Go Big or Stay Put – Stan’s Story Part 5

Go Big or Stay Put – Stan’s Story Part 5

Stan’s Story, Part Five — by Dean Standish “Stan” Perkins

Running your own practice forces choices on you constantly. Do you hold the course? Grow? Tighten your belt? Expand your practice areas? Reduce them? There is always something to consider.

Every month is different. No two months are ever the same. One month might bring an unexpected expense. Another might produce a unicorn of a new client. Some months bring neither new clients nor unexpected bills.

So, let’s assume your practice is about where mine was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. You have established a small but stable practice. You have office space, an employee or two, and a moderate client base. In other words, you are doing pretty well, especially considering the odds that were stacked against you when you first started this adventure.

At the same time, you are becoming increasingly aware of your growing overhead and responsibilities. Presumably, this is an exciting period in your career, filled with hope and promise—or perhaps abject fear and anxiety. More likely, it’s all of the above.

Congratulations. You’re in the game.

Now where do you go from here?

The answer is deeply personal, and it is not always self-evident. Here are a few questions worth asking yourself:

• How much are you enjoying the practice of law, and how much fun are you having?
• How much income do you need to cover your overhead and provide for yourself and your family? Is your firm generating it? If not, do you genuinely believe it can?
• Do you enjoy the business of running a law practice? This includes managing employees, handling the finances, marketing, billing, and collecting fees.
• Are you becoming more confident in your ability to perform the core competencies of your practice?
• Are you beginning to recognize both your greatest professional strengths and, perhaps more importantly, your weaknesses?

There is a lot to consider.

Your answers to these questions will change over time. Some weeks, you’ll feel like a business whiz. Other weeks, you’ll wonder what you’re doing.

Some days, you’ll spend hours working on important tasks that don’t generate a single dollar in revenue. Meanwhile, your overhead and financial obligations never take the day off. Some months, the phone rings constantly—but only with sales calls instead of potential clients.

Then there are the weeks that crackle with possibility and excitement. Payroll is covered without its customary anxiety. Clients seem happy. You leave work early on a Friday afternoon and go swimming. Your decision to start your own practice feels validated. You sleep a little better, and you begin wondering:

What if I increased my marketing? What if I started reviewing résumés in anticipation of future growth?

What is a fledgling entrepreneur supposed to do?

The Stay-Put Sweet Spot

This is where many people stay put. They refine, improve, and strengthen the practice they’ve built. Their appetite for risk has largely been satisfied, and they discover they can create an incredibly successful practice—and an equally fulfilling life—right where they are.

There is an equilibrium of size, risk, and work-life balance that simply feels right.

Don’t misunderstand me. A practice of this size—one or two attorneys with one to three staff members—is still an enormous challenge. It requires business acumen, constant attention, resilience, and courage.

This is the sweet spot for many solo and small-firm attorneys.

I don’t know the statistics, but I would venture to guess this is where most entrepreneurial lawyers spend their careers.

The numbers from our Incubator Program support that belief. Most of our successful incubatees built practices that remained either purely solo or included only two or three staff members.

Success is deeply personal. Only the individual entrepreneur can weigh the costs and benefits of a particular practice and decide what kind of business—and life—they truly want to build.

My Story Gets a Little Crazy About Here

Let’s recap where I was in the early 1990s.

I was sharing office space with a dear friend on Capitol Hill. I had hired a paralegal, a brand-new attorney, and a college student. My girlfriend—soon to become my wife—Joan was holding down the fort at the front desk.

We were transitioning away from criminal defense and becoming a personal injury law firm. I had become a trusted attorney in the East African community and had built strong relationships within Seattle’s gay community. The firm was gaining traction, and I was overflowing with entrepreneurial energy.

My personality simply would not allow me to think about slowing down or staying put.

I believed my team was getting better every day. We were providing real value to our personal injury clients, and we were learning through experience. Firm revenue was moving in the right direction, even though there were still many times when I didn’t take a paycheck.

I was driven to succeed.

Some people might have called me cocky. All I knew was that I felt I was onto something—something special, something worth growing.

Every morning I arrived before everyone else, dressed like an attorney and ready to make things happen. It felt as though momentum was finally on our side.

I was ready to drive across town to meet prospective clients who couldn’t make it to my office. I was ready to photograph intersections before taking a defendant’s deposition. I was still searching for experienced attorneys willing to mentor me in every aspect of my practice.

At the same time, I was building a culture. I hosted happy hours. I took chiropractors to lunch. Come on—this was great.

I was working with clients I genuinely wanted to represent. My team was smart, fun, and committed to taking excellent care of our clients. Word was spreading.

It was happening.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I was still relatively new, and I had a lot to learn.

Fortunately, that didn’t interfere with my entrepreneurial aspirations. Experience was coming quickly, and every lesson seemed to fuel my confidence.

What was my next move?

It was a question I couldn’t get out of my mind. I talked about my options with anyone who would listen. Sorry, Joan. An entrepreneur’s pilot light tends to grow with success. It burns brighter, hotter, and bigger.

Life sometimes presents changes and opportunities you never saw coming. The key is recognizing an opportunity for what it could become and adapting in ways that create growth and renewed energy. It’s okay to be scared by the decisions placed in front of you. Really scared. Crazy scared. And at the very same time, crazy excited by the possibilities.

You can spend days—or even weeks—making pro-and-con lists. In the end, you can build an excellent case for saying no to an opportunity or an equally convincing case for saying yes.

Seminal Crazy Decision #1: The Lease

My next choice came in the form of a punch to the gut.

My friend Charles—the travel school owner who had given my firm its first real office—had weathered some lean years, but he had decided to close the business and move to Hawaii. That meant I suddenly needed to find a new home for my law firm.

By then, I had added another paralegal and was actively recruiting an attorney whom I believed would be an outstanding addition to the firm. Truthfully, I probably needed more space anyway, but this unexpected turn of events became the nudge my entrepreneurial instincts had been waiting for.

I hired a commercial real estate broker to help me find office space for a growing personal injury law firm. I thought moving west of Interstate 5 into a downtown high-rise might give the firm a little more cachet.

What he showed me made one thing clear: the price of poker had gone way up.

The safe decision would have been to take a modest step forward—lease slightly larger office space and continue growing at a measured pace.

I almost made that decision.

Then my broker showed me a top-floor corner suite in the 1800 Howell Street building in downtown Seattle.

It was 5,000 square feet of absolute business perfection.

I had absolutely no business renting it. Come to think of it, the building owner probably had no business renting it to me.

Now comes the part of my story that doesn’t make much rational sense and probably isn’t instructive for most beginning entrepreneurial attorneys.

I didn’t need 5,000 square feet of Class A downtown office space. I couldn’t afford $10,000 a month in rent. Charles had been charging me only $1,500 a month on Capitol Hill.

But somehow, I convinced myself I needed that space and that I could make the rent work.

So I signed a five-year lease—a total commitment of $600,000—and moved in one month later.

Was I crazy?

What did I know that nobody else knew?

Looking back, I suppose I knew one thing. My risk tolerance hadn’t been tapped out yet.

The freedom I felt after signing that lease was almost indescribable. It became my green light to hit the gas. I was all in.

Keep in mind, I didn’t have much of a net worth, but I was still all in.

Thank you, Joan, for supporting what most people would have considered an insane decision.

I threw an epic office-warming party that, looking back, feels like my entrepreneurial coming-out party.

One insane decision seemed to lead naturally to another. I rented beautiful office furniture. I claimed the corner office. Then I looked around and thought:

“Let’s go.”

There is something to be said for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now I had to grow. I had to bring in more cases. I had to become a better businessman.

Most importantly, I had to pay the rent.

Seminal Crazy Decision #2: The Yellow Pages

It was about this time—circa 1993 or 1994—that a Yellow Pages salesman stopped by my new office, managed to get past my receptionist, and made me a proposal I couldn’t refuse.

I know what you’re thinking.

“What are the Yellow Pages?”

I get it. I’m old.

The Yellow Pages are a relic of the past, but in the early 1990s they were one of the few ways an attorney could market to a large audience. Every household received a massive telephone directory listing virtually every business and residential phone number in town. It sounds unbelievable today, but this was long before smartphones, Google, or online search.

I believed in marketing. More importantly, I needed more cases.

I also believed the firm was on the verge of something exciting. It was a feeling that was both exhilarating and terrifying—but not terrifying enough to stop me from doing what many of my friends and family considered unthinkable.

Well… almost everyone. Joan believed in me.

The Yellow Pages had introduced a brand-new advertising product. It was a thick divider tab that separated the Business listings from the Residential listings. Because it was printed on heavier stock and protruded from the edge of the book, it was one of the first things people noticed when they opened the directory.

It was premium advertising.

And this charming salesman somehow found his way into my office and presented me with yet another opportunity I couldn’t afford—and couldn’t resist.

He offered me a full-page advertisement on one of those divider tabs to announce the arrival of Dean Standish Perkins & Associates.

There was only one problem.

It cost $10,000 a month. The same as my new rent.

Money I simply didn’t have.

Once again, I found myself standing at a crossroads. Do I go bigger? Or do I regroup, slow down, and protect what I’d already built?

By now, you probably know which direction I chose.

What I’d Tell You Now

As someone who has mentored many young attorneys over the years, I would hesitate to encourage others to make the same decisions I made during the early 1990s. These choices are deeply personal and often challenge common sense.

Entrepreneurship isn’t about blindly taking risks. It’s about recognizing opportunities, understanding the risks they require, and deciding whether you have the conviction—and the ability—to execute.

Looking back, I don’t think I was fearless. I think I simply believed more in the opportunity than I feared the consequences.

That belief shaped many of the decisions that followed and ultimately became part of the firm’s identity.

An entrepreneur identifies an opportunity, accepts the risk required to pursue it, and organizes the people, systems, and resources necessary to turn that opportunity into a successful venture.

So I’ll leave you with three questions.

How big is the opportunity you see?

How much risk are you willing to take?

And perhaps most importantly…

Do you believe in your ability to execute?

Whether those two $10,000-a-month bets paid off is a story for the next chapter.

Read more about stan’s story

• Stan’s Story Part 1 ➤
• Stan’s Story Part 2 ➤
• Stan’s Story Part 3 ➤
• Stan’s Story Part 4➤