Content Marketing with Real Personality; Perfect Albums Vol. 2; and a Game Called “Bag of Dicks”

Episode Notes

Transcript

Jared D. Correia: I’d like to take a moment to thank my mom for listening to every episode. Now, my mom is the real reason you’re listening to this show right now, but the sponsors have a little something to do with it as well. So, I’d like to thank our sponsors, too. Clio, Noda, Scorpion, TimeSolv. Bill for lawyers notice cloud-based business banking is perfect for your solo or small law firm. You want to spend your day helping clients, not struggling to reconcile bank statements. Notice customer service specialists are here to help you. They only support attorneys, so they understand the tools you use and the requirements you’re up against and they take your business as seriously as you do. Don’t miss out on exciting new member benefits including our partnership with law lines or in ethics credits for your CLEs. Online at trustnota.com/legal. Nota, banking bill for law firms like yours. Terms and conditions may apply

[Music]

Male: It’s The Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia, with guest Mike Whelan. We play around the bag of dicks, and then we’re joined by Martha Stewart to teach us her favorite recipe for gin and juice. But first, your host, Jared Correia.

[Music]

Jared D. Correia: It’s time for The Legal Toolkit and down the hatches. And yes, it’s still called The Legal Toolkit Podcast even though I’ve never actually held a plumb bob. I have held a plum bath, however. I’m your host, Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because William Shatner was unavailable. He’s recording new episode of The Unexplained and also yelling aftercon. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations. Find us online at redcavelegal.com.  I’m the CEO of Gideon Software, Inc. We build chat box so law firms can convert more leads and conversational document assembly tools so law firms can build documents faster and more accurately. You can find out more about Gideon at gideonlegal.com.

Now, before we get to our interview today with Mike Whelan of Lawyer Ford, I’ve got something special for that ass. You’ll still come across Snoop Dogg and popular culture on the regular. He’s got a movie coming out where he’s killing vampires with Jamie Foxx and randomly Dave Franco, called Day Shift. That, I’m not going to lie. It looks fucking awesome. I’m definitely going to watch it. Snoop is also hanging with Martha Stewart, hosting television shows with Kelly Clarkson and investing in and starting up companies right on Brandi and some of his compatriots also created the largest Gin and Juice drink in history in 2018 at a music festival.

Apparently, it included 156 liters of apricot brandy which is fucking disgusting, but I digress. So, basically if you start following the Snoop verse in the mid-2000s, you might not even know he was a recording artist. So, he was nicknamed Snoop Dogg as a kid because he loved the characters Snoopy from Charlie Brown. Now, Snoop is basically a cultural institution that far surpasses Snoopy in relevance. His paw prints are everywhere. I kind of think of Snoop as sort of like Willie Nelson and that they are known for their cannabis use and have this outside significance in pop culture, which means a lot of things to a lot of people but far outstrips their contributions as musical artist. But Willie Nelson is actually a brilliant songwriter and Snoop is a musical genius.

If you remember back a few episodes, I launched a new monologue series called Perfect Albums. The first Perfect Album I named was Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne. At that time, I said the perfect album has no bad songs and that’s still true, but it’s more than that. I think that what makes an album perfect is that it is an encapsulation of time period. It underscores some kind of ethos. Uncle Tupelo kicked off the All-Country Music Movement and was firmly rooted in early 90s culture. Anodyne was the FEG of that genre. Now, around the same time on the west coast, NWA was pioneering the popular acceptance of what was then called Gangster Rap. They probably won’t call that now. And NWA spawned lots of successful solo artists like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy-E. then, Dre spun off Snoop. Snoop Doggy Dogg is he was then known. I think it’s Snoop Dogg. Now, all that’s gone through a number of changes. He first appeared in some Dr. Dre videos including the underrated Deep Cover as the theme song for the Laurence Fishburne movie, but especially Nuthin’ But A G Thang Baby.

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I’m a terrible singer, which exploded on the scene. It was most people’s mainstream introduction to West Coast rap. That set the stage for Snoop’s debut album which was appropriately called Doggy Style. Yeah, that’s a double entendre. It’s also a perfect album when I was in college. I often referred to Doggy Style as a Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of rap. It was that revolutionary and both the album covers are iconic too. Honestly, I could go on and on about how much I love Doggy Style, the record. In my opinion, it’s the greatest rap album of all time and it perfectly encapsulates the West Coast scene of the early 90s. I knew Snoop was huge when my dad asked me one day what The Shiznit was. So, for disclosure, I’m going to sound pretty lame here, talking about this album. But, if a middle-aged white man can’t speak in praise of the historical musical accomplishments of middle-aged black men, I would ask you what’s wrong with this country. Actually, don’t answer that.

So, to me, there are a few things that make Doggy Style particularly ingenious. First, by most obviously all the songs are amazing. The samples are off the hook. Snoop has such a unique flow that the vocals are striking and there are enough iconic lines to choke a goat. It’s amazing how many ways Snoop can tell people in the science to fuck off each more creative than the last.  So, Gin and Juice is effectively the title track and it’s one of the most recognizable rap songs ever. The video, by the way, is also amazing with Snoop having some dude riding him around on the handlebars of his bike while he’s wearing a comically oversized Pittsburgh Penguins jersey to go get his hair done, and that shit still cracks me up.

Murder Was The Case is an absolute toward the force and a prison morality tale. For real, it’s like modern-day Dr. Faustus. The full name of the song is Murder Was The Case (Death After Visualizing Eternity) dealing with some serious shit here. Doggy Dog World features the dramatics an actual Motown Group on Harmony. Who else would do that shit on a rap album? Lottie Dottie is a laidback piece that serves as an intro to Murder Was The Case, complete with a Slick Rick shoutout at the outset. Shout out to Slick Rick. Sounds like Ain’t No Fun (If The Homies Can’t Have None) and Gz and Hustlas are legitimately great songs buried under even better songs like Bone.

The next best thing about Doggy Style behind the music is all the interludes. The album actually starts out with an interlude, not a song and it sets the tone for the album. It’s called Bathtub and it’s literally about a dude trying to chill in his bathtub with his lady before someone rings the doorbell and interrupts. That seems to happen a lot in Long Beach. The next track, G Funk Intro is a song, but it ends with a guy taking a piss which bleeds over into the beginning of Gin and Juice. This shit was kind of staggering in the early 90s and it was roughly equivalent to James Joyce writing about Leopold Bloom wiping his ass with shreds of newspapers after he read them. W Balls is track for the intro to Ain’t No Fun that features fictional DJs at a fictional radio station that had the W Balls. First is DJ Sal-T Nutz and that’s clever, and then DJ Eazy Dick. So, for those of you scoring at home, W Balls is a station that’s actually across your fat ass with a fat dick. Now, that is a tagline if I’ve ever heard one.

Probably unsurprisingly, freshman year of college, my friends and I had a pirate radio station and we called it W Balls. And obviously, there’s a chronic break between 12 and 13 because you always get take chronic break. The final thing that I love most about Doggy Style which cements this edition to the pantheon is the ridiculous number of guest artists who are sprinkled all over the album. Of course, Dre is there but so is Lady of Rage rocking rough and tough with her afro props. Plus, Warren G and Nate Dogg show up. George Clinton from Parliament Funkadelic drops in, but I think the G-Funk genre of which Snoop was a part. Bootsy Collins, by the way, also co-wrote a song. You’ve also got Sam Sneed, not the golfer. Kurupt and The Dogg Pound, Snoop’s posse, lots of whitish there.

So, if you only know Snoop is a spokesperson or even if you remember when he was a trailblazing artist, Doggy Style, a perfect album is worth a renewed listen. But just prepare yourself for the spectacle that is Doggy Style because I think DJ Sal-T Nutz said it best, “You’re about to go downtown bitch, right here on the station that plays only platinum hits. That’s 187.4 your FM dial. If you’re leaking, that’s W Balls.”

Now, before we get to our discussion on content marketing, I really don’t know how I’m going to segue from this with Mike Whelan of Lawyer Ford. Let’s all put down our 40s for a moment and listen to Joshua Lenon who has got you for this week’s edition of the Clio Legal Trends report.

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[Music]

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[Music]

Jared D. Correia: All right. Let’s get into the burnt ends from Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue, which is this podcast. It’s time to interview our guest. My guest today is Mike Whelan, the CEO of Lawyer Ford. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Whelan: I’m excited to be here and the fact that you started, you led with barbecue even though I’ve not had lunch and it’s three o’clock. I feel like that was wrong. That was unkind and I hate you, sorry.

Jared D. Correia: I feel bad now. Thanks for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.

Mike Whelan: Absolutely.

Jared D. Correia: Now, people can’t see this but you’re currently wearing like a very fetching purple Utah Jazz hat.

Mike Whelan: That’s correct.

Jared D. Correia: Are you a Utah Jazz fan?

Mike Whelan: That’s correct. I don’t know why. I went to Utah for undergrad and did not enjoy any of it. We ran away from Utah. For some reason, I left a jazz fan and I’ve been depressed ever since. I could have picked, you know, the Lakers or the Celtics, or some team with money, Miami. But no, I picked downtrodden mid-market team and here we are.

Jared D. Correia: The hat is nice, man. The Jazz logo is awesome. I love the Jazz logo. It’s one of my favorite logo.

Mike Whelan: Schematically, it makes no sense, but it is beautiful.

Jared D. Correia: Yeah, none whatsoever. What about the uniforms that they just came out with? Have you seen these like black and yellow? These uniforms are fucking hideous. What’s the deal?

Mike Whelan: Yeah. All I know is there’s a high school practice squad nearby that’s wondering where did their clothes go, where are the jerseys. They need to play shirts and skins now because the Jazz stole their uniforms.

Jared D. Correia: They’ve got the mountain jerseys that they’re bringing back. They got this awesome logo and they’re like, “Let’s design the worst possible jersey, black block letters with a yellow jersey behind.” It’s just hideous.

Mike Whelan: You know what I’m going to do right now for you Jared, I’m going to make a pivot and here’s what I’m going to say, this was the way the Utah Jazz came out with the jerseys was a perfect example of what happens when you have an audience that you’ve developed over a period of time and you didn’t use that as part of the model to develop something that everybody wanted because you still had a top down, “I’m the company, I’m the boss, you’re just the audience, screw you.” That is not a healthy relationship when you are a content creator. Do you see how I did that?

Jared D. Correia: I love how you brought that around. It’s almost like we planned it, but I planned nothing which I think people are very well aware of when they listen to the show. All right, so let’s start there. As a content creator, you focus grouping this stuff like how are you figuring out like what the people want?

Mike Whelan: Here’s the thing. There’s all this talk about lawyers going out and doing content marketing about — the phrase that I use is Be Yourself Loudly, which is a bit different than very strategic. You know, if you had my buddy Gyi Sakalaki, he’s on, for example, or as Serie refers to him when he texts me Gyi, see you next week.

Jared D. Correia: That’s awesome.

Mike Whelan: But you know Ge is very smart and strategic about, you know, if you’re trying to get transactions, all you need to do is win Google My Business and you go and you put where — you know, he and I and Mark Homer might have a different conversation about it if you’re doing content. How would you do that? How would you be yourself? My sort of take on all of it is that there’s a difference between a services company that goes out and talks out loud, right, like a content. I’m going to go beyond LinkedIn and I’m just posting stuff and I’ll send my crappy newsletter to remind people that I exist or whatever. The problem with that is that’s very transactional. That is not a business model. I have tried to advocate for no, use being yourself out loud as a business model. It is more of a media model. It is, take seriously the idea that you’re going to create something that people want to engage with even when they don’t need you.

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It’s not necessarily completely tied to your product, but it gives you what’s called distribution and we could nerd out about my dad’s day in the direct mail industry. There was a period on the internet where it was like direct mail or you put in a dollar and you get $2, but the dollar just started — I mean, it got so bloody expensive that you couldn’t just think in that transactional way. There was price pressure up for getting distribution. There was price pressure down for delivering services. And so, what I’ve tried to advocate for is no, be so weird, so unique, so you that the people who hire you, you tell them how much you charge. It’s a harder row to hoe, but it is so much better in terms of control in a relationship, believability in a relationship, trust in a relationship. So, what I talk about is using content as part of the business model structure, not as a sidekick.

Jared D. Correia: I see only one flaw in this. It’s the assumption that lawyers have to have personality.

Mike Whelan: True. Listen, it is true that in the modern, you know, communication economy, talent rises, right? Like you can tell the difference between people who feel very normal with this, very natural with this. I was in theater as a kid because I didn’t get enough validation from my mom and so, therefore, I got to go work some stuff out loud. That’s just the way that it is and so I’m weirdly comfortable with this stuff. It is true that there are other people that are not as comfortable, but the thing is not everybody has to be an audience builder, right?

In my book, Lawyer Forward, I talked about two key models. It’s not that there aren’t other ways to build a law firm, but I talked about two ways and one is being an audience building firm. In that, you have what’s called vertical positioning which means you serve a type of person no matter what problem they come up with. Those are audience builders and those people, yeah, you have to have a lot of traffic. You have to be really talented. You have to build this sort of community around your persona to a specific habitat. That’s a whole model, right?

Jared D. Correia: Yeah.

Mike Whelan: But horizontal positioning is around the problem and in that scenario, you’re what I call the expert freelancer model. You don’t have to have a huge audience for that and so, that sort of talent is not exactly the same. You can be just a public intellectual it’s often called or a scholar.

Jared D. Correia: I like that.

Mike Whelan: Where you’re digging so deep into a subject that your value is not that you’re a blow-up hilarious personality, everybody wants to be around help me solve all my problems. You can be so niche and so nerdy that none of that stuff even matters, because you’re so good at the problem that that person runs into, all kinds of people, because you have horizontal positioning. But again, in both scenarios, however you do it, you are working out loud. The key is to be yourself loudly. That’s the thing that matters

Jared D. Correia: That’s interesting, Mike, because we’re talking a little bit about this before the show, like nerd culture is kind of a thing. So, I could see a lawyer taking your advice and being like, “Okay. My big personality component is that I’m like a super nerd, so I can lean into that.” Like that’s one way to combine those two things potentially, right?

Mike Whelan: Sure. And as an aside, in the book I talked about this scenario of somebody owning really niche old Star Wars action figures as a way to go set and there can be a lawyer that serves people who have like action figure. I mean, you can really get so niche in the way you serve. As long as your model is right, you don’t need bajillion customers and so I would point to, there’s a show called Tropical MBA and they have this ten, hundred, thousand-model. Basically, all it means is like you can have a thousand fans and they pay you $250 a year for courses, books, whatever, but that’s $250. You can have a hundred who use your thinking and so you’ve got like a paid community or whatever and it surrounds you. And then you only have 10 clients, you have 10 people you execute for but they’re $25,000 a year.

My point is by stacking those things, you can have a $750,000 or a million-dollar business around a pretty niche, nerdy. You don’t have to be for everybody. If you have the other model that we’re talking about which is the audience building model, you know, that is much more about scale. It’s much more about being able to do things over and over again. Again, the thing that I want to drive home for people is that there is a difference between I do content because I went to a conference and got overwhelmed and they told me Gary freaking Vaynerchuk told me I need to be on the freaking internet and so I’m going to go beyond the internet like an idiot You know? Like amateur actually, because I’m supposed to be.

There’s a difference between that and being a creator as part of your model and I think there’s so much opportunity in being a creator as part of your model, but you got to take it seriously. You’re going pro. It’s not just about being a professional in your legal work. It’s about finding a way to do your legal work out loud. You’re learning out loud, your expertise out loud so that you can also build community while you’re getting better at your actual skills.

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Jared D. Correia: Checking my nose, right content without having the curse Gary V. continuously. So, one of the other things you talked about was this notion of like distribution. So, I don’t think a lot of attorneys think about this level that you’re thinking about it at. So, what do you mean when you talked about distribution because I think people might get hung up on that?

Mike Whelan: Sure. The easiest way to go get distribution is to stand on a street corner with a flippy dippy sign while wearing a chicken suit and if lawyers want to do that, check with your state ethics rules, but maybe you could do that. But the idea is like, “I’m a nerd. I sit in my office. I look at books. I’ve got to have all the law books behind me or known, believe anything that I say. I’ve got to have the blah, blah, blah books behind. And so, I’m in a basement and I’m being a nerd.

There’s got to be some way for people to find your work. We’ll call that distribution. You know, if I were to create content, for example, if I was to create an e-book on Nuclear Waste Disposal Regulatory Compliance, that’s got to get in front of people somewhere. That’s distribution. Sure, you could stand with the chicken suit and a flippy dippy sign. Here’s my content distributed to you, but there are other ways to do it. A lot of them are paid and I think paid media matters. At the end, when you get to a certain level of growth, you can’t grow past. If all you’re going to do is organic methods, you have a cap on your growth, right?

Jared D. Correia: Yes.

Mike Whelan: There’s a point at which you need to start paying for distribution. But short of that, you don’t have to pay for distribution. There are so many models of distribution now. One of them is I’m on LinkedIn. Right? I’m on Twitter. I’m on Facebook. I’m on existing platforms to get eyeballs. That’s called distribution. Now, how do I move them to my space? But the dream world is for you to own distribution for people to come to you as a place because they want to learn from you. They think you’re cool. They think you’re funny. They give you their email address because now, when something happens, you send them in an email that says, “Hey, I offer this service. I offer this product.” The thing where I think a lot of lawyers stumble with this is even though they have a bunch of email addresses, they still are transactional because they’re sending boring-ass newsletters that nobody cares about, right?

Here’s pictures of the changes in my office. Congratulations to you, she bought a puppy. Here’s a picture of her puppy. Nobody cares. Nobody is open in that and I understand that that’s better than nothing. That’s in front of people’s face, but nobody’s open in your stupid newsletter and you don’t care about this, but it’s killing your domain authority and making it so your emails aren’t getting to people anyway, so stop doing that.

Jared D. Correia: No one cares about Seuss’ dog, unfortunately.

Mike Whelan: Yeah. The key is you can own distribution. The point is, if you’re interesting enough to whoever it is you’re trying to be interesting too as part of your model, you can own distribution and you can undercut all of those paid spaces and your model starts to work a lot better.

Jared D. Correia: I think we’ll have a good sense of distribution on this show if we start seeing lawyers dressing in chicken suits and/or representing people that get wear Star Wars figures.

Mike Whelan: That’s how you’ll know it works. That’s right. Yeah. In this world, we call that signal, you know. That’s dark social signal.

Jared D. Correia: Dark social signal. All right, man, you brought it up but now you got to talk about it. Nobody knows what dark social is. Nobody understands what the signal is. Give me like the lightning round version because I got one more question I want to ask you.

Mike Whelan: All right, short version is not everything you do is going to be clear that it worked. In fact, most of the most important things that you do are not measurable. The problem that the internet has created in people’s minds is that if it’s easily attributable, if it’s something I can track, if it’s something I can say, “Hey, that worked”, it probably is stupid because that means everybody else is doing it. And people started to say, “Well, if I can track it, what gets measured gets managed,” which is such a stupid quote. And so, people started to think, “Well, if I can measure it, it must be the smart thing to do.”

Meanwhile, we’re in an era that the buyer journey doesn’t make any sense. It’s really about cultivating atmospheres and making people care about you and like you. So, most of your most important work is stuff that cannot be tracked. Some of that is referred to as dark social. It’s people talking about you in places that you’re not there. Your job is to create conversation, not too bloody track everything and optimize everything. Just do your work out loud, people will find you.

Jared D. Correia: Great. Okay. One more thing I want to hit on because you mentioned this like paid advertising, right? You hit the ceiling if you don’t do paid advertising. So, like when do you start considering folding in paid advertising and what kind of paid advertising you’re focusing on?

Mike Whelan: Yeah. Again, I think this depends a little bit on your model, so let’s just take two extremes from Lawyer Forward and say one is the expert freelancer and one is the audience building, so the preneur. Again, there are other options but these are extremes on a spectrum. If you’re an expert freelancer, you probably don’t actually need to advertise much because again, you’ve got that ten, hundred, thousand model. You only need 10 clients.

Jared D. Correia: Right.

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Mike Whelan: And so, getting referrals in that model is actually okay because the audience-building lawyers who can’t be as nerdy as you can, they become the contact that comes and hires you in a collaborative supply chain. So, they come to you, they bring you in to work. So, most of your work is actually through referrals. That’s fine if that’s your model. I would still be yourself out loud because doing that work actually generates the expertise. There’s the cliche that I write to know what I think, so there’s something about writing and about creating out loud that actually creates expertise. But if you’re the other type, you’re the audience-building solopreneur, that kind of person needs scale.

Being an entrepreneur –okay, this is a rage point of mine. Everybody who owns a law firm is not an entrepreneur. If all being an entrepreneur means is you own a business, then let’s just use that word. Entrepreneur means something and one of the things that entrepreneur means is that you scale to sell, whatever your transition is. Maybe you don’t actually sell it, but whatever. The point is, you’re growing. Growing is important. At some point, referrals which are super important slow down. The virality of law is not very high, so the virality of Postmates is high because the ask is low, right? So, “Hey buddy, you should try Postmates to order your next bit of food.” Buddies are going to tell each other about that and buddies are going to download the app because who cares, right?

There’s very little asking it. The virality of a law firm is different because there’s such a high trust quotient, right? So, there’s not a lot of virality. So, if you need to scale your firm, you’re going to hit a wall if the only way you’re scaling is through word of mouth. At some point, you need to start growing like an adult. You need to start paying for attention. You need to start paying of eyeballs. You need to do it in a scaled way. Yes, have content that captures those people. Have product marketing that moves people to the point of a purchase, but at some point you’re going to have to like pay for exposure. There’s just not enough virality in what we do.

Jared D. Correia: That’s totally fair, which is why I’m sitting here spending like 700 bucks a month on GrubHub and haven’t hired a lawyer for a little while. Paid advertising channels like what are you looking in terms of options for paid advertising? Give like a few examples.

Mike Whelan: Yeah, I’m going to really defer to my friend Gyi.

Jared D. Correia: He’s going to be so late at night. He’s been mentioned twice now.

Mike Whelan: I’m seeing him this week, so I’m really just trying to get him to buy me dinner when I see him so that’s why —

Jared D. Correia: Send him the link to the show.

Mike Whelan: Yeah, exactly.

Jared D. Correia: Yeah, you do.

Mike Whelan: But yeah, no. I mean, in general it’s all, again, very business-model specific. I think it depends a lot on like Facebook ads are a popular thing because they’re so trackable. That doesn’t mean they’re the right thing. Google ads, very popular thing because they’re so trackable. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing. Well, it might be right for you depending on how model is done. You might want to sponsor the school baseball team, right? You might want to try sponsor — there’s a local coupon group through next door app or something. You might want to sponsor that. The question, I think, with advertising is not — you know, “Where do I get the most eyeballs?” It’s where do I get the most return on my investment and in the end, what you’re trying to get people to do is become your customers.

So, it really depends on, you know, that’s the game, right? And the thing is, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re always playing the game. I like to think of it like a board game. You’re always trying to push a new resource to get to the victory points that you need to win. It’s the game that interests you if you’re an entrepreneur. It is not necessarily the law. It’s not necessarily getting nerdy about these legal books. That’s just a different model. It’s the game you’re playing of, “How do I optimize serving the most people in the most scalable way?”

Jared D. Correia: Mike, that was great. Thank you. You’re going to hang around for the last segment?

Mike Whelan: I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.

Jared D. Correia: Awesome. All right. We’ll take one final sponsor break so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice. Then stay tuned. It’s the rump roast. It’s even more subtle than the roast beast.

[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music]

Jared D. Correia: Welcome to the rear end of The Legal Toolkit. That’s right, folks. It’s the rump roast. It’s a grab bag. Quite literally this time, short-form topics all of my choosing.

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Why do I get to pick? Because I’m the host. Mike, thanks for coming back. How are you feeling?

Mike Whelan: More frightful than I was when this started. Go on.

Jared D. Correia: Oh, good. I invented a brand-new game to play today. It’s just for you. I call it Bag of Dicks. Here’s how we play. I ask you a question and the answer will be one of the three dicks I name. So, your job is simply to reach into the grab bag, select the right dick. Are you ready to play?

Mike Whelan: I’m sorry. I’m having college flashbacks and I went to college at BYU, so I take that for what it is. Go ahead.

Jared D. Correia: All right, let’s start slow. We’ll warm up here. This dick, resign the presidency of the United States during the Watergate scandal. Is it Richard Nixon, Moby whose real name is Richard Melville Hall or Dick Gephardt? Let’s get you on the board.

Mike Whelan: I’m going to give this one to tricky Dick, Richard Nixon.

Jared D. Correia: Correct. Correct. One for one. I’m going to be keeping score. Next. This musician wrote the song Trippin’ On My Own Tears. Is it Richard Starkey also known as Ringo Starr, Little Richard or Lionel Richie?

Mike Whelan: Oh my gosh.

Jared D. Correia: You don’t have that in your discography?

Mike Whelan: Only because this is the last one you said, so it’s like some cognitive advice. I’m going to say Lionel Richie.

Jared D. Correia: And that would be Ringo Starr from the 2003 album. That was unfair. I should have said they would get harder. This one, I have a good feeling about this one because we do a lot of sports talk. I think you got a shot at this one. This athlete was a World Series winner in 1960 and 1964. Is it Dick Radatz, Dick Williams or Dick Groat?

Mike Whelan: Okay. I want to point out. We started this conversation by me saying baseball is the worst.

Jared D. Correia: That’s right, I remember that.

Mike Whelan: So, now, I offended all the other states but I don’t care. Baseball is the worst. I’m going to pick the second one. I don’t know what you said, but I’ll pick the second.

Jared D. Correia: All right, that is incorrect.

Mike Whelan: Damn!

Jared D. Correia: Dick Groat. Dick Groat is not a form of venereal disease.

Mike Whelan: Sure.

Jared D. Correia: It’s actually a man that played second base for the Pittsburgh Pirates and I think the St. Louis Cardinals won in 1964.

Mike Whelan: That was really close. I was going to guess that, but really close.

Jared D. Correia: I realized I have another baseball question on here. But you know what, for you, I’m going to change it. I’m going to change it because I can do that. All right, question Number 4. This is to get you back to 500. This actor won the Tony Award for best actor in a musical in 1961. Now, you said you were a theater kid, so let’s see how this goes, Richard Attenborough, Richard Burton or Richard Wagner?

Mike Whelan: I’m going to say Burton for Camelot. Is that what he was in?

Jared D. Correia: Correct and you name the play. Damn. I’m really impressed. All right, you’re looking pretty good here. We are now two of four with two left. Let’s go to the category of TV. This was Don Draper’s real name in Mad Men, Maurice Richard, Bruce Richard or Dick Whitman?

Mike Whelan: I never watched the show. I’m going to say Dick Whitman.

Jared D. Correia: You never watched Mad Men? You’re right. You’re right, three of five. You never watched Mad Men?

Mike Whelan: No and I should, you know, getting them in marketing and advertising.

Jared D. Correia: Mad Men is fucking great. It’s one of my favorite shows. Okay, last one. Category, potpourri. No, let’s do monarchy instead. This monarch was born in 1157. Is it Richard I, Richard II, or Richard III?

Mike Whelan: Gosh! 11:57?

Jared D. Correia: That was a good year.

Mike Whelan: It was such, I mean the vintage.

Jared D. Correia: Postmates was crushed in 1157.

Mike Whelan: I’m going to say Rick II.

Jared D. Correia: Good guess, good guess. It’s Rick I. Hey, look, there we are, right at 500.

Mike Whelan: That is my life goal. That’s my life aspiration right there, just good enough.

Jared D. Correia: We do a little content marketing. We played Bag of Dicks and now we’re done. Mike Whelan, thank you for coming on the show, sir. I appreciate it.

Mike Whelan: I’m always happy to hang out and be really confused. I appreciate it.

Jared D. Correia: That’s what we aim for here on The Legal Toolkit.

[Music]

Jared D. Correia: If you want to find out more about Mike Whelan and Lawyer Ford. Visit lawyerford.com. That’s lawyerford.com, all one word. Also, listen to the Lawyer Ford podcast wherever you get your podcast to discover the 90-day known expert service in which Mike extends on some of the topics he’s addressed in the show. Now, for those of you listening in Knob Noster Missouri, that’s got a bust Spotify playlist for you.

(00:35:00)

It’s Monsters of Rap 90s Edition. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of time to relate Martha Stewart’s recipe for gin and juice, but I’m pretty sure it’s just gin and juice. So, I guess we did cover it. So, that’ll do it for another episode of The Legal Toolkit Podcast. This is Jared Correia reminding you that there’s so much drama on the LTK. It’s kind of hard being JARE single D. Yeah, it’s priced out now.

[Music]

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