What's going on everyone? Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bronx Attorney Broadcast. I'm your host, Will Forero. On this episode, we have Ryan McKeen. Ryan is the co-founder of the Connecticut trial firm and the Connecticut trial firm is a very fast growing personal injury practice in
Connecticut. Ryan just hit for a $100 million jury verdict. In this episode, he talks about what it's like to take risks, what it's like to have a vision when you start a law firm or go out on your own to have your own practice, and what it's like to form the relationships that really help your law firm continue to grow and thrive. So I really hope you enjoy this episode with Ryan McKeen. Hey Ryan, thanks for taking the time to talk to me tonight. I'm
really excited to get to know you a little bit more. Thank you so much for having me on, Will. So just to get started, can you tell us a little bit about your background and about your firm? Sure. I'm Ryan McKeen. I'm co-founder and CEO of Connecticut trial firm. We're located in Glastonbury, Connecticut, which for those unfamiliar with Connecticut, it's right outside of Hartford, and our practice is dedicated exclusively to personal entry work. Okay, and so who did
you co-found the firm with? I co-founded it with my partner Andrew Garza. Okay, and I really wanted to talk to you today about how I got to know you for the first time, and that was your book Tiger Tactics, which I don't know how I found it, but I ended up buying it, I guess, off Amazon or something like that. And it was one of the books that kind of started to get me thinking more about building my own brand and working towards building
my own caseload and clientele and things like that. And not quite ready to have my own firm yet, but our firm is only the two of us, so it kind of started to get me thinking about stuff like that. How did you get the idea to write a book and what was your process like? First of all, that is awesome, and it means so much that that book has touched your life and touched your
practice. It's why we did it. That book, the real genesis for that book is that me, Jay Rewain and Billy Tarasio were in a Slack group together, and we got segregated because we were the most active people, and we just kept messaging each other all the time, over the course of probably 18 months. Saturday night, Sunday night, all hours of the day and never ending discussion of what is the model law firm. And at one point I said to Billy
and Jay, I said, let's turn this into a book. There's a lot of good stuff here, and so Tiger Tactics was born. We decided to write it and to get some co-authors and put the book together and ultimately release it probably 15 months after we sort of talked about it initially. And when did the book come out? Oh geez, I want to say it came out like
March of 2019. We're working on a sequel, working on Tiger Tactics 2, a CEO edition, which will, my chapters are all due at the end of March, so hopefully we'll have that out in the fall. And is that going to be revisiting the same topics as the first book, or is it going to be expanding or new topics? It's expanding. In many ways, like for me and for I think many of the authors, Tiger Tactics was sort of like going from solo, small firm, like really small firm, and now all of our
respective practices have grown. And so it's more transitioning into the role of being the CEO of your firm. So it's for anybody who's doing that or wants to do it or is thinking about doing it. So we're touching on a lot of different topics. And you might get some new authors. Okay, who's going to be new on this, on the new book? Well, we've got Jay Rewain, Billy, Bill Umanski, or back. We've got Jen Gore, Cuthbert, Elise Bowie, Joey Vitale, trying to think of who else.
Michelle Delano, a few others. We tried to get as many diverse practices from across the country for people who have actually scaled firms to write about what that takes. Okay. And you mentioned growing. Are you the fastest growing firm in Connecticut? Did I see that right? Or one of the fastest growing? I would say, I don't know how we measure that. I would say yes. One of the fastest, for sure. I think the law firm 500 named us the fifth fastest growing firm in the
country in 2021 or 2020. And we are continuing to grow. So I don't know where it puts us in the country or how one even ranks that. But yes, we are growing. Well, certainly very fast then. So how did you begin to write the book? I mean, how did you take all of the concepts and kind of bring them all together? Yeah, what happened is we just sort of like, we're like, okay, what would somebody, you know, we wrote it for people who were looking to start a firm or maybe what on their own or maybe
had just started a firm. And we're like, well, what is it that we wish we knew? And what we wanted to do is we wanted to not do it in sort of like a checklist kind of way. We wanted to tell stories. We wanted to talk about things that hurt. We wanted to put it out there as honestly as we as we possibly could. And so, you know, we broke it down into its various components of, you know, vision and marketing and hiring. I forget what other chapters there are. I think there's about
seven chapters in that book. We sort of looked at it that way. And then we're all like, okay, let's all write chapters with our takes on it, independent takes. And the hope would be that, you know, maybe what I said resonates with somebody, maybe what Billy said resonates with somebody else, and just sort of give people different perspectives on sort of the same topics that we all agreed were really important if you're going to do this work.
What advice would you have to somebody who was thinking about writing a book? Because it's something that, you know, I've thought about and I've heard a lot of people talk about how good writing a book could be when you're able to, you know, give that to a potential new client. Yeah, I think a few things about writing a book. One is it's like more time consuming
process than you think. Like, I mean, we write, I mean, I write the chapters and then we get them off to content editors who are sort of trying to say like, well, what you're saying here is it making sense or we need to clarify this. And then once we go through that round of edits, we work with basically grammatical editors to correct our grammar. You know, you need somebody
to format the book, you need, you know, cover design, that kind of thing. So I think it takes a little bit more time if you're going to, if you want to do it, then you may think beyond the initial like, okay, I just, I wrote my word quota for the book. And, you know, I think the other thing is, is it's like, it's a long play. It's not a money making proposition at all. I have never been paid on Tiger Tactics. I think we, we just broke even on the book for what we had spent into
it. Turns out Amazon takes a lot of the portions of any sale. But that was never, that was never the point of it. The point was to hopefully add value to others. And, you know, look, it's doing what I hoped it would do, which is like, I'm talking to you, which I otherwise wouldn't be. So a whole bunch of things like that opened up. Have you seen like non monetary value come,
come back to you as a result of the book? Like, is do people mention it often or people make a decision to hire you because they've seen it? I don't think that they, I don't, I mean, it's not a client facing book. So it's, it's really a book, it's really a book for referral partners, right? Yeah, we, we, we get a lot of cases from lawyer referrals. I think last year, I think we got like about 130 cases referred to us by other
lawyers that we accepted. So it's a big portion of any sort of marketing is just they have to know you, they have to like you and they have to trust you. And sort of a book can help check those boxes because people, if they read it and they connect with you, that's, that's, that is, that is fantastic. So yeah, I mean, I think it's, there's zero, I mean, I wouldn't be
doing a second book if I didn't think it was beneficial. The amount of doors it is open, the speaking opportunities that it's given me the, there was quite a while where every week it felt like I got a note from somebody who was like, you know, this book really connected with me. And that's an awesome, that's an awesome thing to open your mail and see or open your inbox and see. And, you know, there's, you know, if it's, if it's something you want to do, like, absolutely do it.
It's, it's great. And this episode of the Bronx attorney broadcast was brought to you by me, Will Ferraro. I'm an attorney at prior law in the Bronx. We primarily practice personal injury law, but we can help you with just about any legal issue that you may have. And if it's not something that we can personally help you with, we can connect you with an expert in that area of law. You can find me online on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, my handle is typically
at Bronx attorney. And if you can't find me on one of those social media pages, you can email me ferraro at prior law.com or call me at the office 718-829-0222. And now back to the show. One of the things that I found most interesting about your book is in it, you talk about important things that you need when you're starting a law firm from scratch. And it seemed like the two things
you thought were most important was having a vision and having a bookkeeper. Is that still, you still think those are two of the most important pieces? No, no question. I think they're even more important now. I was, I didn't know what you were actually going to say because I wrote this so long ago and I'm like, I hope I said something
good. And I think you hit on something that is so important. And one of the things when we set out to do vision work was for my firm, we set a goal of getting a $10 million jury voting. Okay. That was the vision for the firm. Well, in part because we're like, well, we want to be the best injury firm in Connecticut. And like, that's not an acceptable goal because there's no way to know if you are or you aren't. And so we looked around, we looked at other firms were like, well,
what website like what verdict puts us in that conversation? Right? Or like $10 million, that puts us in the conversation. And so we set out to build a firm that could do that. And so we invested in training that could help us get the result. We invested in marketing that could help us get the cases. We invested in building financial systems and technological systems that could help move our cases to support it. And we ended up, we ended up 10 xing that goal last fall, we got
a $100 million verdict. But we would never have done that had we not set out to get a $10 million verdict. Because it was like, we're going to be trial lawyers, we're going to fight the fight, we're going to be able to be very good at what we do, we're going to be operationally excellent to support it. And so I think that that vision component really asking yourself, well, what are
we trying to build? It informs so many other decisions that you're going to make. And the bookkeeping part of it is like so many, so many lawyers work with a lot of lawyers and they get caught up with book issues, whether it's taxes or IOLTA audits or clients funds or just various things. And if you don't have your books organized, you really have no data on your business. You don't know what's profitable or what's not or where you're spending too much or where you're
spending too little. And as we've grown, one of the people that we hired, we brought on a director of accounting and data analytics in-house, an accountant to not only just manage our books, but look at projections and do a whole host of things with data that we have at the firm. And that's an incredibly valuable position at our size at this point.
And you said in the book that the $10 million verdict was your 10-year goal and you did it in, not only did you 10 times it, but you did it in half the amount of time that you were giving yourself to accomplish it. Yeah. We didn't have the case when we set that goal. And I think, I'm not into the secret or something like that, but I think that there's something too, like we can manifest or we can
make happen what it is that we seek to happen. And I think, like, hey, we put it down on paper and we put it out into the universe that we're open to this and we're going to do the work to sort of attract that, to make that into a reality. And we did. Yeah. I think the goal is certainly, once you put it out into the world, it's there and you can't, it's out and you can't put it back. So... Well, and it should, the goal, whatever your goal is, it should feel like really uncomfortable.
And sort of like, if you think of yourself as like, you know, I don't know, maybe I played sports as a kid, maybe you did, maybe you didn't, but it's like, okay, I'm not only going to be the quarterback, I'm going to be better than Tom Brady. Like, I'm going to go into the Hall of Fame. You know, and I think you have to be willing to dream like that. You don't have to be, but like, I think attorneys in general oftentimes dream too small.
Yeah. And I was, I was into sports when I was younger. I was a big wrestler and I never, I never attained the goals that I set out for myself at the beginning of the season. And every year they would increase a little by little and I, I would get further than I would the previous year, but not to, you know, the end goal. And so before Connecticut trial firm, you, you started another firm and it didn't quite work out. Was there a difference in your vision?
Was there a difference in your vision between, you know, the two firms that you think helped you make it succeed the second time? Yeah. And you know what, and interestingly, like even since writing Tiger Tactics, like I've really connected with my former partners, Megan and Kristen, and we have become the friends that we were before we went into business, which it just feels awesome. And the way in which it actually happened was, I mean, their firm
is incredibly successful. They're an incredibly successful family law firm. Again, they, one of the fastest growing firms and well known in our area, well respected, and they do, they do a whole lot of things right. Like they're on the Inc. 5000, we're on the Inc. 5000. And so now we, we sort of rehash that and we're like, you know, our, what we were trying to do, like was impossible. And what we, because what needed to happen is we needed to put like two firms on the Inc. 5000, not one.
And, and I think that, you know, they're proud of my success. I know I'm proud of, of, of their success. But yeah, it did not work. It did not work out at least initially as we had intended. And so with the benefit of time and forgiveness and understanding, I think we would all, I know we would all agree that it really, really worked out. Okay. And then when you start, I'm sorry, you asked a question about difference in vision. And I, and I think yes, I think,
I think the problem is, is like, we didn't have a vision. And the, the sort of vision was like, Hey, we're going to be awesome, which is, which is fine. But what does awesome mean? Like, what does it look like? And I think, you know, what, what was happening was I was developing a vision for a family firm or for an injury firm, and they were developing a vision for a family law firm, though that was not articulated at the time, those were just sort of the directions we were being
pulled. And had we sort of thought like, well, what, what, what do we want the point of this to be? Whether it's like, we want to be the best family firm or we want to be, you know, I don't know what, what we would have done, but we never had those conversations. And so we're like, Hey, let's get the best software, let's build an amazing office, let's get cool computers and have cool branding and all the different things that we had tried to do. But there was no sort of
purpose to any of it. So was it, would you say that it wasn't like, it wasn't specific enough, or you didn't have your end goal outlined well enough or, you know, we had none of it, we had no, we had no specificity. It was like, Hey, we're going to be awesome and we'll do awesome things and things will work out. That was sort of the extent of it. And again, it wasn't like we weren't
good lawyers, like we're going to do good legal work, we're going to do all of that. But in terms of a company, there was ultimately a sort of no reason to exist when, like you wouldn't go out and find, you know, you wouldn't go out and start like an app for your phone and just be like, we're going to make an awesome app. Like it's got, it's got to be like, Hey, you know what, we're going to make an app, we're going to make a game that's going to compete with like the last of us on
PlayStation. Okay, okay, then we've got something. You're like, it's not a baseball game. Right. You know, so when you started Connecticut trial firm, did that start as like only personal injury right off the bat? Or did you, you know, whittle down practice areas until you got there? Connecticut trial firm itself was started as specifically as I think as an injury firm, if we had, if I had any cases, it was very minor that were sort of like just hanging around,
whether it be a divorce or some other kind of litigation. But I had, I had my own practice, I had McKeen law firm where it was a general practice. And I was doing real estate closings and wills and personal injury and divorce and all of it. And as I was doing these things, you know, I need, I knew I needed to whittle it down and devote myself into sort of one area
of practice. And by the time Connecticut trial firm was founded, that that that was the, it was very, it was even very short time after that, that we were not doing, we were, we were doing personal injury exclusive that you went all in on personal injury. Yeah. You also write in the book about about the blog that you used to have. And do you still, do you still have the blog? Are you still blogging?
The answer is yes and yes, but differently. The blog still, the blog still exists because their digital agency loves it because it's aged and has a lot of inbound links and content and things like that. But nobody really reads blogs anymore. So I take similarly the writing that I would do on the blog and I do it in two different ways really. I write a lot on LinkedIn about like the practice of law and thoughts on that. And I write a lot, I do like personal injury content
on YouTube, which is where, which is where, you know, consumers may find me. So I, the answer is I generate content very much like blogging, but just in, in different mediums. And in Tiger Tactics, you talk about how you didn't start with a, you know, a huge viewership or readership. It was something that you kind of just, just chipped away at. And I, and I, that's kind of what I'm working on now with my, you know, content creation in, is, is, you know, the, just to keep doing it.
Is that something that you, you keep experiencing when you switch different mediums? Oh, absolutely. You know, we, I've been at trying to build a YouTube channel for probably since then sometime in COVID, since 2020, so probably about three, three ish years, trying to build a YouTube channel. And it's a lot of like posting videos that get no views and posting more videos that get no views. You have to sort of be a gluttin for punishment. But like last week,
we got five calls from different people who found us on YouTube. So, so I think if you're going to do content generation, one is you just have to like to do it. Two, you have to be a little bit, I don't know if stupid's the right word, but, but, but yeah, a little bit like, okay, I'm going to be content with this, not getting four views in another video, I do four views. So the volume is, is definitely a thing. It's a long play. If you're going to develop an audience,
it's a long play. If you get picked up by like the algorithm, but it's viable for anybody who's really willing to put in the effort. The problem is, is that most people don't put in the effort. They do five, 10, maybe 15 videos. They get 40 views of all their videos, which are presumably their competitors. And they're like, this isn't worth it. But you've got to keep, keep generating content, ignore those initial statistics as to viewership and,
you know, get better at what you do. In the way of the way that you're creating the content and, and you know, where you're aiming it, you're talking about getting better in that, in that sense. No, I'm just, I'm talking, well, yeah, I mean, you, you figure out what works based upon some of the analytics. You do more of what is working. And you, you, you sort of develop your own voice along the way, which I think is like more important than any of it. And as you develop voice, and
you get more confident, you just get, you just get better at it. It's just like anything else. Like if you did sports, it's like, if you're, you know, you're, you're a baseball player, keep hitting off a tee and eventually you'll get a better, a better swing. Okay. And another theme that you talk about in the book is, is relationships and investing in relationships. Can you talk, tell me a little bit about how that's, you know, helped you get to
the point where you are now in your career? Yeah. I mean, no, no, no person is an island in any of this. We all stand on the shoulders of each other. And specifically, like in the $100 million verdict case, I mean, first of all, that came in from my, my, my Tiger Tactics co-author Jay Rewain, who referred the case to us. So even the relationship of writing Tiger Tactics, you know, ultimately led to that case, because Jay knew what I was trying to build and that I
was diligent and that I cared and I would be a good fit for this case. So he sent me that case. But also we were able to work with lawyers across the country that we had meant for over years of going to different trainings, different conferences, just connecting, just being, you know, sending no cards, just, just in general knowing people. And, you know, we,
I can't even list all the people that helped us. But when we, you know, the Saturday before we were going to close on a Tuesday, we had a call with Andrew Finkelstein of Finkelstein and Partners and Jacobio Myers, a whole lot of other firms. Andrew is an amazing business mind and amazing trial lawyer. And he gave us over an hour of his time, because I saw him at a conference in Vegas, and he said, Ryan, you know, I know you're closing in this, but you got to know how to ask for
tens of millions of dollars. And I can, I'm going to tell you how to do it. And so he spent a whole hour on the call giving us that how to really do it. And we, we just took his closing and, you know, his, his feedback and just ran with it. And I don't know that it would have been possible,
maybe it would have been a different way, but without something like that along the way. So in so many ways, the people that you know, the people who will take your calls, the people that care about you in some way are the greatest value that any lawyer could have.
How did you start building those relationships when you, you know, once you became, you know, running your own firm or, you know, out from being just like an associate in a firm and you had to, you know, form these relationships, where were you going, what were you doing, who are you calling? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's just,
it's something that has pretty, comes pretty natural to me. I mean, a lot of relationships that have been tremendously valuable, you know, in the past 10, 15 years have been originated online. Some relationships on Twitter, LinkedIn. But, you know, for example, like Andrew Finkelstein, I mean, we went to King and Trial Institute and he taught my focus groups class and he was amazing. And, you know, I just wrote him a thank you card after I just said, thank you so much for your
time and what you've learned. And, you know, he sent me back an email, like giving me more feedback. And I was like, this is amazing. And sort of just over the years, like, you know, you do something great, just send him a note. And when it came time to, when we were looking to do animations, like we hired his animation company, because we knew that if it was good by him, it'd be good for our client. And, you know, it's just things like that.
It's just showing up. It's just people knowing who you are, what you do. And I think sort of, like, maybe the biggest thing is that if they know you're not a jerk, and they know you really care about doing a good job, like that sort of greases the wheels in many different ways.
Know the like and trust. That's all it is. Yeah. Well, I just, I always like to talk about that with people because for, you know, my colleagues who might be starting their own law firms or having to build their own book of business, a lot of times it's hard to figure out where to start with these kinds of things and how to form these, you know, how to meet the people that you want
to form the relationships with. You know, that's a great point. And I mean, I've never been one to do like networking breakfast or like BNI or and look, I know people who those groups have worked incredibly well for them, but that's not sort of like my force networking vibe is not sort of my thing. I think for me, it's like, I want to go to the places where the people I want to be
are. And so it's like, if you see, if you want to be a trial lawyer and you sort of see like, okay, well, you know, Rex Paris is speaking, like go to that event, go introduce yourself to Rex Paris, go say, you know, go talk to him. And, and, and, and also the people who are in that audience as well, maybe it's not, maybe you don't, you know, you don't get Rex's cell phone on the first time you meet him. But there are people who are in that audience as well, who are like minded. And you,
hey, what do you do? Where do you practice? You know, what kind of cases are you working on? You know, what do you think about this? You know, Rex said this, what do you think? And just sort of engaging. And then, you know, again, like, you know, it's, it's about, you get back to the office, you send them a note card, like, Hey, so nice to meet you. You know, thank you. And, you know, connect with them on LinkedIn. And when they do something awesome, like, send them
another note card, like, Hey, it's awesome. You got a great verdict. Yeah. And personally, I found that whenever you write somebody a thank you or you send them something in the mail, like, that really sticks with people. Yep. Yes, it does. So I mean, I think that those are the things and like, I mean, they, they, they don't cost money in a lot of different ways. They definitely cost
time. And, you know, I mean, in today's world, though, it's sort of never been easier, like, whoever your idols are, or whoever's doing whatever it is, I mean, I'm sure that there's a Rex Paris of, like, estate planning. But like, just go find that person and just say like, Hey, I read your book. And, you know, thank you so much for writing it. Okay. Like, start that conversation. Yeah. And, you know, I don't want to give away too much of the book, but another thing that you
talk about is, is risk taking. And how do you, you know, calculate what's a what's a good risk to take? Yeah, I mean, if you're going to grow, you have to take bigger and bigger and bigger risks. And in fact, the more you grow, the bigger the risks you take. And, and so, you know, I remember when it was like, Okay, I'm going to go out on my own. Like that felt like a huge risk. Okay. Then I remember like, Okay, I'm going to hire my first employee. Oh my gosh, did that feel like a
risk? And, you know, today I'm on a leadership meeting where it's like, Okay, okay, okay, we're going to hire an HR person. All right, we're making an offer to a lawyer. You know what, we just put in another offer to buy a more office space near us. And like, again, like those are sort of like bigger things. But as you, if you're going to develop, particularly if you're a trial lawyer,
or you're a business person, you're going to have to have an appetite for bigger risks. Because what you realize is like the biggest risk is really not taking those risks, not hiring the lawyer, not going out on your own, not, not taking the case to verdict, not buying the office, those are the things that can come back to hurt you. And, and to me, it's not, I think my comfort level is like, I look at the thing and I'm like, Well, what if it completely goes wrong? Like,
what, what if the lawyer I hire is just terrible? I mean, like, what's the worst thing that happens? Like, I mean, ideally, like, I, I, we catch it, he, you know, he or she creates some fixable problems, we have to spend some time fixing it and we fire them, or they quit. You know, well, what's the worst case? What's the worst case thing that goes wrong if I buy the office next door? Well, I'm on the hook for, you know, $3,000 more a month than rent. Okay, like, well,
you know, can I can I absorb that? And for how long? How long am I willing to absorb that? So, you know, I don't take risk where it's like, Okay, I'm betting my practice and I'm betting my house and I'm betting everything that I have. Because if you're going to take risk, you have to accept loss with it. But you just need to, I think adjust, you know, for like, well, what happens if this completely goes wrong? And I talked to a lot of lawyers who are like, Well, maybe I want to start
my own firm. Well, I don't know, I don't know. But I'm like, Well, what if it goes wrong? Like, can't you go back to work for like, whatever, for some other firm, or some other government agency or, you know, whatever, like you have some skills? Yeah. No, you know, it's no risk at all. And do you feel like there's just a certain, you know, you're going to max out on your growth if you don't take these risks? Oh, yeah. No, no, no question. I mean, all all of growth lies like,
just outside your comfort zone. And if you're not doing things that scare you, like asking a jury for $100 million or hiring 30 people or expanding your practice or taking on larger marketing spends or whatever it is that you're doing, like you're definitely not growing. Yeah, well, hopefully one day I'll have to ask a jury for $100 million and I can, I can get some pointers from you on that. Hey, we have the closing courtesy of Andrew
Finkelstein of how to get there. I'm happy to send it to you. You know, I would love to keep you all night, but, you know, I think I'll let you go have dinner. Where can people find Tiger Tactics if they want to read the book? You can find it on Amazon. You can message me on LinkedIn. I'll send you a copy if you want. And how can people find you if they want to, you know, follow you or reach out to you or something like that? Ryan McKeen on LinkedIn, Ryan McKeen on Twitter. You can also email me
at ryan.ctttrialfrom.com. I'm pretty easy to find. Just find me and connect with me. And, you know, we'll have Tiger Tactics too, CEO edition coming out. And I know the quality of co-authors that we've been able to attract on this. I know it's going to add a lot of value to you. Just for anybody who is in sort of like the, well, how do I run a law firm space? I think it'll be great. And when should we be looking out for that?
I hope this fall. It's going to depend a little bit on, you know, the editors. We have a system and we have a process in place from things that we learned from the first book. It'll all be, my writing part will be done March 31st. I assume all edits will be done probably June 1st. And then it's got to go to formatting and other things. So hopefully the fall. Okay. Well, I'm definitely going to be buying that. So I'm looking forward to it. I'll send you a copy. Well, I'll send you a copy.
Thanks, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bronx Attorney Broadcast. Please like, review and subscribe so we can help the channel continue to grow. And if you're interested in connecting with any of the guests, please let me know. And I'd be happy to make the introduction.