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Brian Lee: Entrepreneurs Don’t Wait – Take a Risk, Work Hard, and Don't Be Afraid | E44 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Brian Lee: No one ever says I've got the perfect job and I'm 100% happy all the time. It just doesn't exist. It just doesn't.
• 0:07
  Brian Lee: It's like there's a there's a quote that I kind of love from Henry Ford. Right. And he said, you know, if you think the grass is greener on the other side, maybe you should pay more attention to your own garden.
• 0:27
  Randall Kaplan: My guest today is my great friend Brian Lee.
• 0:30
  Randall Kaplan: Brian is a rock star serial entrepreneur and incredibly successful venture capitalist.
• 0:33
  Randall Kaplan: He is the co founder and ex CEO of Legal Zoom, which had $575 million in revenue last year, and has a market value of $1.75 billion. Today, the co founder and ex CEO of shoedazzle, a company which grew to more than$100 million in sales within two years after starting the company, before it merged with JustFab, the co founder and ex CEO of The Art of sport, where he partnered with none other than the late Kobe Bryant, and is the current CEO and co founder of arena Club, where he's partnered with Derek Jeter, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes. Brian is also the co founder and CEO of the incredibly successful venture capital firm BAM ventures, which has had many billion dollar exits, and he is an incredibly generous philanthropist who is dedicated to giving back to our community. Brian, welcome to a Search of Excellence. Thank you for having me excited to talk to you. You're my first live guest I've ever had in the studio. So I appreciate you being here. And let's see how it goes today.
• 1:35
  Randall Kaplan: Let's do it. Let's go. Yeah, I always start my podcast with our family because our family prepares us for preparation, our future our values. Tell me about your parents. And tell me specifically about your parents coming here with $500 in the wall and two suitcases. Oh,
• 1:51
  Brian Lee: yes, that's basically I was born in Korea, in Seoul, and my parents, this is an early 70s moved to the United States.
• 2:00
  Brian Lee: With me and my older sister. I was two years old at the time.
• 2:04
  Brian Lee: And we landed in America, my dad had his family, two pieces of luggage and $500. And that's how we started our life here in America.
• 2:14
  Randall Kaplan: And what was that like growing up? What did your dad do? I want to know a little bit about him being working in the furniture business. Yeah. And how he progressed and worked his way up to the furniture business. Just take us through the progression, and why you learn from him and the values you learn from him.
• 2:28
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, sure. So so my father is one of my biggest inspirations in life, and my soul is my mother. We're all super close.
• 2:36
  Randall Kaplan: But when we moved to the United States, my parents,
• 2:43
  Brian Lee: they're both college educated, but they didn't speak the language. And so they took kind of menial jobs, if you will, right. So my dad had two jobs. One was working at a furniture factory, making booth furniture for restaurants like those, you know, the booth furniture. And then, in the evenings, he would work in the orange fields and pick oranges with the day laborers. And my mom worked for bear aspirin. And this is before automation. So she sat at a conveyor belt and counted 25 pills to a bottle.
• 3:16
  Brian Lee: And that's how we started our life here,
• 3:21
  Randall Kaplan: where they come home and talk about their work.
• 3:23
  Randall Kaplan: And did you see how hard they work? How old were you when you actually notice, man, they work their asses off.
• 3:29
  Brian Lee: You know, it wasn't.
• 3:29
  Brian Lee: It wasn't until much later, truthfully, when I was in high school, that I really realized like what my parents went through to create a better life for my sister and myself. My mom told me this story that when she was at Bayer, aspirin, or Bayer, they would ask for volunteer workers for overtime. And she was always the first to volunteer, she would raise your hand because you get paid at a time and a half for overtime, even back then. And so you just realized like, gosh, you know, they they work super hard. And it wasn't until high school that I realized with this type of opportunity that they're providing to us, like I've got to work hard to, I'm not going to put their hard work to waste.
• 4:10
  Brian Lee: Right. So that's when I realized I had to kind of kick it up a notch up until then I was kind of lazy with with grades and studying and everything else.
• 4:16
  Brian Lee: But that's when I kind of took it to another level. Some point,
• 4:21
  Randall Kaplan: your dad worked his way up and started his own company. Yeah, entrepreneur. You have the gene. Tell us tell us about what it was like watching him go from working in a factory and a furniture store to start his own business and build a very successful business.
• 4:37
  Brian Lee: Yeah, so my dad, he was making furniture and he would ask the owner of the furniture shop I can I go sell the furniture. And the owner would always know well, your job is to make the furniture. So my dad actually told me that he convinced the store or the company owner to let them sell furniture on the weekends and He said, Well, if I sauce furniture on weekends, well, you give me the same commission, that you're giving your other salespeople and said, Yes, that would sell furniture on weekends. And it was interesting, because this is the early 70s, before the very large wave of Asians came came in. And so my dad would knock on the doors of Chinese restaurants and Japanese restaurants. And they were just like, they're kind of amazed, like, wow, there's an Asian sales guy, so on the furniture, and so they all became friends with my dad.
• 5:30
  Brian Lee: And so he started selling them with furniture. But then, what my dad realized was that, after she sold them furniture, it would take a long time to, for them to order again, right?
• 5:42
  Brian Lee: Because furniture lasts a long time. So my dad started thinking, Well, what can I manufacture in Asia, right with his connections in Asia, and bring over here to the United States, and use my restaurant connections. And so this was pretty all on guard at the time, right? This was pretty early in terms of importing and using manufacturing in Asia, this is the early set, or actually now is the probably the mid to late 70s. And then, so my dad thought utensils are stainless steel flatware. And so he kind of built that business, working at selling to these restaurants and so forth. And his sales pitch was pretty simple. He told me the sales pitch, he said, If I could give you the same quality fork for half the price would you buy from me? And of course, the answer was always yes.
• 6:31
  Brian Lee: Right. So my dad built a pretty sizable business and utensils, stainless steel utensils and and then he started fabricating a lot of other stainless steel goods. And so he moved into auto parts as well. And so like my, this was one of his clients, where he would make the stainless steel muffler tips.
• 6:48
  Brian Lee: And I think there was like, some auto companies like Smittybilt, who would make like the railings on trucks, like stainless steel railings, and so forth. So he built a nice business.
• 7:00
  Randall Kaplan: You were born with the DNA. You're one of the best entrepreneurs I've ever met. Oh, yeah, that's you've had an incredible career. Can you learn to be an entrepreneur, without having the DNA born to be an entrepreneur? And were you influenced watching your dad? I mean, did you have it from the moment you're born? Or were looking at your dad? Oh, my God, look what he's done. Like, what he's built? I gotta do that?
• 7:23
  Brian Lee: You know, it's a great question. I think entrepreneurship can be learned.
• 7:26
  Brian Lee: Of course, it can be. But at the same time, I do believe that most entrepreneurs have that DNA, are born with that little part of them that wants to go to start something and build something. That's interesting, because I meet a lot of folks, you know, just being in business and so forth. And they come to me and say, you know, I'd love to be an entrepreneur someday.
• 7:51
  Brian Lee: Right? And my answer to them is always like, why not? today?
• 7:55
  Brian Lee: It's, I think most entrepreneurs kind of seize opportunities. If they come up with a good idea, if they see something that they want to go do a lot, I'm just gonna do it. Right? It's like you don't wait. Because I hear all sorts of things like, Well, I'm just working at this company to get more experience. And in due time, I'll go start something or there's, and most of the time, that just doesn't happen. Most entrepreneurs, if they have that idea, they're gonna go do it. Right. And I really do believe that and it's, and it has become harder. It has become harder as you age. That's the sisterhood versus I always say entrepreneur ship is sometimes oftentimes a young person's game because at some point, you get married. Some a lot of folks get married, then they have kids, and then you have tuition to pay and rents to pay and, you know, mortgages and car payments and everything else. So it becomes harder and harder to actually take that risk to jump into the abyss and, and try something. Right. So my, I guess my suggestion to anyone listening is, if you have an idea, you really want to pursue it. Go do it.
• 9:07
  Randall Kaplan: So so many people, we now have great jobs.
• 9:11
  Randall Kaplan: And we know a lot of people who are not millionaires, but a lot of people who work in companies are making 30 40,000 $50,000 a year they have great ideas, but they don't do it. And the reason they don't do it is fear of failure. And that's true from someone right out of school. I should do this. I have a burning passion. They do it because of the opportunity cost of changing job and not not doing it they feel bogged down. What what's your advice to these people? So many great ideas. We spend a lot of our days listening to pitches. We have a lot of friends who pitch you ideas. Hey Brian, we're good friends. Right but what's your what's your advice for people to get over the fear? When people are going to lose their job give up their job, take on more debt take on credit card debt, and then they're afraid of being known as a failure. It's public when you fail these days. So on social media, it's everywhere. Yeah, you know,
• 10:11
  Brian Lee: I think I might be missing that antenna, right of fear in terms of starting something or failing at something. I really don't care if I fail. I honestly take that as a learning lesson. Right? Of course, you don't want to fail, but it's okay. And that's what I try to tell any aspiring entrepreneur, it's okay. And And honestly, it's like, you're never going to know, you're never going to know if something works unless you try it. Right.
• 10:40
  Brian Lee: And yes, are there a lot of companies that fall by the wayside that that didn't work out? Sure. But again, that's all learning, right? It's all learnings. And, you know, I want to say, you know, go take out massive debt. And, you know, go try something or this or that.
• 11:00
  Brian Lee: That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that there are ways to get creative and starting something to you can always have a job and work really hard work at night.
• 11:10
  Brian Lee: That's how I started my first company. I actually we have jobs. We're going
• 11:14
  Randall Kaplan: to Oregon into legals. Oh yeah, I'm excited. So we did
• 11:17
  Brian Lee: it. It's like, you're just you're just, you're just at work. Yeah, work everyone.
• 11:20
  Brian Lee: Right? So you're working two, three jobs sometimes to make ends meet, but to go follow your dreams and passions and, and go try something.
• 11:30
  Randall Kaplan: But what about the people who get up the courage? They may raise some funds? We start with friends and family, usually, unless you're really lucky, and you make a product and it just starts taking off the shelf? What about the people who fail? First time?
• 11:42
  Randall Kaplan: Oh, man, I'm done. I mean, how many successful entrepreneurs have you and I met? Who are on the failed their third? Three failures on the fourth one, they hit a big? And what's your advice to people who, okay to two companies? Maybe not for?
• 12:01
  Randall Kaplan: Four? Something's wrong. Yeah.
• 12:06
  Randall Kaplan: But yeah, to companies to you're an entrepreneur, you were born, it didn't work the first time and we know tons of people, like I said, many of the companies that you funded, have that same profile. But what's your message to all those people out there who, man I failed, I can't believe it, I lost investors money, I wasted two years of my life. And then they don't want to try again. But they may have another great idea. How do they keep going,
• 12:31
  Brian Lee: you just got to convince yourself to get back on the horse, and give it another shot. I know, there's no other way to say that. It's just you got to keep going. And if you really believe in your idea, if you really believe that you've got the capability to get it done. Go try it, even if you failed the first time, right?
• 12:51
  Brian Lee: And we as an investor, I've invested in plenty of entrepreneurs that have failed once or twice before. Right? And sometimes the third time or fourth time is a charm. Right?
• 13:00
  Brian Lee: And and it says, if you've got it inside of you to want to put all your effort into something, then certainly just you gotta just do it. You gotta go for it.
• 13:13
  Brian Lee: Because there's no other way around, and no one's going to do it for you. Yeah, you know, like, no one's gonna do it for me. How many times have you heard Oh, my gosh, I had that idea to write Oh, that's like I was going to do this bubbly water, or whatever it is within fuse.
• 13:30
  Randall Kaplan: Uber's a great example. By the way, there are a bunch of companies doing the exact same thing. Yeah.
• 13:35
  Brian Lee: Right. And so this, like, all that kind of stuff aside, you've heard so many times somebody will say, gosh, you know, I had that idea 10 years ago, well, then why don't you go do it? Right. So it's not the idea. It really is. It's, it's do have it in you to execute it. Right, and to give it your full effort, because that's the other thing is it's unless you're really focused on it is talking and just happen.
• 13:59
  Brian Lee: Nothing just happens. Rarely, I mean, okay, maybe sometimes someone was a lotto, or something like that. But, but most of the time, you got to work for it. You know, almost all the time, you've got to work and you got to outwork everybody. And, you know, it's all about executing on that idea. And if, if you fail the first time, take those lessons, take those learnings and try it again. Try something new. Maybe it'll work the second time.
• 14:25
  Randall Kaplan: Assign about education, which I think is one of the most important ingredients for our future success. graduated high school.
• 14:29
  Randall Kaplan: And you say, Man, I want to be a Korean rapper. And I want to go in the music business. And Mom and Dad, I don't need to go to college, but I'm going to New York. Yeah. Tell tell us what that was about. And then we can switch to UCLA and you coming back to college? Yeah, you know, it was lovely. You've never rapped for me ever. And once we go to dinner Tuesday night, I want to make you I'm gonna make it rapid and Bear is gonna make you wrap your pricer funny.
• 15:02
  Brian Lee: Ya know, I always loved music. I always loved rap music and hip hop and I really thought I wanted to be a rapper.
• 15:10
  Brian Lee: This is in high school. And I told my parents, you know, I'm not going to college. I'm going to go pursue this rapping thing.
• 15:17
  Brian Lee: Yeah. This is this is back in, you know, the early 90s. And I don't think the world was ready for a Korean rapper yet. It took it took sigh relief to break that barrier. But yeah, I'm actually happy I tried it. I went to New York and we made some mixtapes and we're trying to hustle and saw the tape on the streets and give them to, to any producers that we knew. And it just it just didn't work. But we tried. And I had a lot of fun trying. But um, yeah, that's when I realized okay, maybe maybe my parents are right, maybe I should go get an education and went to UCLA.
• 15:54
  Randall Kaplan: There's so much talk now about kids not needing to go to college. You got guys like Peter Thiel paying people for to prize not to go to college. Charlie, my son, you know, well, yeah. Love selling shoes. He's an entrepreneur. He trades he's got the gene, and for his junior year in college, so Dad, I'm not going to college. Charlie, you're going to college? Yeah. Dad, why do I need to go to college? And I know what I want to do. I said, Okay, well, who's gonna pay your rent? Charlie? What are you gonna do? How are you gonna get the capital? Yeah, I believe that education is the most important investment you can make in your future. And I also believe going to college, that it's the learning environment, being away from home, where you really grow as a person, you learn to make friends and you grow a lot in mature a lot. Tell us you went back to UCLA. You were not a particularly hard studying student, but you did well in school. So you're one of those guys that people hate where you're, you're not working that hard. And then you get A's on your tasks. But But what was you went back to school? What was the experience? Like? Could you be as successful as you are today without going to UCLA? And then UCLA law school?
• 17:05
  Brian Lee: I don't think so. I kind of fall into your camp, in terms of I do believe in education. And I do believe in that, that college experience.
• 17:13
  Brian Lee: And I think most of it has to do with just perspective. You know, understanding different cultures, understanding different viewpoints, meaning people from all walks of life, and understanding. Right, and I think that that you can't get that almost anywhere else.
• 17:32
  Brian Lee: Right? You're not going to get that as a as an entrepreneur.
• 17:36
  Brian Lee: Right? You that that type of perspective. And so I think the only place you can get that type of experiences in college, because I certainly did. Right?
• 17:44
  Brian Lee: It wasn't even so much the material I was learning at school. Right? Really, it was just learning about life. Right?
• 17:50
  Brian Lee: And maturing in that sense. I think you gain a lot from that, right? Especially if you're going to be an entrepreneur and you want to if you're doing anything in consumer, especially you want to you want to understand, you know what makes people tick. Right, and you want to understand what moves people.
• 18:08
  Brian Lee: And the only way you get that is by getting perspective.
• 18:13
  Randall Kaplan: And there's so many opportunities for people to do whatever they want to do their interests or hobbies.
• 18:17
  Randall Kaplan: There's tons of clubs, these days. There's entrepreneurship clubs, business clubs, consulting clubs, they didn't have those really when we were in school. I sold T shirts door to door as you know, yeah, made T shirts going in one door out the other guy because we have so Cutco knives now, but I did there was the Ginsu knives on TV. Yeah. And I actually applied for a job in the mail for door to door sales job and didn't get it. I was 16 years old. We actually never talked about this. Yeah, but I actually did apply for one of those jobs.
• 18:48
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, that's awesome. So as I was mentioning, i i sold T shirts door to door, I go in one door to go out the other day I get kicked out but the cold calling experience was amazing.
• 18:58
  Randall Kaplan: And clubs, we didn't have the clubs but they're like minded DNA people. It's fun to be around. It inspired me to be an entrepreneur when I saw other people being entrepreneurs.
• 19:09
  Brian Lee: Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And I think salesmanship right is key for almost anything you do in life.
• 19:19
  Brian Lee: It's all about sales, you're selling yourself you're selling the product or selling service, whatever you're selling, you're selling right I really believe that that my at when I was at UCLA, my first job was actually selling oil futures. I'm not sure if I told you this
• 19:36
  Randall Kaplan: now, but I don't even know what that is
• 19:38
  Brian Lee: an oil. I was basically selling like energy products. It was like the company called was called Remington securities in Westwood. And it was cold calling and dialing for dollars and they literally they would give you a phone book and say start dialing right and so I would say you know Hello This is Brian Lee from relative security is would you be interested in investing in oil You know, so forth. And you've learned very quickly how to hone your pitch, right? Because you get hung up on so many times cold calling, but then you get better and better and better at it. And eventually, I started making some sales. Yeah, that was my first job. What was your first sale? It was to somebody in Nebraska in Omaha, Nebraska. And they purchased like five units of what we're selling. And it was a big deal for me, because that helped me pay for food for about a month.
• 20:30
  Randall Kaplan: One of my first jobs and a summer job in college was working for a company called mural stone construction. So I did Home Improvements in low income neighborhoods in Detroit.
• 20:40
  Randall Kaplan: And I walked into the office one day, there's 10 People in 10 zones, and white page phone books, which no one even knows what that is today. But it's a phonebook and just 100 cold calls a day. You gotta buy some aluminum siding today. Do you need any cracks in the sidewalk as your house needs to be painted? Yeah. It was interesting, because like you said, I think cold calling is one of the best, most important skills you can have in anything you do. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So let's talk about how times have changed a bit. Since you and I went to school, we joke that we're old. And things are very different today. But we do work with mostly young people. You're an entrepreneur, most of your teams are young. My team is very young, and our portfolio companies and teams are young.
• 21:26
  Randall Kaplan: When we were going to school, it was most important to get a high GPA. Everything was about GPA.
• 21:28
  Randall Kaplan: And to go to law school, you obviously need a high GPA, and you have to take board scores.
• 21:36
  Randall Kaplan: Although I've never heard of any direct correlation between your board scores and your success in life. I don't know why we're still taking the LSAT. I think it's ridiculous. But today, our grades important. We don't hire people, or even really look at the grades when we hire anybody today.
• 21:55
  Brian Lee: Great question, Randy. I would say yeah, we don't i don't really pay attention to grades.
• 22:01
  Brian Lee: I think the most important thing that I look for, is, does this person that I'm looking to hire, have commitment, have drive. So it's not so much, you know, their grades are there. So that is completion, right to the graduate. That's all I really, that's all I really look for.
• 22:22
  Brian Lee: Right? Because it really is. And I heard like recently, because my kids are getting to the age where they're starting to think about college. And I spoke to a college counselor once. Just recently, they said the most important thing to really show even the colleges is that you know how to finish. Right?
• 22:41
  Brian Lee: You're you you start something and you see it through. And that's the same thing that I look forward to for you. When I look when I hire is like to this person see it through? By Can I rely on this person? Because it's harder when you're when you're looking at a resume. And, you know, we've all seen these resumes were selling like skips from job to job every three months.
• 23:04
  Randall Kaplan: We don't hire job hoppers are the two jobs in two years, we won't even look at the resume.
• 23:09
  Brian Lee: Yeah, that's how we are, right? Because it just it shows lack of commitment.
• 23:12
  Brian Lee: There's something off, right. If you're jumping around every three, six months or even a year, right, it says, we look for someone who is dedicated, loyal and sees things through.
• 24:19
  Randall Kaplan: What's your advice to the young professional, who is a little bit unhappy at work because their boss is an asshole, or doesn't like them looking at them in a funny way? Or they hit some political atmosphere?
• 24:34
  Randall Kaplan: They're not entirely happy? Or maybe not even happy at all?
• 24:37
  Randall Kaplan: Should they learn to get along with others and stay in a job for two years? Because that's part of being successful is you have to learn to deal with difficult people. That's great people, there's very difficult people there are jerks who you're working with? Or do you leave the minute something gets rough and then a like something, and they go across the street?
• 24:56
  Randall Kaplan: In addition to that, what if someone is modestly happy?
• 25:00
  Randall Kaplan: They're making $60,000 a year$100,000 A year, there's a competitor, so I'll give you$10,000 More? Or if they're making 100? I'll give you$20,000 more? Do they leave? Or do they stay?
• 25:12
  Brian Lee: Well, if it's a money thing, I would say say right, because it's really more about experience at a younger age especially. And you want to get that experience but in terms of you know, if you're unhappy, but I don't think anyone should be unhappy. Right? I really don't.
• 25:27
  Brian Lee: But at the same time, you know, can you do have to do with a little bit of pain? Of course you do. But that's that's life.
• 25:36
  Brian Lee: It just is. Right? It's like everyone deals with some kind of BS at their job. Right everyone?
• 25:46
  Brian Lee: No one No one ever says I've got the perfect job and I'm 100% happy all the time. It just doesn't exist. It just doesn't.
• 25:54
  Brian Lee: It's like there's a there's a quote that I kind of love from Henry Ford. Right. And he said, you know, if you think the grass is greener on the other side, maybe you should pay more attention to your own garden.
• 26:07
  Brian Lee: Greg? Well, yeah. And I really believe that because everything always looks great from the outside. Right? It's like, oh, my gosh, look at this person.
• 26:17
  Brian Lee: They're so happy working in the music industry. And they get to go to concerts all the time and find new tell, I want that job.
• 26:24
  Brian Lee: That looks awesome. But then you get that job here, like, this job sucks. Sometimes that happens, right? And you're just like, well, it's not always rainbows and unicorns on the other side, right? And sometimes you just gotta suck it up, and you just gotta get it done. And hopefully, you're more happy than not, because again, I don't think anyone should be unhappy, especially all the time. If that's the case, then maybe you should be working. Right? Right.
• 26:48
  Brian Lee: But um, yeah, but sometimes you just have to suck it up.
• 26:53
  Randall Kaplan: Right. So let's talk about sucking it up in doing somebody that sucks. Yeah.
• 26:56
  Randall Kaplan: So we have a lot of things in common. One of the things in common is we went to law school with no interest in practicing law. We fucking hated law school. Yeah. And so what? We graduated law school, but we realized we need to make money and put things on a resume and learn something. But it was a means to an end for both of us.
• 27:19
  Randall Kaplan: Tell us about Skadden, which is one of the best firms in the world. And I read somewhere that you said you just want to put a bullet in your head, which is how I felt every single day I was there. Nothing against Skadden Arps, by the way, which I love. I have friends, they're one of the best firms. I've worked with them many times over the years, but difficult to do.
• 27:43
  Randall Kaplan: And so tell us about your time there. And and where you plodding along thinking about I'm going to do something in the future. And you can talk about you and Brian Lou and just the precursor in the meetings prior to LegalZoom. Because that's where we're going next.
• 27:57
  Brian Lee: Awesome. Yeah. So I actually enjoyed working scattered. I did is I really liked the partners that I worked with. I like the people I worked with. I just didn't enjoy the work. Right? Right. And it's the work that kind of ate at me. I just wasn't getting a lot of fulfillment out of it. You know, it's like you I was in the tax department. And so you structure some tax instrument, and you save some mega Corp and billion dollars in taxes. And it just wasn't that fulfilling for me.
• 28:24
  Brian Lee: I'm sure other people are like, get excited about that. Right.
• 28:28
  Brian Lee: But but for me, it's just yeah.
• 28:28
  Brian Lee: Does it didn't move me. And so I was always seeking something that would move me. And so that's when I started thinking, well, maybe I should go start my own thing, right. And that's when I started talking to Brian Liu, who at that point was is my best friend, and he's still my best friend. We started thinking of ideas together. And that's the idea of LegalZoom.
• 28:53
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about legals of let's talk about the start of Legal Zoom, talking about your condo. And we'll talk about I think it was called Garden lawn.com in one in one part log garden. Log garden.
• 29:03
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. And then you made a really interesting, smart, Lucky phone call one night at nine or 10pm at night. Tell us tell us how that all went down. And how luck is sometimes plays a huge part in your future in our future.
• 29:24
  Brian Lee: Yeah. Yeah, so LegalZoom was an idea that came about when I was talking to Brian Lew, my business partner at Legal Zoom. We both kept thinking, There's got to be something better than working with these law firms and something that we could get excited about the initial concept that I'm surprised that you don't matter, but law guardian.com. And the idea was that we're going to have a bunch of see at home attorneys get online and answer your questions and chat with you for I think it was like 99 cents a minute is what we're going to charge. We actually never launched it. We thought about it. We started like sketching it out and everything else and modeling it.
• 30:05
  Brian Lee: But it's just it didn't work, the economics didn't work.
• 30:08
  Brian Lee: Because at the end of the day, you're still practicing law. So then we'd have to get licensed or take the bar exam on all 50 states. And then on top of that the legal insurance was prohibitive. We didn't have any money to pay that. And the most important thing is that since you're still practicing law, you couldn't raise money from non lawyers. So you could never sell the company to a non lawyer or take the company public for a feast waiting issues. And so we kind of scrapped that idea and started thinking deeper about what else can we do. And that was the start of the idea for legals and of legal documents online and using the internet to kind of automate the process of forming these documents, or creating these documents. And so that's That was the idea. But the thing is this, a lot of people forget the early days of the Internet, right? People were scared of it. Right? People were scared of the internet, they did not want to put their credit card number into their computer because they didn't know where it was going. Right. Right. And so, but at LegalZoom, the idea we had asked for a lot more than your credit card information. If you're setting up a living trust, we were asking for everything, your bank account information, your your savings account, stuff, your your home mortgage, like all of it. So we're like, Well, how are we going to build that trust with the consumer? You know, I was at a great law firm, and my partner was at a great law firm, but no one in America, unless you're in business, have ever heard of these firms. Right. And so that didn't really bring a lot of credibility. And so that's when we started thinking, okay, maybe we need a face to Legal Zoom.
• 31:47
  Brian Lee: Right? It was really to bring trust that, you know, you can trust the site. And it wasn't a fly by night company, we're not stealing your information. And so that's when we came up with a list of attorneys that we thought would be good for Legal Zoom and Robert Shapiro, the he was just came off the OJ Simpson case, and the entire world knew who he was. And so we reached out to, to rob Shapiro, to be our partner in Legal Zoom.
• 32:15
  Randall Kaplan: You got to get more detail than that, my man. I mean, you were, I mean, yeah.
• 32:17
  Randall Kaplan: Tell the story of when you call him what time of day it was, and kind of what the banter was between you guys back and forth.
• 32:29
  Brian Lee: Yeah. So it was, um, I reached out to everyone I knew to introduce me to Robert Shapiro. And my network at that time was pretty small. Right?
• 32:37
  Brian Lee: And so no one I knew knew him.
• 32:42
  Brian Lee: And so what I did was I called for one one information. And this is before Google, right? No one calls for one anymore by now. But I call for information.
• 32:49
  Brian Lee: I asked for Robert Shapiro, Attorney Century City. And I got a phone number. And it was like nine o'clock at night to your point, and I had my voice message written out. And I was going to leave a voice message.
• 33:02
  Brian Lee: So I called the number. And I didn't know at the time, but Robert Bob works a lot. And I hit so it was nine o'clock at night, and he picked up the phone, say, hello. I said, I'm calling for Robert Shapiro. And he says, this is Robert Shapiro.
• 33:17
  Brian Lee: How can I help you? I said, Well, Robert Shapiro the attorney. Yeah, this is Robert Shapiro, the attorney, how can I help you? Well, my name is Brian Lee, and I have a business idea I'd like to run by you. And the first thing he said was, I'm not interested. Right. And I knew he was about to hang up on me and said, Well, wait, how do you how do you know you're not interested? If you don't hear me out? And he definitely heard that desperation, you know, in my voice, and he said, I saw remember this, he says, You've got two minutes. Right. And in those two minutes, I told the entire vision of Legal Zoom, and we were trying to do, and at the end of it, he said, You know, I get a lot of calls. But I really liked this idea. Right? And, and I'm thinking something's somewhere. So why don't you call tomorrow at a normal time, and set up a time to meet with me through my assistant? I said, Sure. That sounds great. And so we set up a meeting, and it was off to the races after that.
• 34:19
  Randall Kaplan: How many people today now who want to get in touch with somebody and they're intimidated to do so it could be they have a customer service problem? They're not going to email the CEO of United Airlines. Why wouldn't you do that? But if you're an entrepreneur, there's so many people you should call for relationships, partnerships, advice, mentorship, and so many people don't do it. But people do respond. What's your advice to those people who are sitting there thinking, I'm not going to call that CEO, that person's successful, that person is a millionaire? They're never going to take my call, they're never going to return my call. But what's your advice to all those people?
• 34:54
  Brian Lee: Why not just just make the call? It's not that hard to pick up the phone. And it's not that hard to email someone wise, we'll try that.
• 35:00
  Brian Lee: What's the worst that's gonna happen? They say no, or they don't respond. I live I've gotten a million nose in my life. Right? And a lot of people who have hung up the phone on me or not returned an email. It doesn't stop me. You just keep going. Right? And so a lot of times you get those very successful folks, entrepreneurs, or bankers, or whoever it is that you're trying to reach out to, and they won't respond.
• 35:27
  Brian Lee: Right? And they will because they both find whatever you're saying is interesting. Right?
• 35:34
  Brian Lee: And they want to take meetings and it's kind of like this. You hear the story. I remember I read a story once about I can't remember what actress it was, but it was some, some actress who said, you know, I think the interviewer said, You must get asked her all the time. You know, you're single, you're beautiful and that is She says, no one ever asks me. Right? It's probably the same. No one ever really calls. No one cold calls me right and no one cold calls you well, not not often, right so it's just it's just the way it is people just don't take advantage of picking up the phone or sending an email