In Search Of Excellence - Brian Lee: Entrepreneurs Don’t Wait – Take a Risk, Work Hard, and Don't Be Afraid | E44

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Brian Lee is a rock-star serial entrepreneur and incredibly successful venture capitalist. He is also a great philanthropist dedicated to leaving and impact and giving back to the community.He is a co-founder and ex-CEO of LegalZoom, a co-founder and ex-CEO of ShoeDazzle, a co-founder and ex-CEO of the Art of Sport, co-founder and current CEO of Arena Club, and co-founder of the incredibly successful venture capital firm, BAM ventures.Brian Lee is also an amazing person, dear friend, and a mentor and I am very grateful for having him on In Search of Excellence!(00:00) – Brian Lee's backgroundWho is Brian Lee?Brian’s parents and their coming to AmericaHow Brian’s dad built a successful business(06:59) – Can you learn to be an entrepreneur?It can be learned, but most entrepreneurs are born with that DNAEntrepreneurs don’t wait, they seize opportunitiesIf you have an idea and want to peruse it, go and do itEntrepreneurship is mostly a young person’s game(09:09) – The advice to people who are afraid of failureIt’s ok to fail, failing is learningYou have to get back on the horse and keep going, many entrepreneurs failed several timesYou have to be focused and work very hardNothing happens out of itself(14:25) – Brian’s education and the importance of attending a collegeHigh school - wanted to be a rapper, tried it and it didn’t workCollege - went to UCLA School of LawSalesmanship is a key for everything you do in life, whatever you do, you are sellingCold calling is one of the best skills to learn(21:09) – Are grades important when hiring someone for a job?No one pays attention to the grades, but it’s important to finish what you startedWhat is important are commitment and driveImportant traits – dedication, loyalty, ability to see things throughWhat to do when you are unhappy on your job – stay or leave? A little bit of pain in life is inevitable, sometimes you have to suck it up!(21:09) – The grass is always greenerStick it out and do well with what you are given (28:02) – LegalZoomThe late-night call with Robert Shapiro at 9:00pmLegalZoom's goal was to bring trust to people, not steal informationResources Mentioned:LegalZoomThe Honest CompanySponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

No one ever says, I've got the perfect job and I'm 100% happy all the time. It just doesn't exist. It just doesn't. It's like, there's a quote that I kind of love from Henry Ford, right? And he said, you know, if you think the grass is greener on the other side, maybe you should pay more attention to your own garden. My guest today is my great friend, Brian Lee. Brian is a rock star serial entrepreneur and incredibly successful venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and ex-CEO of LegalZoom, which had $575 million in revenue last year and has a market value of $1.75

billion today. The co-founder and ex-CEO of Shoe Dazzle, a company which grew to more than $100 million in sales within two years after starting the company before it merged with JustFab. The co-founder and ex-CEO of The Art of Sport, where he partnered with none other than the late Kobe Bryant, and is the current CEO and co-founder of Arena Club, where he's partnered with Derek Jeter, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes. Brian is also the co-founder and CEO of the incredibly successful venture capital firm BAM Ventures, which has had many billion-dollar exits.

And he is an incredibly generous philanthropist who is dedicated to giving back to our community. Brian, welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thank you for having me. Excited to talk to you. You're my first live guest I've ever had in the studio, so I appreciate you being here, and let's see how it goes today. Let's do it. Let's go. Yeah.

I always start my podcast with our family because our family prepares us for preparation, our future, our values. Tell me about your parents, and tell me specifically about your parents coming here with $500 and a wallet and two suitcases. for preparation, our future, our values. Tell me about your parents and tell me specifically about your parents coming here with $500 and a wallet and two suitcases. Oh, yes. Basically, I was born in Korea, in Seoul. And my parents, this is in the early 70s, moved to the United States with me and my older sister.

I was two years old at the time. And we landed in America. My dad had his family, two pieces of luggage and $500. And that's how we started our life here in America. And what was that like growing up? What did your dad do? I want to know a little bit about him working in the furniture business and how he progressed and worked his way up to the furniture business. Just take us through the progression and what you learned from him and the values you learned from him. Yeah, sure. So my father is one of my biggest inspirations in life and so is my mother. We're all super close. But when we moved to the United States, my parents, they're both college educated, but they didn't speak the

language. And so they took kind of menial jobs, if you will, right? So my dad had two jobs. One was working at a furniture factory, making booth furniture for restaurants, like those, the booth furniture. And then in the evenings, he would work in the orange fields and pick oranges with the day laborers. And my mom worked for Bayer Aspirin, and this is before automation. And so she sat at a conveyor belt and counted 25 pills to a bottle. And that's how we started our life here. When they come home and talk about their work, and did you see how hard they were working were how old were you when you actually noticed man they worked their asses off you know it wasn't it wasn't until much

later truthfully when i was in high school that i really realized like what my parents went through to create a better life for my sister and myself um my mom told me this story that when she was at bayer aspirin or at bayer they would ask for volunteer workers for overtime. And she was always the first to volunteer. She would raise her hand because you get paid a time and a half for overtime even back then. And so you just realize like, gosh, you know, they work super hard. And it wasn't until high school that I realized with this type of opportunity that they're providing to us, like I've got to work hard too. I'm not going to put their hard work to waste, right? So that's when I realized I had to kind of kick it up a notch. Up until then, I was kind of lazy with

grades and studying and everything else, but that's when I kind of took it to another level. At some point, your dad worked his way up and started his own company, entrepreneur. You have the gene. Tell us about what it was like watching him go from working in a factory in a furniture store to starting his own business and build a very successful business. Yeah. So my dad, he was making furniture. And he would ask the owner of the furniture shop, like, can I go sell the furniture? And the owner would always say, no, well, your job is owner of the furniture shop, like, can I go sell the furniture? And the owner would always say,

no, well, your job is to make the furniture. So my dad actually told me that he convinced the store or the company owner to let him sell furniture on the weekends. And he said, well, if I sell this furniture on weekends, will you give me the same commission that you're giving your other salespeople? And he said, yes. Dad would sell furniture on weekends, will you give me the same commission that you're giving your other salespeople? And he said, yes. Dad would sell furniture on weekends. And it was interesting

because this is the early 70s before a very large wave of Asians came in. And so my dad would knock on the doors of Chinese restaurants and Japanese restaurants. And they were just like, they're kind of amazed. Like, wow, there's an Asian sales guy selling me furniture. And so they all became friends with my dad. And so he started selling them booth furniture. But then what my dad realized was that after he sold them furniture, it would take a long time for them to order again, right? Because furniture lasts a long time. So my dad started well what can i manufacture in asia right with his connections in asia and bring over here to the united states and use my restaurant connections and so this was pretty avant-garde at the time right this was pretty uh early in terms of uh importing and and using manufacturing

in in asia this is the early, or actually now it's probably the mid to late 70s. And then, so my dad thought utensils, stainless steel flatware. And so he kind of built that business working at selling to these restaurants and so forth. And his sales pitch was pretty simple. He told me the sales pitch. He said, if I could give you the same quality fork for half the price, would you buy it from me and of course the answer was always yes right so my dad built a pretty sizable business in utensils stainless steel utensils and and then he started fabricating a lot of other stainless steel uh goods and so he moved into uh auto parts as well and so like midas was one of his clients where he would make the stainless steel muffler tips.

And I think there was some auto companies like Smitty built. He would make the railings on trucks, like stainless steel railings and so forth. So he built a nice business. You were born with the DNA. You're one of the best entrepreneurs I've ever met. Oh my God, that's right.

You've had an incredible career. Can you learn to be an entrepreneur without having the DNA, born to be an entrepreneur? And were you influenced watching your dad? I mean, did you have it from the moment you were born or were you looking at your dad? Oh my God, look what he's done. Look what he's built. I got to do that. You know, it's a great question. I think entrepreneurship can be learned. Of course it can be. But at the same time, I do believe that most entrepreneurs have that DNA or are born with that little part of them that wants to go start something and build something. It's interesting because I meet a lot of folks, you know, just being in business and so forth, and they come to me and say, you know,

I'd love to be an entrepreneur someday, right? And my answer to them is always like, why not today? And I think most entrepreneurs kind of seize opportunities. If they come up with a good idea, if they see something that they want to go do, a lot of them just go do it, right? It's like you don't wait. Because I hear all sorts of things like, well, I'm just working at this company

to get more experience. And in due time, I'll go start something. And most of the time, it just doesn't happen. Most entrepreneurs, if they have that idea, they're going to go do it right and i i really do believe that and it's um and it does become harder it does become harder as you age that's the situation which is i always say entrepreneurship is sometimes uh oftentimes a young person's game because you know at some point you get married some a lot of folks get married. Then you have kids.

And then you have tuitions to pay and rents to pay and mortgages and car payments and everything else. And it becomes harder and harder to actually take that risk, to jump into the abyss and try something. So I guess my suggestion to anyone listening is if you have an idea, you really want to pursue it, go do it. So many people we know have great jobs. And we know a lot of people who are not millionaires, but a lot of people who work in companies are making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year. They have great ideas, but they don't do it. And the reason they don't do it is fear of failure. And that's true from someone right out of school. I should do this. I have a burning passion.

They do it because of the opportunity cost of changing the job and not doing it. They feel bogged down. What's your advice to these people? So many great ideas. We spend a lot of our days listening to pitches. And we have a lot of friends who pitch you ideas. Hey, Brian, we're good friends. What's your advice for people to get over the fear when people are going to lose their job, give up their job, take on more debt, take on credit card debt, and then they're afraid of being known as a failure?

It's public when you fail these days. It's on social media. It's everywhere. Yeah, you know, I think I might be missing that antenna, right, of fear in terms of starting something or failing at something. I really don't care if I fail. I honestly take that as a learning lesson, lesson. Of course, you don't want to fail, but it's okay. And that's what I try to tell any aspiring entrepreneur. It's okay. And honestly,

it's like, you're never going to know. You're never going to know if something works unless you try it. And yes, are there a lot of companies that fall by the wayside that didn't work out? Sure. But again, that's all learning. It's all learnings. And I want to say, go take out massive debt and go try something or this or that. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that there are ways to get creative in starting something, too. You can always have a job and work really hard, work at night. That's how we started my first company. Actually, we had jobs.

We're going to get into LegalZoom. Yeah. I'm excited. Excited to talk about it. That's how we did it. You're just at work. You outwork everyone, right? So you're working two, three jobs sometimes to make ends meet,

but to go follow your dreams and passions and go try something. What about the people who get up the courage, they may raise some funds? We start with friends and family usually, unless you're really lucky and you make a product and it just starts taking off the shelf. What about the people who fail the first time?

Oh man, I'm done. I mean, how many successful entrepreneurs have you and I met who failed their third, three failures on the fourth one, they hit it big? And what's your advice to people who, okay, two companies, maybe not four. Four, something's wrong. Yeah.

But two companies, maybe not four. Four, something's wrong. But two companies, you're an entrepreneur, you were born it, it didn't work the first time. We know tons of people like this and many of the companies that you funded have that same profile. What's your message to all those people out there who, man, I failed, I can't believe it, I lost investors' money, I wasted two years of my life,

and then they don't want to try again, but they may have another great idea. How do they keep going? You've just got to convince yourself to get back on the horse and give it another shot. I know there's no other way to say that. It's just you've got to keep going. And if you really believe in your idea, if you really believe that you've got the capability to get it done, go try it, even if you failed the first time. And we, as an investor, I've invested in plenty of entrepreneurs that have failed once or twice before. Sometimes the third time or fourth time is a charm right and and it's just if you've got it inside of you to want to put all

your effort into something then seriously just you got just do it you got to go for it because there's no other way around no one's going to do it for you yeah you know like no one's going to do it for i mean how many times have you heard oh my gosh i had that idea too. Right? Oh, that it's like I was going to do this bubbly water or whatever it is with infusible. Uber is a great example by the way. A bunch of companies doing the exact same thing. Yeah, right? And so it's like all that kind of stuff

it's like you hear so many times somebody will say gosh, you know, I had that idea 10 years ago. Well then why don't you go do it? Right? So it's not the idea. It really isn't. It's do you have don't you go do it? Right? So it's not the idea. It really isn't. It's do you have it in you to execute it, right? And to give it your full effort. Because that's the other thing is it's, unless you're really focused on it, it's not going to just happen. Nothing just happens rarely. I mean, okay, maybe sometimes someone wins a lotto or something like

that. But most of the time, you've got to work for it. You know, almost all maybe sometimes someone wins a lotto or something like that, but most of the time you've got to work for it. Almost all the time you've got to work and you've got to outwork everybody. And it's all about executing on that idea. And if you fail the first time, take those lessons, take those learnings and try it again. Try something new. Maybe it'll work the second time. Let's talk about education, which I think is one of the most important ingredients to our future success. Graduate high school,

and you say, man, I want to be a Korean rapper, and I'm going to go in the music business, and mom and dad, I don't need to go to college, but I'm going to New York. Tell us what that was about, and then we can switch to

UCLA and you coming back to college. Yeah, you know, I always love... By the way, you've never rapped for me, ever. And when we go to dinner Tuesday night, I'm going to make you rap, and Mera's going to make you rap. Peer pressure. That's so funny. Yeah, no, I always loved music. Always loved rap music and hip hop. I really thought I wanted to be a rapper. This was in high school. I told my parents, I'm not going to college. I'm going to go pursue this rapping thing. This was back in the early 90s.

I don't think the world was ready for a Korean rapper yet. It took Psy, really, to come and break that barrier. But yeah, I'm actually happy I tried it. I went to New York, and we made some mixtapes, and we were trying to hustle and sell the tapes on the streets and give them to any producers that we knew. And it just didn't work. But we tried. And I had a lot of fun trying. But yeah, that's when I realized,

okay, maybe my parents are right. Maybe I should go get an education and went to UCLA. There's so much talk now about kids not needing to go to college. You got guys like Peter Thiel paying people for a Thiel Prize not to go to college.

Charlie, my son, you know well, loves selling shoes. He's an entrepreneur. He trades. He's got the gene. And for his junior year in college, I said, Dad, I'm not going to college. Charlie, you're going to college. Dad, why do I need to go to college? I know what I want to do. I said, okay, well, who's going to pay your rent, Charlie? What are you going to do? How are you going to get the capital? Yeah. I believe that education is the most important investment you can make in your future. And I also believe going to college that it's the learning environment, being away from home where you really grow as a person. You learn to make friends and you grow a lot and mature a lot.

Tell us you went back to UCLA. You were not a particularly hard studying student, but you did well in school. So you're one of those guys that people hate where you're not working that hard and then you get A's on your test. But what was, you went back to school, what was the experience like? Could you be as successful as you are today

without going to UCLA and then UCLA Law School? I don't think so. I kind of fall into your camp in terms of I do believe in education. And I do believe in that college experience. And I think most of it has to do with just perspective. Understanding different cultures, understanding different viewpoints, meeting people from all walks of life, and understanding, right? And I think that you can't get that almost anywhere else,

right? You're not going to get that as an entrepreneur, right? That type of perspective. And so I think the only place you can get that type of experience is in college, because I certainly did. It wasn't even so much the mature I was learning in school. Really, it was just learning about life and maturing in that sense. And I think you gain a lot from that, especially if you're going to be an entrepreneur and you want to, if you're doing anything,

a consumer especially, you want to understand what makes people tick. And you want to understand what makes people tick. You want to understand what moves people. The only way you get that is by getting perspective. There's so many opportunities for people to do whatever they want to do, their interests or hobbies. There's tons of clubs. These days, there's entrepreneurship clubs, business clubs, consulting clubs.

They didn't have those really when we were in school. I sold t-shirts door to door, as you know. Made t-shirts going in one door, out the other, getting kicked out. Did you ever sell Cutco knives? No, but I did. There was the Ginsu knives on TV, and I actually applied for a job in the mail for a door-to-door sales job and didn't get it. I was 16 years old. We actually never talked about this, but I

actually did apply for one of those jobs. Yeah, that's awesome. So as I was mentioning, I sold t-shirts door to door. I'd go in one door, I'd go out the other door, I'd get kicked out. But the cold calling experience was amazing. And the clubs, we didn't have the clubs, but the like-minded DNA people, it was fun to be around. It inspired me to be an entrepreneur when I saw other people being entrepreneurs. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And I think salesmanship is key for almost anything you do in life. It's all about sales. You're selling yourself.

You're selling the product. You're selling the service. Whatever you're selling, you're selling the products you're selling service whatever you're selling you're selling right and i i really believe that that um my at when i was at ucla my first job was actually selling oil futures i'm not sure if i ever told you this no but i don't even know what that is yeah that's an oil i was basically selling um like energy products uh it was like the company called was called remington Securities in Westwood and it was cold calling, dialing for dollars. And they literally

they would give you a phone book and say start dialing. And so I would say, hello, this is Brian Lee from Remington Securities. Would you be interested in investing in oil? So forth. And you learn very quickly how to hone your pitch. Because you get hung up on so many times cold calling. And you learn very quickly how to hone your pitch, right?

Because you get hung up on so many times cold calling. But then you get better and better and better at it. And eventually, I started making some sales. Yeah, that was my first job. What was your first sale? It was to somebody in Nebraska, in Omaha, Nebraska. And they purchased like five units of what we're selling. And it was a big

deal for me because that helped me pay for food for about a month. One of my first jobs, a summer job in college, I was working for a company called Mural Stone Construction. So I did home improvements in low-income neighborhoods in Detroit. And I walked into the office one day, there's 10 people on 10 phones and white page phone books, which no one even knows what that is today, but it's a phone book and just a hundred cold calls a day. Do you want to buy some aluminum siding today? Do you need any cracks in your sidewalk? Does your house need to be painted? And it was interesting because like you said, I think cold calling is one of the best, most important skills you can have in anything you do.

Yeah, I agree. So let's talk about how times have changed a bit since you and I went to school. We joke that we're old and things are very different today, but we do work with mostly young people. You're an entrepreneur. Most of your teams are young. My team is very young, and our portfolio companies and teams are young. When we were going to school, it was most important to get a high GPA. Everything was about GPA. And to go to law school, you obviously need a high GPA and you have to take board scores. Although

I've never heard of any direct correlation between your board scores and your success in life. I don't know why we're still taking the SAT. I think it's ridiculous. But today, are grades important? We don't hire people or even really look at the grades when we hire anybody today. Great question, Randy. I would say, yeah, I don't really pay attention to grades. I think the most important thing that I look for is does this person that I'm looking to hire have commitment, have drive?

So it's not so much their grades or their so that, it's completion. Do they graduate? That's all I really look for, right? Because it really is, and I heard recently, because my kids are getting to the age where they're starting to think about college, and I spoke to a college counselor once just recently. They said the most important thing to really show, even at colleges, is that you know how to finish, right? You start something and you see it through. And that's the same thing that I look for, truthfully,

when I hire is like, did this person see it through, right? Can I rely on this person? Because it's harder when you're looking at a resume and we've all seen these resumes where someone skips from job to job every three months. We don't hire job hoppers. More than two jobs in two years, we won't even look at the resume. Yeah, that's how we are. Because it shows lack of commitment.

There's something off if you're jumping around every three, six months, or even a year. We look for someone who is dedicated, loyal, and sees things through. What's your advice to the young professional who is a little bit unhappy at work because their boss is an asshole or doesn't like them looking at them in a funny way or it's a political atmosphere? They're not entirely happy or maybe not even happy at all.

Should they learn to get along with others and stay on a job for two years? Because that's part of being successful is you have to learn to deal with difficult people. There's great people. There's very difficult people. There are jerks who you're working with. Or do you leave the minute something gets rough and they don't like something and they go across the street. In addition to that, what if someone is modestly happy, they're making $60,000 a year, $100,000 a year, and there's a competitor who said, I'll give you $10,000 more. Or if they're making $100,000, I'll give you $20,000 more.

Do they leave or do they stay? Well, if it's a money thing, I would say stay. Because it's really more about experience at a younger age especially, and you want to get that experience. But in terms of if you're unhappy, look, I don't think anyone should be unhappy. I really don't. But at the same time, do you have to deal with a little bit of pain? Of course you do.

That's life. It just is. It's like everyone deals with some kind of BS at their job. Everyone. No one ever says, I've got the perfect job and I'm 100% happy all the time. It just doesn't exist. It just doesn't. It's like there's a quote that I kind of love from Henry Ford,

right? And he said, you know, if you think the grass is greener on the other side, maybe you should pay more attention to your own garden. Great quote. Yeah. And I really believe that because everything always looks great from the outside, right? It's like, oh my gosh, look at this person. They're so happy working in the music industry and they get to go to concerts all the time and find new talent. I want that job. That looks awesome. But then you get that job and you're like, this job sucks. Sometimes that happens, right? And you're just like, well, it's not always rainbows and unicorns on the other side, right? And sometimes you just got to suck it up and you just got to get it done. And hopefully you're more happy than not. Because again, I don't think

anyone should be unhappy, especially all the time. If that's the case, then maybe you should be looking. But sometimes you just have to suck it up. Right. So let's talk about sucking it up and doing something that sucks. Yeah. So we have a lot of things in common. One of the things in common is we went to law school with no interest in practicing law. We fucking hated law school. Yeah. And so we graduated law school, but we realized we need to make money and put things on our resume and learn something. But it was a means to an end for both of us. Tell us about Skadden, which is one of the best firms in the world.

And I read somewhere that you said you just want to put a bullet in your head, which is how I felt every single day I was there. Nothing against Skadden Arps, by the way, which I love. I have friends there, one of the best firms. I've worked with them many times over the years, but difficult to do. And so tell us about your time there. And were you plodding along thinking about, I'm going to do something in the future? And you can talk

about you and Brian Liu and just the precursor in the meetings prior to LegalZoom because that's where we're going next. Awesome. Yeah. So I actually enjoyed working at Scatted. I did. I really liked the partners that I worked with. I liked the people I worked with. I just didn't enjoy the work. And it's the work that kind of ate at me. I just wasn't getting a lot of fulfillment out of it. I was in the tax department. And so you structure some tax instrument, you save some mega corporation a billion dollars in taxes, and it just wasn't that fulfilling for me. I'm sure other people get excited about that, but for me, it didn't move me. And so I was always seeking something that would move me. And so that's when I started thinking, well, maybe I should go start my own thing.

And that's when I started talking to Brian Liu, who at that point was my best friend, and he's still my best friend. And we started thinking of ideas together, and that's the idea of LegalZoom. Well, let's talk about LegalZoom. Let's talk about the start of LegalZoom, talk about your condo. And we'll talk about, I think it was called GardenLaw.com in one part. LawGarden. LawGarden. And then you made a really interesting, smart, lucky phone call one night at 9 or 10 p.m. at night. Tell us how that all went down and how luck sometimes plays

a huge part in your future, in our future. Yeah. Yeah. So LegalZoom was an idea that came about when I was talking to Brian Liu, my business partner at LegalZoom. We both kept thinking, gosh, there's got to be something better than working at these law firms and something that we could get excited about. The initial concept, I'm surprised that you dug that up, but lawgarden.com. And the idea was that we were going to have a bunch of stay-at-home attorneys get online and answer your questions and chat with you for, I think it was like 99 cents a minute is what we're going to charge. We actually never launched it. We thought about it. We started

like, you know, sketching it out and everything else and modeling it, but it's just, it didn't work. The economics didn't work because at the end of the day, you're still practicing law. So then we'd have to get licensed or take the bar exam in all 50 states. And then on top of that, the legal insurance was prohibitive. We didn't have any money to pay that. And the most important thing is that since you're still practicing law, you couldn't raise money from non-lawyers. And so you could never sell the company to a non-lawyer or take the company public for fee-sweeping issues.

And so we kind of scrapped that idea and started thinking deeper about what else can we do. And that was the start of the idea for LegalZim of legal documents online and using the internet to kind of automate the process of forming these documents or creating these documents. And so that was the idea. But the thing is, and this,

a lot of people forget the early days of the internet, right? People were scared of it, right? People were scared of the internet. Like they did not want to put their credit card number into their computer because they didn't know where it was going, right? And so, but at LegalZoom, the idea we had asked for a lot more than your credit card information. If you're setting up a living trust, we were asking for everything.

Your bank account information, your savings account stuff, your home mortgage, like all of it. And so we're like, well, how are we going to build that trust with the consumer? I was at a great law firm and my partner was at a great law firm, but no one in America, unless you're in business, have ever heard of these firms. And so that didn't really bring a lot of credibility. And so that's when we started thinking, okay, maybe we need a face to LegalZoom.

It was really to bring trust that you could trust the site and it wasn't a fly-by-night company. We're not stealing your information. And so that's when we came up with a list of attorneys that we thought would be good for LegalZoom and Robert Shapiro. He just came off the O.J. Simpson case and the entire world knew who he was. And so we reached out to Robert Shapiro

to be our partner in LegalZoom. You got to get more detailed than that, my man. I mean, you man. I mean, you were, I mean, tell the story of when you called him, what time of day it was, and kind of what the banter was between you guys back and forth. Yeah. So it was, I reached out to everyone I knew to introduce me to Robert Shapiro. And my network at that time was pretty small. Right.

Right. And so no one I knew knew him. And so what I did was I called 411 information. And this is before Google, right? No one calls 411 anymore. No. But I called for information. I asked for Robert Shapiro, Attorney Century City.

And I got a phone number. And it was like 9 o'clock at night, to your point. And I had my voice message written out. And I was going to leave a voice message. So I called the number. And I didn't know at the time, but Robert, Bob, works a lot. So it was nine o'clock at night, and he picked up the phone. He's like, hello. I said, hi, I'm calling for Robert Shapiro. And he says, this is Robert Shapiro. How can I help you? I said, hi, I'm calling for Robert Shapiro. And he says, this is Robert Shapiro. How can I help you? I said, well, Robert Shapiro, the attorney? And he said, yeah, this is Robert Shapiro, the attorney. How can I help you?

I go, well, my name is Brian Lee, and I have a business idea I'd like to run by you. And the first thing he said was, I'm not interested. And I knew he was about to hang up on me. I said, well, wait. How do you know you're not interested if you don't hear me out? And he definitely heard the desperation in my voice. And he said, and I still remember this, he says, you've got two minutes. And in those two minutes, I told the entire vision of LegalZoom and what we're trying to do.

And at the end of it, he said, you know, I get a lot of calls, but I really like this idea, right? And I'm thinking of something similar. So why don't you call tomorrow at a normal time and set up a time to meet with me through my assistant? I said, sure, that sounds great. And so we set up a meeting, and it was off to the races after that. How many people do we know who want to get in touch with somebody, and they're intimidated to do so?

It could be they have a customer service problem. They're not going to email the CEO of United Airlines. Why wouldn't you do that? But if you're an entrepreneur, there are so many people you should call for relationships, partnerships, advice, mentorship, and so many people don't do it, but people do respond. What's your advice to those people who are sitting there thinking, I'm not going to call that CEO. That person's successful. That person's a millionaire. They're never going to take my call. They're never going to return my call. But what's your

advice to all those people? Why not? Just make the call. It's not that hard to pick up the phone and it's not that hard to email someone. Might as well try. What's the worst that's going to happen? They say no or they don't respond. I've gotten a million no's in my life, right? And a lot of people who have hung up the phone on me or not returned an email, it doesn't stop me. You just keep going. And a lot of times you get those very successful folks, entrepreneurs or bankers or whoever it is that you're trying to reach out to, and they won't respond. And they will because they'll find whatever you're saying is interesting.

And they want to take meetings. And it's kind of like this. You hear these stories. I remember a story once about i can't remember what actress it was but it was some actress who said you know um i think the interviewer said you must get asked out all the time you know you're single you're beautiful and then she says no one ever asks me out right and it's probably the same thing no one ever really calls no one calls me right and no one ever asks me out, right? And it's probably the same thing for a lot of entrepreneurs. No one ever really calls. No one cold calls me, right? And no one cold calls you.

Well, not often, right? So it's just, you know, it's just the way it is. People just don't take advantage of picking up the phone or sending an email.