Blaze Your Own Trail - Better, Faster and Less Friction with Dennis "DM" Meador

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

In this episode of the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast, host Jordan Mendoza interviews Dennis DM Meador, a lifelong entrepreneur with a diverse background in business and pastoral work. Dennis shares his journey from early entrepreneurial ventures, including door-to-door hustles, to building a successful legal podcast network. He discusses the lessons learned throughout his career, the importance of leveraging strengths, and the challenges faced during personal transitions. Dennis also provides valuable advice for aspiring podcasters and entrepreneurs, emphasizing the need for strategic planning and adaptability in business. Takeaways Dennis started his entrepreneurial journey at a young age.He learned the importance of leveraging others' strengths.Transitioning from business to pastoral life shaped his perspective.Dennis emphasizes the value of relationships in business success.He built a successful legal podcast network from scratch.Planning for future growth is crucial in business.Overcoming adversity can lead to personal and professional growth.Dennis encourages others to blaze their own trail.He believes in creating frictionless processes for clients.The journey of entrepreneurship is filled with lessons and opportunities. Connect with DM: Website: https://www.thelegalpodcastnetwork.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennismeador/ Connect with Jordan: LinkedIn Instagram TikTok Order a copy of Jordan's new book The Life-Changing Power of Adversity The Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast is exclusively sponsored by CityGate Studios Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and I'm joined by an incredible guest today. His name is Dennis D.M. Meador. And I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today. A little bit about who I am. I am a pretty much a lifelong entrepreneur. Started kind of in that path about 14 years old.

And, you know, saw, did that for a couple of years, basically had a, you could call it a service business. I had lawn mowing, paper route, raking leaves, shoveling walks, but I didn't do it. I actually got the customers. And then my brother was a couple years younger, me and his friends. And they actually did the jobs because they were too shy to go knock on the doors, but they wanted to make money. And I was not too shy to knock on the doors and ask for the money, but I hated doing the jobs. So kind of worked out for me. I would usually on Saturdays go, I would, you know, collect the newspaper money,

collect the whatever lawn mowing money, whatever was going on. I would meet with my team. I would give them their money and then I would go and buy Jordans or get my hair cut or go to the, you know, whatever I wanted to do. So I was in a situation at that time where it was just like my parents were like, listen, you've got a roof over your head. You've got enough food in your belly that you don't starve. You're pretty skinny, but you don't starve. And, you know, you got clothes on your back. So if you want more than that, you're going to have to go out and earn it. And so that's what I started doing at that age. Then my early 20s,

you know, I got into marketing. I went to college for actually an unaccredited Bible Institute in the Ohio Valley. And I started working in advertising. Well, I started working in phone sales, soliciting donations, things like that, mid-90s because they were paying twice as much as everybody else. I was like, well, I'm going to go make more money, right? So I go. I start working and I do well.

They put me into script writing about six months into it. Now I'm 19 years old. I'm getting paid $25 an hour in the mid, you know, 90s. I had a schedule where I could come and go as I please because I just would walk in, go to this back little office, start calling people with no script in front of me, or a script that I had handwritten, and then I would cross out stuff and nope, they don't like that word. And, you know, I would just, somehow it worked for me. I didn't know what I was doing.

I just knew how to do it. You ever feel like that? You know what you're doing, but you don't know how to do it. Yeah. So I did that, and then I ended up getting recruited into selling ads and police magazines, making even more money, ended up becoming the manager of that division, managing guys that were in their 40s, ended up taking that management, and again, I'm still under 20. I now am, we're now, we've now increased the department over 50%, you know, in, in its revenue generation. Then I got recruited by a hospital patient handbook company to travel. travel around and sell ads in hospital patient handbooks.

Now I'm 19, 20 years old making three to five grand a week, so well into six figures. Now, think about this, 18 years old, I am in a house where probably between my two parents are making 40 grand a year with six kids in the Midwest. Two years later, I'm making $150,000, $200,000 a year. I'm just like, man, I got life, I got life figures. out, right? 19 years old. It doesn't always continue that way. I learned some lessons. Then shortly, just maybe a year or a couple of years later, I'm back kind of in my home area. And I start selling ads on Maps, Magnets, posters. And I had a buddy who had gone off and

started his own thing. And he's like, hey, man, I'm getting ready to start this thing. I'd like you to be a part of it. Again, I was like, okay, I go over. I come up with a product. I come up with the sales process. I come up with the scripting. I train the core staff. In one year, we go from a six foot by six foot office where we had to take turns, making calls to try to sell clients. A year later, we're doing $3 million a year, three, four million dollars a year. We've got 30, 40 employees. We're just cranking. And I actually ended up because me and my partner, we really didn't both need to be there. I was kind of more the brains and he was kind of more the everyday guy. I was the one like, you know, I've never been the guy that wants to

get on somebody and punish them for not doing right, whereas he didn't mind that. So I was like, listen, you manage and you manage the people, all manage the business. And I actually was able to live back and forth in Romania for a few years and travel across the U.S. and speak in churches all over. I was a pastor as a parallel career for 20 years as well. I always made my own money, always had my own thing going on, but I also always typically had some sort of ministry that I was doing. did that for a while there's a little bit of and i won't go into the story but basically me and that partner ended up kind of separating ways spent probably the next few years five seven years more doing consulting so i would actually go into companies that were um you know like they used to sell

like all of their sales were inbound and then when the uh when everything hit in like 2008 now all of a sudden or 2001 to 2000 and then 2008 again again. Again, that kind of that period where the economy really struggled. A lot of businesses were like, we don't know how to go out and get our customers. They've always come to us. So I would set up inside sales departments and bigger companies that only had like outside reps and they were struggling. And I did that, enjoyed it. Then about my mid-30s had another big success company that I took.

Then this past five years before I was here had another partnership. He had a buyout option. He took it after about five years. We went from, when I met him, he had been in business nine years. He had 78 clients who was doing less than a million dollars a year. Five years later, when we parted ways, over 400 clients doing over $5 million a year. Now, we come to December of 23. I get an email, hey, I'm using the buyout.

I'm five months away from my wedding. I go to my fiance and I'm like, you know, the money I've been making, pretty good money every month. Well, I've got a little bit of a buyout, but I don't have a business or a way to make more money at this moment. So what I did was I took out this notebook right here. This notebook right here is now what I call a multi-million dollar notebook. And actually, notebooks like this are probably eight-figure notebooks throughout my career of earnings and revenue generated, I guess I should say well into A figures. But what I do is I just write down when I have business ideas, I don't know if there's an entrepreneur listening, but that intellectual thing that happens in

your head where you're just coming up with business ideas and margins and things like that, I got into the habit a long time ago of kind of writing those out, even if it made no sense. I was in a great situation. I'll probably never use it, right? And then I can't tell you how many times that those this concept or this book, I guess you could say, has taken me from what am I going to do to all right, let's get going. So in the book here, I had an idea because I'd been talking to lawyers and they were like, you guys do anything with podcasting? Can you help me with podcasts and me and my partner met and he was like, ah, let's wait on that. We're going to launch answering service. I was like, okay. So I started it and started building the groundwork.

May 1st, 2024, we launched the company. Me, my V. who I've had for five years, and then a guy contracting for me out of Pakistan. So we had three people. We had no clients. Now, here we are, not even two years later. I guess you could say a year and a half later from that point. We have about 200 clients. We did seven figures, our first, our calendar year last year.

We will probably have about a 50% or double from last year to this year. And we've got about 60 people on the team, 12 countries, over the world. They're all remote contractors. I live on an island in Belize running the company. And so we're completely remote. We're growing. We're seeing a lot of impact in the industry. And honestly, I'm thankful because the success I've had, especially with this venture, has not been because, oh, look at me. I'm just such a smart, intelligent man, you should be impressed. It was really a fortuitous management of relationships. Some people that followed me that didn't know me for years and we're just like, you're doing something again on your own, I'm in.

Or people that I just met and I gave them my vision, people that, like my lead producer, I have seven directors now. They each direct different parts of the business. But my lead production person, her name is Carrie. And Carrie did a podcast and produced a podcast for Stephen King. She produced a podcast for Michael Cohen, regardless of your politics, that's still a name. She produced a podcast, a podcast for Spotify, IHeart Media. In other words, she is a industry, a known industry quantity. And she heads up that division. The person who heads up my content or my content team, I have two.

I have one young lady who is a second generation copywriter and just kills it. And then I have somebody that I've worked with now for seven years in different capacities who's been a content director with the legal industry. So I'm no superstar. I'm just a coach of superstars. And that's where I feel the most fortunate of what's happened in the last two years with the growth of the company. Love it. Love it.

I appreciate you giving us the deep dive in the journey. And I definitely got some questions with some of these pit stocks on the way. That's Cliff Notes, my friend, but let's go. Yeah, I love it. So let's talk about the formative years. So where did you grow up and start the door? door, you know, hustles, trying to, trying to start earning money just for the audience context.

What part of the country did you grow up in? And then what kind of kid were you outside of being this guy that wanted to come up with ideas, manage the process, and essentially hire for your weaknesses and leverage your strengths like I truly believe in. So yeah, give us some context there. So I, from birth to eight years old, seven and a half, whatever, my dad was in the Air Force. So we lived in 9, 10, 11 states. Sometimes I'll count and I'll be like, oh, it's only 9.

And then I'll count again. I'm like, oh, I forgot that one. But it's somewhere in there, 9, 10 states. When I was around 8 years old, we moved to a place called the Quad Cities, which is in the Midwest. It's Davenport, Bentendorf, Iowa, Rock Island and Moline, Illinois, right on the Mississippi River, about three hours south and west of Chicago, mostly west and a little south. So that's where I lived in at that time. From 8 to 13, I lived with my mom after the divorce.

My mom, you know, you could say it was because of the divorce or whatever the reasoning was, but she kind of went pretty, pretty off the deep end. Like she started dating crack dealers, heroin dealers, gangsta disciple leaders out of Chicago. So I lived in like a gang party, drug, like crazy house for five years. Well, what that taught me was every night we would have a party. We would have stacks and stacks of Milwaukee's best cans of beer. If you know that brand, you're probably just like, ugh. But two cans every night.

So me and my sister, because my mom, she was in her own place trying to deal with what she was dealing with, I would get up in the morning and me and my sister would dump out the stale beer, rinse out, put them in can, bags, and we would take the bags and bags of cans because we got a nickel deposit. And that's how we live. That's how we fed ourselves besides free school lunch or free churches that we knew fed us. But I think that was the training ground for who I became later. So people say, well, do you think you were born that way? Or do you think, you know, is it nature? Is it nurture? It's probably both. I like to say I am natural born and trauma built. And so, you know, that gave me the presence of mind to be able to understand like I need to pay attention to how

money is being made around me. How can I get money? How can I get safety? Like I just paid attention to things most eight, nine, 10, 11 year old kids just don't pay attention to. And so that enabled me to kind of be more aware of those sort of things. The concept of taking care of myself was not a foreign concept as a very young child. The concept of taking care of others was not a foreign concept for me. So then when I moved in with my dad at 13, then 14 is when that business happened, I moved in, now we went for me and my sister,

then my stepmom had two children, and then together they had two children. So it was his, hers and theirs. Boy girl, boy girl, all sets about two years apart within each other. So I move in and basically one Saturday, or one snow day, I guess I should say, I took my brother and his best friend, and we started knocking doors to shovel snow

because I had a buddy that told me he made $100 that way. So we start doing it. We get about an hour into it. It's cold. My brother and his friend, they don't want to knock on any doors. They're tired of getting rejected. I don't want to,

I think we'd shovel two walks, but I didn't want to shovel more. I hated it. So I go up and I'm like, I tell you what, guys, I'll get this one. So I get the next one. Let he gets $20 bucks. I put $10 in my pocket.

I gave each of them five. And I say, all right, guys, here's what you need to shovel. I said, I'm going to go and I got a great idea. You guys stay here. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep knocking on doors and I'll get the next job. So as soon as you get done, you can come and do the next job. And we'll just keep doing that and we can just make money until we're ready to go home.

They like the idea. Next time it came time for snow. I was just like, oh, I remember, you know, I kind of made a note of all the houses that said yes. So then we made even more money that day because we didn't have to knock until we finished our route. Then I started bringing in more young guys to do. it. And then I would just be like, all right, you go here, you go here, you go here. I got all the lot worked out. And then once the snow came, it stopped for the season, then it was mowing lawns, then it was raking leaves, then it was paper routes. And so I basically took every job that a 12 to 15

year old boy could take within our walking distance of our neighborhood. I was the face of the company. My brother and his friends were the ones doing the jobs. And that's how I kind of got that presence of mine for that first business. And, you know, I didn't think about leveraging others. I just didn't want to shovel and I didn't mind talking to adults because, you know, you asked a question, like, what kind of kid was I? You know, even before the stuff from 8 to 13, like, I was the 5-year-old who, because I grew up in church life. And so, like, I was friends with, you know, at 5, I was friends with 80-year-old women and 18-year-old teenagers and 6-year-old kids. Like, you know, what I mean. There was like age. I didn't have that sort of segregation of ages that we kind of,

the peer groups that I grew up with being in that sort of environment. And so I've always been that kind of person that wasn't shy to talk to people about it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you giving us that access into the past, but also, you know, our environment definitely shapes us, you know, shapes us. It molds us. You mentioned that, you know, the, The trauma, it actually, when you reflect on it, you look back and it really helps you map out why you do some of the things that you do in life. Yeah. You know, I grew up very similar, you know, super poor.

I would have to go collect cans to go buy candy if I wanted it because or else I'd have to go with the food stamps, which that was embarrassing. So I'd rather go collect some cans and instead of having to hand the green and orange and browns out to people, you know what I'm saying? But yeah, it teaches you how to think on your feet. You become more resilient. You, the nose just roll off your back because you're used to having to deal with rejection every day. Yeah. So I see how that would play out into the future of building your affiliate marketing empire

before it existed, you know, with all the kids in the neighborhood, right? So you had just a ton of affiliates and you paid to meet a piece of the pie and you did the thing that gave your energy, you know, versus all the things that you hated to do. So I know I love that and we're definitely kindred in that aspect. I was selling baseball cards and raking leaves and pulling out the tops of every plant and saying I was weeding. Yeah. Making grown folk money, right? You're bringing in a lot of times more than my parents.

Yeah. Yeah, more than that. And you did it through similar means that I did. I did telemarketing for an alarm company in high school. And then I did it for we were selling those big brick Nokia phones that, only had one game and it was snake and it was like right when you could first text message people and I was selling those over the phone and so you know and I love the fact that you were you became the script writer you know because you don't seem like a scripty guy to me I'm definitely I do better in

a script guy like I remember in corporate they would hand me these scripts like for these big award ceremonies and I'd literally look at it I would crumple it up and just throw it because I knew I wasn't going to read the stupid thing because that's just not how I roll. So when you had to go write scripts, I can imagine that you're just kind of freestyling stuff. Is that how? Yeah, that's, that's all I did is I would, I would just basically say something and then what I would do is like to listen for, huh or, you know, and then I, okay, they did that, did that. And so what I've learned about like with script writing for me, so I don't know about you, but I have to compartmentalize aspects of like, so like when I cold call, I have a very different persona than I do when I'm even

working in a product, even if it's the same. Because like with cold calling, you know, you have to be just like, especially I've worked with attorneys 20 years. I say you have to grab that person by the throat in the first three seconds, you know. So like all of that stuff, like when I am in a position where I have the cold call, even if I wrote the script, I stick to the script. I just literally read it because what I do is I focus on the intonation. I focus on breathing life into the words because I know I have to hit all these points. And so although scripting is not ideal like in a situation like this, it's certainly in certain instances I've been able to force myself to do it, although I've never been primarily a cold caller. I've always been the closer

even from a young age, which is where the money is anyway, right? 100%. So but and that's where you can kind of free flow as long as you hit your bullet points. Even when I was a pastor, I never wrote out a sermon. I have spoken multiple thousands of times. And it was always an outline or just on the fly. I can't do that whole like write every word and exactly what you're going to say. It just, it doesn't work for me. Yeah. Yeah. I think we are called extemporaneous speakers. It's like you can speak without a script, but when you have it, it kind of throws you off. That's like, don't quote me on it, audience. It's something similar to that.

It'll be in your comments. No, that's not what it is. Yeah, that's not what it is. So we can't skip over a 20-year pastoral career. So let's dive into that a little bit. So how did this happen? Obviously, it sounds like you grew up in the church. We're kind of in that capacity.

Birth to about seven, yes. Obviously, eight to 13, no. Now I'm like full-on heathen. I mean, I'm moving to my dad's house. with his new bride and their two younger kids. And, you know, they're listening to church music and have like, you know, rainbow and flower pictures on the wall. And I come in and I'm like, all right.

And I put in Easy E and I start playing that. And I put up my posters with girls and thongs, you know, draped over cars and, you know, all of this stuff. And it definitely was a culture shock for me and for them. But then I got into church, I think, obviously, with what I had been through, I found structure. I found, you know, I found people that I felt like loved me and cared about me. of that. The summer I turned 16, I went down to Mississippi. My youth pastor, who'd been my youth pastor,

moved down there to become the lead pastor in another church. So I went down to spend the summer with him and we went to summer camp. And in the particular group of churches that I was in, if you said, I'm going to be a pastor, I'm a preacher, they say, okay, you're up next. And so I said, on Tuesday night, I feel like I'm going to, I'm a preacher. On Wednesday at 2 p.m., they said, all right, you're up. You've got a five minutes slot after two other preachers. So study, you got five minutes. We'll ring the bell when you're done. And then, you know, go on. They did that every day. So I'm, I'm there. I skipped all the things, everything. I'm studying. I've got it all in my head of what I'm going to say. And the first person gets up and he's like 18 and he's been like speaking for like five or

six years. So, you know, he's got a beautifully alliterated, you know, sermon with good illustrations. He's great, and I'm just like, man, like, here I am rookie, right? Then, like, a 10-year-old boy gets up. And he's been preaching for, like, five years. And he's got, like, a suit and tied. He's like, a Bible size, the listen version here, you know? So I'm just, you know, probably your audio guy's going to have to cut that out. I'm sorry.

But I'm just like, so I'm nervous, right? Because I feel like I'm a rookie following two all-stars. And so I get up there and I'm like shaking, right? and they both got rung at five minutes. They did their little sermons. And I'm like shaking. And I like look down at my notes and I look up and I take my hands off the thing. And I just start speaking.

45 minutes later, remember they were supposed to ring the bell in five minutes. 45 minutes later, the guy behind me, the director of the camp, comes out next to me and he says, we don't usually do an altar call on these meetings, but I think it's appropriate. and like 200 teenagers come forward and they're crying at the altar and all of that. And I'm just like, I guess this is what I'm supposed to do. It felt very confirmed. Now, looking back, it was probably more just like some sort of like, you know, episode of like just intensity. But, you know, it obviously made sense.

It helped people. So then I started like I was speaking in church. We moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa then. I was speaking in church. And then the first time I spoke in church, the youth pastor took me out to lunch after. And he was like a volunteer youth pastor. And he said, I'm not going to speak to the youth group anymore. And I was like, oh, no, what happened?

And he's like, you're going to speak to the youth group. I cannot in good conscience stand up in front of these kids and do the teaching when you're in the room. And I'm like, okay. So I became like the spiritual youth pastor at 16. Now 18, I go off to college. somebody says, hey, we need a little student pastor to come out for a weekend or two, a month. We're in between pastors. It's about an hour away from the school.

And I was like, well, I'll go. So I go out there. No one wanted to drive that far. And I go out and I go out for like two weeks. And then they're like, well, you become like our pastor and like drive out here and we'll pay you and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay. So that kind of started on my path. Even when I started that business went back and forth to Romania.

In Romania, I did a lot of speaking. I traveled all over the U.S. I've been a pastor. I've been a youth pastor. I've been a missionary. I've been an evangelist. And it wasn't until I was about 35, 36. And I'll just be honest with you. Here's what happened. My daughter, who's now grown, we were out in like a little podunk, Oklahoma town. My daughter says, Daddy, I don't like boys the way you're supposed to like. boys. I like girls like that. Now you've got to remember we're in like these are like people that only use the King James Bible. They don't watch television. They don't like this is these are not people that are going to welcome someone with that sort of preference, lifestyle, whatever, sexual, orientation with open arms. So I knew at that time I had to transition away. My hope was to transition to something much more accepting of her, but still feel comfortable. But I had to, been so kind of, you know, intense. And the groups of people we've been around were so intense

that I couldn't go backwards without just completely going out of church. So I kind of chalked that up to, you know what? I've spent 20 years, lots of hours being super intense and almost solely focused on this. I looked at my businesses as just the way to fund ministry. I was just like, I'm a conduit for money. And I could take this money and bless all these ministries and orphanages and build churches and all the stuff I did in my 20s. We transitioned away from church at that time. And since then, life's been a little bit different. I moved to Austin, Texas at that time.

Now I live on an island. My kids are all grown up. I just got remarried. I'm tatted, like both of my arms from shoulder to wrist, chest. You know, it's a very different life, but one that I still very much enjoy. But that's the 20 years. And that kind of brings us to now

as far as the spiritual journey on. Now I tell people I'm more of a universe guy than I am a specific deity guy. Appreciate the context. And it sounds like it was a very rewarding journey. It sounds like you did a lot of incredible things. And like you said, being able to help people, that is something that if I kind of take a through line in your journey, it's been about that, you know, helping people leveraging your strengths to help them leverage their strengths, helping other people. So let's get into 2023.

You have the idea of the legal podcast network and I know that it started it's very small. You know you had just a couple people. What were your initial goals? And I know you're a, you kind of start with the at the end

and work your way back on a lot of things I think just like I do. So you probably already knew like, hey, these is our revenue goal. This is where we see ourselves. This is the size of the team. So we're, able to hit all of those, those goals that you set? Yeah, so far. Thus far, I'm just curious. Yeah,

definitely ahead of the pace. I wanted to do seven figures my second year. I did at my first, and then I doubled. I wanted to be at 50 people within three years, and I did that in the first year. We should hit 500 clients by the end of this year, just based on my infrastructure and the sales velocity of my team. Just to contextualize it, this month alone, we're at 23 new clients. not always the best month for signing marketing up, right? So typically July and December, your lowest months of the year, this has been our second best month of the year. And a lot of that's been because I put in new,

some more things in sales, I've actually had to hold back my company on the sales side to keep up so that I can deliver a product and have the infrastructure to deliver it. I could literally go hire five, like, talented salespeople and 15 talented centers and literally sell a couple hundred clients a month, but my infrastructure won't allow for it.

So I'm building because for me, I don't know anybody that's doing what I'm doing the way that I'm doing it. So I'm just kind of coming up because even when I see networks, I'm like, okay, I get it. Like it's a network, but it's more like a network as far as when you go to a networking event. Whereas when I talk about a podcast network, I think of a television network.

I think of a, that's my mind. of the legal podcast network. It's not a loose affiliation of shows helping each other. It is a centralized production house or production company that is curating, developing, and cultivating shows

and stars for consumption. Yeah. No, I love it. Love it. You're thinking about like a multimedia company versus just a network of people that can collaborate and swap shows and ideas. This is more about a true value

at in a place, the destination, essentially. So let's talk about that a little bit. You know, there's going to be some listeners out there. You know, I've got tons of podcasters that listen to the show. There may be ones that say, man, DM, like, created this thing in a very short period of time. He's seeing success. And this might be something I want to take on for my vertical. So I'd love for you if you could just add some value.

And maybe what are the three first things you would recommend somebody do? And, of course, you know, you have your own model. They can come up with their own ideas and models. and things like that. But what advice would you give maybe the first three steps they would need to take outside of coming up with their name

and their logo and all that stuff, which is anybody can do? I think you need, first of all, to decide what it is you're wanting to do for your shows. Because like for me, and you and I talked about this before the episode, I was like, okay, I'm working with lawyers.

Am I trying to get them to have shows where they're going to get like, you know, 4 million views and get like K from YouTube and 2K from Apple and like, is that what I'm trying to do? I don't think that's really going to help them because at best, if they kill it, they could make 100 grand off of, no, 100, 200 grand off this, right? At best. It's niche content, right?

So it's like, okay, what really helps? And I've worked with attorneys 20 years plus years. And there's a few things I know that they like. Number one, they like not necessarily more. customers, but good clients, clients that are willing to pay what they're worth, clients that don't come in as if they are the prize, but that the attorney's the prize. The other thing I know about them is, and any business owner really for both of these, they don't have a lot of time. And so that was the first thing that I set out to solve. So you've got to find something that you

are solving or giving to the people you're going to work with that they couldn't just get on their own. Like, listen, just having a show that's on the same landing page as other shows, maybe you'll get some residual like, oh, if you like this, you'll like this sort of overflow. But that's not the value that I see a network bringing. The value is I can, A, cultivate ideal clients so that they can get paid the correct amount by the amount of people they want to get paid by. And then B, I want to do it with as little friction as physically possible. because if it is easy and enjoyable and profitable, how well do you think your product will do?

And so that's really what we tried to do. It was like first thing is just like kind of, and my big thing was friction, because we always say better, faster, less friction. That's what we're trying to do in everything. Internally, externally, internal processes, internal communication, external processes, external communications, better, faster, less friction, always, always.

So that would be the first thing. And the second thing that I would say is, I would then start to take your archetype client and create the ideal for other people to see. Gone are the days. I used to love, like, when I started, you could pick up a telephone and just be like, hey, we're doing this and this is how it works. And if people, I just don't get it. But you explained words. You sold concepts and ideas. Well, yes, we're still selling concepts and ideas,

but the more visible and understandable you can make that idea. So again, for example, what I did is I was like, okay, like I'm starting from nowhere. I'm like, how am I going to show them what a legal podcast is? Because most people are thinking podcast, Joe Rogan, hey man, like I went this weekend and like, did you see that on the news? Yeah, cool. Like, and attorneys are going to be like, I don't want that. What do you mean, a legal podcast?

So I was like, I had this idea of like seven to ten questions. It's authority positioning. We're going to provide them with the questions. They just need to give their answers, make it super low friction, super easy. They don't have to study. They don't have to create content. They don't have to get guests if they don't want to. They literally just have to show up and talk.

So all I'm trying to do is take advantage of their, you know, with whatever's natural to them, which for attorneys is talking for the most part. So I tried to create a very frictionless process. I had actually a friend of mine that lives here on the island. He's a Miami family divorce attorney. He goes back and forth. And then he had a buddy who's a criminal defense attorney who actually has a show on court TV. And I was like, hey, like, we're going to do this.

We're going to have you on this podcast. I'm going to have my host talk to you. You're going to answer questions, blah, blah. Is this cool? And they're like, oh, yeah, we'll do that for you, man. Don't worry about it. We did that. We just kind of framed it and said, here's the legal podcast network.

Here's what a legal podcast network does. here's how it benefits you. And I just kind of like win in. And I made it make sense to my audience. They didn't have to guess. They didn't have to use their imagination. I literally just tried to spell it out for them, even though I was just using my buddy. And our very first podcast that was shot, he was sitting in my little office that was like a like a six by eight office. like it was literally the entryway of my house that I had made into an office because it overlooked the ocean there and I loved it. So he just sat in there and talked for a half hour and then boom, we did everything we needed to do and got it out. So you have to make what you're doing an actual thing before it becomes a thing. And let's not fake it till you make it. It's show them

what they're going to get. So that would probably be the second thing. If I was, you have, you can't explain your vision as well as you can show people your vision. And people are good at sales and are good at talking like we are. And I don't even know if that's correct grammar, but you understand my point. We have a tendency to depend on our innate abilities of just explaining things. But first of all, that's not duplicatable. And I would say that's the third thing. Everything you build out, build it out as if you already have the level you need to get to level one. So when I I built everything, I built it for 100 clients. Well, when I got to about 80, it broke. And I had to readjust it. I built it up to, I think we're at a 500 client infrastructure,

but I've had three iterations in between to get to this point. Because what I thought would get us to 500 broke at 120. What I thought would get us to 500, broke it, you know, 150. Now we're a little around 200, a little over 200. And we have plenty of infrastructure, plenty of people. We have all the people in place. Build for your next state. instead of your current place because then you won't outrun your infrastructure break, lose clients, get bad reviews, and then have to start all over from scratch. And then you end up being one of those idiots, whoever two years reopens their company name,

not because they're progressing, but because they don't want their reviews to be found. Yeah, love it. Yeah, great advice, very solid advice. I am having trouble hearing you. I'm not sure why. Can you hear me now? Testing?

Is that better? Can you hear me? Let's try it. Yeah. You hear me now? I can't hear you, my man. Huh. Yeah.

I don't know why either because I am definitely connected. Let me see. Let me try this. Sometimes it jumps onto my iPhone, so let me just turn it off. It just will do it in the middle, and I apologize for that. Yep. Is that better? All right.

Hello, hello? I am not sure. I should be hearing you. Yeah, I should be. Here, let me check the microphone speaker. It switched on me. Can you hear me now? Give me just a second.

Try it again. Hello, hello, hello. There we go. I'm sorry. It literally switched my headset in the middle of this thing. I don't know why. No worries, no worries. All right, let's continue from there.

What I was saying is, yeah, I'm just saying those are really great tips. So make sure you guys jot those down. You can come back, rewind it if you need to. But those are really, really great tips if you want to start a network of any kind, you know. And I love the last one that you, you gave because you literally, it was all about load testing, right? Like, hey, I know that this is for 100. It's probably going to start to break.

It's a certain point. And as you added clients, it put more load on it. And then you realize, okay, now we have to build that next iteration. So always thinking ahead. It's super smart because a lot of folks don't think like that, you know, and what ends up happening is all the things that you said, negative reviews, frustrated people, people end up leaving. and then you have to go back to the drawing board,

which is never a fun place to be. Been there, done that, not fun. Yeah. Well, and me too. It's like, why do I know what to do now? Because I did it wrong before, right? Yep, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, so I wrote a book. My second book came out in July. It's called The Life-Changing Power of Adversity. And, you know, the subtitle is How to Overcome Struggle, Unlock Your Potential, and Blaze Your Own Trout to Success. But I love the title because most people don't see power and adversity and you clearly leverage the power of your adversity to help you, right? Like, reframe it for what it's worth and leveraged it for good. And I think that the tests and the things that you went

through in your early years have really helped shape and mold who you are. And it's given you the innate ability to have conversations with anybody, to build strong teams, to understand strengths and weaknesses and so I love how you've just leveraged it. I'm just kind of putting the pieces together on how you've kind of leveraged it as you've weave through life. And I just want to say kudos to you, you know, because not everybody can take the tough things and turn it into good, you know, and that's clearly what you've been able to do. Well, I want to make sure our audience gets connected with you. And I know you've got a million places. You put out a lot of content. You've got this amazing network. Where's the one place you want folks to reach out?

So if you are interested in just knowing me or being connected with me to hear what I'm saying and you think there's some value in the words that this mouth spits out, then LinkedIn's probably the best place, Dennis Meadow, M-E-A, D-O-R. If you are interested in connecting with my company because you like the concept of what we're doing, which I didn't talk much about, but we take 30 minutes of a podcast session and that becomes a month's worth of marketing. It's a full podcast. It's then put on 25 different networks. We create 30 pieces of content out of it. We take those 30 pieces. We create 10 accounts, unless you already have it, on 10 social media outlets. And then we just rotate those 30 pieces so that you have the different one on different days on every piece, but never the same one on two different pieces on the same day.

We also take and we do a two to three pages of content, FAQ content. So that is for a 30-minute session. If you do an hour, which is two shows a month, we're talking about two posts a day, and everything doubles from there, 60 pieces of content, blah, blah, blah. If you're doing four shows a month, then three times a day we're posting. Every week you're getting a new show. Every week you're getting two to three pages of content. Plus next month, we're launching, we have a launch event on January 13th, on LinkedIn.

We're streaming it. So you can probably find me. If you find me, you'll find that. We're not only are we launching our new show, but we're launching two streaming television networks that you can download through Amazon, Roku, Samsung, all of that stuff. One's called LPN Life, and that is we have about 20 shows for attorneys because we're trying, like you talked about an ecosystem. We're launching LPN Eco. So we did LPN, LPN 2.0, where we went from three pieces of content to 30 pieces of content. Now our next iteration is LPN Eco for ecosystem.

We're adding in the streaming television networks, one for attorneys and one called LPN Answers, which is content from attorneys. We're also launching in beta a podcast matching service within legal. So if you're a show and you want guests or if you're a guest and you want to be on shows, we're going to do like kind of a concierge sort of white. glove. It's not just like an inner end and get, but we actually curate and say, here's three people that fit your your profile. So, and I just wanted to throw that in because like we are constantly trying to get better, add more, better, faster, less friction, right? So we're working on the better.

Once we get it in place, we'll make it faster. Once we figure out the friction points, we'll have less friction. So that's where we're at, get a hold of us on either one of those ways. And, hey, we'd, we'd love to help you out. We're also launching the authority podcast network and the expert podcast network, which is going to very quickly be a mirrored ecosystem that will have authority as more national, international shows, and then expert is going to be more focused on helping them be an expert locally, your local real estate expert, your local mortgage expert versus the authority on helping podcast networks, you know, monetize and grow their reach or something like. Love it. Love it. We'll appreciate you given that context. We're going to make sure we get all of DM's info down in the show notes.

So, folks, if you are a legal podcast or really any other niche with the future of what's coming with the legal podcast network, make sure you guys reach out to him. He's a great guy. He's not going to reply back to you if you send him a message. So make sure you all reach out. But we'll make sure we link everything in the show notes so you guys can grab it, get connected. DM, I appreciate you coming on the show. You're definitely blazing trails out there. there. That's why I knew I had to have you on. You've been building incredible things since 14 years old with the first business and you're continuing to build. And I know that if I talk to you a year from now, you'll probably have a couple other companies out there. So folks, make sure you connect with DM Meador. All his infos down in the show notes. Thanks again for tuning

into the show. DM, any final thoughts for the audience? You know, the show's about blazing your own trail. And I think at the end of the day, that is what I would encourage people to do. a lot of people look around and say, well, I don't see other people doing this. Do you want to be like other people? Because if what you want is different than what other people have, then you have to be willing to do what other people don't. Love it, love it.

Great advice. Go out there and blaze your own trail, folks. We will see you on the next episode. And happy new year if you were listening to this in the month of December. you might be listening to this in 26 and that's okay as well. What I know about blazing trails is it's never easy, but it's always worth it. So keep it up, folks. We'll talk to you soon.