Kevin McGoff – Creating Meaning with an Active Mind (468)

Write a Podcast Review:

Podcast reviews are important to iTunes, and the more reviews we receive, the more likely we’ll be able to get this podcast and message in front of more people (something about iTunes algorithms?).  I’d be extremely grateful if you took less than 30 seconds and 5 clicks to rate the podcast and leave a quick review.  Here’s how to do it in less than 30 seconds:

Click on This Link – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/howd-it-happen-podcast/id1441722417

Click on the “Listen on Apple Podcast” Box

Click on “Open iTunes” – You will go directly to the iTunes page for the Podcast

Click on “Ratings and Reviews”

Click on the 5thStar (or whatever one makes the most sense to you 🙂

Episode transcript below:

00:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.

00:19 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
On today’s episode, I’m talking to a lawyer who has really figured out how to create a life of reward and meaning. Kevin McGough and I talk about childhood jobs, how his dad was a 50-50 guy that’s kind of a cool conversation why he turned down the pickup truck, how developing meaning is a lot like planning a trip, and why you should always, always, always, thank your mentors.

00:43 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
He walked down the street and I run into my lawyer’s brand and I’d say hey, mike, how are you doing? You’re responsive? Oh man, I’m busy. Well, I gotta out-biz you, I gotta come back with. Oh me too, in fact, I’m so swamped I can’t do this or that. I’ve never had a French person say oh, I’m busy, there’s no conversation about what you did. Nobody asked me that I was a lawyer. But the converse of that, I think, here is we’re mired to this identity that requires us to out-biz the next guy or the next woman, as opposed to saying Now I’m having a great life, I like what I’m doing or I don’t like what I’m doing. I’m thinking about a change.

01:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream.

01:49
Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today. This is a great conversation and I hope you love it. And now here’s Kevin Mcoff. Hello, kevin, welcome to the. How it Happened?

02:39 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Good morning, Mike. I’m really looking forward to speaking with you today.

02:43 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I am looking forward to speaking to you as well, because we have a lot in common and for those of you listening, you’ll figure out that sort of what Kevin’s book is about and what he’s interested in and been through on his own is a lot like what I talk about frequently, so there’s going to be some parallels here. But let me tell you a little bit about Kevin before we get started. So Kevin Mcoff is the author of Find your Landing Zone Life Beyond the Bar, and for those of you who are thinking that, oh, can you see, there we go, there’s his book. It’s not about addiction, it’s about a different kind of bar. He is a travel writer, he’s a speaker and he’s a lawyer. Kevin’s desire is to motivate lawyers and other professionals like you to progress from thinking about what’s coming to creating a personal plan to make it happen.

03:41
During his career, kevin worked for a state agency. He ran a solo law practice, started a law firm and later served as a general counsel to a large Midwest firm. As he looked to other horizons, kevin created a plan with his law firm’s management, allowing him to wind down his career while developing new skills. He retired from practice of law from the practice law in 2021, but he didn’t retire from life, and that’s what’s important about what we’re going to talk about today. So when I look at my work with Dream Exit for entrepreneurs and business owners, I draw this parallel between Kevin’s work and mine. I think he’s doing Dream Exit for lawyers and professionals, so I’m ready to dig into that. I do think there’s one thing interesting here, two things. One, he and his wife have been married for 50 years, which that’s a really big deal. My wife and I are at 34, so we’re trying to get there.

04:43
Yeah, congratulations for you too, and he and his wife split their time between Indiana, where he is now in Indianapolis area, and the South of France, which is kind of cool. You can learn more about Kevin at his website, which is Surla. I’m just going to spell this S-U-R-A-L-A-R-O-U-T-E-K-Mcom. His email is kevinmc-g-o-f-f-1 at gmailcom. So, kevin, I start my podcast with a simple question, and that is how did it happen for you?

05:29 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Well, first of all, I was seated with an idea and secondly, I did spade work and found that there are facts that have been germinating and many things that I’ve done over the course of my life had actually been in preparation for this seed that a friend of mine planted, which I want to tell you about. And thirdly, I was validated when I finally mustered the courage to move forward. So there’s a quote from Gilbert and Sullivan opera which I really like. It’s in my book and Kevin did nothing, but he did it particularly well. And I think if you look back at who Kevin was when, as a young man, that was a paper boy, I was an altar boy, I was a flower delivery man and my interstate interstate commerce blossomed when I took on a candy route and I was a built vending machine. And at some point my wife I was married when I was 20 years old, patty was 18. She inspired me to get off the couch and not be complacent with what I was doing.

06:42
I’d been in the Army, I was in and out of college and finally I met a couple of young law students who kind of inspired me to think about the law school bit. So I went to my candy route, supervisor and I said I’m going to quit the route and I’m going to go back to college, get better grades and I’m going to go to law school. And the guy said you know what? He said you know how hard it is to get into law school. He said you’re never going to make it. He said if I were you I’d stay here because you’re supervisor material and you do know that supervisors get to drive the pickup truck home at night and keep it on the weekends. And so think about your decision. And obviously I went on to law school and was reminded frequently well, more or less frequently by my wife every time I wanted to complain about a case, a judge, a client, a partner that I could have had the pickup truck. And I chose something else, and so I ended up with this really nice career.

07:50
I, as you said, I worked for a state agency that prosecuted lawyers. I turned that into the business of defending lawyers, which I did for many years. I was at a small firm, a big firm. I had my own practice and did everything at one time, from defending murder cases and some debt penalty cases and doing traffic tickets, whatever to keep the doors open Along the way. I had a luxury of being in a law firm that valued continuing legal education and personal development, and as a partner I had a small stipend that I matched with my own money, and I hired a professional coach, and at the time I didn’t realize it, but it was life-changing because the seeds that Mark planted in me got me moving in some other directions other than trying to climb the career path.

08:54
I was restless. I had a great job, I had great partners, I had a good law firm, but I was always looking for something else. On the side, I had my professional life. My wife and I had been traveling to France. When I was in the Army, I had the good fortune to have my orders changed from Vietnam to Germany, and when I got to Germany I had developed this love for Europe and taken some French in high school, and so we started going to France after we got married for a week, two weeks, whatever we could afford, and that developed this interest in France to the point that we worked with tutors.

09:40
We studied the language, started going more and more, and so when I got to this point where I’m restless, I had a stroke of luck in that my law firm asked if I would be the general counsel, and it came at the same time that, because the law changed in Indiana, one of my brothers was a client of the firm and he could no longer stay a client if I remained a partner. And so I struck a bargain with the management team that I’d relinquish my partnership, become general counsel but also have a program by which I could reduce the commitment to the law firm gradually. And I offered which people thought I was crazy to take a reduction in pay accordingly, so that my salary was reduced, my responsibilities were reduced and then I could move on to something else. But the something else was I didn’t know. So I decided well, I’ve been writing my whole lawyer life that’s what many lawyers do and felt that I could put sentences together and be persuasive.

11:01
But that didn’t translate into what I thought I’d be interested in. So I found a travel writers class and we had a daughter living in Denver at the time, so it was a great excuse to go to Denver. I did this weekend class, found that I liked it and started publishing travel stories and that went along with our love of travel and gave me something to do. And as I got towards the end of my career I decided I wanted to do that. I didn’t want a job I already had one of those but I wanted some meaning. So there’s a program that I went to.

11:42
I was having dinner afterwards with Scott King, who has been a friend for years and also manages he’s the head of the Indiana Continued Legal Education Forum. And Scott goes your life is so strategic and he’s playing this thing so well. And here you are, you’re living in France half the year, you’ve wound down your lawyer life and things are going great. I burst out laughing. I said, scott, there was nothing strategic about this. It just, I mean, entered through life and ended up here. And he said I don’t believe that, because I really think there’s a program there. Why don’t you sit down and think about that? Let’s have breakfast. So I did, and this was the idea that I was seated with by Scott, because once I started working on the program, he and I would meet. He said I think maybe there’s a book in there.

12:36
And so what I realized as I started writing this book that all these things that I’ve done throughout my life that seem pretty disjointed. I mean taking a French class, travel, writing, visiting France or Europe or whatever, taking random cases as a young lawyer. What I synthesized is that it’s almost like when you’re on an airplane and you’re landing on parallel runways where you see the other plane coming in, that my personal life was on one runway and my professional life was on another, and my professional life was winding down. My personal life was taken off in a different direction. And while it seemed like happenstance, I think maybe Scott was right, there was a strategy there, but I didn’t know it consciously.

13:34
And so third point in terms of how it happened, is the validation that when I started thinking about this to say to myself and to others, I expressed that my view, watching this from my role in management of the law firm, was that lawyers frequently have they have all these talents, and I wrote from a lawyer’s perspective because that’s what I know. But here are these talents sitting there, but they’re just dormant. And they’re dormant because we profess to be too busy, which busy is a choice but we say that we’re too busy, and I talk about that in a minute. That my take on that.

14:16
So when I started saying, look, I think if you reflect, if you read, if you talk to others, if you try to unravel the talents, that there’s a method by which you can go about that, to change course. Didn’t we totally get out of the law? Maybe you wanna take a different path within the law, maybe you wanna stop lawyering and teach, which I have friends do. And so when I was validated with people saying, look, this resonates with me. And so I borrowed upon my experience personally, things that I’ve read, things that I was taught, things that I learned from my coach, and put together this program that morphed into a book. And so that’s how it happened.

15:06 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
That’s how it happened. Okay, so you laid down a lot of stuff there. I wanna go back and tease our way into a few of those things. First of all, this busy thing. You have an interesting part in the book where you sort of compare the American version of how you answer the question how are you, or how are you doing and the French version of how you answer that same kind of question. That I found fascinating. So, from your perspective, americans do one thing because for validation, and the French, for example, do something different. Could you talk about that a little bit, sure?

15:49 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
I observed. I wrote an article about this probably 15 years ago, and then I revisited it because I realized that the article I wrote didn’t have any impact. My observation is he walked down the street and I run into my lawyer friends and I’d say, hey, mike, how you doing? Your response to me oh man, I’m busy. Well, I gotta out-biz you, I gotta come back with OB too. In fact, I’m so swamped I can’t do this or that.

16:20
And it struck me as so odd that, instead of saying I’m doing great, I’m healthy, my kids are great, I bought a new car, whatever you wanna say, it’s no, we go right to our career and friends. If you see somebody on the street and say, how are you, ça va, how you doing? Well, that’s the response you might get oh, come see, come see, I’m kind of okay, but it’s rare that you I’ve never had a French person say, oh, I’m busy, I just can’t handle it. And so, and aside to that, I started cycling during COVID.

16:58
We stayed in France for nine months and I bought a bike and started riding with these fellows that are roughly my age, way more accomplished than they, and there’s no conversation about what you did. Nobody asked me that I was a lawyer and what I found was I’ve known these guys now for a couple of years and I, just the other couple of months ago, asked one of them what he did in life. And that isn’t the identity, at least to the group of people that I’m associated with in a small town in France. But the converse of that, I think, here is we’re mired to this identity that requires us to busy the next guy or the next woman, as opposed to saying now I’m having a great life, I like what I’m doing or I don’t like what I’m doing. I’m thinking about a change where it’s a go-go society and it’s. That’s no big revelation to anybody, right.

18:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, I think it’s. I feel like it’s a, it’s a crutch too, because when you tell me you’re busy, I wonder why Like not that you don’t have a lot of responsibility or something, but when you’re telling me you’re busy, you’re telling me that as if I’m supposed to hear you’re effective and I’m hearing okay, so everybody’s busy. I mean, tell me something that I don’t know. I mean, even the person who has nothing going on is busy, right, that’s just they’re busy. And I agree with you. It’s to me it’s well, you didn’t say this, but I’m gonna say it to me.

18:47
It’s like when someone answers a question that way, it’s kind of boring because they’re just trying to play the game the way that they they think everybody plays, you know is supposed to play the game, like at a networking event or whatever just run into somebody. How are you? Oh, busy, man, things are great, everything’s off. And then you get them outside of it like, oh man, this is wrong and that’s wrong and I’m busy, but I’m not getting anything done. You know, there’s all those things, so it’s a really interesting. I’m glad you talk about that in your book.

19:23 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
No, it’s interesting you use the word crutch, because my sense is that and that’s part of what I’ve written that I’m busy center of, if you will, keeps us and I’m not talking about lawyers, I mean it’s us generally from pursuing other things because we’re maybe inefficient and effective. And, as you said, you know, just because you say you’re busy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re busy doing something constructive, and so the concept that I can’t break out of this I think leads to a lack of opportunity to explore other options. You have blinders.

20:04
I had one of the interviews with a young lawyer who her takeaway to me was that she thought that lawyers have blinders on and these opportunities are out there, that they’re missed because we’re so focused on the goal of this particular case, this making partner, all these other things. She got her dream job in her young right out of law school, but she wanted to write and so she was writing articles. She wrote for Forbes and by habit stance this, somebody from New York at ESPN calls and says hey, would you come and talk? And her friend said you ought to go talk to these people because I think it’d be great networking opportunity. And when she got there she discovered it was really a job interview and she walked away with an on-air position at ESPN only because she flew from Atlanta to New York on kind of a win.

21:03 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So Huh, and thanks for sharing that. You kind of glazed over this. You know your time in the military, the, and I read in your book that you kind of were able to get out early on that. And you know the lock that you mentioned, the lock of being stationed in Germany instead of Vietnam. So and you hit, so you had this career path. That wasn’t high school, college, law school, which you mentioned that briefly, but I would like to go a little bit further into that. Like, who was Kevin McGuff when you got out of high school? I mean, you talked about some of the jobs you had, but where was your life going at that time?

21:53 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
I’m the oldest of six and so at the my father and mother were great, my dad in particular. He was a great 50, 50 guy. If you wanted to bicycle then he’d pay half. And so when I was in the eighth grade I was serving mass at the local Catholic church and the Jesuit priest was building a new high school. Turned out that he happened.

22:23
He knew my father from my father’s college days in Cleveland and Father Schmidt said you want to go to Berbuff Jesuit High School? I said well, there’s no way, man, it’s, it’s the oldest of six, it’s not going to happen. He said you take the test and if you pass it I’ll make it happen. Well, I later found out he made the same offer to a bunch of other boys to his all-boys school at the time. But he came to the house and said to my dad, jim and Dorothy, here’s the deal I’ll give Kevin a job at high school, a buck an hour. The tuition was 400 bucks, you pay the other 200. So I thought it was a great marketing technique of a Jesuit priest to drop that in front of the whole family. Yeah.

23:04
I don’t know where your kids but I’m housing. I’m going to say no to the priest. You know we find the 200 bucks. So I had a 50-50 deal with dad through college, through high school, and he said when you go to college? He said you pay for the first year yourself and if I like your grades I’ll split the next three. And I decided that you know what, I’m not going to have these debates over my grades.

23:31
So me and two buddies got on our bicycles and we rode to the Army Recruiters Office in June of 1971. And we actually bargained. The Navy guy said he’d give us two years unless we met. The Army guy said three. And as we left the Army guy’s office to say we’re going to join the Navy because we’re only going to do two years, he jumped up from behind his desk, ran, got in front of the door, blocked the door and signed three new recruits up, just like the movies. And so I rode my bike home. Dad sat on the back patio with his smoke and newspaper and told him what we’d done that day and he said don’t you boys know there’s war going on? Oh, you know, we’ll be fine pop. You know we go high school graduates and all bravado and my two buddies ended up at radio school.

24:23
By the end of the summer I was at Tigerland, home of the Combat Infantry Men at Fort Worth, fort Oak, louisiana, and a couple months later, with orders to go to Vietnam. And so this has been one of those mysteries of life Me and the other six guys sitting there waiting to go, the sergeant came in and said you’re not going, orders have been changed, sit around here for a couple of weeks and clean out old barracks. And then I went to Germany. And that’s how I got there. It was really to go to school, and then I didn’t really squander it. I got out and thought oh man, I’m going to be a doctor Now. I couldn’t master the slide rule in high school which one had to use chemistry class.

25:10
So I did terrible in chemistry and why? I thought two years in the Army as a clerk typist in Germany enhanced my math and chemistry brain. But it didn’t. And I went back to college or went to start a school and got probably got a D in zoology because I couldn’t figure out a bug’s head from its heart or its kidney. I you know zoology class. So so I left college, delivered flowers, went back to school and said I know what I’ll do, I’ll be a, I’m going to be an accountant. Well, two weeks in I couldn’t get the balance sheet to balance and math was never my skill and I just dropped out again. And my wife Patty went to beauty school to become a hairdresser and I filled candy machines for a year and I was making 185 bucks and was living large, and till I met these law students, until Patty said you know you need to. You can’t fill candy machines rest of your life, even if there is a pickup truck at the end of the rainbow.

26:16 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Smart woman, smart woman. So so read it. So I’m reading between the lines here and I’m saying well, kevin was maybe a bit rebellious, you know. And dad said hey, you pay the first year and then, if I like your grades, we’ll do something. You’re like well sounded to me. You were like well, street at that. We’re not going to do it that way.

26:34 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Yeah, no, there was quite. There was a bit of that and I don’t know it all works out for the good. He gave that gave the same deal to the rest of the family, although the running joke is, you know, most big families have this where the older three had a little rougher than the younger three, which we joke about all the time.

26:53
You know they got a credit card and a car and all that you know, but it was, but he was pretty much the same deal. He wanted to make sure that you earned it in that, and those are great values because you don’t lose them right. It’s another one of those little snippets that are buried back in there that you don’t consciously think about, but it’s who you are.

27:17 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Right, and you also, if I remember from the book, you’re also, at least in your mind, an aspiring entrepreneur at one time, because you and whatever the program was that allowed you to get out of the army early. It’s at Scotty’s landscaping or some Scooter scooter, scooter, Scooter landscaping.

27:42 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Scooter landscaping Scooter landscaping, it was really. It was one of the funny things about the US military. One of my very good friends was a draftee, so in 1971, they were drafting soldiers. But the war started to wind down and by the spring of 73, they were letting people out early if you had something to go home to. And so I worked in an office where I said I’m going to start this landscaping service and typed up my business plan and said I couldn’t get out at June 30th. The customers would all be gone and who’s your landscape would be overgrown. And so I get out 30 days early. I can contribute to the beauty of the state of Indiana, and a friend of mine next door, of course, stamped approved and I got to come home a couple months early and to start school and I was landscaping service. Never go off the ground. In fact, I was never much of a gardener. I was better at working in the flower shop than I was gardening.

28:51 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Got it, yeah, so it was a good idea to get. It was a good idea that maybe it wasn’t intentional to get you out, but it did the job.

29:04 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Exactly.

29:05 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Good job, yeah, exactly.

29:06 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
It got me back to school and, frankly, I worked in an office where there wasn’t much work. It was, I mean, I was living in Germany 18, 19 years old, so it wasn’t all bad. But the Army saved some money when they let me out and the little work that I had somebody else could do without taxing anybody. So it was a win-win.

29:33 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And you mentioned in your legal career that you’ve been first a prosecutor, I think you said, and then a defense lawyer, and you mentioned defending a bunch of things, but you said you defended lawyers. You said did I get that right? Yeah, yes, so that’s kind of a niche, right. How did that come to be? What kind of things were you like? How frequently do lawyers need to be defended? Because I’m thinking this is a criminal thing, not a civil thing, correct?

30:04 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
No, no, actually, mike. It’s well the Indiana Supreme Court, as every state court holds a lawyer’s license. The lawyers are licensed by the state and there is an arm of the Indiana Supreme Court called the Disciplinary Commission and the Shal Bresco, who was the executive secretary there, gave me a job as a second-year law student with that agency as a law clerk writing up reports, and ultimately he let me stay for one year as a lawyer where I would prosecute the cases and then I changed tables in the courtroom. But lawyers are. That whole legal ethics has evolved hugely from 1978 when I took that first job where there’s two staff lawyers. There were 10. Last time I knew that there was no mandatory continuing legal education back before the late 80s and that really evolved in the 90s. But no lawyers are over the years. The number one problem is neglect. That where lawyers neglect their clients. That was probably the highest incidence of problems. So not necessarily serious. But there’s some lawyers that have substance abuse problems. That’s an issue. There’s lawyers that have dipped into client funds and that’s a serious issue Getting off inappropriately in a deposition or in a courtroom. So it was a for me.

31:47
I was at an organization of lawyers that that’s what they do associate professional responsibility lawyers and there’s lawyers across the country that do this in their particular state and it was I. Really I enjoyed it a lot In people of ass. Oh my God, you had lawyers for clients, but no, the lawyers are actually pretty good clients, I would say. Out of all the ones I represented, they were. They listened, and that’s the kind of point that I make too.

32:14
Is that this, doing that over the course of 30 years, ends up when I’m general counsel to a law firm and I’ve been a litigator and I defended lawyers and judges as well. So I had this base of knowledge that I really didn’t think much about. That was was accumulating, and so it made it easy. There were 200 lawyers in the firm and I told some of this the other day that the lawyers came to me before they acted, which is what any general counsel wants or business lawyer wants for the client to say what do you think about if I do this, as opposed to guess what I’ve done, because it’s a lot easier to clean it up before you need to clean it up.

33:01 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And so, just so everybody’s clear, then you’re really helping lawyers, or you were defending lawyer when you were defending them. You’re helping them hopefully avoid disciplinary or disbarment type things, right? So this is their.

33:20 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Their career is on the line their license.

33:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Exactly, yeah, okay.

33:25 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Now that’s, we’d always counsel lawyers, or I spoke for years at the program that I put together with one of the lawyers at the disciplinary commission, chuck Kidd, and Chuck, he would always make this point the most expensive piece of paper you have in your pocket is your law license, and you know so guard it well. And that was our pitch. We tried to I think did well at it by going around the state and talking to lawyers about how to stay out of trouble, and we used Cousin Vinny and whatever kind of poll knew in the movie clips to make the point, as opposed to just two guys droning on. So it was fun to do.

34:07 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, my cousin Vinny, yeah, nice, so you. Yesterday I was on a call and one of the people on the call it’s like a group mastermind call and one of the people on the call woman, she’s an immigration lawyer and she was talking about how she’s designed her firm to be the happiest law firm in the United States. That’s her goal. She’s trying to break all the paradigms of what being a lawyer is and what the customer experiences for a lawyer and his or her client and I. It was kind of fascinating to me because and I think this plays into your book she she juxtaposed her approach to her brothers, who is also a lawyer and is kind of one of his career has been one of those grind out the hours. This is what I do.

35:03
Happiness doesn’t matter, it’s all about you know putting in the time. I guess, and most people I don’t think, realize that you know being a lawyer. There’s two sides to that coin, right, in most circles not all, but in most circles lawyers are people look at them and go, wow, you’re a lawyer, held in, you know, high regard, they think what a great job. And then there’s the backside of being a lawyer, in a lot of cases, at least where it’s really about exchanging time for money. And then there’s this whole hierarchical thing, sort of like multi-level marketing, inside of a law firm. My point is it what the inside of being a lawyer for a lot of lawyers isn’t like what the outside looks like. I mean, it’s a real I’m going to call it a trap. It can be a trap, right, because you only make money when you’re working, which is still strange these days. I know some law firms are sort of morphing, but there aren’t that many professional positions where you’re getting paid only five hour that you work. So that’s a weird thing. And the other weird thing and this is really going to be interesting about how you broke this the longer you do it, the more you make typically, and so the more hours you put in, the more you make.

36:38
And then it’s like why would I, how could I walk away from this? Because I’m getting all this, and so I just wanted to sort of lay that out. You can respond to that. As to whether I’m out in left field or not, I’m not sure, but when you mentioned the seed that was the seed of an idea that was planted in you, and I think you were referencing the seed. You mentioned the professional coach. I think you were referencing Mark Hirschman. So can you just help us understand this law lawyer dynamic in terms of the outside, inside, like I was trying to do? And then, how many people have you seen that did what you have done or did when you were? I think it was 54 when you engaged with Mark.

37:27 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
I think you’re right about the perception.

37:32
What if there’s a joke among lawyers that well, nobody tells you in law school what the grind is going to be right? Your association with how the law works is and this is being a bit facetious, but it’s a television show where the crime is committed at the top of the hour, the arrest is made before the first commercial and the trial is over with in a couple of hours. But all the work that goes into putting not just litigation, which is what I’m familiar with, but to deal together it doesn’t happen like that and it is hard work and with a stress associated with it, particularly if you’re doing family law or criminal defense, you’re going to have to diminish other areas of the law, because it’s equally if you’re trying to close a merger of some big company and the heat’s on right. I mean there’s certain things where maybe the law is writing your will would not stress the lawyer out, or shouldn’t. But defending capital murder case, aside from just the work, is the stress of what the lawyer perceives as his or her failure is.

38:46 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, the person’s life is in your hands. Your life gets exactly.

38:50 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
And so that’s another dynamic. I think that is not taught, I suppose, and so you do. You go into it. When I went to law school I knew one lawyer this man, he was the railroad lawyer. He’s a parent of a couple of guys I went to grade school and high school with. I didn’t know any lawyers. I got my first job out of the state and pulled out of the parking lot there’s a Maserati and a couple of Mercedes and I thought these guys must do all right. I had no idea what the economics was. It doesn’t. I didn’t start for that reason and I maybe I was just naive, but that wasn’t part of the what was going through my head when I thought I’d be a lawyer and so so I think you’re right.

39:34
The outward appearance of this is an accomplished person, but the inward struggle of the angst, beyond what I’ve already talked about, climbing the corporate ladder within the law firm and there’s the same sort of muscling that goes on. I was on the management committee. It’s like any other institution that there’s I wouldn’t say everybody, but people are disappointed with what their compensation is and that’s I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be too broad to say that’s human nature, but I made the quit that everybody thinks that they’re underpaid and that their house is worth more than it really is. Just, I mean, that’s how we’re, that’s human nature. Yes, Right.

40:24 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So tell me about what the seed that Mark, tell me more about the seed that Mark planted in you and how you’re how I mean, I think, ultimately between that and what you mentioned, scott said led to this book, right? I mean led to you wanting to be like hey there is.

40:43 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Okay. No, you’re absolutely right. I mean, when Scott said that, I thought I just, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about that, it just. And then I thought it was kind of it was funny to me that he thought that I had a strategy, but as I, when I sat down and took the time to look back, I actually had a file where I had my notes for my conversation with Mark and that really was inspiring.

41:08
When I went back and looked, one of the exercises he had us do which I put in the book, he said just be random, what do you want to do in the rest of your life? And you know, jump out of an airplane, go to Romania, learn another language. I mean, I had this list of I don’t know 40 or 50 things. Well, I went back and looked at it 15 years later. About 40% of it I had done, and I’m still fiddle with other parts of it, and I hadn’t looked at that list for 10 or 15 years.

41:42
And so, mark, I’m an advocate of professional coaching and some circles, some people get squeamish about that and that you know and term, some enterprises still want to invest in those sort of things.

41:58
But for me it was hugely valuable because it got me out of my comfort zone and again my training as a lawyer.

42:08
I was a history major and I went to law school and I was a candy delivery man, right, I wasn’t a business major. I never talked about business concepts or marketing or those sort of things that other lawyers certainly have in there to a kid that I didn’t, and so maybe they’re ahead of me in the game. But when you have somebody sit down who can get you out of your not necessarily your comfort zone but to make you think differently, I found huge value there and I, in writing this book, I worked with Anna Rapoport, who’s a coach, a professional coach, and some of the things that she told me were really interesting to me that I think the value of having somebody who’s not in your family, not in your law firm, not in your social circle sitting you down and holding you accountable, which is a huge thing, as you know from your work professionals that the accountability factor the cynic in me says and I’d be interested to get your perspective on this that the law firms corporate, some corporations.

43:21 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
The reason that they may be anti coaching is not because they don’t see the value of it. It’s because they fear that if you’re coached and you mentioned it you’re you didn’t. You said maybe didn’t get out of your comfort zone, and I thought in my mind, I thought no, but it opened your eyes. They are. I think there’s some fear that your eyes will be open to other things that will lead you away from them, and that’s scary. So your personal growth or development, or whatever you want to call it, may not align with the company or the corporation or the law firms goals.

44:05 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Right Now. I see it. In my opinion it’s always been that that’s a good thing If you’ve and it firms kind of in different shapes and sizes, but in a 200 person firm, if you’ve hired and brought along your younger lawyers to have the more senior person say, I’m going to go teach high school but I’m going to make sure that my clients stay with the law firm and stay with these new lawyers, then you’ve done what people in industry do. It’s a little more complicated in the law firm because there’s a lot of personal and some lawyers have a reputation and maybe they’re not transferable. But if you’re a lawyer that represents various companies and you’ve got this reputation, there’s a way, in my opinion, to pass that along. If you hire well, you train well and you nurture these young lawyers, then you make room for them. And I think that’s a frustration in younger lawyers, that I know where the top gets a little top heavy and I was one of the things I tried to sell, as now it was selfish because I did it because I wanted to, but I used that as an example to say, look, I’m having pretty much fun here when I’ve reduced my hours and you ought to think about it yourself. If you’re at a certain point in your career where you should be financially comfortable, emotionally comfortable and have something else in mind, then what are you doing here at 7.30 in the morning and 7.30 at night? Right, but it’s your hardwired.

45:54
And some people have a great friend, a really good lawyer. He’s 81 years old. A couple of weeks ago I talked to him. He’d just been down in Florida trying a case that he was successful in. He loves it. He said Macawth. He said don’t, I don’t even want your book, I’m not interested in what you’re selling. I said, jim, I think it’s great and I admire my brothers and sisters in the bar that are viable at that point in their lives, at 80 years old and still going at it, which is? I mean we’re having this debate right now about whether an 80-year-old should be president of the United States. Do you want an 80-year-old lawyer? I didn’t know. I’d hire Jim, but there’s others that maybe not.

46:42 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, it’s probably less Jim’s than others, but Jim sounds like he’s lit up by what he does, though that’s a whole different story than someone who’s grinded down but thinks I have to keep. I just have to keep going. It’s my only option, exactly.

47:01 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
No, you’re right, Mike. That’s kind of the point is that there shouldn’t be one option. There’s no one size fits all, and that’s where this message and I think your message is that you have to figure out where you fit into this spectrum of opportunities.

47:24 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Right.

47:25 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
And you have lots of choices, but you have to look for the choices and I think that’s difficult for some people.

47:32 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah Well, you mentioned the word meeting earlier, kevin, and in my Dream Exit program with entrepreneurs, I talk about helping them get maximum value and create maximum meaning in their life, and I think meaning is something that, whether you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, lawyer, professional or a person, if you wait until a certain period of time when you are retired, taken out of use, to start thinking about what your meaning is, the likelihood that you will make really good progress on that, I think, is low, whereas if you start thinking about that and planning for that and exploring that idea, opening your eyes to it to use the example we talked about earlier you have a lot more chance of at least being on the right road to it.

48:40
You never know what’s really going to work for you, but at least you know that you’ve intentionally thought about it and you know at least the first step you’re going to take, or the first three steps you’re going to take, for example, and they’re not I’m going to play golf, I’m going to go to the beach, I’m going to all this stuff the retirement industry sort of sells you in the commercials.

49:08 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
I like it to planning a trip, and I look back to the early days of our trip planning, when we had limited resources and credible enthusiasm for this annual trip that we would take to Europe, france in particular, where you’d search out the right prices for the flights and the car and get the cheapest you could get, and where are we going to go, and let’s know something about this area, and so the experience and preparing for the experience was every bit as gratifying as getting there and then seeing everything.

49:46 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And I think it’s.

49:49 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
I liken that to the same thing with how we manage through life, that the planning and the thinking about it. You know how many trips you say I want to go do this and that you look at this site and say, oh, I really don’t want to do that. And it’s the same thing in our personal life or professional life. If you’re contending to look down the road, it doesn’t have to be 20 years or 30 years, it can be three, four, five or 10. So thinking about it turns into an opportunity and it also tells you what you don’t want to do. You know you look at that and say, oh, it’s not that interesting. But if you’re just focused on climbing the corporate ladder and you’re not looking for these things that are going to happen to you, like you said, it’s not. Nobody rides this forever.

50:41 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, yeah, what’s happened to you since you wrote the book? What’s, what’s? You know, I, I wrote a book a couple of years ago, my first book, and I’m always fascinated by anyone who can write a book, but I’m also fascinated by what you get out of it. So what have you taken away from the experience, Kevin, and what are you getting out of it now? It’s been out for about no, it came out in 23, right, so it’s not, hasn’t?

51:15 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
been out that long.

51:16 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah.

51:17 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So so a few months into it, A couple of things.

51:24 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
One I guess I didn’t write it necessarily to have fantastic sales. I felt really fortunate to for the American Bar Association to publish it. I mean that was a big. When I looked at the self publishing route and the various hybrids of that, and then when they expressed an interest in it, I felt gratified and also humbling to.

51:53
You know the publisher like that, take it on, which relieves you of a lot of issues. But then you learn that if you’re going to sell books you got to do it yourself. That’s the author’s job as well, and so I enjoy doing these podcasts with you and others, which I wouldn’t be doing but for the book. But the one thing that I’ve had two of these events so in the last couple of months, the most recent one was a doctor friend of ours is retiring and so I took a copy of the book to her office and dropped it in there, a little note in the front of it back in the fall, and she called a couple of weeks ago and said hey, would you like to have a beer? Sure, retired. So I met her at a restaurant down the way and she had the book. It was dog-eared and the exercises in the book were partially filled out.

52:59
And she said you know, I’m on my way to Florida with my husband to start my retirement life. And she said this has been really helpful to me.

53:07
You’ve made me think and I still have more work to do, but I found this meaningful and that at that moment, and now talking about is every bit as meaningful as look at production numbers and so it made a difference in somebody’s life and that when I was writing it, that’s when I had to accomplish although I’m not the foggiest idea how I was going to get it published or do that and so I suppose, at the end of the day, if nobody else pops up and says, hey, that was helpful. I’m gratified by Sheila’s comments that it was, and I think that’s just maybe think about what I want to do next and going forward, because as you know it’s writing books not easy, and once you write it, there’s other things to do.

53:55
So I’m doing you write another book, do you market the one you have? And again, I’m traveling some. I’m riding bikes, if when I get the opportunity. Not, you know this climate right now, but I have lots of other interests. I read, and so there’s, I’m not. I’ve always got my little to do pad here, that you know. When do I start my next project? And you know I’m not. I don’t have to rush into it, but I, but I do feel a need to do it because I am not ready to kick back. I’m not a golfer, a card player, or you know there’s, there’s a lot.

54:39 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I think I have a lot of miles left.

54:40 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, you look like you do, you talk like you do. Thank you, I think you think like you do, so I’m glad. You said I’m glad, so you’re right. So one of the biggest, I think, best things about being an author is that you, you know, nobody ever gets tired of being told that they have a cute baby, and when you write a book, that is your baby. And when someone, like the woman you mentioned, says something positive about your book, that will take you a long way, like you can think about oh, it’s not selling as much whatever.

55:18
All it takes is someone to tell you your baby’s cute and you’re like this was worth all the time that I spent in June. So Kevin thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been a real honor and pleasure to talk to you and learn more about your journey Before we go. Is there any place besides what we’ve mentioned or you want to mention again, where to direct people to connect with you or get your book or have a conversation with you? Book you on their podcast, whatever?

55:52 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
Absolutely, if you, you can buy the book. It’s easy to type Amazon and Kevin McGough, it’ll take you right to the book, and my email is K-E-D-I-N dot m-c-g-o-f-f. And the number one at gmailcom. So I’d love to hear from anybody with questions and happy to chat. I do have a website where my travel writing is produced and these podcasts are accessible at sirla-root-k-n dot com. That’s S-U-R-L-A-R-O-U-T-E-K-N dot com. Sirla-root is on the road, on the road.

56:30 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, got it, and all that will be in the show notes as well. So, kevin, is there anything that I didn’t ask you or that you feel like you want to leave with the listeners today before we go?

56:48 – Kevin McGoff (Guest)
The one thing I would say that to thank your mentors, that I had the good fortune to have really fabulous mentors in my life, starting with my mother and father moving through careers, and there’s a couple that I missed that I just I didn’t realize that they were being a good mentor when this one man didn’t promote me and he didn’t promote me because he knew that with me, that I’d quit college and he kept me in a part-time position and I didn’t thank George for that, but others along the way. I did call him up and how meaningful that was for me to have a conversation with two great guys that are gone now that I got to call them and it’s caused me I’ve written an article about this, but I think you know, thank the people that brought you along, because nobody gets anywhere without somebody bringing them along. Yeah, I like that.

57:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Thank your mentors. Keep that in mind, everybody, and keep in mind as well that you have greatness inside of you and I would like to see you maximize it every single day. Thanks for listening and until next time. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One. If you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer.

58:15
If you’re really into it, leave me a review write something nice about me, give me five stars, or whatever you feel is most appropriate.

58:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck.

58:27 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
It’s an Amazon bestseller.

58:29 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Thanks, I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes and Noble, amazon. You can get it everywhere. If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential, order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy and if you get it, please let me know what you think. Number three my newsletter.

58:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name mikemalatesta.com.

59:07 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
You do that right now. Put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.