Why should law firms build empires not kingdoms? with Travis Fox

Episode Notes

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:27] Travis: Hey, thanks. Let me be on the show, everyone. Um, just to give you a quick background, my name is Dr. Travis Fox. Most people just call me T cause it’s easy. Uh, I was born and raised, uh, for the first 10 years of my life outside the United States, even though I was born here, my mother was a model and actress and my father was a fighter pilot and I was good combo.

[00:00:43] I always tell people if you ever watched the original movie top gun with, uh, with Tom cruise. It didn’t end like that. It was like, why buy? I just didn’t work. You know, which for me, it was a beautiful benefit because I became by hemispheric, which is not a sexual thing. It’s about how your brain works.

[00:00:57] Right. So calm down everybody. Before we go there, [00:01:00] I learned, you know, complete left brain, you know, cognitive, uh, from my father who is multiple masters and was a fighter pilot. And I could learn to complete creative. And you know, out there in the creative realm of my mom, from the modeling acting. And I started my career at nine years old and I got my first modeling job for JC Penney’s as a runway model.

[00:01:17] And I started this true story and it started out of a by hemispheric argument. My father was like, well, you don’t understand the value of money. I’m like, I’m nine dad, what are you? I’m like, you’re supposed to teach me that brother. For those of you who are old enough to remember, I’m dating myself. I realized, but it’s when the very first Atari came out way back in the early eighties.

[00:01:36] And it was like $200 back then you got asteroids. And I wanted one and my dad said, well, no, you got to earn it. And I went, okay, how? And he goes, mow lawns. I go, that sucks. My mom said, well, why don’t you try modeling? I said, well, as long as I don’t get my, you know, my teeth kicked in for being, you know, with the good, the guys on the team.

[00:01:53] Yeah, I’ll do it as fate would have it. She taught me how to, you know, runway model to pivot, to smile. And I hold credit to [00:02:00] this day. My smile and being able to talk is because of her. She taught it to me when I was young, I ended up winning the, the audition and I got paid my 200 bucks and my dad said, well, you need to save it.

[00:02:08] I’m like, yeah. No money or you’re driving me to Kmart, I’m buying an Atari and I bought it. And that’s how my entrepreneurial entrepreneurial career really started. And then from there, you, obviously, the, the other side of me was mine. My father, my father, uh, really, it he’s an avid athlete, but he was good at things, but it wasn’t great at one of them.

[00:02:28] He put a golf club in my hand when I was five years old and I took to it naturally. And that really became of. The network of our relationship. It was based on golf. And by the time I was in high school, everybody knew Travis Fox was going to be on the PGA tour. That’s where it was headed. So my high school yearbook, everybody knows those captain of the golf team, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:02:43] And then this funny little thing happens and I bring this up for all of you. Cause all of you have experienced this in some form or another in your life. There is yeah. This true story. This. Your life is planned out. You know exactly what you’re going to be. It’s a lineage, it’s a legacy thing. It’s all of this.

[00:02:57] And your subconscious decides to show up and show you the [00:03:00] truth. That’s exactly what happened at Travis Fox. I became a first time father at 18 years old and had an absolute emotional meltdown. Not because I became a father because I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I had no idea how to manage, you know, now being a father, trying to go to university, still playing golf.

[00:03:18] Absolutely turned into. I went from literally, as it’s funny, people always ask me, Travis, how come you’re such a good head coach? I’m like, because I was a headcase first. I understand it. I, I, I I’ve been to the, I’ve been to the dark night of the soul and I hung out there for awhile. I had residents, they gave me a long-term lease.

[00:03:34] I was hanging out there for awhile and I went in as a real estate major and I came out a psychologist. And the reason I came out is because I met my mentor and my master, who I sat under for 15 years, who was an amazing soul. And he. Looked and said, Travis, um, have you ever looked at subconscious? Huh? I said what I’m like, I don’t remember.

[00:03:55] I don’t remember that class in any one of my classes. I have no idea what you’re talking about. And he, he introduced me to [00:04:00] subconscious modalities, emotional, traumatic levels. And he really started taking me down the road and I became instantly fascinated with, wait a minute, you can actually transform what you believe you can transform how you feel.

[00:04:11] And it isn’t this mindset thing. Cause I, you know, my, my real introduction to mindset started when I was 13 with two major influences. One was PTO. From Barnum and Bailey circus, because I kept looking at how do you build a legacy? How do you build an empire? How did this guy do this? When we didn’t have internet and cell phones and all the things we have now to do it at scale.

[00:04:28] And yet he did it and lasted 110 years simultaneously. I got introduced to Dr. Dennis. And the psychology of winning, which really started my career at 13. I didn’t know it in of course, 40 years later, you know, being able to co-produce and CoStar with him in a film was kind of that hero’s journey for me, which happened a couple of years back in 2020, and that’s how it started.

[00:04:46] So it was all mindset, mindset, mindset, mindset, mindset, mindset. Here’s the problem with mine. It doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? Because mine can’t solve itself. And so I turned into this absolute basket case going, I’ve been training [00:05:00] my mindset of golf, golf, golf, golf. I can handle it. I can handle the pressure.

[00:05:02] I’m ready to good. Better to now I had to translate that AF off the golf course and had no. How to transform my, my limiting belief structures. I didn’t know what, I didn’t know. My insecurities, my vulnerabilities and doc really took me down that road and it became the path of my life now, 31 years later.

[00:05:20] And that’s what I’ve done for 31 years. As I’ve gone around the world three times, I’ve a five time Emmy nominated and winning producer. I’ve won over 40 awards for producing and directing and telling stories. Okay. 

[00:05:32] Karin: Okay. I think that is the longest introduction. 

[00:05:36] Travis: Well, if you want, I got, it takes a little bit of time to introduce that.

[00:05:38] I mean, I’m not young anymore, 

[00:05:40] Karin: some major history there and, um, so many different avenues that we could be going down, but I think we’re going to focus today and what our big question is going to be is why should law firms build empires and not kingdoms? And so what we’re going to talk about. It at some point during your [00:06:00] intro.

[00:06:00] Uh, and going back to my favorite part of the intro was imagining a JC penny runway to begin with, again, I’m picturing JC penny, and I’m not picturing that lining up with a runway, but either way, 

[00:06:13] Travis: um, runway as a plane, but 

[00:06:16] Karin: obviously, right, right. Exactly. Either way runway model and JC penny, somehow don’t.

[00:06:21] Necessarily go 

[00:06:21] Travis: together in my brain back 40 years past, we’ve got to go back and raise family. I got to go back away. We didn’t have cell phones back then. So it was a little different world. 

[00:06:29] Karin: Well, and it’s an interesting case study because when you look at where the J JC penny empire was, and kind of how that has, um, you know, just kind of happened over history.

[00:06:42] Um, it’s kind of a sad story, but so let’s talk about let’s. So our big question is why should law firms build empires and not kingdoms? So, first of all, Travis, tell me what is the difference between an empire and a 

[00:06:54] Travis: kingdom? Yeah. And the simplest of languages and the most convenient for, for everyone listening to the show, [00:07:00] uh, uh, imagine your kingdom is usually.

[00:07:03] Yeah, I may have one or two or three offices. That’s your kingdom. And you rule your kingdom, you know, king and queen, however you, however that’s ruled you rule it, but it’s a single part entity. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s always up against other kingdoms, other law firms globally now and nowadays world where an empire is a much larger coagulation where it’s all Kings and Queens of several kingdoms come together to form.

[00:07:23] Bigger. Now you can analogize this to the Roman empire, to the Egyptian empire, to the automated, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. Empires come and go. But empires tend to last because of a resources, their availability to move information, data cash. Right. And three there’s redundancy. The challenge when we’re running our own kingdom is generally, it starts with you.

[00:07:44] You’re the, you’re the founding partner. You’re the managing partner. If you take off, you got to trust. And most often you can. I get it, but you’re still always a nervous ninny about what’s happening back home, which means even when you’re on vacation and you’re resting, you’re new. Right. And then you never really recharged [00:08:00] over time.

[00:08:00] It’s a depleting asset. And then when you want to, do you want to sell your kingdom to somebody else in your out? So that’s really the difference in the kingdom and an empire. Lisa’s how we put it together and help companies build. 

[00:08:09] Karin: Okay. So then your overall approach is to take them from a kingdom to an empire.

[00:08:13] Is that right? Correct. Okay. So what, so what’s the first step there? 

[00:08:16] Travis: Well, the first step is to identify what’s your. Right. For example, and I’ll use this. My son is a graduate of Georgetown law and, uh, and I’ve loved barred attorney over in DC. So I, I’m not an attorney kids. I play one on TV. Okay. I’ll be really crystal clear about that, right?

[00:08:32] Yeah. 

[00:08:32] Karin: You know, and love plenty of either a lot of them in your close 

[00:08:36] Travis: close-knit circles. I do. And you know, two of my partners are lawyers, you know, you know, they’re wonderful litigators and wealth management structure, guys who I’ve learned tons from, but here’s the thing I’ve heard from every single lawyer I’ve ever met.

[00:08:47] I don’t want. They all say the same thing. I go into school and law school wanting to be a lawyer and they come out on the other side and about five years into they go, Hmm, this is not the brochure that I got when I [00:09:00] signed up for the gig. And I’m like, yeah, I kind of get that. So the kingdom then first thing becomes about diff, well, we call defining your throne.

[00:09:06] What does that actually mean? What does your kingdom stand for? What are the principalities principle? Excuse me, that run your kingdom. Most people are very good at their job lawyers. All of you listening, you’re phenomenal at your job in some form or. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re anything more than an entrepreneur or a glorified job.

[00:09:25] You just have more responsibility if you’re the actual owner of the firm or the managing partner, but that doesn’t make it an independent brand. Right. And that’s what we really want to move you to because there’s a, there’s a hierarchy in business, right? There’s the independent contractor, a DBA will for lack of definition, then you’re gonna move to a business and the business is going to make you good revenue and give you a fairly good lifestyle, but you’ve got to stay.

[00:09:44] It doesn’t go without you in some form or another where a brand slash empire can’t. It also has a bigger exit strategy because of its valuation it’s growth, its reach its IP, et cetera. So that’s the challenge. So what do we really stand on? Because again, if [00:10:00] we all came in with the idea that we, you know, we want to be lawyers, we want to go defend the law.

[00:10:03] We love that. We want to, you know, make our good cause whatever division of the law you, you represent, are you still on point. And I, I found most, not all. I’m sure there’s someone on the call. Who’s going to give me a contrarian argument and I get it. You guys are designed to make arguments, so I’m not, I’m just trying to make connective strategies.

[00:10:19] That’s a different, different kingdom, but then the last. They’re not there on what pays the bills. What gets the firm going? What keeps the employees going? And you’re constantly in this, I’ve got a bot I’ve got to go out and solicit, get new business, be converting that business over. And now the sudden the law isn’t actually what you do.

[00:10:36] You’re focused on the business side, but let’s be candid most, not all, a lot of law firms, especially let me know the smaller to medium sized ones. They had to learn their business skills a lot. Right. It’s not what you taught as a lawyer. No different than, Hey, as a psychologist, they taught me how to be a connective strategy, communications, Britain, you know, break down the entire system, but didn’t teach you how to win business.

[00:10:55] Karin: Right? Exactly. I say the same thing, you know, I have an MBA, [00:11:00] I know how to run a business, but I’m not about to do my own legal work. Um, so for the same reason that I’m going to hire a lawyer who knows what they’re talking about when I have legal issues. Lawyers need to hire a strategist or a business person or some kind of a coach or whatever the case might be, whose expertise that is to do 

[00:11:18] Travis: that piece of it.

[00:11:19] Well, I think the key you’re absolutely correct. And I love that, you know, how you approach from your marketing agency makes total sense to me because let’s be candid. This allows the lawyers in the law firm to do what they do your job is to help them grow the business. But the challenge that we run into, and this is part and part, I watched.

[00:11:36] And I want them again, brilliant human being masters degree in public administration from USC Georgetown law degree. He’s a, you know, he’s a poster child for what, you know, your American dream could look like. And even I go, that’s my kid. Wow. I thought he was gonna be in therapy for the rest of his life and growing up with me as a father.

[00:11:53] So I was like, right. Yeah. But I looked at that. And what was the fundamental challenge? The fundamental challenges. Even then he could [00:12:00] put the link, could put the business together. He could put the articles together, could put the structure together. And I said, great. So what’s your sales modality? What’s your pitch?

[00:12:06] Why should they go with your law firm? Another, yeah. Dead silence, no idea. No clue. And so when you really look at it, when we say claim your throne, what is it that you can hang your hat on? And we create a marketing strategy with, you know, obviously someone like Caryn who obviously does this, or the quest that comes around and says, here’s all the things you’re going to run into.

[00:12:23] I know you’re a lawyer and you’re a bad-ass operator, but you might still have a fear of public. Or you might have a fear of success that you don’t know about. And it’s embedded in there because of a wonderful thing called our education, right? Or we call the four pillars, mother, father, religion, and culture, but our educational system at large, especially when we’re doing our formative years, one through 17 is really about conformity.

[00:12:44] It’s about shaving off those edges that you would call the misfit in yourself. And so you could fit in or what’s called subconscious modeling. We modeled it in, here’s the problem. That’s not where your master should lives. So we may have shut down those parts. But if we’re so busy going well, I’m a brilliant lawyer.

[00:12:59] I know I’m a [00:13:00] litigator. I know how to get in there. I’ve talked to juries. Great. Have you done a speech in front of a thousand people yet to advertise your firm? Yeah. 

[00:13:06] Karin: So tell me this throne. Is this a, is this like your unique positioning or is this the heart of why you got into law school or is it some combination of both?

[00:13:19] Travis: It’s actually a combination of both. Yeah. Okay. So it’s a metaphor because. Uh, let me, let me go, let me go. Let me sound like I’m really cool to all of you. Beautiful counselors out there for 30 seconds, right? I’m a big dork. I admit it. I got it. So let’s just own that, but let me just sound like I’m cool.

[00:13:34] Yeah. The thing that we do is thing called reverse hypnotic thematic learning through, through Cynthia mastic movement. Let’s try that on Latin people. 

[00:13:43] Karin: Let’s try that again. A little slower, cause I think I got 

[00:13:46] Travis: reverse, reverse hypnotic thematically. Through Cynthia mastic movement. It’s a really fancy way of saying, Hey look, nothing.

[00:13:56] You’re going to change in you, your ideology, your thought [00:14:00] processing is going to come from here. First, what you would know in the simplest of languages, mind, body, spirit, that’s sequential order that we all subscribe to as they concept is actually the fundamental reason why we can’t. Because when we start with mind, mind can’t solve itself.

[00:14:15] Even Einstein said that, which created the problem can’t solve it. So when we start with this, we get frustrated because we think we’ve got to do more mindset stuff, mindset stuff. And as lawyers, you’re already bad-ass operators, because you’re all about, uh, finding the angle, finding the argument, making a quality argument and using the law to validate that argument.

[00:14:32] That’s your job and your phenomenon, but then you have people like current or her job is. Well, what is it? You specialize in, what’s your real passion because you got into law for a reason. I don’t care if it’s for the money or the altruism, your choice, but you got into it for a reason and somewhere along the way, and it’s not just with lawyers, but in particular, this conversation, we lose sight of what we’re really interested in because you’re going to get to a point, if you haven’t already family, where you’re going to go, well, what’s my passion.

[00:14:57] What’s my purpose. I’ve lost my vision. I don’t, I don’t know what my [00:15:00] mission is anymore. And I damn sure don’t want my legacy is, and we all want to leave that deep down inside. So the heart of. Allows us to move in that space. But when I say that, that sounds all woo buoy and like, oh, let’s have some thought of Mount shave her head and have a great night.

[00:15:13] Then we’re not going to ask me yoga. Iowasca because that’d be great. I agree. You can, I’ve done those too. I’ve done all the drugs too. So I hold myself in contempt of court, but okay. But it’s still at the end of the day that doesn’t create effective change. It creates perceptional shifts. Great, but that’s not change.

[00:15:31] And we need to transform ourselves. If we’re going to become that, which we want to become no different than when you first went to law school, you had to transform yourself into being a lawyer and a bar. Now attorney versus a law student, right. Here’s the problem. The problem is when you look at this from a perspective of what I was saying a moment ago, we are generally operating on repetitive pattern or automated automated process, run through our subconscious thinking that we’re actually in [00:16:00] control and we’re not.

[00:16:01] Yeah. And we can prove it. How watch watch your daily routine, any one of you listening the car and show right now, just take a gut, check on yourself and watch your patterns. Stick of your daily routines. Now some of it has merit. Don’t get me. But a lot of it actually becomes the actual inability for you to grow into a bigger law firm, into a bigger empire, into ability to really do what you wanted to do is one.

[00:16:23] You want it to be in the law, but cut the crap family. You wanted to be free. You wanted to make enough money that you could go do whatever you wanted to do. And that’s the dream of every person who’s ever got into business. Whether for somebody else or for themselves, we always. Where’s that dream living right now.

[00:16:37] That’s where the throne starts. If we don’t know what that actually is, you are truly a serial job. 

[00:16:45] Karin: Okay. So the throne starts kind of where that dream was and kind of at the heart of what was driving you to start this law firms are at this business. 

[00:16:56] Travis: Well, beyond that go beyond your offer, you [00:17:00] can just go to loss.

[00:17:00] Well, some people did, right. I get it. All right, generalities. Right? You were in love with the idea, the idea of it, the ideology of it with the process, et cetera. The heart of your castle is an easier way when we do, what’s called us enthusiastic movement, us enthusiastic movements, a really cool fun way.

[00:17:17] That gets me great dinner reservations. When people go, I want to hang out with that guy. So he’s a big syllable words beyond that. It’s a really simple way of saying when we put you into the fantasy realm, gameplay, archetipal symbology, where you’re playing a game in the fantasy. Two things occur. You can assimilate information faster and turn it into whatever you want it to be.

[00:17:38] Even though it feels like a fantasy, it ends up showing up in your reality and you move from, I need to go to this daily motivation, this daily inspiration to that spark that started your initial journey into law school. Ultimately becoming an attorney so that it’s a lifelong spark because there’s a big difference to team motivated.

[00:17:55] And literally being on fire. 

[00:17:57] Karin: Okay. Let’s unpack that for a second. So like the idea of [00:18:00] gameplay, cause I see this on your website and this idea of, um, this empire kingdom, all of, all the wordplay with, with all of these archetypes that you’re talking about. Um, and so how do we break that down into this idea of, of game play in terms of.

[00:18:17] What you’re calling an empire, and I know that’s intentional that word versus kingdom. So how do you bring that gameplay idea that gamifies this, this building? Because I know myself, uh, I’ve read a lot about habit forming and getting all of those atomic habits and all, all of those great books about, you know, how you really, truly.

[00:18:40] Get growth at those atomic levels and gamifying. These, these habits is a significant part of, I hate the word mindset because it’s so overdone, but just getting that into your brain and then translating the brain into your process and your daily existence. So [00:19:00] how does that translate into what we’re talking about in terms of empire?

[00:19:04] Travis: Yeah. Great question. Thank you. A great observation, by the way. And seriously, I’ve been on podcasts are like, what, what am I nevermind. Well, let’s just, just go to the quick, so when you’re talking about like person Cynthia stick movement, we’ve got 50 years of science and scientific data backing 

[00:19:19] Karin: up an energy.

[00:19:20] One second, Cynthia. Yeah. Or Sydney 

[00:19:23] Travis: that definition is that it is literally putting someone into the fantasy realm or the subconscious realm where they can rework things and bring it back into their reality or into the conscious level. 

[00:19:32] Karin: Okay. So kind of gamifying right now that kind of. Okay. So we’re talking about empires, kingdoms, fiefdoms, all of the words that like, you know, five dong, whatever it is, I’m picturing, like, you know, those SIM city games that we had way back where you had, you were like building your little, uh, your little kingdom.

[00:19:52] Really? I think it was called back then. And then it was, it was, you know, getting into larger and larger areas. So, so this I, Cynthia. [00:20:00] What is it since easy astic movement 

[00:20:02] Travis: movement. Call it fantasy gameplay, make it 

[00:20:05] Karin: easy. Gamifying your growth, basically. 

[00:20:09] Travis: Yeah, well let’s, let’s be candid. Let’s use let’s quote, the great Alan Watson.

[00:20:12] Let’s start this, this answer to that frame. Great. Alan Watts said, Hey, you know, life doesn’t define death. Death defines. Okay. So death is eminent life as a choice. Yes. So if we’re gonna use mindset, although I don’t, I load that word personally myself, but the simplicity of this conversation, if your mindset says that, Hey, death is eminent.

[00:20:30] Life is a choice. It’s going to start framing how you approach things. But most of us don’t frame it that way. We do everything we can to avoid. The ideology or the thought process that death is eminent. We don’t want to talk about that because it’s a scary thing. And a lot of places, it might not happen to me.

[00:20:43] Right. You know, frail, I’m looking for cryo baby, come on, come on sales, figure out how to figure this out, man. You’re the, you’re the guy, Elon Musk. Why don’t you guys figure that out so we can get this done, right? Because, but the bottom line is if we don’t go and like you said, all those books. [00:21:00] They are the phenomenal books.

[00:21:01] Don’t get me wrong. Here’s the problem. You’re still filtering through the exact same guarded structure. So if you imagine your mind and your body and your life is a castle, you’re the king and queen of it inside and out front, you know, you’ve got your Tourette’s and you’ve got your Drawbridge and there’s a mode.

[00:21:14] And however you designed it. But I brought there’s this little guard running around and whatever works for you now, and maybe some trolls under the bridge, you know, you gotta pay the goals of gold coins and tokens, but here’s the deal. When you look at that, there’s this little guard, it’s a beautiful metaphor for you to couch this understand.

[00:21:31] Is that on the Drawbridge? There’s a little garbage. The spirit says who goes there, that determines who gets in to the castle to see the king and queen. Now that guard in analogous where represents your conscious mind, it believes it controls what goes into the sub-con. Here’s the challenge. It only guards that one little Drawbridge, there’s three other walls that can go underneath the castle.

[00:21:49] You go over the walls, you can parachute in that it can’t focus. It’s scientifically it can’t do it holds one thought per second. That’s it. So when we’re reading books, as an example, it’s only looking from [00:22:00] its point of view and it’s already filtering based on your subconscious and deeper level called the emotional traumatic level of how you frame the word.

[00:22:08] That has nothing to do with your cognitive education by friends. It has to do with how you as a person work. So by moving you into the fantasy realm through architectural symbology called the warrior, the wizard, the Bard, and the jester, we can start identifying how we operate. Example if you’re a wizard, there’s a high degree of probability.

[00:22:28] You tend to lean on your. No lawyer I’ve ever heard of ever does that, but just assume that that’s the truth. You lean on it, but you’re also, you’re hyper analytical. You’re the geniuses of the world you’ll find the angle. Yeah. But there’s always a balance in the universe. And the balance of the wizard is the bit, the wizard always will find stuff.

[00:22:45] So if I find the flaw, which is what I’m looking for, then I’ve got to solve that and then I’ll find the next flaw. And then it’s like, and you would know that as stain at night, looking at the ceiling fan at three in the morning, well, the head’s spinning at a hundred miles an hour, right? So we can read all the books that we want.

[00:22:56] And those are phenomenal books. Please don’t misinterpret my comment. But if [00:23:00] I don’t get past that guard at your gate, and I don’t get down to the subconscious and the emotional traumatic level where the truth lives for you. And I do it in a fun way, two things are gonna occur. One you’ll never change to.

[00:23:13] Okay. So in 

[00:23:13] Karin: that example of the wizard, the flaw and that, that guard that’s at the gate is the one that’s looking for the flaw all the time. And that’s there totally. If they’re right, but in that case, the wizard there, they’re constantly just looking for their flaw and they’re totally preoccupied with that.

[00:23:30] And that’s, that’s all they’re doing is constantly looking for that. 

[00:23:33] Travis: Correct. And that becomes. Right where we get stuck in our head for simplicity languages. It’s not going to have a loop and over and over, and the what if and the whatever and the future casting and what have I met? My prompts should have been different, but that was 30 years ago.

[00:23:43] And I played married a different person than if I had said this in cordovan. And you’re like, then you become a nut job. Right. And that’s because the genius. And you is also the insanity line, right? Because the wizards are true, brilliant, they’re brilliant human beings and they know, and all of us are wizards.

[00:23:59] I want to [00:24:00] qualify that everyone listening right now, you’re going to, well, that’s not me. Yes, it is. You’re all wizards. It’s just whether you lean on that wizard and the ideology of finding your throne, as you learn to balance, because a king and queen. Truly have the ability to call on their warriors at any given time as ambassador or defenders, they call on their wizards, which is their counselors.

[00:24:19] They call them their barns, which are their sales. There are people that reach out and send the message of the realm, because they’re more on the theatrical there. They understand the energy of things, or they go to their gestures, which is their advisory board. It keeps them on directory that has an arms length capability to sit back and go, you know, this might not be the best way to do that.

[00:24:36] And Kings and Queens who have started to balance their, their, uh, their kingdom can now move into an empire because they have that all balanced. So this makes it a two things for, in a law firm to bring this down into a granular level. Yeah. You can create profiles literally with the two questions to go.

[00:24:52] Got it. They’re a lawyer, they’re a wizard of barges. I know exactly how to talk to them and you create deeper connective strategy. Now as a lawyer, that’s all that could be very powerful thing for you for [00:25:00] settling out of court, working with juries 

[00:25:03] Karin: judges. 

[00:25:06] Travis: Uh, well, you got to go through the quest to find that don’t

[00:25:12] we do that and we do live events. Like we work with companies and it’s really simple. So for example, I’ll, we’ll, we’ll use car and you use an example. So I’ll do the first one. So, um, could you tell me, uh, why’d you buy your last. 

[00:25:23] Karin: Uh, because my, my previous lease was coming up and I wanted something. So my previous car was bigger and this one was smaller and I wanted something smaller and more gas, efficient 

[00:25:31] Travis: wizard to the bone boys or girls would be dumb.

[00:25:33] But if you don’t want it, you want to know what a wizard sounded like. That was it right there. And not from a negative contrarian point of view, bad it’s oh, I realized, I looked at the car. I had analyzed all the statistics. Did it make sufficient sense to me? Do I really need this big of a car? My lease is coming up as my Eagle and ball.

[00:25:47] That’s a wizard being employed. In a positive frame, but it tells me immediately how you tend to process information. So now I’m going to talk to you from wizard language, right? Wizard has a very distinct how they approach business, how they approach relationships, how they approach themselves. [00:26:00] Right. And that’s a cool thing.

[00:26:02] And some, for example, in like a marketing, what you do for all the. I want a wizard. I want you to find what the strategy is. Where’s the flaw in my strategy and help me plug the hole in the boat before the dang thing sinks. 

[00:26:13] Karin: Well, here’s the thing though, that I, as I was like, that was definitely the leading way that I went into that car purchase for sure.

[00:26:20] But then there’s a S a secondary way that I’m thinking, um, you were talking about how we all have all different parts of our personality in all four. There there’s the wizard, the Bard, the warrior, and the. Jester, and we all have different pieces of it. It’s kind of like we were talking earlier about the Myers-Briggs and so you have like different pieces of those different parts, right?

[00:26:42] Because then the second piece was that I really liked the way it drive drives. I like the way it looks like there was like an emotional connection with this car as well. But the, the leading thing was that wizard side. The second, the emotional connection is, is which part? The Bard or what is that? 

[00:26:58] Travis: Bart is actually the emotional, the [00:27:00] bar, which bar, you know, the simplest of languages is really, you know, our thespians, our actors, right?

[00:27:05] These are the people that understand what is the energy I’m feeling from the audience or from the person I thought human, the opposing opposing counsel, what is the energy I’m feeling? And they can move. That energy in themselves to match that energy, to convey messages very, very well. They’re great ambassadors.

[00:27:20] They’re great salespeople. They’re great people that can translate a message of your firm and your kingdom. And, but problem is when we’re starting to hire people, we hire people more often to resume versus who they actually are. And when you start finding out who they really are, the resume is great, but you also not effectively use them.

[00:27:37] I mean, it’s, it’s a known statistic that the. Company from all of the above, the hiring firing process costs $30,000 to the business. Every time we hire it by or someone. So if you do that three times a year, you just lost a hundred grand out the door because we didn’t ask the questions to the person, but again, in a fun way, here’s the thing.

[00:27:55] Now we’re back to thematics or themes. We all operate on themes. We all [00:28:00] do. The challenge is all of us on, I mean, every single one of you listening to car and show every single one of you, regardless of your, your degrees in. We all mastered one thing when we were younger and that was fun. We mastered it.

[00:28:13] We spent almost 17 years being told, be a kid. Now you only live once you got to go out and play imagination. We had no problem make believing that we were the $6 million man or that we were, you know, on the shores of California’s bay watch, we could jump right into the fantasy realm and then mysteriously right around when we became seniors in high school, this rhetoric shifted in the narrative.

[00:28:34] You know what Travis, you need to be an adult. Now you need to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life and time to get responsible time to grow up. Here’s the problem. We have no fricking idea how to do it. We have no blueprint. So we go off to university and turns stupid in the freshmen 20.

[00:28:46] And I know I was one of them, so I’m going to hold myself in Campbell. Right? And you go, wow, that was great. I know my freedom, but I have no idea how to manage myself. I have no idea what I’m really doing. I don’t even know what I really want. I’m just, I chose the major cause they went along with. Real estate and golf made sense to me.

[00:28:59] They [00:29:00] both had dirt made sense. Doesn’t mean that’s what I really was interested in. And along the way we all get introduced. And all of you went through this in some form or another to this beautiful school called the school of hard knocks, and we have to learn on the fly. Here’s the problem. We have a limited amount of time here.

[00:29:16] I’m planning. Period again, Alan Watts gave us a kind of a blueprint of that. And so if we, by the time we’re starting to figure out, is this what I really want? I’m not whatever I sure. Oh yeah. I’ve got the degree now, but who cares? I mean, how many of you out there right now? No people that are massive, massively educated, but life’s.

[00:29:33] Right. Cause we’re educated in a different thematic we’re thematically learned to have fun. So if I come into the firm and say, Hey guys, we’re going to help you transform your company culture to make this a great time, blah, blah, blah. The natural response is go well, we’re serious. We’re professional. I’m like, what the hell does that have to do with.

[00:29:48] Karin: So in terms of when you are looking to build this empire and you’ve got these four roles that you need to balance out in your team and in, you know, bigger [00:30:00] picture, this empire I’ve heard. Um, the equivalent that I’m been familiar with in the past is kind of the Gallup StrengthsFinder, or I think it’s called something else.

[00:30:09] StrengthsFinder. Now they’ve got a different name on it. But it’s, it’s a similar idea to like finding those strengths really honing in on them and then hiring for those and hiring for this, the pieces of your, uh, to, in order to balance out the strengths that you’re missing. So, uh, not 

[00:30:26] Travis: wasting your time.

[00:30:28] Right? Exactly. 

[00:30:29] Karin: So is that basically, uh, that’s, that’s not what your recommendation, isn’t 

[00:30:35] Travis: the way past that. And here’s the, so here’s the ETR to go back to that. Here’s the social proof for that? My partner, uh, his name is Aaron Huey ran the number one residential treatment center for at-risk youth for the last two decades.

[00:30:48] This ideology, this entire IP built on architectural symbology was how do we talk to kids that have been so traumatized from sex trafficking to bulemia to anorexia, to sexual psychological name it, [00:31:00] the most horrific thing you could imagine happening to a child that’s where these kids end up. This is their last chance.

[00:31:05] There’s only two options. It’s either. Or it’s full incarceration. They had to be brought back. And when we’ve used traditional methodologies and I mean, across the board, we found that the kids were it’s like hitting the BB off a freight train. It bounced right off of it didn’t make sense. And when we realized what they were trying to say to us, we had to put them in the fantasy realm.

[00:31:24] And this is where Aaron really had this massive breakthrough, where we saw how this really worked. And we kept testing and testing and test. Well, what if we put them in a fantasy play, Hey, you’re a warrior. You’re a wizard, you’re barred and your adjuster. And when we explain what that meant, it was one disarming.

[00:31:38] It allowed us to get past that guard into the subconscious, where we could actually help them transform themselves and release and heal from the emotional trauma. And yes, every single one of you listening to this as emotional. I hate to break it to you has nothing to do with law school. It’s called being a human.

[00:31:52] It goes with the territory, right? Yeah. And whatever that is for you. And it can be as simple as I didn’t get a hug from mom and dad to you’ve been in the most horrific situations like our [00:32:00] CEO, an amazing woman, brilliant woman, but she’s also a sex trafficking, survivor bono fighty. She was abducted from a modeling experience and thrown into sex trafficking for a year and had to run for her whole life.

[00:32:10] How do you recover from that? Will you recover from it because you have to go to the fantasy round. And when you go to the fantasy realm, especially when we go through the quest, we can address that. Why do you have a fear of success counselor? You’re the one that said you’re a great lawyer, but why are you afraid to actually grow your firms so that it’s doing a million dollars a month, $2 million a month, $5 million, about $10 million a month?

[00:32:28] Who knows? We can find out though, we have a process to take you in it. But if I come to you and I say, Hey, Karen, I want to talk to your top 100 firms that all work for you. We’re going to show them how they’re scared of success. Guess what. 

[00:32:39] Karin: Yeah, no. Yeah. Right. Okay. So then to build the empire, uh, w you’re looking at each person and how they kind of bring, they gamified the, their roles within the firm is that.

[00:32:54] The right assessment or 

[00:32:55] Travis: life, right? Let’s let’s, let’s start with a macro before we go down. So micro [00:33:00] micro life is an adventure and we all started that way until we handed it in again by hemispheric using myself as the example we handed in for our logic. And I’m not saying your logic doesn’t matter, councils, please don’t misinterpret, but that’s not why you’re in business.

[00:33:12] And that’s damn sure not why you’re here on planet earth. You are here to experience life imbalance through the thing we call the BP. And if you don’t have to balance your BPR, you’re probably going to be CPR because your world’s going to adjust itself pretty quickly in some form or another, whether it’s your business, your relationship, your finances, or your own body, right?

[00:33:30] I mean, how often, and council’s ask yourself this question. Does your body pay the price for your firm? Do you neglect yourself? Because you put yourself in a value system that says my business and my family and my, all my employees all come bursts before myself. Well, here’s the fundamental problem. We take you out of the equation and do all these things suffer.

[00:33:48] Yeah. So you start to realize there’s a difference in a business on empire. So when we take it into gamification, it all feels like a game. In fact, too many of you who wizards out there and maybe even UCAR and you’re going to go, oh, I don’t get it. I’ve done all [00:34:00] this personality typing stuff. I’m like this isn’t personality typing.

[00:34:02] This is personality transformation. You are not a single entity. It’s an impossible, it’s an impossibility for you to be just current. In fact, let’s further prove the point. You didn’t even name your. I didn’t name myself. We just subscribed to it further validating. We’re already hypnotized, but like, oh, you’re Travis.

[00:34:18] Okay. I’ll be called Travis. I’ll be good. Right. That’s a great name. I’ll go with, it sounds like it’s better than, you know, stick. Great. Right. So we, when we start looking at, you know, understand differences in decisions and choices and automation versus being present, and I’m not talking woo. I’m talking about really understanding where we are and what we’re creating.

[00:34:37] We have to go to the fantasy realm because if we come at it straight on through that garden, the gate you’ll reject it. Every single fricking time. In 31 years, over a million people I’ve stood in front of a travel the world three times. It happens consistently because that’s how we’re built as humans.

[00:34:49] Now this can serve your business because you can start to see opposing counsel. You can see the juries, you can see your own clients. You can determine whether they’re good for you. You can hire and fire your relationships, how you view your [00:35:00] body. You can start transforming it because you’ve stepped back from a second and it’s hard sometimes.

[00:35:05] You guys are fighting powerful fights out there. I watch our firms do amazing things every day and you are needed out there in the world, but let’s backstep if, uh, if the law said, guess what? We’re going to abandon all the law. We’re just going to go back to tribal mentality. Now. What? So are you ready? Or are you wealthy, wealthy as you, and you understand a balance, a set of skills within yourself.

[00:35:28] I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about how to transform yourself, how to truly consciously with cognitive awareness, transform yourself from the inside out mindset. Doesn’t change. Mindset just gives you something to mentally masturbate with and you get to play with it, but it doesn’t change.

[00:35:43] You change comes from here. It comes from the emotional traumatic level. It hits a subconscious, it moves into a habit bay state, and now it becomes automated. And when it’s automated, you naturally, the guard out front will shift. And if I may quote the great Wayne Dyer, when you change the way you see things, what you see will change.

[00:35:59] It automatically happens all by [00:36:00] itself. And we don’t do that in business. We just kind of keep blowing down the road and hoping to God, we get the girth of great case that makes us gazillionaires and that happens. But more often. 

[00:36:09] Karin: Okay. Awesome. Um, all right. So as you know, our audience is full of tireless lawyers who don’t have time to read good and book.

[00:36:18] That’s not worth it. So, Travis, what is the book recommendation that you are going to suggest for the audience? 

[00:36:27] Travis: Well, my favorite book of all time of all time. And it’s a, it’s a heavy read family and it’s gonna challenge every aspect of life. And I think that’s a powerful thing because sometimes we don’t know why we believe what we believe.

[00:36:38] We just believe it like Miami, Travis. Okay. I guess it’s gonna be Travis, right? Cause my mom and dad told me, so the book is called IMD. And you can go buy it on any, any online store. I don’t want to give a shameless plug. That’s not a commercial supportive yourself. We’ll link to it, but it’s a, it’s a really powerful book that was written in the 18 hundreds, um, by Maharaji who was actually being interviewed.

[00:36:57] He had a sixth grade education, but was this [00:37:00] quote unquote enlightened being, but he approached it in a way where he. I gave you the blueprint for you to transform how you look at the world and start to see things on a bigger scale. Because often we do this, especially as wizards out there. And I’m pretty sure most of you listening have a wizard capability within all of you.

[00:37:16] We get very myopic. We get very focused on this is our world. This is all there is. It’s not, there’s so much more going on and guess what happens? And we all know this, but we are guilty of it myself. Time flies quickly. Right? We get so busy. We miss it. And man, we got to go back to that deeper one, but time flies when you’re having fun.

[00:37:34] But if you’re not having fun, then time just flies and you’ve got nothing to show for it. You’ve got no experiences where it’s at the end of the day, you missed it. Exactly. And the stories of what we tell it’s not necessarily the cases that you want and you know, this tort did this and this response did that.

[00:37:48] And those are great. Those are fun when you’re talking to other attorneys, but you’re talking to the rest of us who were dumb idiot. Are you talking about a court, like is then like a tortellini? What do you mean by flat? All right. So you are a human [00:38:00] first family. You have a family, you want to leave a legacy.

[00:38:02] So we got to look at what your throne is. What is your passion, your purpose, your mission, your vision, because you’re going to leave a legacy. If not, you’re going to be lost in the Amazon. Is that what you really want. That’s interesting. An empire and a business. That’s a different scene, an empire and a kingdom.

[00:38:15] So the question becomes, what is it you really want? But we do it in a fun way. So it doesn’t feel like this drudging through the mud. I’ve got to rip my entire psyche apart, go sit on the side of a mountain Dew Iowasca till I see every prism known to human being and have my come to, you know, God moment, as opposed to how about we do it, what you’re already naturally built to do, but we do it in a way that doesn’t really invade.

[00:38:37] Your world in a way that feels invasive. So you don’t feel like you’re ripping your world apart and that’s called gameplay and there’s a three level escalation maps. So it’s, you know, it’s claim your throne, building your castle and then building the empire and it walks you through and it’s all fun. And it is based on real business principles that we’ve done ourselves with over 110 years collective experience, but done in gameplay.

[00:38:56] Here’s why you mastered gameplay as a kid. [00:39:00] How to have fun. All of you are innately wealthy. You’ve just forgotten how to have. Because you’ve been so busy on the school of hard knocks that we get hypnotized into this other realm. And next thing you know, you wake up and you. Hello, what, what just happened?

[00:39:14] Right. So then that kind of puts it in a more of a, um, I think, well thing puts it in a simpler frame, but it’s kind of brings 

[00:39:20] Karin: it back to the heart of why people started with law school and kind of, you know, what, where, where it all started and, um, removes that element of getting too burned out with it at the same 

[00:39:31] Travis: time, the number one thing in law firms, you know, those better than.

[00:39:34] Yeah, I watched my S I watch my son brilliant wanting to do constitutional law. Why he’s ex special forces. He believes in, in what we do in the United States, he believes in the constitution wants to defend. And all of a sudden it became, it became a bar to attorney D C. He was like, oh, wow, this sucks. And I was like, oh, you could have said that before he went to Georgetown, that would have been a lot more fun, but, you know, okay.

[00:39:52] Everybody goes to that, but that’s that kind of thing. And so not just burn out, but keep the flame burning. Yeah, for the passion and a [00:40:00] purpose, because when you’re truly on fire, cause you know, your passion, your purpose, your mission, and your vision, and you know, you’re leaving a legacy. You don’t need motivation.

[00:40:07] You don’t need to listen to stuff 24 hours a day. You don’t have to keep reigniting yourself. And that’s your first clue. If you’re doing. That you’re already on the road to burn out. You’re already in a subconscious search to find that deep fire that was in you naturally, you’re looking to keep it kindled alive so that you don’t wander off because there’s already a part of you that’s going.

[00:40:25] And this isn’t quite what I thought it was going to be. And that gives you a clue you’re on the road. You better get on the. Fast. 

[00:40:32] Karin: Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. That’s got such great insight. We will link to your book, recommendation, your website, all of your resources that you mentioned, uh, all your social media accounts as well.

[00:40:45] Um, and it’s been such a great insight, I think, just to imagine the idea of getting past. That little guy on the Drawbridge that is you kind of leading you in the wrong directions and [00:41:00] making sure that you’re thinking in terms of this gameplay for building. An empire and not a castle where it’s entirely dependent on you and is it’s really limited in the amount of growth that you’ve got.

[00:41:15] If you, if you’ve only got the castle, but, uh, awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Travis Fox. Thanks so much for being here today. I appreciate 

[00:41:22] Travis: your time. Bye.

[00:41:24]

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