Justin Spizman is an award-winning and bestselling author, ghostwriter, editor, and proposal writer. Since beginning his career as a writer while in law school, Justin has worked on numerous non-fiction books and successful book proposals. Justin prides himself in his ability to work with people from all different backgrounds, upbringings, and expertise. Through working closely with some of the most successful people in their respective industries, Justin has gained strong insight and understanding into the most efficient and effective means to create a fantastic and marketable story primed for exciting opportunities.

He has collaborated on books in the areas of self-help, business, leadership, sports, entertainment, law, and other non-fiction. Justin has developed distinctive and marketable book proposals reflective of his clients’ personalities. His communication skills, focus, flexibility, professionalism, writing ability, and desire to create a complete and high-quality product help to fuel the success of his clients. He collaborates with his clients not just to write books, but to strengthen brands, build legacies, and create enormous opportunity. Justin dedicates the time and attention necessary to create winning projects by creating a manuscript representative of an author’s most heartfelt and meaningful message. His experience in the marketing and promoting of numerous award-winning books of his own and those written by his clients greatly assists them in navigating the ins and outs of the industry.
 

Some of Justin’s clients include five-time Heavyweight Boxing Champion Evander Holyfield, NCAA Championship-winning basketball coach Jim Valvano and The V. Foundation for Cancer Research, climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice on the front lines of global youth-led movement Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, sports agent Molly Fletcher, former General Manager of the Denver Broncos Ted Sundquist, branding and marketing genius Joey Reiman, and numerous other entrepreneurs, self-help gurus, CEOs, coaches, entertainers, and thought leaders in their respective industries. Justin is always on the lookout for the next game changer with which he can collaborate.


During the course of his writing career, his various books have included amazing interviews from the likes of renowned actor Mark Ruffalo, respected actress Shailene Woodley, commentator and author Van Jones, educator, author, and businessman Stedman Graham, NCAA basketball world champion coach Tom Izzo, MLB future Hall of Fame coach Bobby Cox, activist Suzy Cameron, actor Adrien Grenier, environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, filmmaker and photographer Jeff Orlowski, and many more. Over the years, his ability to capture the true heart and soul of these interviews and weave them into the book manuscript has become a great strength of his writing.

He has published numerous major book projects within the past 15 years as a professional writer. The most recent includes the book We Rise: The Earth Guardians Guide to Building a Movement that Restores the Planet, co-written with Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and published by Rodale. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is a 16-year-old climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful new voice on the front lines of a global youth-led movement. We Rise includes powerful interviews with Mark Ruffalo, Van Jones, Shailene Woodley, Adrian Grenier, Suzy Cameron, and even an endorsement from Leonardo DiCaprio.

Justin also recently collaborated with ECOfashion and internationally recognized ECOlifestyle entrepreneur Marci Zaroff for a 2018 Atria/Enliven release, entitled ECOrenaissance: A Lifestyle Guide for Co-creating a Stylish, Sexy, and Sustainable World. With a forward by Aveda Founder Horst Rechelbacher, ECOrenaissance provides inspiring tips and tricks for how to live and shop in harmony with nature without sacrificing style or luxury, and how best to benefit from the current renaissance—a global rebirth of sustainable economics, progressive ethics, and green culture.

Justin’s road to these major book projects started 15 years ago as a first-year law student. His first book was The Insider’s Guide to Your First Year of Law School: A Student-to-Student Handbook from a Law School Survivor. George H. Ross, Executive Vice President and Senior Counsel for the Trump Organization, as well as Trump’s right hand man on the hit television show, The Apprentice, wrote the foreword for this book.

Justin then authored Don’t Give Up…Don’t Ever Give Up: One Coach, The Inspiration of Jimmy V–One Coach, 11 Minutes, and an Uncommon Look at the Game of Life. This true story about the legendary college basketball coach, Jim Valvano, is an inspirational and motivational self-help and sports book. Justin worked closely with Jim’s brother, Nick Valvano, and ESPN to secure the rights to include a DVD of Jim’s famous speech with the book, which eventually became a bestseller, with proceeds from the sale of the book going directly to The V. Foundation for Cancer Research. Shortly thereafter, the Georgia Writers’ Association awarded Justin the Georgia Author of the Year Award for his work on Don’t Give Up…Don’t Ever Give Up. This book reached bestseller status on numerous publications and annually sells thousands of copies with the support of ESPN and the ESPYs.

Next, Justin collaborated with Molly Fletcher, one of the most successful sports agents in the country, and coined by CNN as “the female Jerry Maguire.” Together, they wrote The Business of the Best: Inside the World of Go-Getters and Game Changers, published by Jossey-Bass and John Wiley & Sons. The Business of the Best includes some of the most successful athletes, coaches, and businessmen and women of our time, including Arthur Blank (co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons), Roger Staubach (former Super Bowl MVP and real estate mogul), Stedman Graham (businessman, speaker, author, and philanthropist), Alana Shepherd (founder of the world-renowned Shepherd Center), John Smoltz (former All-Star and Cy Young Award-winning Major League Baseball pitcher), and many more. Molly now books over 150 speaking engagements per year to Fortune 500 companies and has since gone on to publish numerous follow-up books with major houses.

Shortly thereafter, Justin worked with Ted Sundquist, former General Manager of the Denver Broncos, to author his award-winning book, Taking Your Team to the Top, published by McGraw-Hill. He also worked on another award winner, The Story of Purpose, published by John Wiley & Sons and written by marketing/branding genius Joey Reiman.

Justin currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife Jaime, their two beautiful daughters Dani and Bella, and their rambunctious dog, Guinness. When he is not writing, he enjoys following his beloved Texas Longhorns and Atlanta Falcons. But his wife would tell you that any football game distracts him. He also stays active and enjoys spending time in the gym. When time allows, he loves travelling the world and eating his way through different countries.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: of The next step in the writing career?

Justin Spizman: Yeah I, I realized there's no money in writing your own books because, you know, that $10,000 check was a lot of money at that time, but to the amount of work that went into it, it was crazy. I mean, you know, it was an insane amount of work and just very little money for the work. And so I realized quickly that the way that you write books or, or, and make money, right?

Because it was important to me at that time to find the, you know, the balance was. You're either John Grisham, you're writing a legal thriller and you're getting a million dollar advance every time, or you're writing books for other people. And what I realized is in the Jimmy V book is I don't like going on, you know, radio shows.

And I went on probably 50 plus radio shows across the country in like 30 days. I'd wake up radio show class. But what I realized is that the marketing is a grind. It is a grind. So I asked myself, how can I do what I love?

Let's dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. This is a podcast where I get to interview founding attorneys and hear about all the cool shit that they've done and are doing. And today's guest is doing some cool stuff.

He's a, I'll say he's a. Criminal defense lawyer by day and an award-winning author by night. So we're gonna dive into all that. Or maybe it's early morning, I don't know. You can tell me. But today's guest is Justin Spizman. He's an attorney here in Atlanta. So Justin, why don't you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your firm, how many people are there, what kind of stuff you guys do, and then we'll get started.

So that's kind of what we wake up and do every day. We have some subspecialties that are kind of one-offs, but similar to, you know, probably some crossover in the criminal world, I do a fair share of tribunal or disciplinary hearings. I do a fair share of protective orders, both prosecuting them and defending them.

Jonathan Hawkins: You dabble in in some personal injury too, right? Or no.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, dabbles da was the way to put it. I've, I, you know, about seven or eight years ago I was sending out a lot of PI cases and we still do send out a great deal of PI cases, but you know, we have good relationships with our clients and some of these car wrecks are kind of fast falls down the middle. So we began handling those mostly 'cause I really love trying cases and you know, not to suggest that my job is easier or harder, but I think it's easier to.

Ask for money than it is to ask for freedom. So it's there's something to that in my mind that it felt like my skillset crossed over well. So generally, the cases that were taken on the PI scale are, are ones that we are litigating. So, I enjoy a courtroom and that's where I'm probably my most comfortable.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did you always know you wanted to be a trial lawyer? Is that, you know, there's some people that go to law school knowing that's what they want to do, or is that something that just sort of happened later?

So decided to go to law school and once I got outta law school, I'm sure what I wanted to do. I was wonderfully lucky to get a job in the Fulton County Solicitor's Office as a prosecutor. Took that job and I started trying cases and that's kind of when I got hooked, just being in a courtroom, litigating, you know, just duking it out.

And when you're prosecutor and you get to try cases against all different levels of lawyers, so defense lawyers would walk into courtrooms and some were remarkably talented, others were young, inexperienced, like me. But I love the challenge. I love trying cases against the best lawyers in the state of Georgia.

Some people needed to go to jail, but I always felt somewhat conflicted. And I think I came to terms with the fact that I would be better off defending people and giving 'em a fair shot at things than I would prosecuting them. And it pays just a little bit better being on this side sometimes

Jonathan Hawkins: Just a little bit, probably.

Justin Spizman: just a little bit.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, yeah. So tell me about, so trying the cases. I mean, what does that look like when you're in a solicitor's office or prosecutor's office? I mean, is it one a week? Is it two a week? Is it like three a day? I mean,

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: what does that look like and are they jury trials mostly, or bench trials?

So you're, you know, week on, you know, few weeks off, week on, few weeks off. Obviously you get caught in these major felony trials with lots of witnesses that get take weeks, if not months. Right now there's one of those going on in New York with a famous rapper. And so you will find yourself at the felony level, just more marathons in the solicitor's office.

Misdemeanors, sprints, you know, one day trials. Two day trials, a lot of DUIs, a lot of batteries, a lot of thefts. So when you're in a solicitor's office, you are doing back to back. A lot of times it seems like you have a trial week and you're trying cases, one after the other. Whereas in a DA's office it's less number of trials, but longer trials

I'm thinking if you're doing a, you know, a couple week or more than that, or. I mean, you're picking a lot of juries, man. You're learning how to talk to a jury, right?

Justin Spizman: Yeah. I learned as I've developed as a trial lawyer, that I used to think that you would win a trial in a closing argument. Then I realized that you win trials when you cross examine witnesses, adversarial witnesses. And then I think at this point in my career, I realized that you win trials when you pick juries and that's I think what I've settled on is that if you want to be successful trial lawyer.

You have to intuitively figure out what six or 12 people are going to be. Your shepherds are going to protect your client or are going to be the beacons of truth or you know, or white. And so now, yeah, you get to be real good at it 'cause you keep doing it again and again. And I think when I look at jury selection now I look at it in such a different light.

But that repetition is remarkable because, you know, picking a jury in a misdemeanor case and picking a jury in a felony case are no different. You're in a felony case, you're managing more people 'cause the panels are bigger. You're choosing from larger groups of people. So you have to do more multitasking.

But the fundamental aspect of who's the right fit here doesn't change at all. So the little sprints are much more effective to really learn how to do it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. And I would think, you know, it's if you're doing a trial every five weeks or one a year the lessons you learn and, and to be able to quickly iterate and maybe say, all right, I'm gonna tweak that thing and then tweak this. It's harder to do. But if you're doing high volume of picking juries. Be like, okay, that didn't work yesterday. Try something else today. Right.

There's, I mean, it's graphic, but there isn't a body on the floor that we're dealing with here. We're dealing with, okay, so this guy who stole a bunch of stuff from Target will go steal some more stuff from Target. It'll be back, you know, the drunk driver will probably drink and drive again, especially when I was prosecuting.

There's no Uber, Lyft, you know, unfortunately domestic violence is often repetitious. You see people that is generational and so, you know, if you're lost you didn't have to look at someone and say, I know that you lost someone that you cared about. I'm sorry that we couldn't find justice for you.

So it was a lot, lot less stressful then, and what I'm doing now.

Justin Spizman: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: with one alternate for the jury. And they start polling the jury doing jury selection, and I think five of the potential jurors had DUIs.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: and so sitting there and I'm thinking, oh my God, I actually might end up on this jury. And sure enough, I did and did openings. They called the police officer and they said, all right, we're gonna take a break, set up the camera to do the, whatever the dash cam. We went into the jury room and then extended. extending, extending, and finally they called us out and said they reached a plea deal. So I guess they, they didn't like the way we looked. They, They said, all

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: let's get it done.

Justin Spizman: Someone, Someone didn't like their jury that day. I mean, you never know who it is, but someone walked up to the other side and said, I don't like my shot with this six. You got something to work it out.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, it was kind of an interesting progression. The first thing I did was, is I joined a boutique DUI defense firm. That is no longer in existence. And I kind of became their, you know, their horse. I mean, I was running, it was a, you know, a woman that owned the practice and she had me, I was a former prosecutor.

I had a head of steam. I wanted to try everything. I wanted to generate business. So I ran, I mean, I ran every courthouse I could run to. I loved it. It was more fun than I could imagine. And toward the end of our relationship. It felt like I was doing all the work and she was taking all the money. I was the associate.

So that's understandable. But this is probably a good early lesson to learn. We had agreed on a fee split when I brought in cases and I wasn't getting paid that. So I hung around thinking the best things would happen and everyone would do the right thing and they never did.

Can I have an office? And I said, look, I don't wanna, I don't wanna spend any money on it. I said, how about I give you, you know, 5% of whatever I, you know, I bring in? And obviously within two months, that was a horrible deal for me. And so eventually I had to say, look, let's, you know, formalize this, and I did it.

And so for about a year, I just ran my own firm and had no clue what I was doing, but people would call me and. The criminal defense community is a really wonderful community. It's different than the PI bar. Nothing wrong with PI Lawyers, but it is PI's a very competitive group of lawyers.

So I just kept chipping away and building. And then there was a legal business consultant who I gave the call to and I said, Hey, I'm interested in potentially trying to scale. What do I do? And we started talking and he suggested that I call a couple of his references just to confirm that he's as good as they said he was.

And one of those references ended up becoming my partner because. The business consultant was, it was Alvaro three A. He said, well, rather than you guys maybe talk his references, what would you think about joining? And a former partner he had more business than he needed and he was an expensive lawyer and he needed an associate at just a lower mark.

And I felt like I was giving away a lot of money. So we both agreed it might make sense to become partners. So that was kind of the next step.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, going back I guess the first firm that you left another lesson there is for the owners. Do what you say you're gonna do. Pay your people 'cause and then treat 'em right whatever that means because you don't wanna kill that golden goose. I mean, and you get, it's so hard to find talent nowadays you gotta keep 'em happy.

Justin Spizman: No, I mean, I look back at things that people have done or things that I've done, and I'm so thankful she screwed me. Oh my gosh, because I probably would've sat there for another year or two years thinking that we're gonna become partners paying off all this money and it would've been horrible.

But at that moment, it was like the most money ever to me. My whole salary as a prosecutor. So it was very difficult, very challenging, and, the greatest story that came out of it was I ended up filing a lawsuit and I ended up settling it and then there was a a nonpayment of judgment.

I ended up garnishing. So it was, you know, I never really got much money, but I was proud of myself. So

Jonathan Hawkins: all the way.

Justin Spizman: I just, you know, it's sometimes and I think this is a good lesson, I've learned this. Most fights aren't worth fighting. You know, if a client screws you over a few thousand dollars, if they want some money back, it.

Have a good day. But you learn that you have to pick your battles and most of these battles aren't worth picking because the time that you waste battling is time you can use to grow or scale or make money.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's a great point. I do a lot of these and you know, the money is big enough to where you have to fight about it. But, and the other point I'll say too you bring this up. I remember when I was a young associate, you know, the amount of money that would've been meaningful to me.

At that time was really like hardly anything to the partners just like, oh my God, just gimme an extra little, you know, and it's like, wouldn't

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: anything. And they, and you guys get to spread it around. Just give me a little.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: like?

Justin Spizman: Yeah, it's great. I I have a law partner, Scott Fortis. And he's fantastic. Works every bit as hard as I do, and we have three associates. We have an of counsel lawyer who's a senior lawyer that is. Fantastic and wonderful. He does a lot of federal work. It's just great having his energy in the office.

And he wanted space and we need a little bit of help running around. So he's willing to trade us. And then we have a fantastic support staff. I mean, we have, I wanna say we're up to seven paralegals. Even our receptionist has some paralegal responsibilities. And I think the lesson that you just kind of outlined is.

I, hopefully they won't listen to this, but I think I'd do anything to make them happy. And they're appreciated. And I try to find creative ways, not just in, in the sense of telling them, you know, and showing them by paying them a fair salary, but also just letting them know I appreciate everything they do, and when they do something great, just letting 'em know.

But also, you know, just doing things that are thoughtful. And so I know I diverted a little bit from where we were headed, but yeah, so we're, we're about, yeah we're, we're 13, 14 people deep and. We try to create a great work environment. You know, I think that we have three rules. Show up on time, be nice and do your job.

Those are my rules. It frustrates me when people are late. It's just a personal pet peeve. But if someone is late, they call in, they say, Hey, I'm in traffic. I'm fine with it. They gotta leave early. Go to doctor's appointment, just let me know. I.

So we really do try to, to hire good people. But also once we get good people, once we get those all stars, like do everything I can to keep them, like anything and everything. And I found that if I just create a respectful working environment that cares about them as people and, and you gotta figure out whatever, it's like you know, what's your love language, right?

It's amazing how many lawyers. Or just not caring to their team members. And that to me like blows my mind. 'cause I kind of kid like, you know, Robin and Raquel, it's like I have my wife, my kids, and then they're the next two most important women in my life. So I really do what I can to keep 'em happy.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, another good point there.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, I don't know when we met, I mean, it's, it is been

Justin Spizman: Oh yeah. Has been. Yeah, for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: always, you know, my sense of you and you sort of. it here is that you are a, a go-getter man. You just make it happen. You're always running around just making it happen.

So how how do you get your clients now and maybe, you know, take us through, I mean, you were in a DA's office where you didn't have to get clients. I mean, you just get your files stacked on your desk and all of a sudden you gotta

Justin Spizman: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: How did you figure that out and what has worked for you and, and has it changed at all over

It was over on, not how male North Side. North side. It was at that greasy spoon diner. That was like the, yeah, whatever. What the hell was that called? I remember we had that, you know, we had that first meal. I was like, oh, I was a good dude. Right? Like, so I tend to be attracted to people I just would like to hang out with anyway.

So like, just people I would go to a ballgame with or have a beer just, you know, come on their podcast like friends and so you know that. And then you just gotta follow up, you know, every now and again, whatever it is, you know, just call 'em up, text 'em, you know, just help 'em whenever they can help 'em. So.

Just as a courtesy, just as like, Hey, no problem. Happy to do it. And I don't do it selfishly, right? Because I, my thing is this, I can't refer you a case every day. I don't know what's coming in the door. I don't know when I can send you a great case and I might not be able to send you a case, right? But you need help.

I can help you. And if I can just go get a traffic ticket handled for you so you don't have to mess with it, like you're gonna send me cases. And again, I don't do it because I want the cases. But you know, I do it because it's easy. It's no hair off my back, your friend. I'm happy to help you, but that has been a humongous situation like for me to build, because all these lawyers, I mean, call what it is they owe me one, I.

So that's been a humongous way. The other way is. I do good work for people. I mean, you have to service your clients. If you do a good job for your clients, everyone you take care of, whether it's traffic ticket or a major felony, they will remember you and they will call you. And that is, people don't think about that, but it takes time.

You know, you can't build that book of business overnight. I mean, it took, I think it took me 10 years to get to the point where I'm consistently always busy. Those 10 years, there were ups and there were downs. There were slow, there was fast. Now, I mean, there's more work than, you know, than I can take.

And so that, that has helped me because now when I have a, you know, a client that's a jerk or a client that wants to negotiate me down from reasonable fees, I can just say no thanks. You know, and that's a good thing because then the client is willing to see my value will come through the door, or the client is not a complete asshole to my clients, or sorry to my staff is gonna be there.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, and I mean great points there and it's, and you're basically, you're planting seeds all over the place. You don't know which ones may grow and which ones may bear fruit, some may

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: bear a lot

fruit and others, and you just continually plant the seeds, water, the seeds and hopefully good things come and

Jonathan Hawkins: a lot of this just a function of time. You might get lucky. It's like that old saying,

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: you can't force a nine month pregnancy to happen in one month.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: A lot of these, the relationship building, maybe you get lucky, but it's just gonna take time.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: so let me ask this on your, do you have like a system or anything? a way to sort of, stay in touch with all the clients you've now helped over all these.

Because that's the game, right? People want traffic lawyers and they're willing to hire a traffic lawyer off of the internet. It's, you know, a thousand bucks, 500 bucks. It's an easy decision, right? It's not a life altering decision. But with criminal cases, people, I mean, look, people will take the internet as a point to start, but they want to meet with you.

They want to talk to you, but the most important thing that they want is they wanna see good reviews. And so we work, I mean, very hard to protect reviews. I mean, you know, on on AVVO have. 255 star reviews all former clients. On Google, we have almost 205 star reviews. And so that's been like right now where we're at, right?

I think I saw covenants, non-compete covenants that you sent out. And I read those like, I like them. I think it's great. I wish I had the capacity to do it. I really have no complaints in the day and age we're living and I can literally hire someone to do it. I just, it's just doing that.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, you know, maybe that's a good segue into your second job or your

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: whatever you want to call it.

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, you got some excuses. You know, you, you're. Running a full-time practice still

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: You're you got a family and kids, you're doing all that stuff, but you're also an author and an award-winning.

You won the Georgia Author of the Year Award. but tell me about your writing. So how did you

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: it? What do you do? I mean, at this point, how many books have you written?

I've been writing for probably 20. I don't, the first five years was just kind of walking around in the dark, figuring out what the hell I was doing. My mom was a New York Times bestselling author, so I grew up in, in a writing family. It was always something that I loved. I had a knack for writing, you know, English.

You know, if you look at my SAT breakdown, it was like almost 800 verbal and like 500 math, which I had to get a calculator out to figure out what that equaled. So it was the strength. I mean, it was undoubtedly something that I'm, that I've just been blessed with. You know, just having good DNA and so I kind of cultivated it.

And I was in New York and it was a book about how to survive law school. And, And this is, you wanna talk about full circle. So the guy that wrote the foreword for my first book was George Ross. Who was senior Exec counsel. He was Trump's lawyer 20, 20 something years ago. Right. He was, if you remember The Apprentice, he was the old guy in the boardroom.

Right? Insane. Right. So, so he was in town in the land in an event and just walked up to him and said, Hey, I got, you know, I got this book I'm working on what you write the for. He is like. Sure. Just a nice guy. So we get the book deal and I remember they offered me a, a $10,000 advance. It was like the most money I've ever seen at that point in my life.

It was like I blew like half of the advance in like one shopping spree. It was awesome. And so then, you know, that came out and then it was cool because I interviewed all my professors, I interviewed all my classmates for it. It was awesome.

Jonathan Hawkins: Lemme add, is that book still still out there, still getting

Justin Spizman: man, I think it's out of publication. They probably could find, actually, interestingly enough, I think I lost a trademark this year.

Like I got a notification 'cause I trademarked the Insider's Guide and I just got a notification that it's back in the public forum. And I didn't, I, I didn't make an effort to save it. But yes, I wrote that book and it was, you know, it was fine. It did fine. It was cool. And then a couple years later I.

And I had this idea to write a book about this famous speech he gave which I'm sure people listening have heard it. And I got a whole lot of nos and nos and eventually I bothered Nick enough where he said, yes, we got ESPN to give us the rights. And we wrote the book. And it hit, I mean, it became, it was very successful.

I did podcasts. I went up to the spring game at NC State. I mean, it was just. A home run. And I went George off through the year for that book, and that's kind of when, you know, things got a little bit real. And then I turned that into another book. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: real quick, when you wrote that book, where were you? Was it, were you practicing law at this point? Where were

Justin Spizman: So that was my third year in law school. So my first year I wrote the Insiders Guide, and then my third year I wrote that. And so going out of law school and into my first year as a practicing lawyer.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, the first two years is pretty, pretty heavy.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: How are you managing

Justin Spizman: Open it down.

Jonathan Hawkins: Your process Real quick

Justin Spizman: You're, yeah you're giving me too much credit to assume I was managing it. I'll tell you, I'll tell you just a funny story. I remember. I didn't manage it. I didn't fail out of law school, but I also didn't do great in law school. My first, you know, year because I was writing the book.

I was, you know, practicing law. I was, or sorry, I was in law school. I was having fun, you know, doing what you do when you're still kind of in college. But I really, in college, I'd just come home, you know, to Atlanta. All my buddies were here. Again, it was like. It was a lot of worlds colliding. So I didn't manage it very well.

I'm writing this book about succeeding in law school, and I get a C in legal writing. So I remember walking across the stage when I graduated, it just so happened my legal writing professor was giving out a diploma. So she gives me the diploma. Congratulations, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, you know, I've been, you know, there's one thing I want to tell you, Melissa.

I go, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person that ever took you to legal writing class that got a c, but got a book deal That same year she started, started laughing at me. You know, just the stupid things I remember.

Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: her a signed copy? So here

Justin Spizman: You know, I gave everyone a signed copy that would buy one. So when I was, you know, when I was, when it was that first book, I wanted to sell books.

So anyone that would buy one would get a signed copy.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Okay. So you graduate you get the success, win the award with the Coach V book.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: of the next step in the writing career?

Because it was important to me at that time to find the, you know, the balance was. You're either John Grisham, you're writing a legal thriller and you're getting a million dollar advance every time, or you're writing books for other people. And what I realized is in the Jimmy V book is I don't like going on, you know, radio shows.

And I went on probably 50 plus radio shows across the country in like 30 days. I. I'd wake up radio show class. But what I realized is that the marketing is a grind. It is a grind. So I asked myself, how can I do what I love? But, you know, but monetize this, and I, I, wait a second.

And I feel like I'm just taking advantage of her. And so that book went, got out and then I did a book with a woman named Molly Fletcher, who's a female sports agent. She's the female. Jerry Maguire negotiated over half a billion dollars for remarkable athletes, coaches, like really like big time.

And I did that book and then she introduced me to Ted Sundquist, who's a former general manager of the Denver Broncos. He had just finished his run right before they won the Super Bowls in LA and all that good stuff. So he wanted to do a book and so I did a book with him. So it started very quickly transforming.

Jonathan Hawkins: so tell me what's it like now? What's the business like now? I

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: do people coming to you, are you trying to pitch the service? I mean,

When I worked on a, a book and collaborated with John Quiñones and Maria Elena Salinas about Uvalde in the Robb Elementary shooting, that was a book that that kind of found me. Disney Publishing contacted me and they had known that I'd worked with the editor at the time on another book and.

We just had a good relationship and I delivered a good product for her. So she contacted me. So it's a fair share of referrals, probably 80%. Occasionally I'll just get excited about something, I'll see something, I'll hear something, and I'll pursue it. And that's what I've done. You know, I probably do that once or twice a year.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I don't you know, I don't know what you can or can't share. But I don't know. There's some of the highlights, some of the cool folks

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: to meet over the years. I.

I have to think about this, right? Because I gotta think about who I can talk about and who I can't because there are ones I can't. One, one of my favorite stories and it's not a household name, but it's a really important book to me was one I did with Keanon Lowe. Keanon was a football coach, played in the NFL he also played at University of Oregon.

He came home to a small school in, in Portland, in, in the off season after taking this team on a really, a historic run. He was called to retrieve a student and as he walks into the school building, the student walks out of a classroom armed with a shotgun, was about to shoot the school up and Kim's faced eye to eye with him and instead of tackling him or trying to.

I'm in trouble here. Like this is, I don't know what's gonna happen here, but this isn't good. I'm watching ES, espn. I see this 30 for 30 about this Coach Keanon Lowe and his amazing story, and his story's remarkable. I mean, it traverses, you know, mental health and drugs. He was one of the coaches when Colin Kaepernick took a knee for the 49 ERs.

I mean, just the same stuff. And then, so I see it and I go on a LinkedIn and I find him, I said, Hey, you know my name's Justin Spizman. I'm a writer. I like writing sports books. Do you wanna work together? And he responds a week later, he says, I've been thinking about doing a book. I. But, you know, I'm a high school football coach.

And so Keanon is truly one of the, just the greatest human beings you'll ever meet. And so he is like, yeah, let's do it. Let's roll. So we start and then we start working on this project. We start putting together this proposal. We start coming out of COVID, and then I get a call from Keanon. He's like, dude, I got this call from this guy Adam.

And no, it was Adam. Brad. Brad. And he told me that he's he saw my story on ESPN and he'd like to see if I would be interested in selling the rights for a movie. And he said that he is Dwayne the Rock Johnson's agent. So, you know, naturally I'm like, bullshit. Right. You know, this day and age scam.

They're like, Hey, there's this publisher, very reputable publisher, and they wanna make an offer on the book and like, yeah, sure. And so we have the offer. So they tell us what the offer is. And like, without going into details, it was 10 times more than any advance I design that I've ever seen. And it was like earth shatteringly, like big.

And so I'm almost in tears. 'cause this, it'd been a, it was been a tough year for everyone and it just felt like this moment. And Ken is one of those guys who doesn't have much, he didn't at the time. He just root for him. He's just the best guy in the world. And so it was, you know, it's like one of these moments I just lost my father.

And, And so that, that deal, and it wasn't about the money. I mean the money was great, but it was just about, we built a relationship together. We were both two good people. We went on a great journey. We did good work. And then like, wife just you know, did the rest, you know.

Jonathan Hawkins: That is really

Justin Spizman: Yeah, it's a good one.

Jonathan Hawkins: is a movie in development, are we gonna see

Justin Spizman: You know, interestingly enough, I don't know, I think they, so what I've learned is, you know, the Amazons, the Netflix, what they do is they buy millions and millions of dollars of content. I. And part of the reason they buy it is someone else can't buy it, right? It's to take it off the market and then they have full rights to produce it or not.

Like they wanna buy your life story. He goes. Yeah, but you know, next thing you know, there's gonna be some old white guy playing me. He goes, you know, like goes, I just, I don't know, man. It's just, it's my life. It feels like I should get some more for it. I mean, it just, you know, it he, he was in the most, you know, wonderful way that he tells that story.

It just truly was like he so authentic and he would never sell his soul for a dollar, whether it be a million dollars or $1. He just wanted to make sure that the story was true and authentic.

Jonathan Hawkins: that, that's, that is an incredible

Justin Spizman: Yeah, that's a good one.

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: So I wanna shift, so stay on the topic of writing, but you know, there's, books, lawyer, a lot of lawyers write

Jonathan Hawkins: to

Justin Spizman: Yep,

Jonathan Hawkins: market their practice or tell a story, whatever.

Justin Spizman: yep.

Jonathan Hawkins: Do you have one of those? Have you ever done one of those? Do you have thoughts about those?

Justin Spizman: Yeah, I, so no, I haven't done one for myself nor do I have any interest in doing one for myself. I, you know, I contemplate one day, you know, like Henry David Thoreau, like moving to Walden Bond and writing the next Great American novella or maybe just telling some good stories, like, I don't know.

I mean, one day I'll write a book for myself, I guess, but

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, the way I view it, it, is for your kids and your grandkids. So

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: story. 'cause there's a lot of stuff in your head, a lot of stories that may. Maybe they're

Justin Spizman: Yes,

Jonathan Hawkins: Hear yet,

Justin Spizman: yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: one day they'll have it. You know that might be one way to look at

You know, or some sort of area of specialty, you know, a legal malpractice book, whatever it may be. So I do a fair share of that work. And they're remarkable. I mean, calling cards and advertisements and, you know, one of the, really, part of the reason why I write and I still do it, I mean, yeah, it's some, you know, the money's good.

It's fine. I do it because it's a great opportunity to just learn. And so I become this like subject matter expert on, I mean, I've written books on leadership, on, you know, on building culture, on, you know, like every topic you can imagine in a self-help world scaling businesses. I. And I learn every time I write one of these books.

And so, 'cause I started my career really as like a business writer. That's what I did, like self-help, business development. So like, if you think about all the fads that came through, you know, it was leadership and then it was culture, and then it's, now it's like health and wellness. And so like I'm doing a lot of these types of books.

Jonathan Hawkins: pack now, right? You got a six

Justin Spizman: let me tell you. Right. But it's so interesting the way that you know, that the world, you know, works in terms of these areas.

And so I get this benefit of just learning so much. And I love it. So these academic books, like the legal books, I get to go down these rabbit holes with my clients and they're a great marketing source for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, yeah, so I, I'm a lawyer out there. What kind of advice do you have? If they're thinking about a book or maybe

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: wanna do a book what would, what kind of advice would you give them?

Justin Spizman: Yeah. I think that, you know, first and foremost, I think it's a really great, you know, a business calling card. If you think about it like this, what is the one thing you could do? And all you gotta do is do it once and it will give you returns every time you give it to someone. Right? Easily transferrable.

Because the worst thing you can do is write a shoddy book. And what that means is that doesn't mean you have to hire me to write it, right, but you need to have professional cover design. You need to have professional formatting, you need to have an editor, right? These are all things that. That are so key in the book, like the rest of it's, the rest of it, how you publish, who really cares, things of that nature.

But I mean, if someone picks up your book and the first thing they see is, you know, some sort of grammatical error, I mean, at least my responses, like, I'll tell you, I get a lot of resumes you want to intern, whatever it may be. If I see a grammar issue, like I will not, I just put it in the pass pile.

Jonathan Hawkins: I'm with you a hundred percent.

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: resume is maybe one, two, maybe. Nowadays you see a three pager. I mean, it's not that long. You better make sure that thing is.

Justin Spizman: per perfect. Yeah, you're, yeah, that's right. But it's a great calling card. I think word more should do it. You know, I mean, even if you invest in a writer, because you can't get it done yourself, you know, if that writer charge you a chunk of money, you know, one good personal injury settlement this is something that every single year, right?

Think about it. If you use this, like if I told you, here's the deal, I'm gonna, I'm gonna create something for you. I, and you can use it for 10 years. It's just, you know, it's put a finite time on it and every year you have to pay $5,000 for it. That's it. That's all you have to pay. It'll probably generate for you four to five cases a year, do the math.

So I think that there's a lot of opportunities out there for people to, to write books and I think more people should because their immediate credibility.

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: 20 years. Yeah, I'll buy that any day.

Justin Spizman: that, that's exactly right. That's how I feel about it too.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, so let's shift back to practicing law and building law firm. Running law firm. So, what any advice you'd give to perhaps someone who wants to start a firm or maybe someone who's just started a firm, maybe building your practice or just building a firm, any advice?

Justin Spizman: Be a subject matter expert. Don't do everything. Be very clear about what you're good at and what you know, because here's the thing, people come into my office and, I mean, my practice personally in the criminal world is really about 50% impaired driving. That includes the homicides, fatalities, serious injuries, 50% criminal defense, right?

And so with that being said, it's because I focus 17, 18 years ago on those areas, and I've just cultivated 'em over the years. So that's one, be a subject matter expert. Can't be anything. You know, you can't be everything to everyone. And I think the second thing is that, you know, you have to be patient.

It's the worst advice in the world. No one, nothing pisses me off more than someone telling me to be patient. But it takes time to build a practice and, you know, stay lean. You know, service your clients, especially now when it's small, right? Like you grow, then you have to figure out how to serve more clients.

I mean, so the struggle we have every day is how do we serve all the clients in our law firm? And look, sometimes we're not perfect, we fall short, but we take responsibility for our mistakes, and they're usually nominal. And we try to make them right and we give people their platform. Clients are platform.

As the assets, they are not liabilities. It's not, oh, man, I gotta deal with John. He's such a jerk today. Oh, I gotta deal with, you know, Karen, she's driving me crazy. I live in that challenge every day, right? Like I do. There's clients who call me up and they just, like, they get my cortisol going, like I get triggered by them.

But I take a deep breath and I think to myself, look, these are the people that keep me in business. They're the way that I support my family. And I need to, at least from my mind say, I'm so thankful for these people so that when you know, when I get these calls and I'm immediately gonna go to that bad place, right?

Jonathan Hawkins: That was beautiful, man.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, Yeah. I don't do it. I don't do it all the time. Some people just piss me off. Some people just piss me off. But I, it just giving yourself that, like, that mindset, right? It does give you like, it gives you like 10% more patience than you'd have otherwise. And sometimes that 10% is a difference between just being outright rude to a client and creating further controversy with them and conflict, or just resolving the issue.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Well, cool man. So I wanna wrap it up here.

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: be respectful Of your time, but as you sit here today, you know, you your firm is fairly young. I know you've been practicing a while, but your new firm's fairly

Justin Spizman: yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: Where do you see it? What's the vision? Where do you want it to go? And maybe to add to that your book writing, whatever where do you see your career going?

I don't mind it whatsoever, but it's, maximizing, your time. And doing it in a way where instead of working a 80 hour week I'm working a 70 hour week and getting the same output. So I think it's this consistent evolution of working smarter while, while growing.

Such on the legal side also, just, you know, more wins. You know, more wins like in wins can be many shapes and sizes, but for me, like walking into courtrooms and winning cases.

Like I still walk into closets. Three weeks ago I was in Fitzgerald, Georgia trying a. A significant sexual assault case where I represented a captain in the Marines and we were able to secure not guilty verdict on every charge.

So that on the legal side on the writing side, you know, I don't know. I want to keep, to continue to, I mean, I feel like, like the writing is, the way I leave my print on the world is something I leave behind that has meaning. I wanna just continue working on projects that move me. You know, that project, you know, the Robb Elementary shooting and the Uvalde project is something that will never leave me.

I did it. I was very hesitant to take the project because who wants to dive head first into a, you know, a world of, you know, 19 dead children? It's horrible. I mean, going to Rob Belman was horrible. Going to the cemetery was horrible. But let me tell you, it was one of the most like emotionally challenging things I've ever done.

I'm talking about the police officer response part. And to see the spirit, the human spirit, the strength. That's when you like leave there and you're like, wow, like, like I can, I, we will, everything will be okay. So it's just, I want more of that, you know?

Jonathan Hawkins: All right. We gotta end with that,

Justin Spizman: All right, man.

Jonathan Hawkins: But for anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you maybe to talk legal shop or maybe to talk book writing what's the best way? Maybe there's two different ways, but what's the best way

Justin Spizman: Yeah, writing justin@justinspizman.com. Very easy. And then our law firm is spizman firm, hsf law firm.com.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well Justin man, this has been fun. Thanks for coming on.

Jonathan Hawkins: Alright, enjoy your weekend.

Justin Spizman: You do the same.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.

lawfirmgc. com. We'll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.