What happens when you risk everything on a case, with no offer on the table and $50K already spent on experts? For Howard Ankin, it wasn’t just a turning point—it was the moment that changed everything. From a folding table and 40 referrals to a 100-person law firm competing with national giants, Howard’s journey proves success doesn’t come from luck—it comes from showing up when it counts. But how do you scale without losing your soul? And what does it really take to lead a firm that lasts?

You gotta be out there for a good long time for it to actually work. But for those lawyers out there that can't afford advertising. It sounds like you still get a lot of referrals. I mean, what sort of advice would you give to them to generate cases, referrals, cultivate the relationships, those sorts of things.

Howard Ankin: So I'll say two things. One, just being on the advertising lawyer. I've had people that come to me or they want advice, but like the mindset becomes, hey, I turn on the commercial and you know, my staff will take care of it and I'll go golfing. When you start advertising, if you're actually doing it right, you're actually gonna be working more, not less.

Let's dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where I get to interview law firm founders, successful law firm founders that have done all kinds of cool stuff, and today is no exception. Today I get to interview a, a very successful and apparently up in Chicago, very well known.

Howard Ankin: Well, thanks for having me. That's a very nice introduction, Jonathan. I'm a third generation lawyer, a little bit different third generation than most. It was my dad's father that was a lawyer, and then my mom married a lawyer. So I guess then the only thing that my mom knew was for her firstborn son that I was gonna be a lawyer to so I'm here in Chicago, Illinois.

And my office is located, if you put a bullseye right in the center of what we call our Chicago loop or Chicago downtown that's where my office is at 10 North Dearborn. And I practice personal injury law in all facets. Anything that's contingency fee related, I do workers' compensation, personal injury, medical malpractice products, liability trucking, slip and fall dog bites.

So, social Security Disability, mass Torts. So anything that's contingency fee related in the injury field, that's what we do here.

Howard Ankin: Well, you know, I grew up in the Chicago land area. I went to law school. I went to undergrad at the University of Illinois. I went to law school here in the Chicago Loop. So I hope I was a hometown guy to begin with. But then like most lawyers, as their career advances you wanna get your reputation out and in city over 10 million people.

I used to think as a younger lawyer, you know, I had all these jury verdicts and I was doing all this great stuff and I was working 15 hours a day and working late into the night, and I thought like the name was gonna get out there. But you find unless you have some type of way to be on a podcast or you know, do some type of marketing, it's very hard for that name recognition to get out there.

So yeah, so then I started marketing and advertising my practice.

Howard Ankin: Well, I didn't know what type of lawyer I was gonna be, but in my world with my pate, with my maternal grandfather being a lawyer and my father being a lawyer I really didn't know anything else. Like, from the beginning of time I just thought that I would be a lawyer 'cause that's what you're supposed to do.

So like in the community that I grew up in, there was a lot of, like, if you came from a certain background, there's a lot of people that own Dunking Donuts. There's other you know, backgrounds people if they you know, they owned I dunno, cleaners, that kind of stuff. Like in the world that I was in I was a lawyer that was like what my, that's what the people in my background did.

Howard Ankin: Yeah. You know, I came, I worked at a summer job like most people, so I worked trading in an options pit over the summer between my junior and senior year. And it was my job to run around and check the trades. And then, you know, sometimes like I'd have to come in on a Saturday morning and it was triple witching hour, had to like, make sure that all the trades cleared and whatever.

So I remember coming home and I said to my mom, I'm like, you know. I am thinking maybe this law school thing might not work for me. I'm gonna be a traitor. She said, you're going back to college, going to law school, and then you can decide what you wanna do with your life after that.

Jonathan Hawkins: There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So your firm now take me back to be before that. So, you know your granddad, your dad were lawyers. Did you go work with them immediately after law school or did you do something else?

Howard Ankin: So I have a much different path for like a generational law firm path. You know, my grandfather had a real estate practice and it really had nothing to do with anything that I'm doing today. It had nothing to do with my dad's practice. My dad was functionally a criminal defense lawyer. But he also had for like many lawyers of his generation, he was a general practice lawyer.

I on graduation, I worked for a law firm for a year. Then I worked for another law firm for about four years, and then I had to make a decision about five years in which way I was gonna go. So I probably jumped too early at that time, but it worked out for me and I started my own law practice independent of my dad or independent of anybody else.

And then later over time then my father and I merged together and we worked together. But really, he still kind of did the type of law that he did. And I did the law that I did, but it was under one roof of what we now call Ankin Law.

Howard Ankin: Yeah, I mean, I was hungry. I was. I still relish being a lawyer and I still have a strong passion for being a lawyer today. And I still have a strong passion for what I'm doing now and for goals that I wanna have today, but especially, you know, taking it back 35 years ago I was hungry to have my own law practice and be a successful lawyer, so I was trying a lot of cases as a young lawyer working at the firms that I was at, I was.

Working all kinds of hours. You know, I remember my dad having a conversation with me where I was calling him one night at like 10 o'clock at night from like the office, and he's like, you know, you're like trying to sprint a marathon. And, you know, maybe at the time I was but anyways, so I started my own law practice.

And at the beginning, even though, you know, injury work is what I did you know, my dad was a general practice lawyer and it put me through law school. So I started doing general practice work for, I'd probably say the first five years of my practice. So people had a phone, they had a lawyer and I was doing some criminal defense work.

I was, you know, doing real estate closings. I was doing bill by the hour you know, lawsuits whatever it took. But I was building up my practice and about the time that I was 30 years old. Then I, you know, hit my first big case and you know, from there then it kind of went off to the races from, at that point.

Howard Ankin: You know, looking back, I wish I would've had a little bit more faith and confidence in myself. And I'm still always worried about the success of my practice. You know, with the summer now, you know, we have a lot of summer clerks here. So we have about 110 people. They're in my office working at this point.

But in general, you know, I average about a hundred people with me helping people. So I probably should add a little bit more confidence in myself that it was gonna work out. But for a long time, you know, I was always worried about like when I was gonna get the next case or if I was ever gonna get the next case, or, you know, in the personal injury field, you, there's a lot of costs.

And it was one of these cases where there was no offer until you were showing up to the final pretrial, right before picking the jury. So the judge comes out and basically says to the defense, are you offering anything or you're not offering anything? And the defense is hemming and hawing. And the judge is like, I don't have time for this.

Let's go pick the jury. Okay? And he says, Mr. Hankin, you gotta a demand on the file. I'm like, your honor, not only do we have a demand but we got a demand. And we also got a you know, we got basically like. We call it like a penalties petition, where like if they, we got a verdict over the policy limits, we'd have an opportunity to get money beyond the policy limits.

And anyways, from there it was, it was a significant sum and like kind of in, I had that matter, and then I had another matter that kind of resolved itself in the similar timeframe. And those two cases was kind of like, it was, it was a definite shift in my life that made all the difference. So.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it's funny. You know, talking, hearing your story. I mean, I've had mine and talking to others it's like you, you're sort of clawing and scraping and scraping and all of a sudden, boom, this moment hits and then you're like, this is gonna work. And then you're like, we're going for it.

I mean, you don't go from one to a hundred overnight.

Howard Ankin: Yeah, you know, it wasn't pretty, I will tell you that, I started in an office and for the first, until this case that I'm talking about happened my desk was a car table, Chi was a car table and a car table chair that had my computer on it. That was how fancy it was. And when this case happened, I, you know, went out and bought a desk and got office furniture and all that kind of stuff.

But it didn't start it started with very me meager means. And really what happened is, like first employee all they did was answer the phone. Then I had somebody that answered the phone and then I had you know, it was like I used to work all week. And then I used to like anything that was like secretarial, you know, support staff stuff.

You know, it's funny today, but like we file complaints or the money that has to go into a legal case. You know, like I just signed checks all day long in my firm. Now and I don't know that the younger lawyers even appreciate this, but there was a period of time where I'd be like, okay, well I'm gonna put this case in.

This is the statute on this one, and this is what's happening with this case. I'm gonna put this case into suit next week. And then like, I'll put this case in the suit the following week. 'Cause you know, if I had to put up $500,000 per case, it was like I almost had a like wagon to it. I couldn't put like all six cases in the suit on the same day.

But for a long time it was like me and 10 legal assistants and I just, they just put all the paperwork together and told me where to be and I'd be bopping around from like one courtroom to the next and I'd be like, with my hair on fire. And you know, my main legal assistant at the time, I'd come in and I'd be like, did the phone ring?

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah the card table story, it reminds me, you know, read about Jeff Bezos and when he started, I think they couldn't afford desks, so they went to Home Depot and just bought doors and just stood 'em up. So they had their desks were literally doors from Home Depot go 'cause a little cheaper

Howard Ankin: I guess I was ahead of Jeff Bezos with the uh, card table chair, but he, you know. Obviously I didn't think it through that. Well, I should have done it a little differently.

Jonathan Hawkins: so, so, so you said at some point your dad joined you. So, you know, I'm always interested, you know, my dad was a lawyer. Like I said, I've never practiced with him. We're in two different cities. But what was that like having your dad come on? I mean, it's sort of like full circle. It sounds like you'd been running your firm for a while and you're like, alright, come join me.

And maybe what was that like and what's it like working with your dad?

My dad and I had like, what would be like the two associate offices and you know, he did his work on his end and I did my work on my end, and we started to be like, okay, I'm gonna refer you this case and you'll refer me this case. And it just got to be such back and forth between like, I'm referring you this and I'm referring you to that and keeping track of it.

And we eventually, we just are like, you know, we just like merged it together in terms of like one office. But my dad continued to always do the type of work that he did and I continued to do the type of work that we had. And he kinda like continued to like, you know, greatest thing about being a lawyer is a hundred thousand lawyers plus in the state of Illinois and everybody could be a lawyer, how they wanna practice law.

Jonathan Hawkins: So are there any Ankin's that are gonna be the fourth generation lawyer?

Howard Ankin: That is Jonathan, the million dollar question. Proud that my son just graduated from high school. My daughter just finished up her freshman year of high school. So I got started late. You know, there's about 10 years of my life. They're unaccounted for. My son. I celebrated my 40th birthday when my son had his six month birthday.

So it shows you what happens when you become a lawyer. So we'll see. I got about. I gotta keep doing what I'm doing for the next 10 years, whether I like it or not. We'll see if they wanna be lawyers, maybe they'll have a significant other one of them that they may wanna do something. So we'll see how it goes.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let's talk about, and I want to get into that too, but the growth of your firm. And you know, I sort of feel, I could be wrong here, but my sense is from my own experience and talking to lots of people, it's, you know, growth or real growth is really not accidental. I think you sort of have to make a decision.

You know, at some point you have to decide, am I gonna take the risk, hire the extra people, and really go, I mean, on some level, when it was just you probably got busy enough and you're like, I just need some help. So, but once you get to that level, you sort of, I think, have to make a decision. So was there a point in your career where you said, all right, I'm gonna grow this baby.

And I used to get a lot of referrals from other lawyers. Like I'd up walk up and down like the main street of the Chicago Loop by the courthouse. And you know, lawyers that didn't wanna try cases like they may settle 'em, but if they didn't settle, they needed somebody to go to court and try the case.

You know, I didn't set out to be a an advertising attorney, but I didn't wanna lose the infrastructure that I already had and I had to keep that volume up. So I started advertising. And with the advertising is, you gotta keep feeding the monster because, you know, once you have 10 people, you gotta feed 'em and you gotta feed 20 and you gotta feed a hundred.

I am no longer competing against the law firm across the street, or the lawyer that's got a firm in the suburbs. And I, it doesn't matter if they're here for one generation, they just started third generation law firm. The competition now is coming out of Florida and Texas and Nevada and New York. California.

The people that, the firms that we're competing with, that we're competing with now are national. And so, their war chest, their budgets their ability to hire the best lawyer, talent, so on and so forth that's what I'm competing against. So, you know, there's always room for another good lawyer. But as far as being a lawyer, you wanna work on the best cases that you could work on.

Okay. And there's a lot of like, you know, when it's on a contingency fee. You don't want there to be a lawyer that feels like he's gotta settle the case on Friday because he's gotta pay the rent. You know, he needs sustaining power. So, long story short is that issue about growth, if, especially now there's national firms that have thousands of lawyers.

So if I don't have a hundred, if I don't have a hundred people you, you're not gonna be you're not gonna bring. To bear what the client needs to be successful.

So what do you do now? Do you take an active role in any cases? Are you trying cases still or is that?

Howard Ankin: Still, yeah. Yes. I still have an active role with a lot of cases, some people might think that my active role is in the cases that are like the most financially lucrative but a lot of times it's actually the opposite. So a lot of the cases that I personally get involved with is I may advertise but I also still get referrals from other lawyers.

And I try to do that the best that I can. The other way is on the larger cases, but in all of our cases, even when new cases are coming in, the cost of us to get an expert to like go out and inspect the car when the airbag didn't open, or to check to make sure that like this product was defective or whatever we need to do, we're talking, you know, $10,000, like without blinking an eye.

Because if it's an expert's case, the case might rise and fall on who the experts are that we have. And for my lawyers they may be incentivized on the outcome of the case. But I don't have a Desi, I don't have a desensitizing way that if like the lawyer decided that he needed an expert, but then.

You know, this is, I invested a good portion of my life in my law practice. So I'm still also involved in interviewing and that type of stuff. I may not do the first interview but for the most part, many people that work here I'm involved at some point in that interview process and I wanna know who's working here.

And I also wanna be involved in, you know, what people are doing here, like our processes. To make sure that the service that we're providing is the same type of service that I feel I feel good about providing.

You know, most people have this view that it, the advertising firms the owners aren't really, in the cases very much, which sounds like it's very different for you. But you know, as you said, it's very competitive. Advertising is expensive. It is a long game. You gotta play. You don't just throw a couple commercials up and get cases.

You gotta be out there for a good long time for it to actually work. But for those lawyers out there that can't afford advertising. It sounds like you still get a lot of referrals. I mean, what sort of advice would you give to them to generate cases, referrals, cultivate the relationships, those sorts of things.

Why? Because that quality control from the first time that the telephone rings, you have to have strong quality control. You have to have infrastructure to be able to take in those telephone calls. And even if you're not accepting a case in the world of Google, you're gonna get multiple one star reviews, okay.

Online when you don't accept the case. So I'm the longest winded person I know, as you can tell from our podcast today. And the reason for that is, is because as soon as I don't explain something to somebody in triplicate, they're mad and I'm not eating okay? Because they're just gonna go online and hammer me.

Okay, so. But when you're dealing with the public, everything you do is highly scrutinized and you're gonna end your law career pretty quickly with a bunch of one star Google reviews. So anyways, advertising equals much more infrastructure and much more oversight to make sure that it's going the right way.

So it's like now they're meeting me in person. So, or if somebody says to somebody, Hey, I'm referring you to Howard Ankin. In this day and age, everybody wants to like do research. They wanna know who their lawyer is. So typically, like if somebody said, Hey, you need a dentist, do you need an accountant? Hey, where do I buy a pair of socks?

But everybody's gonna go online and be like, Hey, are these good socks? You know, they wanna do their own research. So, you gotta be out in the community and doing things. So I'm the president of my Law School's Alumni Association. I'm on the Board of Managers for the Illinois Trial Lawyers. I'm on the Board of Governors for the American Association for Justice.

My kids' school, so on and so forth that try to be, you know, active in my local community. And then my law firm in general, we try to pick our spots where we could be have like some the community could see us doing things and doing charity work and giving back. So we do this thing where we have something that's called Teacher of the Month and we basically students can write in about a favorite teacher and the great work that the teacher's doing.

And then we'll go to the school and we give a, the teacher gets an award and we give a thousand dollars to the teacher to buy school supplies or whatever they wanna give. And then that kind of gets put out there in the ether so that people know that my firm is trying to be part of the community and give back.

Jonathan Hawkins: So saying

Howard Ankin: that that's not a good, that's not saying that's not a good advertisement for other people. I'm just saying that's how we distinguish ourselves.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you're getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so, you know, it sounds to me like, you know, you grew up in a time where relationships matter and you got a lot of referrals. So I imagine, tell me if I'm wrong, but I imagine you, you have a you stay in touch with your past clients and maybe talk about a little bit some of the things you do.

Howard Ankin: You know, my dad was a sole practitioner in a day when, you know, maybe even more advertising was frowned upon, which is kind of like why it took me a long time to even get into the advertising game. You know, but. You know, my dad's prior clients, those were the lifeblood. Those are the people that put me through law school and put the food on the table at our house.

So, you know, I grew up watching you know, my dad answer every telephone call you, you know, like, you know, be concerned about like what was happening in his client's lives. Like my dad lived a lot of the, his client's cases, like where he was as concerned for like what the outcome of the case would be.

And I had, I remember looking at two things. One that would be more personable to me, and one was this phone call and I had to make a decision which one I was gonna make. And I'm like, well. This is the right one to make and this is what I'm gonna make. So I had a union store you know, he's never asked anything of me.

He is referred me, you know, a couple cases over the years, always been nice to me, what have you. And he called me and he is like, you know, I've known you a long time and I've never really asked you for anything. But like, you know, my son, he was in the military and you know, he has this divorce going on and you know, another state and.

And then ultimately I'm like, okay. This is what's happening here. There's the lawyer that you need at the price point that you're at or whatever, in this other community. And, you know, an hour later I was home for dinner late, but I got him exactly where he needed to go. And I don't know that he was gonna be able, it took me an hour to navigate it for him.

There'd be no way that he was gonna navigate that in an hour. I don't know that he would've been able to navigate that ever. So anyways, you know, I you know, like the world is round and you know, is this ever gonna come back to me? No. But like, almost like, you know, his dad asked me to give legal advice to his son and, you know, I owed it to him.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, that's a good point. You put good things out into the world, you may not, you know, just to be good. And it's just good energy, whatever you wanna call it. And eventually, hopefully some of that comes back your way. But if. You know, it may not be a direct line from this guy, but I guarantee you he, he's not gonna forget what you did for him.

He may not real realize how much you saved him or how much work you've been into it, but he is never gonna forget it, I suspect.

Howard Ankin: Your, like your podcast, Jonathan. You know, you put it out there. Everybody and everybody, you know. All come all, all goodwill comes back to you for like helping the world.

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah, you never know. You just never know. But so, so I wanna shift real quick. So. I want to maybe shift to the business aspect of your firm. So, you know it's way different operating a hundred person firm versus a one person firm. So how did you learn it along the way and, you know, do you have people that help you now?

Howard Ankin: So along the way, you know, you always meet people and you know, they give you good advice. You listen to podcasts and you get good advice or whatever. So I remember talking to a lawyer and I was complaining. I was like, ah. You know, it's hard to find like lawyers that wanna like, you know, work as hard as me and you know, like the competition to get like to good cases is very competitive.

And there's people that are doing, you know, like maybe some unsavory things that, you know, I wouldn't wanna do to get legal referrals. And it's going on and on and on. And this lawyer said to me, they're like, look, you have to realize that, you know, I appreciate you're trying to be as much of a lawyer as you can but laws become also like there's a business aspect of law and he is like, you're a businessman.

' 'cause that's, that's what you do. And he's like, don't complain about it. He's like, good businessmen. They figure out what the problem is and they figure out how to fix the problem. And then you need to move forward with that. And he is like, the day that you don't want to fix the problem anymore is probably the day that you know it's gonna be the beginning of the end for your law practice.

You know, the one thing in life that, you know, provides them a special skill and that special skill that, that, the special thing that God gave me was just I've just been lucky to have the people that are in my life. So my legal assistant, she's the best the managing partner in my office.

He's the greatest the first you know, my first lawyer that handled my all my law department cases. Nobody's better than him. You know, a lawyer that focuses on workers' compensation. My partner, you know, he started with me as a law clerk. We had no, no room. Even in my office, his desk and my desk were in the same office.

Like they show him up. You know, so you know, you know the lawyer's that good, but like the people around him are even better. You know, fortunately for me, that's my law practice. So, and I'm lucky that way, but it takes a long time to develop those relationships and nurture them back and forth.

And you know, I I think any strong law practice, it's not the building, it's not the furniture, it's not the cases, it's the staff that's for the law firm is what it's all about. And so, the ongoing success of our law firm is really based on, you know, are we able to continue to add the best staff that we can possibly bring on and you know, you know, continue to develop the already you know, strong core that we have.

Or maybe some advice to folks out there. Be careful of this, you know, learn from my mistake. And that could be both something you did that maybe you shouldn't have done, or maybe something you wish you had done way earlier than you eventually did it. Can you think of anything there?

Howard Ankin: I think the number one thing that I wish that I would do differently, I still guess I still wish that I would do it today, is, you know, I am you know, I'm always a little bit wary about like, will I find, you know, will I find future success? I was always worried about that at the beginning. And I'm still worried about that to today.

You know, so the other factor is for me, I advertise my practice and, you know, all law firms have developed to where they need a business model. But I still feel like it's not a law of business, it's a law of practice. And so I feel like there's a lot of other firms that financially may do better.

And I know that I'll eventually be upset that I, like I. That just became the norm of what, like law's about but I still have like an old school feeling about like what law's supposed to be about because I saw my dad or my grandfather and how they help people. So I still feel like in my mind that's like what needs to be done.

But if there's a different person managing what I've built here, they'd probably be doing things that are more law business than law practice. But for as long as you know, I'm in the driver's seat, I feel like people are gonna get much better care with me than they're gonna get with somebody else.

But now it's like the main corner of like Main Street, you know, 50 years later. So. My attitude was, is that I would purchase my own law building and house my law practice in it. And then, you know, like when I got to an age where, you know, hey, I woke up and instead of paying rent to a landlord, I paid rent to myself.

It would all work out. But I, the only thing that I didn't consider was, is they had this thing called COVID.

And downtowns in big cities were not places that people came back to work anymore. And now remote work and so on and so forth. Even remote courthouses are a thing that I never envisioned nor could I envision COVID.

And so I'm hopeful that, you know, I'll be around another 20 years and the market will come back and, you know, but in the current world you know, that was not one of my better, that was not one of my better law practice business moves.

Jonathan Hawkins: I think it's gonna come back. I just think that I. You know, I really think it's gonna come back is people need to be around people. And that's the important part. And with everybody virtual and not coming in I just, I don't know. I like being around people, so I think it's gonna come back, but, so you sort of touched on something that I do wanna ask you about.

You got all sorts of things going on as you look out. You know, anything that you think's coming our way.

Howard Ankin: Well, you know, maybe we always lived in an uncertain world, but it just seems like the world that we live in generally, not just in. We live in a very uncertain world, in uncertain times now, and you know, we're going through a lot of change. So the first thing about that big change is like, how's AI gonna change all of our lives?

It's gonna be very interesting. In the community that I grew up in, there was like where the big houses were, where the good looking, you know, the best looking people with the biggest houses, with the best, you know, the best families. In that community, there was a lot of those people where their parents were pharmacists.

Okay. And they had like the neighborhood pharmacy and you know, that's where everybody went to get their prescriptions and you bought your toothpaste or whatever there. And then over time those, that type of pharmacy really doesn't exist anymore. It's all CVS and Walgreens and all these done.

Can have ownership of law practices. I just really don't under I don't think people that are at like the ABA and, you know, other bar associations that you know, like this and they think it's good to provide services. I just really feel like, you know, overall there's a corporate policy for how we dispense like prescriptions now.

I, you know, I. Like, there's just not gonna be a lot of independence to that. And if like a lawyer just wants to provide from some free legal, or he wants to be long-winded about something, or he just wants to not build this hour you know, I don't know that the corporation is gonna be into that. And as a community I think it's gonna be a problem.

But anyways that we have a lot of uncertainty in the world, but that path where there's going to be a major consolidation of consumer firms. So in the corporate world, you know, there's been major consolidation over the last, you know, since I got outta law school. And I feel like in the consumer firms there's gonna be a lot of major consolidation.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So in light of that one possible backdrop or the future, you know, what's the vision for your firm as you look out over the next 10, 20 years? You know, what are you looking to do with your firm?

You know, post COVID, there was a lot of law firms that closed the doors and my firm only grew at that time. So I feel like as other firms who have not invested in their technology, not invested in their education, not invested in their people not invested in, you know, making sure that they're getting jury verdicts and you know, really helping people and having a strong base of clientele that know that you did right by them and, you know, really wanna give back to you by referring friends and family.

And you know, they just determine that it's like better to be with someone that has the infrastructure, has the technology, has the know-how, and you know, we can join forces together. So I could even do more for clients that come here and even get better results that we're even getting today.

It's kind of like where I see my vision going.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, that's great, Howard. I think that's a very, noble vision and, you know, I think one that will resonate with folks, especially as they sort of see some of these things that, that you're talking about. So, thanks for coming on, man. This has been really, really interesting. It's been, It's been fun to hear about your journey, your background and your lessons that you've learned along, along the way.

So if, for anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to find you?

But I really enjoyed your questions and enjoyed being with you here today.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, well thank you very much and again, thanks for coming on. It's been great.