Joe Musso

Kevin Daisey (00:31)
What’s up everyone. Welcome to another episode. Thanks so much for tuning in and I appreciate you listening to the show, tuning into the show. We have a lot of listeners that, that tell me they listen quite often. And I’m always trying to bring some good content. Today I have a really cool story and a friend here. I got Joe Musso on the show. He’s got really a interesting niche.

And I think it’s really cool how it’s, how he’s going to create a design marketplace, if you will. And excited to talk about that, but Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Musso (01:05)
Thank you so much, Kevin. And I’m one of those listeners. I’m one of those fans of your podcast. So you can count me among the many, I’m sure. It’s been very useful and helpful to me in my practice and kind of in the places that I’ve been along my journey. So I appreciate you.

Kevin Daisey (01:13)
Whoa.

I appreciate that man very much. Um, well, again, that’s been cool talking with you and learning what you’re doing and how it’s unique. Um, and obviously for me, we’re always looking to help lawyers and understand their business better, but at the same time, you know, I like learning from my guests and I just like learning about business and how it’s unique and how maybe I can help, you know, apply it into my own business or different situations. Uh, so it’s just always cool to go, wait, wait.

What do you do and how do you do that? And that’s it.

Joe Musso (01:47)
And

I’m certainly unique. I my work is pretty unique. Although it’s less unique than it was when I first started it. When I started it, I’ve been a nursing home abuse lawyer since 1998. So it’s been a while. It’s been a minute, you know? And back then, there was nobody doing it. You know, very few people, right? There was a couple of people around. I learned.

I got hired as a law clerk and at a law firm of about five, a personal injury law firm with about five people in it. And the owner who was summering in Jersey, I was in Jersey and he was wintering in Boca Raton, Florida, comes up and he says, they got this stuff going on in Florida because that’s where the greatest percentage of elderly people were, where they’re suing nursing homes for abuse of the elderly. And, you know, I think that’s going to be something that goes on for a long time.

He was definitely right about that. So he hired me on the condition that I learned it. And I had to literally find, now they’re just giants of the gate, right? Like Ruben Krisztal and Wilkes and McHugh and, you know, this Levin, these people back then that were doing it that are now, they’ve got a whole generation of people underneath them that taught me how to do it. And so I’ve been a nursing home abuse attorney that entire time, which has been a crazy kind of ride.

Kevin Daisey (02:39)
Here you are.

Yeah, actually a guest I’ve had on the show a while back was, it’s client, Clinesmith.

Joe Musso (03:07)
sure, Curtis Clinesmith, of course. Yup. Dawn’s one of the best nursing home attorneys in America. I work with their firm quite a bit.

Kevin Daisey (03:09)
Yep. ⁓ Dawn, I had Dawn on the show actually.

Well, there you go. Dawn,

Dawn, if you’re listening. Um, yeah, great. She was awesome guests. Great episode. Uh, I’ll have to reach out and have her back on, but to be honest with me, not me as not a lawyer, right. Hadn’t heard much about some of these specialized nursing home outfits really until probably a handful of years ago. So when Dawn came on the show, you know, they were talking about how they had really niched into it and, really try to go national.

Joe Musso (03:18)
Yeah, she’s great.

yeah, she’s great.

Kevin Daisey (03:42)
with it as well. So I it was a really interesting move. Obviously there’s some bigger conglomerates and firms out there as well. But very specialized again across all the clients that we have. Some dabble in it. Some might have, you know, probably enough counsel or someone that they’re leaning on if they do get one of the cases. Most of time don’t have anyone in-house that specializes or can handle work. Afore to have them just hanging out.

and waiting for some cases. I wanted to kind of talk about that. For one, Joe’s in Virginia, I’m in Virginia. Go commanders, Redskins. Been fans our whole lives, right?

Joe Musso (04:12)
Go commanders. Amen.

Definitely. Definitely. I was a little kid when I first started. John Reagan’s. That’s how long ago it was. Joe Theisman.

Kevin Daisey (04:23)
I had a, there’s a, I used to have a picture of my mom, used to have a picture on the fridge probably until about 10 years ago, but it was like me and my redskins pajamas. So yeah, we’ve been fans since we were born and

Joe Musso (04:35)
We had a little bit of a period of difficulty lately. My entire kid’s life.

Kevin Daisey (04:38)
Like most of my life basically we

But now, you know, maybe we have a chance. ⁓ so while we’re recording this, it’s preseason, but, we’ll, we’ll see what happens. Everyone’s standing by. We’re coming back for you. So, well, Joe, wanted to, so actually I’ve met Joe because I have a client, personal injury client, and, they do car accidents, general PI. and they really connect me with Joe saying, Hey, we.

Joe Musso (04:45)
That’s right. That’s right.

Amen.

Kevin Daisey (05:06)
We have this nursing home side of the practice that we’re trying to build. and they introduced me to Joe and then I learned that, you know, Joe’s on his own really. And Joe, is working with these other firms and he, would be the one doing that for them. And I was like, okay, that’s very interesting. And, so just telling me a little bit about like your structure, how you operate. I think it’s super cool. and really how that can expand. think there’s a lot of opportunity there.

Array Digital (05:36)
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Now back to the show.

Joe Musso (06:06)
Yeah, well, and I know he wouldn’t have a problem saying his name. Wayne Williams is your client that you’re talking about. Wayne owns Williams DeLoatche. Wayne has been my friend since childhood. I met Wayne when I was 12 years old. ⁓ yeah, we’ve been friends for a very long time. He was in my wedding. I mean, we’re very close. And he has built a wonderful, him and Jonathan DeLoatche, have built a wonderful law firm, basically concentrating on all personal injury.

Kevin Daisey (06:20)
Sorry to hear that.

Joe Musso (06:34)
But he came across a couple of nursing home cases. In fact, one of them was a dear friend of his. And he sent it to me when I was working at another firm and I handled it kind of with him. And he got intrigued by it. And so when I went out on my own in 20…

21, 22, he said, hey, look, I’ll come across these cases, I’ll get these cases and we wanna do them the right way. And that’s been my model since I went out on my own. So I’ve been the head of big nursing home departments, big nursing home litigation departments at giant firms. And then kind of went out on my own, started a new law firm and found so many opportunities where people wanted

to do the work, but just don’t have the skillset. And it takes years and years to develop the skillset to do it because you’re trying to you know, medicine, geriatric medicine, and then you have to learn how a nursing home functions, how it gets paid, what the language is, it’s the most regulated industry underneath nuclear power plants. So the regulations are, you know, even beyond trucking. And so it’s just a very, you know,

Medically, legally, and sort of the understanding of how it all works takes a long time to learn. So a lot of people are seeing the value of these cases and not just the fee value of the cases, which exists for sure, but the moral value of these cases, right? I mean, the reality is there are more cases out there than there are lawyers competent to handle them. And so the sad part of this work is that

I turn down cases every week that I’d love to take. I just don’t have the time or the resources at this point to take on more. And this is kind of the stuff that Dawn and Curtis over at the Client Smith’s office is doing. They’re looking at it as a bigger model, a more volume-based model. But most of us have much more small practices, or you’re doing what I’m doing, which is I’m of counsel to various firms. Williams DeLoatche is my primary one.

And I co-counsel with other people who want, cause they have one or two, right? You’re not going to hire someone, train them, learn it, and then prosecute that case within the statute of limitations. So you can come across a really good one, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, there’s so many traps in it. And so what I think is kind of interesting about it, and I think maybe the bigger lesson for folks, certainly if you have young lawyers listening, but even for older folks, there’s something about

Kevin Daisey (08:37)
Yeah.

Joe Musso (08:57)
doing a practice that’s so difficult that people can’t get into it easy. The barred entry to my practice actually becomes a competitive advantage once you have gained the knowledge gap. And it does another thing, and this is what I think you saw with Client Smith’s office. For me, because that’s kind of all I’m doing. Again, the firm I’m with, like Williams DeLoatche, does all sorts of stuff, but I’m very niche down. And as a result,

I’m building my case the exact same way. If you’ve ever learned the lean law firm principles, my favorite law firm management book, it talks about how if you have multiple niches inside of your firm, it’s sort of like a factory that has to change out the factory settings to make the other kinds of models. I don’t. It’s the same steps every time. The building is exactly the same. Prosecuting cases is different, of course. Every case is different.

Kevin Daisey (09:24)
Mm.

Yeah.

Joe Musso (09:46)
You know, fact pattern is different, but the building of a nursing home case is exactly the same every way. So I gain all these little competitive advantages in the market. I gained the competitive advantage of everybody knows me as the nursing home guy, right? And so they come across a nursing home case and they go, where am I going to get a referral fee and know that it’s not going to be malpractice on me or I’m not settling the case too cheap or I’m not selling it. You know, this guy’s been doing it his whole life. He doesn’t do anything else and it’s a win-win deal.

Kevin Daisey (10:02)
You

Joe Musso (10:13)
So in the marketplace, niching down is helping me a lot, but also in the building of the case. I don’t have to switch out a lot. Even if my firms do, I don’t. It’s just been good.

Kevin Daisey (10:22)
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. Systems processes page super

important. And yeah, if you niche that makes it a lot easier to do that. If you’re just a general practice or anyone that’s got a pulse, you know, with a case potentially, um, it just makes it difficult to grow scale. Um, your firm for sure.

Joe Musso (10:41)
But it’s tempting, I’ll tell you, it’s hard because there’s downsides to nursing home too. So when you’re really niche down, the downsides are yours too, right? So they take a long time, they’re expensive. There’s never a situation where I’m sending a demand letter and getting policy limits on an accident. That never happens, right? I have to litigate almost every single one of my cases. So it’s got downsides too. And so you get tempted with the idea of

Kevin Daisey (10:44)
You

you

Joe Musso (11:07)
Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna offset my downsides by diversifying. But as soon as you do that, you lose, you can lose your marketing brand, your brand, or at least dilute it. And you then lose your systems and processes. You don’t lose them, but you dilute them and you have to now recycle time and your throughput rates are being impacted by changing out your systems to accommodate for other practice areas that you didn’t do. So.

Kevin Daisey (11:31)
No.

Joe Musso (11:31)
Some of the ways people I think have

done that in my world to try to overcome it is find what they perceive to be tangents, natural tangents, elder law, for example, because it’s the same marketing world, but the practice areas are so different. So that’s challenging.

Kevin Daisey (11:47)
Yeah. I know for me, like, if I thought that like a business owner or a startup or someone that’s trying to into business for me every time, and I have multiple companies and you know, I’ve always delayed mostly in the past delayed niching and cause you’re like, well, you know, we’re going to start this up. Let’s just, just got to make money and it’s just gotta be blah, blah. Every time I do that, I regret it every time and time is lost to where you could have been building a brand.

And messaging and strengthening that to say, this is what we specialize in. your growth will be much faster. You might take a little while to get that momentum going, but once the momentum is going, that’s where it really takes off. So if you niche and you specialize and you have a clear message, people know who you are and what you do. then it will pay off bigger in my, my experience.

Joe Musso (12:29)
what

and what’s kind of unique absolutely and what’s unique about it is so you know where I saw this in another area with that I don’t I’m trying to think if I’ve ever heard an episode that you’ve had on this niche but have you seen the niche that came out God I want to say it’s I remember when it came out because it definitely I became a customer immediately it was the niche of lean resolution lawyers right so these were lawyers that all they did was handle everybody’s liens their customers ended up becoming lawyers themselves

Kevin Daisey (12:50)
⁓ yeah.

Joe Musso (12:56)
And they said, hey, we’ll take all your Medicare and Medicaid and Tricare and, you know, your Medicare set aside issues, like all the stuff you don’t want to work on that drives you crazy, that makes you pull your hair out because you’re not really good on the law. And the penalties are the government coming and seizing your fee and giving you a hard time. We’ll take that mess, that hornet’s nest. And those guys are like printing money now because it’s not just niching down, right? Because I could go and niche down into car accidents.

today and so many other people in Northern Virginia are niched down on the car accidents. You know, Williams DeLoatche can jump in the market and fight because they built a brand and that’s what they do. For me to do that, I’m going to have years of trying to get ahead. But when you choose a niche, and again, if I had young lawyers in front of me right now, I’d go look for the work that no one else wants to do, you know? And it’s like, it seems like

Kevin Daisey (13:46)
That’s a point.

Joe Musso (13:48)
counterintuitive like why would you want to do something super difficult, super hard, super complicated because nobody else wants to do it. That’s why.

Kevin Daisey (13:55)
So it is right. mean, and I’ve heard

this, I’ve heard this many times, boring work, the boring, ⁓ companies that do boring stuff like insurance or just stuff that just, you’re like, like they make tons of money. Like people don’t want to do it. Don’t want to handle it. It’s like if you sold porta potties or rented porta potties, no one wants to get into that, but it’s just, it’s needed.

Joe Musso (14:01)
Right, right.

Right.

Outside of the legal,

outside of the legal field, outside of the legal genre, you see this now, the revival in the stripers who were striping parking lots and power washers and they call them boring businesses, right? But they’re like, great, because AI is not replacing them.

Kevin Daisey (14:36)
A hundred percent. Yeah. gonna be a very long

time before it could, if anything. yeah. So I know Jason Lazarus, he’s with Synergy. They do a lean resolution. He was on the show not too long ago and I was, I was perplexed with him. I’m like, what do you do? And cause I’m a lawyer and you you explain to what they did. And so he is a lawyer, has a side practice still. He’s actually in a mastermind group that I have, the managing partners mastermind and

Joe Musso (14:47)
Absolutely. is that right? missed that. It’s great.

Kevin Daisey (15:01)
Very intriguing, they’ve incredibly fast.

Joe Musso (15:02)
Yeah, oh, they’re huge.

I use them. You know what mean? For a nursing home abuse lawyer, having someone take your lien problems is an enormous win-win all the way around. And they’re like their own contingency fee too. they’re like, we only charge you what we save you. So you’re like, you don’t even have a risk. So you’re just sitting there going, so this guy’s gonna take my work, save my client money. I’m not gonna have to work on something. He knows 10 times more than I do. And it doesn’t even come out of my.

Kevin Daisey (15:05)
Yeah, well there you go.

you

Joe Musso (15:30)
pocket. And it’s just like, this is an easy, this is an easy sell. But it’s because they chose to do something that no one wanted to do. That work is hard. But they got good at it that’s all they’re doing.

Kevin Daisey (15:34)
What an awesome business model.

Last time,

when I had Jason like coming on the podcast, I had chatted with him and he was at like 80 employees. And then I saw him like a few weeks later and he was over a hundred. And I was like, Holy S I guess 20 and you know, a month. It was like, so yeah, they’re just.

Joe Musso (15:53)
God, huge. And they were

like the first one, but they have competitors now too. it’s become something where other lawyers now are looking at it going, hey, we could do this too. it was really when they jumped out in front of that, was like everyone looked at them like, ooh, what a terribly difficult practice, but that’s why they’re lucrative.

Kevin Daisey (16:10)
Yeah. I think it’s for them is just marketing and getting in front of firms to know that it’s a service that exists. so nice little plug for Jason there and his company, but, no, so niching, they chose something that no one wants to do nursing him hard, expensive, hard to staff for because you might not have enough cases coming in to make sense of that. That’s what Joe’s done. He’s taken that and now he’s got multiple firms that that use him.

Joe Musso (16:19)
Yeah, that’s right.

Kevin Daisey (16:35)
to fulfill that service. Or like, Clinesmith has just built the whole practice around it and kind of grown that and scaled it and trying to go national with it. So, niching is super powerful.

Joe Musso (16:44)
I kind of just lend

my brain out, my experience out to these other firms who would have to just send the case out and they want to learn it or they want to be a part of it or they refer to me, which is fine too, you know what I mean? But they don’t have to just cut it and go, I don’t know what, I don’t want to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing here, that kind of thing. And so it’s kind of win-win because they’re everywhere. Unfortunately, the sad part of this is

They’re everywhere and I’ve been doing it for 26 years and every year there’s more cases than the year before. We’re getting older as a nation and we’re getting, we’re living longer and we’re living sicker in some ways. And so, you know, it’s a tough situation and then there’s government funding to these nursing homes and big ownership and big, you know, that’s a business too, right? And so they’re.

You got the two kinds of owners of a nursing home, the ones that are trying to get right up to the level of staff that can meet everyone’s needs without anyone just kind of hanging out doing nothing, right? And they’re getting right up against that line. And then the bad ones, dirty ones that are intentionally staffing below that line to maximize their profit. Accidents and mistakes can happen in the first one and in the second one, it’s inevitable. So it’s just a rough situation.

Kevin Daisey (17:55)
Sure. Yeah. I have a grandma who’s,

I have a grandma that’s dementia. She’s been nursing him for probably six, seven years at this point. Um, not the greatest of place. And I mean, it’s expensive. Obviously, um, most of it’s all, it’s all covered, but it’s, I mean, I don’t know how much it was for a month. It’s like seven, eight grand a month, but, the kind of care that she needs, you can’t really stay anywhere.

Joe Musso (18:07)
gotta be a pretty good one.

Kevin Daisey (18:22)
at someone’s house or home. ⁓ it’s 24/7. So when I say, I don’t know what compare it to, but you know, to me, it seems like a place that would definitely not want to be. but, yeah. So Joe’s good person to have, in your Rolodex, for family, people, you know, because the specialization that he has.

Joe Musso (18:22)
Yeah. no.

Okay, nobody.

What’s sad is

I’m in this age now, Kevin, right? And it’s like crazy to me, but I have friends now on Facebook that have known I’ve been a nursing home lawyer for a quarter of a century now, right? And they were friends with me in high school, like same class as Wayne, right? And they reach out to me and they’re like, hey, I’m putting mom in a facility. And it’s like, wow, we’re all getting old really quick.

Kevin Daisey (18:45)
.

Joe Musso (19:05)
for now people calling me about my practice area that are my age and it’s sobering reality.

Kevin Daisey (19:13)
I get any younger.

Well, in the meantime, so, you we, we do marketing for Wayne. we’re going to be stepping up, the nursing home cases that come your way, hopefully. excited about that. yeah. Well, you know, kind of back to you were saying, you know, bar to entry too, you know, like in my business marketing, super easy to enter. You don’t have to know anything you’re doing. just boom. I can start doing marketing for you. can.

write blogs or make social content. So the bar is really low. But I would, you know, on the flip side is doing it well and the results of it I think is probably the most challenging space to be. So while the bar is low and there’s crap tons of people in the space, the only thing we can do is be the best possibly at it and you know, we win at end of the day because there’s lots of people that don’t

do well at it. like in your case, you’re your absolute expert and you’ve dug into that and continue to stay in that space. think that’s, it’s easy for people to want to stray over to something else or pick up a couple bucks over here and you know.

Joe Musso (20:08)
Yeah, you know.

Oh, I get the

call. I get the call. I don’t wanna say it’s every week, cause it’s not, but I’d say once a month, maybe, definitely once a quarter. Definitely once a quarter. I thought I could handle this. It seemed like a pretty open and shut case. I thought I could pull this off without any help. I didn’t wanna split the fee, the story is, right?

Kevin Daisey (20:32)
you

Joe Musso (20:37)
and now they’re upside down. And you’ll look, these defense lawyers have niched down too, right? When I first started doing this work, you would get these either personal injury insurance lawyers or at best you’d get a medical malpractice defense attorney. And they’re used to winning nine out of 10 cases because juries love doctors and it’s hard to hit on a med mal case. And so they would walk into these nursing home cases like, you know.

we’ll throw something at you, maybe we won’t, just beat you at trial. And then they started to realize that jurors understand these cases. Leaving someone in their own feces long enough that it burns the skin off of them and they end up having a hole in their backside, it fills with their own feces, poisons their blood and kills them, which is about 70 % of the cases I handled, bedsore cases, pressure injury cases. You don’t walk into a courtroom,

Kevin Daisey (21:23)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Musso (21:29)
and say, represent the nursing home and you start with the white hat like you do with the doctor. And so, you know, it’s the really good lawyers now have jumped on the defense too. And they’re niching down too. They’re just handling nursing homes. Virginia has some of the best nursing home abuse defense attorneys, I think in the country. And it’s largely because they’re niching down too. So it’s super hard. And if you just kind of dabble in this, they’ll eat you alive.

Kevin Daisey (21:36)
That’s a good point.

Joe Musso (21:54)
because they’re not defending a nursing home case on, we gave great care. They’re defending the case on, you didn’t file that right. Your expert report is incorrect. You don’t have a proper foundation for that document. They’re trying to get the lawyer to screw up, not defend their actions. And so they catch somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing, man, and they are going to kill them. And so you’ve got these folks out there.

because everyone’s got it on their website now. mean, everyone, it’s nothing to add nursing home abuse landing page to your website now. AI can do it for you now, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I tell most clients, ask a couple of simple questions of your lawyer about, how often have they done this? Are you co-counseling with someone who does this?

Kevin Daisey (22:28)
I have seen it a lot more often recently in the last couple of years for sure.

Joe Musso (22:43)
I always tell them, if you Google nursing home and my name, you can see me thinner with more hair, talking about nursing home stuff 20 years ago, right? Like my whole life has been this, you know? And I think that that’s a really important thing to have. So I’m marketing to lawyers who have it on their website, but don’t know what they’re doing. Before you make a huge mistake, you can call me and I’ll get you through it, right?

And then I’m marketing, of course, to the families of these residents who don’t want to let them get away with this. But what’s really kind of interesting about the practice area, too, is that it’s so unique in its challenging and its difficulties because of the nature of the case itself. if you had a, I always say that, you if you walked in and went to go pick up your

four-year-old or your five-year-old daycare. And you found him with a broken ankle and he’s got a diaper rash that’s so deep it’s through his butt up and his bones are exposed. You know, and you went to the daycare center and said, why is my child suffering with a broken leg and why does she have a urinary tract infection and why does she have this giant gaping hole in her backside and her diaper is filthy? And they said, well, we don’t know how she got like that.

We don’t know how she broke her leg. We don’t know how she got the big wound. We don’t know how she got the infection. You know, she was with me all day, but you know, I don’t know. And they start looking around. Do you know what happened to that kid? They’d shut that place down, arrest everybody involved, and lawyers would line up around the block to represent that person. Most of my clients come to me after they’ve been rejected by three or four lawyers. Because if you don’t know that a 90-year-old is entitled to justice,

Kevin Daisey (24:13)
Sure.

Joe Musso (24:23)
then it just sounds like a really bad med mal case for an elderly person who has no income, no lost wages, and was already so sick, frail, vulnerable, and sometimes dying that they needed 24-7 nursing care before the thing you’re suing about. And then when you find out, it’s a medical malpractice case and it’s gonna cost you $50,000 $100,000 to prosecute it, it’s easy for a bunch of people to say no first.

Kevin Daisey (24:46)
Yeah, that’s a good point. So yeah, either ones that market it or say that they can handle it. Pick them, picks them up and then end up going, this is not something we want or can handle.

Joe Musso (24:57)
It’s not hard to convince society that you can do something that you may not be able to do. I mean, in today’s world, it’s really a dangerous thing. I bring this up because being a nursing home abuse attorney, I don’t have a great story for how I became a nursing home abuse attorney. I think I told you in our prep session that

Kevin Daisey (25:16)
you

Joe Musso (25:17)
My boss came to me said, if you want a job, I’ll train you in this nursing home stuff. I don’t have some great stories. Some of the great nursing home. Yeah, some of the great nursing home story lawyers I know have really powerful stories about loved ones that were in that situation that prompted them to go to law school to do this. You know, and it’s beautiful stories. I don’t have it. Like I was looking for a job, but you don’t stay in this business for 26 years until you’re developing a real passion for it. Because here’s the thing.

Kevin Daisey (25:22)
la

Joe Musso (25:44)
there are way easier ways to make a living than what I do. And so you don’t just want somebody who understands the regulations and the medicine and all that. At my stage of life and my stage of career, I deeply care about the cause of the institutionalized elderly. And I have now seen these families over and over and over again.

The guilt and the pain and the shame of choosing the nursing home that killed their loved one is something that until you’ve done the work for a bit, you’re not really equipped to handle. There are big parts of my job that are a ministry, you know, not a career. There’s big parts of my job where sitting with a daughter or a son of someone who died in a nursing home that they chose.

requires a certain level of empathy and sympathy and compassion that if you’re just rolling through it for a fee, you’re not gonna have and they’ll know, they’ll pick it up quickly. They know who’s on their side for real.

Kevin Daisey (26:43)
Yeah.

They’re kind of putting that on themselves for making that decision or somehow blaming themselves for choosing that facility. ⁓

Joe Musso (26:48)
Yeah, and you know, I’m so scared. Yeah, I’m scared

of death to make them a victim again. You know what I mean? Like they’re a victim when they come to you. They’re never the same. Defense lawyers talk about the life expectancy of the resident all the time, right? Oh, she was 90. How much longer was she gonna live? But in my cases, it’s not the life expectancy of the resident that matters. It’s the life expectancy of the child who has to live the rest of their lives knowing they put mom in a home that killed her.

and in a bad way, know, infected blood, bed sores, broken necks, you know. So there’s parts of the job that are emotionally, you’re also seeing the worst of humanity every day, which is another thing that is not easy to look at. So again, you know, I don’t recommend it for everyone, but there’s something very rewarding about taking on people who don’t have a voice and…

really need a good lawyer who cares about them. And my experiences, like I said, my biggest problem now is that I can’t take them all. You know, I can’t. There’s more than I can take because compassion and love and skill and heart and desire to hold them accountable is rare. Lawyers are not out there looking for that all the time.

The people who do this work are great. I know them all. know, the whole country that does them. I’m on the nursing home litigation group, AAJ’s nursing home litigation group, the Virginia trial lawyers, long-term care section. Lawyers who do this work are special people, for sure.

Kevin Daisey (28:03)
You said that.

Sounds like you should be out there doing a mentorship or coaching program or speaking at some events. don’t know if you, yeah, so share some of your knowledge to folks that really want to maybe get into it or go that direction.

Joe Musso (28:18)
Yeah, you’re right. It’s a idea.

a good idea. I I do try to mentor and teach and I teach CLEs and I speak a lot and but, you know, required also Kevin, it requires people to, yeah, it requires people to forego the easy thing and our society, I’m going to get off my soapbox and not be the old man shaking his fist at the cloud. you know, I think there’s a lot of life, right, where if you’re willing to

Kevin Daisey (28:38)
I time, I bet.

Joe Musso (28:53)
sacrifice now and learn it now and suffer a little bit now and you’re not just going to walk right in and be first chair in a multi-million dollar Med Now case. You get bigger and better rewards later. that what is that? It’s that marshmallow test from like the 50s where they gave the kids the marshmallows. They said if you eat the marshmallow, if you don’t eat the marshmallows, you’ll get two in an hour and they track those kids later. So I think that unfortunately a lot of young lawyers coming out and some of it’s, you know, law student loans and you

Kevin Daisey (29:09)
Yeah.

Joe Musso (29:21)
Financial pressures today are leading these kids not to take the long road and develop a real niche that they’re proud of that, that, you know, moves them emotionally and spiritually, not just from how do get my paycheck? How do I pay off my student loans? How do I buy a house and have a kid, you know?

Kevin Daisey (29:38)
Well, yeah, instant gratification. And now that you’re exposed to, you know, a lot of successful lawyers are very vocal. They’re on social media. They’ve been all these big settlements or, you know, so it’s like, I want to just jump right to that, you know?

Joe Musso (29:45)
Right? Right?

Right?

Well, you’ve built multiple businesses. I mean, you know that there’s no shortcut to that. You can’t shortcut your way to success in business. It really doesn’t work. Everyone tries it. That’s why the Get Rich Quick scheme businesses sell so well is because so many people want that. anyone who’s actually successful, including the guy who’s selling that course, they know that there’s no such thing as a shortcut to

Kevin Daisey (30:16)
The best work I can give people is listen to others that have done it. Join a mastermind group, listen to podcasts like this and others, and just soak everything up you can. Because someone else has already done it, and you can read books and do all that stuff, but the answers are out there. It’s just, you got to put in the time and work to, to figure it out for yourself. Knitching is a big piece of that. It’s one of the, one of the pieces of the puzzle that I think is important.

Joe Musso (30:42)
Yes.

Well, you love, and again, in the pre podcast discussions we’ve had, you love your work, right? You love your business. You love what you’re doing. You love helping people. I know from talking to Wayne, you’re just super passionate about helping the people that you’re in contact with. That’s the stuff though. That’s the stuff that’s gonna get you there. I mean, if you’re passionate, and it doesn’t mean, you know, I always hear the,

Kevin Daisey (30:59)
It has to be there.

Joe Musso (31:08)
You’ve got to love what you do and you won’t work a day in your life. Loving what you do is really important, but the science of that is actually doing meaningful work. You know, it’s not, my work’s not easy. You’re still working, exactly. There’s going to be days and no matter what your job is, there’s going to be days when you’re going to be doing things you don’t want to do. And so it’s not that every day is just fun. It’s when you look back, you know, we have a saying in Williams DeLoatche and anywhere I go, quite frankly, that

Kevin Daisey (31:17)
Cause you’re still working.

Joe Musso (31:36)
We do what we do because people who will never know we existed, who will never thank us, who will never even know, will have a more dignified and safe, clean, dignified existence at the end of life because of the work we did in our life. It’s a lifetime. What is your legacy? What is your career? And I know you look at yours the same way. There’s all these people that you’re touching.

and then they go off and they touch others and you’re helping people deliver great services to others in a way that really helps them. And you don’t even know the level of your impact, you know, but when you envision it, that’s what gets you up every day.

Kevin Daisey (32:14)
Yeah. I mean, that’s one of things I have to tell my team. And we worked this into like our mission and vision is, why would some young folks, I got older folks too, but young, let’s just say young folks want to go do marketing or build a website for a law firm. That sounds pretty boring. It sounds terrible. and so, although I’ve been working with lawyers for many years and understand,

that we wanted to help them, you have to bring it back to them understanding who they’re helping, what they’re doing, and how many people they’re impacting. And we got to tell those stories and we worked that into our mission about how we’re helping our clients, law firms, connect with the folks that need their help, that are in bad situations. And so it’s kind of cool to see how that’s gone across like the culture of our

employees see stories from the clients and how they helped or a case that was settled or went to trial and won. And this is across, you know, not just PI, but it’s criminal, it’s, you know, family law, everything, immigration, but it’s, yeah.

Joe Musso (33:03)
Right.

Yeah.

Well, it’s passion

stacking on top of passion, right? So your passion is being used in service for people like, again, I can speak about how Wayne speaks about you and Williams DeLoatche, those people breathe this. They get up every day and they think somebody can’t pay the bills.

because they were harmed by the negligence or recklessness or intentional act of someone else. And we are the only thing that’s going to be able to restore their lives. And they put all their trust in us. you’re servicing someone like that, so you look at the whole picture, your passion, because, you know, look, Wayne’s a great marketer, but he’s a lawyer. These are lawyers, right? They’re never going to be as good as you are. So when you come to them and you go, here’s my passion, and I want you

to

be able to spin it to help those people who need it. It’s like love on top of love, passion on top of passion. And that’s what business is. When you get to the highest levels, you realize business is not about what you get. It’s about what you give. And the getting is great, but it’s only after you kind of learn the lesson that it’s not about getting. It’s like a giant paradise, like marriage in that way.

Kevin Daisey (34:03)
you

Yeah, you’ll get back.

Yeah, it’s

interesting. It’s just, but, um, you know, think general public, if I just hired a person off the street, uh, what’s their, uh, you know, what’s perception of a law firm or a lawyer? first is my team and my employees. If you were to ask them, I think you’d get a different answer from, again, someone off the street versus someone that again works for like a company like mine that’s actually understands what they do.

it has a different, different idea of how lawyers help people versus lawyers don’t help people. just take money from people.

Joe Musso (34:51)
Eventually.

That’s all businesses though. Eventually you can fool some people, but eventually your client base is going to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, right? If you are really doing this just for money, it’ll catch up. Eventually it’s going to catch up with you. You can’t fool everybody with that. But if you are in a ministry, your business is your ministry. Your business is, is you expressing your highest calling.

Kevin Daisey (35:09)
and look at shit.

Joe Musso (35:21)
That comes out, like you can’t hide that, right? I mean, that just comes out.

Kevin Daisey (35:25)
Well, it’s going to draw people in, right? It’s gonna, and that’s the thing, like, you know, I talk on the show a lot about like culture. and you can have a good culture if you’re just trying to make money or you’re, you’re trying to just to scam people or you don’t really care about the work. If not, if everyone has, if everyone cares about the work, that’s going to be bleeding through everything, right? When you talk to anyone on the team or if you call Wayne’s office down to the admin or assistant.

Joe Musso (35:28)
Right? Right.

Right.

Kevin Daisey (35:50)
Like you can tell they’re excited about it. They’re excited to help. So, and that’s just going to drive the business and be more successful. And that’s, you know, for me, that’s the only way that you’re going to really have a long-term growth and success.

Joe Musso (35:55)
it.

It spins

out. It spins out, right? You keep putting on in passion, you keep putting on care for these people that keeps on pushing you. They see it, it gets reflected. Then they’re referring people to you, right? I mean, again, I get referrals all the time because people know, hey, it’s not like, Joe’s the most brilliant lawyer in the world. I’d love to say that. But the truth of the matter is I don’t know that my clients are going off saying,

Oh, you you lost your mom in a nursing home. Go get Joe. He represented our family because he knows the regulations like the back of his hand, which is true. But I don’t think that’s what they say. They say, I love Joe. That’s what they say. And Joe loves me and my family. That’s what he said. That’s what they say.

Kevin Daisey (36:44)
Yeah.

You

Well, I had a friend of mine on the podcast of the day that it’s through this question, which I thought was interesting. You know, if you ever look at bad reviews for like a law firm, for personal injury firm, do you ever see a bad review that’s like the settlement was crap or I’m not happy with the amount? It’s always about the interaction with the law firm. It’s always about the communication, either good or bad. It’s not going to be about.

Joe Musso (37:07)
Right, no, they didn’t call me back. They didn’t care about me.

That’s right.

Kevin Daisey (37:17)
the out, the end result typically. it’s, if you’re passionate and you’re helping your clients through the whole process, communicating and running a good business, right? So you talked about having a process and you care, right? Then you’re gonna do well.

Joe Musso (37:29)
I have a family right now, heading towards trial this fall. And me and Steve Baker of Williams DeLoatche, she’s my partner on the case, met with the administrator. I think she might be the middle kid, the middle child of 11, right? So it’s a big family. And we’re talking about trial and going through everything. And she says to me, well, I’m just really worried. She’s not worried about losing the case because what would happen to them?

Kevin Daisey (37:43)
Whoa.

Joe Musso (37:55)
She goes, you guys have put six years of work into this and how will you get paid if we lose? And I’m like, hope you’re not allowed to worry about that. But again, it’s an example. It’s because for six years we’ve been loving her and holding hope for her that she’s gonna get justice for her mom. And we’re like, we’re close. I mean, that’s what happens is you get close in these times.

Kevin Daisey (38:17)
That’s some, that’s, that’s intense. Well, Joe, man, I appreciate you coming on to share a lot of deep things ⁓ about niching, how helpful it is across the board. And of course, having passion and caring and what that’ll do.

Joe Musso (38:21)
Yeah, it’s been great. Kevin. Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate it.

Love your clients.

Love your clients. Fight against some evil. That’s even better than If you’re gonna find a niche, find a niche where you love the people you represent and you’re fighting against something you really hate or fighting for something you really love. I I think that’s the key.

Kevin Daisey (38:45)
Great message. I want to get you a cape. Superhero Joe.

Joe Musso (38:47)
Yeah. I don’t

I don’t think I need a cape. That’s funny.

Kevin Daisey (38:52)
Well, Joe, thanks so much for coming to share. What’s the best way for our listeners to find and connect with you?

Joe Musso (38:55)
yeah.

Yeah, so you can always get through to me at my, you know, was my of council role at Williams DeLoatche at wdlaw.com, wd-law.com, And you can always get me at myfirmshy with joe@mussolawfirm.com. And I’m on Facebook and Instagram and put in my name in nursing home and you’ll find me everywhere. Like I said, you’ll find shorter, not shorter, you’ll find thinner, more hair, all that versions of me talking about nursing home rights and resident rights from.

you know, the late 90s to chuckle at. ⁓ Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Kevin, it’s been an honor. Thank you so much.

Kevin Daisey (39:26)
We’re gonna get some fresh content out the door for you.

All right,

Joe. Yeah. Appreciate it. Everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in as always. Hope you loved Joe’s story today. Thank you so much. We’ll see you soon