. All right.

Mitesh Patel: very sweet job

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So you, you didn't last there too long. It sounds like, but the other couple of things that I noticed, in your bio, so, you were a firefighter and a rescue technician. Tell me about that. Was that before or after college and executive recruiter stuff?

And what did you do?

We had lots of training, but I started there at the age of 16, our local, I was in the Boy Scouts, our local scout leader, something came up, he couldn't do it anymore, and nobody picked it up, I mean, it's that small of a town, right, and so our scouting program just died, and I was like, okay, I, you know, I liked being out of the house and staying active, and I was like, that's pretty cool.

And so, and rescue was for the most part, cutting cars off bodies, cutting cars off people. I know it doesn't sound great, but that's the vast majority of what we will do in between that stuff with the water rescues. East Tennessee is filled with caves, cave and vertical rescue, heavy trench rescues.

So that team went up to New York during 9 11 to remove all this heavy concretes, that kind of stuff of work, right?

And, you know, it was pretty easy to work with a, with a college schedule. But then when I started working in my professional job, I had to figure out a way to make it work. So I actually moved into the station, and so I would work the night shift. Which is fine in the winter time. People don't get out and do dumb stuff.

I could have a nice night of sleep every now and then, two or three nights a week, I'd probably get woken up. My day job was the financial analyst job and the recruiting job. So I'd get up, you know, sign off of the truck and get ready to go to work and come back and do that. Summertime's were busy. People get out, drink a lot and do dumb stuff.

it's, I mean, from like May until October, night times were busy. I'd get woken up three, four, five times a night. I look back now and I'm like, I don't know how I did it because I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of being tired now. Uh, so back then I've, I've been just nonstop. I didn't need that much sleep, but so much.

Jonathan Hawkins: really cool. So did you ever, I mean, were you like rappelling out of helicopters and some of these mountain rescues and stuff? I mean, was that you?

Mitesh Patel: that's enough.

Jonathan Hawkins: was the other team.

Mitesh Patel: It was the other team, you know, those were our teams. We, they're usually not out of helicopters, although we did have a contract with them. UT Life Star for our dive rescue team. So like we had to fly to another, we had to go for dive rescue for another community, go there to their place, put our tanks in.

We had special holders for the helicopter and then off we go. So, I was on our dive and swift water rescue team. That's, I enjoyed doing that a little bit. So, but yeah, we would do a lot of lift rescue again, people slipping, falling down into caves. So yeah. strap up and off you go.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. That's cool, man. I never knew that. That is, that's really cool.

But, uh, again, training,

Jonathan Hawkins: you're getting old, man. You're going to pull it back. Now you're going to go in

Mitesh Patel: that's yeah, yeah, right.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, that's cool. Okay. So, all right, so we'll go back. So financial analyst and executive recruiter now what took you to law school? How did you finally end up there?

Mitesh Patel: I mean, I'm not gonna give you the answer that I probably gave on my application or to the school because it was totally bogus. I mean, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew that I. Wanted to go back and I felt like I really needed to go back to graduate school Wanted to get a master's or doctorate.

I would say a little bit of that was being at that big corporation of when we would have to make critical decisions, it would always go to legal first, right? After we do it and okay, let's send it to legal. I'd be like, it's numbers. what are they going to send it to legal? And so I was like, I want to be that guy making some of those decisions, you know, telling the other folks what's good.

So that was a part of it.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you graduate law school and then I guess that's when you moved to Atlanta you went you went sort of the big law route right,

Mitesh Patel: Yep. You got it. I did. You know, the, on campus recruiting, they would come and dog and pony show the rockstar Summers. I, I hope they, they still do those, but, yeah, I don't Did you do one of those? Did you get a rockstar Summer or

Mitesh Patel: Yeah, well, you know, you look back, they keep you drunk, so you don't know any better. And when it's time to sign on the dotted line, you say yes, because you had a phenomenal time. But, you know, it's a great experience. It truly is. I think almost any big law, if you've got a good team, good people around, the real advantage is that that advantage and disadvantage, right?

So, but it also just absolutely, you know, I had a head full of hair when it started and it didn't take long. Kids and big lawn. Gone.

Yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: We've heard some people say, depending on where you are, you know, when you actually get your effective hourly rate of what you're getting paid, you know, you got a big check, but when you factor in how much you're working to get it, this is, it's not as good as it looks.

Mitesh Patel: Yeah. Divide. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a 40 hour a week job by any stretch. Yeah. You're working two jobs. So if you look at that and the number of hours, it's not so awesome. At that point

Jonathan Hawkins: And so you, were you doing real estate stuff then or,

Mitesh Patel: I was doing secur. Just, just securities. Yeah. rework, s elevens, uh. It's some non read word, but it was all regulation. D 506 PPMs and the like. If you've seen all that, I mean, that's I sat at a desk and crank those things out. Yeah, I don't know if you, you know, for folks that I don't, you don't get many of these anymore.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Mitesh Patel: And I was like, the poor staff didn't do that, but I was like, oh, this is what hell is like so it

Jonathan Hawkins: so, uh.

Mitesh Patel: It might be I

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah,

Mitesh Patel: So for the Associates sake

Jonathan Hawkins: so you you know, you burned it out there at the big law firm And then eventually you left and you went to uh, called a smaller Smaller law firm tell me about that.

It was just the times. I mean, at the firm that I was in, they were bringing in folks at mass into the conference rooms and just like, okay. All 30 you need to go. So there was a lot of nervousness around.

What the heck might as well go now, right? I mean, building, I knew that building relationships. takes time. And, you know, if you want to have your own practice, you have to have your own clients and relationship based. I was like, what the heck? Might as well start now. Start building that book rather than waiting.

You know, I had offers. I did interview a little bit. I had a couple of offers from other big law firms, but I was like, ask and put me to put me in the same spot.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you interviewed, so you knew you were gonna start your firm.

Once I was like, I'm going to do this, everything else was significantly easier. Then that decision, because the rest was blocking and tackling, you know, has people figure out what you got to do. And as attorneys, we're, we're really good. So, you know, so the rest was just water on the bridge, super easy. But yeah, I went to that smaller firm.

This is the original sign for my office. I just hung on to it all these years. But, yeah, I had fun. It was hard.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's a good looking sign

Mitesh Patel: Yeah, I appreciate it.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you end up starting your firm and then I guess the guy joined you were y'all partners, how did that work?

And that's where my current firm, Blue Sky Law, came from.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, so we'll talk about Blue Scout real quick. So when you and your partner Went your separate ways. did you jointly own that real estate as well as the firm?

Mitesh Patel: we did. Yeah, both. And, I will tell you that, we both had the advantage of doing a lot of partnership disputes for clients. a bunch of them. And we still do a lot of them. I think we have about a dozen actively. And we had learned what to do and what not to do and where those things end up.

They almost always end at the exact same place with the same types of activities, that lead to that. And so it was like, okay, let's just fast forward this. Let's promise each other that we'll be civil. And we were, we ended up talking through intermediaries toward the end. We haven't communicated in years, but you know, it's, it's all okay.

So it was like, okay, who's You know, we didn't want to cause confusion with those clients who wanted to keep it clean. So there was some discussion of, hey, you, you pursue that of these particular ones. I'll talk with these and then we'll kind of see how they shake out. But we really had a fast track process for that.

start to finish with two months. In all honesty, it should have taken about nine to 12 months, just even though we had a plan, but we really crammed a lot of stuff in very, it wasn't necessarily by my choice, but whatever. It's, you know, hindsight works out.

Mitesh Patel: Still standing. Still practicing. Yeah. Yeah. I think it all worked out. You know, it sadly we learned the most truly like we learned deeply from the worst things. I mean, for those that can come out on the other side and look back and I was fortunate in that way. And so I learned a lot. I wish I didn't have to learn it that way.

But, but I did and I'm better off for it. I wouldn't repeat it. And, but it's honestly made me a much better, practitioner, better father, better husband, just all around. I think it was better, much more patient.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you guys went your separate ways and you said, all right, I'll take the building and I'm going to rebuild this thing. And was it just you or did, did it, did you have attorneys that came with you?

Jonathan Hawkins: And so you decided to go with the name Blue Sky Law, which, you know, everybody that listens know I love a good trade name. And so tell me about that. You know, why trade name? Why Blue Sky Law?

And we also wanted something that other attorneys would recognize that, hey, this is a business oriented firm. So that's kind of where we settled on Blue Sky Law. And the interesting thing is, is the domain was already owned by another law firm. And so, as was the trade market. So we had to reach out and do some finagling, negotiating, purchasing of You know, uh, the existing trademark domain, et cetera, but that's what we wanted.

It worked out. Well, I'm so glad that that I did it

Jonathan Hawkins: That's pretty cool. I did not know you had to go, buy that. That's, pretty cool. The other thing, you said you started as a securities lawyer. So I always wondered, did it have something to do with, you know, the blue sky laws?

In In fact, we did, but it still worked out checking so many boxes that it wasn't a deterrent for take me back.

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, you had already started a firm. So you'd been there before. So you, you sort of knew what, you know, probably learned a lot of lessons there, but you're coming off. You said, you know, you're, you're breaking up with your partner. Your dog died. I mean, it just, everything's going bad 18 years.

That's, an old dog, by the way.

Mitesh Patel: Here's an old dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coronavirus was full swing, right? Everybody, this one, we

Jonathan Hawkins: We were all going to die. Right.

Mitesh Patel: down in a road circus, right? We're wiping off cereal boxes, like, come on,

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, there was that time we were all going to die. That's the way, you know.

That's what everybody thought. So you start a firm in that sort of mental state, you know, even though you had done it before, I mean, what was going, you know, take us back.

What was going, what was going through your mind?

Mitesh Patel: Yeah, yeah, it was, it was definitely not a good feeling. Yeah, you know, when I was opening up the firm way back when, you know, this one, it was positive, things were going well, etc. This was the opening of a new firm because a hand was forced, right? With the partnership dispute, the breakup of the prior firm.

I knew I wasn't going to go back to work for anyone else. I can never do that ever again. and the money and lifestyles was too good. But so I was like, okay, this is going to move forward. I'm going to continue to service my client. I had hundreds of clients at that point. And so it wasn't a question of if I was going to do it, I was going to do it.

but with all of the, you know, the world is shut down with the virus. We didn't have any money coming into the firm. Every project stopped. We made a decision with our firm at that time that we were going to counsel our clients and not charge them for it. We were like, look, this is the end of the world.

Do we have to keep paying them? Do we have to pay to keep the lights on? What do we do? What if, you know, the ones that have real disputes and other issues going on, it just compounded their level of pain. So it was tough. It was emotionally very tough to deal with all of their issues. And then once the phone stopped, which would be almost midnight every night, it was like that for months of that counseling these clients and a lot of it was just psychological counseling like It's gonna be okay, right?

Like, hey, let's hug each other virtually through the phone. It ended up being okay, right? But it was very, very tough. I was most concerned about how do I keep my people paid and done well in savings and continue to keep them paid at the level that they had been getting paid for months without any income coming in.

So it was just kind of survival there for a while. You know, once we got the name down, it was like, we'll deal with who we and what we are as a firm a little bit later, right? Let's keep things moving as much as we can. And sure enough, the world opened back up. Georgia was a good place.

If you will, we didn't buy into really anything. It's a topic for another day, but I think our shutdown here was a lot different than it was in other places in the world. I feel very fortunate. It

Mitesh Patel: We were doing virtual happy hours and most of our discussion, my recollection of it was telling each other that's going to be all

Jonathan Hawkins: right, right? We didn't, I think we spoke some details about employees and overhead and this and that.

I remember the overall theme being, you know, resilience, patience, right? Love and let's, you know, let's, let's help each other, support each other. It was a, it was a nice time in that sense. I think if people come in again. Yeah, I thought it really,

Mitesh Patel: I do.

Jonathan Hawkins: and they, you know, Martin had this huge, real estate transactional practice.

I represented, you know, developers and owners and that kind of stuff. Huge. And then the great recession hit and like overnight deals just came to a halt

Mitesh Patel: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: in his practice sort of became, you know, representing the same kind of folks, but against the banks and against the lenders and his, his book of business, like doubled, I mean, it's like. it was amazing to watch. and so I remember having to do a lot of that work. I hated it. It was just, it was like you're fighting with both your hands tied behind your back and maybe missing a leg too. And you're just like taking the blows from the bank attorneys. I think that firm you went to was on the other side of a lot of that stuff.

Mitesh Patel: we were doing a lot of that firm is doing a whole lot of that stuff.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, you represented the banks. you're blooding me up.

Jonathan Hawkins: So COVID was tough. You had to start the new firm. So take, what's it like now, man? Tell us where you are. And, you know, I think you've had more growth. I know people have come and probably some have gone, but where are you now?

Mitesh Patel: It's been great. You know, right after all that mess, wasn't too many months after partnership divorce was finalized that I picked up two of my largest clients today. I mean, just massive clients, throwing on lots of work and lots of cash. And so that was something that was a nice rebound, if you will, you know, from all the emotional mess.

But I had a chance now at an almost blank slate, if you will, to rebuild the firm from the ground up. And that's exactly what I did. I did things that I did not do the first time because I just didn't know any better. I was so pompous and young and all that other stuff. I was very focused on just making, money. And what I learned is there's so much more than making if you wanna have a successful business.

So I feel like I did it. the right way this time. A lot of that was was implementation of the E. O. S. entrepreneurial operating system. For those that have read the book, traction was one of the biggest catalysts in changing the way that we were building the firm. And now it's solid and multiple in a that we never were before.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I know a lot of firms who are on the U. S. system and they just swear by it and they say it's just night and day. After they've done it for two, three years, it's like, it's just, it's good. I'm not there yet. I'm headed there at some point. so you mentioned secondary year, you said you got to your biggest clients.

And again, you know, I've always considered you a rainmaker, in the. You know, greatest sense of the word. you're good at getting business, man. So what's your approach? I mean, how do you go get your two biggest clients? you know, teach me

Jonathan Hawkins: and your client, you know, your business clients, more sophisticated. Probably a longer sales cycle. It's not like consumer practice, you know, divorce or personal injury or criminal.

Mitesh Patel: Yeah,

You have to really good work, be engaged, et cetera. It's not just that relationship, right? You have to do do the work, really good. so it all, it all worked out. But, Yeah, I love, I love business.

development. And it is truly such a challenge. It's always, and it is truly. I'm an introvert by nature, but I continue to love the challenge because if, I succeed, I get some immediate results, right? Smiles and money and compliments. Two, three things I really love. So it is very self serving, you know? So,

Mitesh Patel: yep, yep.

Jonathan Hawkins: So there's probably some folks that know what that is and probably some that don't but why don't you sort of explain what it is And how long you've been involved?

With it. And then I may dive in a little bit. I don't know if you're sworn to secrecy or not, but, once you're initiated, you

Mitesh Patel: I can't show you the handshake, but there are certain handshakes. Yeah, yeah, EEO is a worldwide organization that's comprised of business owners, and it's business owners that have met certain financial level criteria in their business.

Most of the folks are invited in or will know somebody there, and then you go through some classes and training before you actually get in.

Both personal development, professional development, I could talk for the next several hours about it and truly the advantage of it is, and I would say, if it's not EO, you can replicate this. Surround yourself with superstars. these people are phenomenal. I mean, every time I get together with them, I am in awe of them.

What they accomplish and how they go about it. And some of these businesses are smaller than mine. Some are much larger. But the interesting thing is you have folks that because of the training, et cetera, you come in high level of confidentiality, which allows these business owners to really express themselves.

I've had one in some form or another for 15 years and I would never own a business without having some type of peer to peer, uh, whether formal or I think it's absolutely,

Jonathan Hawkins: lot of lawyers, they talk about these mastermind groups. I'm in some, you know, where you're with other lawyers. This is sort of like that, I think, but you're with a lot of non lawyers, and it's, a little bit, Bigger, I think, you tell me, but bigger than a traditional lawyer mastermind group where you're really just talking about your business.

Maybe you talk about a couple of personal things, but, you know, other people that I know that are involved at EO, they talk about, you know, it's, I think you guys have some sort of, saying about, you know, the personal above the, I can't even remember what it is, like,

Mitesh Patel: we call it 5%.

Jonathan Hawkins: 5%, that's

what it is. Yeah. 5%.

yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: and so, you know, you, you make really good friends. And, and my understanding is, is, you know, most of the, the little groups of cohorts, I mean, stay together for years, years and years and years. Right. I mean, once they sort of form one of these groups, don't you guys. I mean, you're traveling together, you're doing

all sorts of things, right?

Mitesh Patel: I travel across the world with my first, what do we call them, forums, small group. I just went to Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, Cape Town, South Africa, you know, Costa Rica. Now, there's some small groups that don't travel like that, but we did, and it's phenomenal. Even though I'm in a different group now, which we all decided to, you know, disband, change it up, but, it's just amazing.

You know? So, the great thing about being with other CEOs really is they are so much more in tune with things that our legal industry is not yet. Technology is a big one. I learned so much from them about things they're using that easily applicable to our industry. It's just that. Attorneys aren't using it, necessarily, and resources and, and honestly, ways of looking at things, that.

We tend to find that, yeah, you know, you practice law long enough, folks think a lot alike, and it's because of the nature of practice. So it's really nice having outsiders ask me very critical questions like, Why do you do that that way? Well, I don't know. I was taught that way. And things that you wouldn't always necessarily, you know, think of.

Jonathan Hawkins: I like say, uh, why do you call it business development? We call it sales.

Mitesh Patel: You're right. Yeah,

that's so true. It's so funny. Yeah. I mean, to hear them ask questions. I mean, you really find out how quirky law is and how old school it is. It is so old school. I mean, but things are changing, you know, we're fine.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, well, I remember seeing, you know, our, our friend, Jimmy Trimble, he did a post something about EO and I'm looking at the people in the, in the picture. I'm like, I recognize that head that's, that's, that's the dash.

Mitesh Patel: some starburst pattern, uh,

Mitesh Patel: cool too. Again, I think I've gotten a chance to rub shoulders with some really cool folks here in the Metro Atlanta area and through here, you know, Arthur Blank, founder and, you know, chairman of Home Depot. I don't think he's any longer the chairman, but, Sarah Blakely. founder of Spanx, her husband, Jesse Hitzler.

I mean, just really interesting. Vern Harnish, he wrote the book Scaling Up. He's actually an EO founder. He's very well known. it's amazing just the types of folks.

Jonathan Hawkins: that's cool, man. So, let's, go back to the law firm. So, you know, you start the new thing, you're a good business developer, you do some works, but tell me about sort of your typical Weak. What's it like now? How much is out there getting the business and managing relationships versus actually really cranking out the work?

I truly am a believer that most, we can all be good at multiple things, but I think that we can really only be great at one or two things. And if you are trying to bring in the client, do the work,

get it out the door, follow up the administrative side. Chances are you're not really good at multiple areas there, right?

I mean, it's like they want them to do it all it. I think it's a unicorn of a person. That would be good at all those things to begin with. but even if they were good at all of them, it's not, I don't think a good use of their, mental bandwidth to try to do it all. It's, you know, I think law firms will be better served.

Find the people that are good at. Cranking out the work, find the people that are good at training the people, find the people that are good about managing relationships and find the people that can go hunt the whales. Right. and you shouldn't expect everybody to do everything. And it's, that's just crazy to me that That's still, you know, many, many, many firms, that's the way it is and it's the way they structure their compensation, all of it. It's just, it's just crazy to me.

You know, there are certain things that Frankly, we have no business to do. there are other things where, where we should. And yeah, I, I don't get it. I mean, if you've got somebody in your firm that can really bring in clients and produce, get them from, get them away from the desk, get them outside, you know, get them to go bring in more business so that you can have two people behind desks instead of one, you know, and it's amazing.

It'll pay for it if you get more business, but I don't get it. That's, you know, so old school is

I know that's a common thing. But, you know, How is it for you to move from doing the service work to sort of the role you have now?

Mitesh Patel: you know, I, it's kinda multifaceted, I think versus is some self-actualization that you could still be a phenomenal attorney. and I'm, I'm a really good attorney and it's just, I've had great training. I've had good partners that I've worked for. I've made good mistakes, , you know, so, uh, but.

But I, I'm, I feel like I'm a really good attorney and part of being a really good attorney is not just the work. The work is only a tiny fraction of being a really good attorney. And so, you know, it was probably, for me, once I left to start my own practice, the big shift was when I got the guts enough to hire a full time WTUDE employee.

Absolutely. It took me about 45 days. Before I started kicking myself going, God, why did I not do this five years earlier? It literally, I thought about it for about four and a half to five years before I pulled that trigger to hire that first W2, you know, attorney. Now we have seven. and it was a game changer.

I think the two, there've been several big game changing moments, but one was hiring an office manager, somebody to do. Everything that's non-billable. thankfully I did that, or I think that's a big part of why I had success right now,

out of, actually I'm pretty And then the second was, leverage. I mean, if you don't leverage your firm, it's pretty, pretty easy to do the math on what your life is gonna look like and how much income for the rest of your life.

And that, I didn't want. I love having, take about the equivalent of, I probably should say, a lot, lots of time off, lots of flexibility. I love it. I would,

Jonathan Hawkins: so another thing that we haven't touched on is, you know, you're continuing to Try to grow your firm and that you know part of that is bringing in clients. The other part is getting attorneys So how much of your time is spent recruiting and you know, tell me about you don't give me your secrets But you know generally what's your approach recruiting?

How do you find people? How do you sell the firm? How do you tell them? Hey, there's a good place to come

It's why we've got a handful of partners and a whole bunch of associates, but they're the hardest to bring in. And, So to do that, you have to have a relationship with them. Occasionally you'll get lucky and find somebody who's ready to move right then, et cetera. But what I want is. I want them to think of me when, in our firm, when they're thinking about it.

And that, again, is, it's business development, kind of, but it's just in a different way, right? It's with attorneys and letting them know who you are, and you've got to stay in touch with folks. that's the one thing I've had a few of those I've been working on, and then they end up going somewhere else, right?

Great. They came from amazing, big firms, great schools. They've got, you know, amazing personalities. But It took a lot of work on the front end to really push us to find out what do we, what do we want, you know, and What's good for us? What does our current team look like? Does everybody on the team currently buy into this philosophy?

And there was a period, in the not too far past where even with the new firm, I had to make some adjustments based on philosophy. So, but I think if you invest the time looking for and finding good attorneys, especially if they're going to be service based attorneys, they're out there. You can find amazing partners, the business developers, much, much harder.

I was very skeptical. I was like, well, just some words. It's going to make a difference. And I was like, this is going to be some job description like the hundreds of others that I've read. Not the case, not the case. And, words matter, the process matters, the system matters, and it produces better results at the end.

I mean, everybody gets, at least all the attorneys get a say in a voice and you think you can work with this person, you know, it only gets tough and you know, you, you get something really tough if you want this person playing. So, yeah. But I think if, if you invest the time in it, pays good dividend

Jonathan Hawkins: I'm gonna have to get the name of your recruiter when we get off here.

Mitesh Patel: will do

Jonathan Hawkins: you'll share that secret with me. You know, I call it, the ABR philosophy. Always be recruiting. Always be recruiting. Cause the timing is always, it's never right when you need it or right when they're ready.

And so you just got to keep it going. And then hopefully the stars will align at the same time and then boom. and it's, you got to have lots of irons in the fire, all that stuff. So, I hear you and, and you're a recruiter. I mean, you used to be a recruiter, so you better be good at it. Right.

And if you, you know, if you're ever at a transition point. I hope you'll just, you know, call me so we can just talk. and I will say that I'll tell folks, I'm like, please do me a courtesy. Don't go anywhere unless we've spoken. and most do reach out. So they'll be like, I remember you saying, even if, you know, even if they don't come here, but, don't be shy.

I mean, business owners, most of us are not, but I think you have to be a a little bit more bold when it comes to. Recruiting and attracting people want to be desired, right? They want to be liked and think back and, you know, dating days. If you're lucky enough to have somebody courting you, it's like, man, it feels good.

So I try to tell folks, I'm like, man, you're awesome. I'd love to work with you.

I think it

You know, what, what advice would you give to folks out there who are further behind you in the journey to maybe speed up their timeline?

Mitesh Patel: Wow. Well, there's so many, so many little pieces of pieces of advice. I think for attorneys especially, getting, not getting too mired in, well, let me say this differently. We have the opportunity, a lot of us, of making good money. And then what I find, and I see this in others, is that we get a little trapped and we don't follow what we want and our own philosophies.

And it's, it's easy for me to, you know, folks out there may, ah, it's easy for him to say he's sitting there, he owns a firm, he can do whatever he wants.

And things don't come about by sheer chance, you know, time is ticking by. If you want it, go freaking get it. Like. You know, and yeah, it's gonna be perhaps a little painful, but you'll get what you want, truly. And it's, I think, especially attorneys. We are smart. We're driven. Most of us, you know, we can solve problems.

So, solve your own problem. If you don't like where you're at, fix it. You know, approach it like a client problem. What would you tell your client who says, I hate my job, and I don't like what I do, and I'm working with all these assholes. Like, fix it, you know, especially where we are. This is America, right?

It is harder in other places, but here, no excuses. So, want something? Go get it one.

Jonathan Hawkins: hit it on that, but, before I let you go for everybody out there, if they want to find you, what's the best, way to get in touch.

I love talking with other attorneys and other law firm owners, business owners, and I mean, I'm probably going to learn a lot of stuff from you too. So yeah, don't hesitate, please reach out.

Jonathan Hawkins: Thanks again, Dash, man. That's been fun.

Mitesh Patel: Guys, that has been fun. I appreciate you having me. I've loved watching your success and appreciate all the actual technical work.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right. Well, yeah. Enjoy working with you, man. Thanks.

Mitesh Patel: likewise. All right, man. Take care.