Brian Beckcom

Kevin Daisey (00:32)
What’s up folks. Welcome to another episode of the Managing Partners Podcast. My favorite thing to do every single week. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. And I have a guest on here today, Brian Beckcom. And we know a same gentleman, Mr. or I’m sorry, Ben Glass, his son’s Brian Glass, with Great Legal Marketing. Brian’s known him for a long time, was kind of listening to him as a protege.

So, excited to have Brian on the show today, talk about himself, his firm, and just share with all of us so we can learn something and apply it to our own businesses. So, Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Beckcom (01:05)
Thanks for having me, Kevin. I’m really looking forward to it. We were talking earlier. You said, we’re going to get to talk about you a lot. And I said, yeah, that’s my favorite subject. And then you said, yeah, all trial lawyers are like that, which is true.

Kevin Daisey (01:12)
Ha

you

Brian Beckcom (01:21)
psychologically wired.

Kevin Daisey (01:22)
It is. that’s why, you know, why podcasts work so easily. You you just ask, you just come on and give them a platform. And, it’s just a great, great way to talk to people and meet people. and they definitely want to talk about themselves, which is good. So we want, well, you know, know you’re, down in Houston, Texas, Texas, and, have a, a great firm down there, but, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you.

Brian Beckcom (01:25)

Yeah, for sure. Exactly.

Yeah, sure. So Brian Beckcom, my firm is VB Attorneys. It used to be Vujacenovic and Beckcom. And just by singing the name, I think we’ll probably figure out why we shortened it. The funny thing is my partner’s name is Vuk, V-U-K Vujacenovic. And I’m Brian Beckcom. That’s the V and the B. But people would always spell his name right and spell my name wrong. And my theory on that was that his name was so hard and took so much energy and concentration to spell right that people were just

Kevin Daisey (02:09)
They got

it right.

Brian Beckcom (02:10)
wiped out by the time they got to me. But yeah, so it was VB Attorneys. They actually celebrated our 20th anniversary last year, which I’ve had the same partner, the same wife, and the same house for 20 years, which I’ll bet there’s not a single trial lawyer listening that can say that. So who can I?

Kevin Daisey (02:29)
That’s a you need some change in life

in your life. What’s going on over there?

Brian Beckcom (02:32)
Yeah,

well, you can have change. You need to have change, absolutely. Otherwise, you’re not growing. But certain things probably are better if they’re pretty consistent. But anyway, Vuk and I started this firm 20 years ago. there’s not a single lawyer in my family on either side, mother or father, as far as I can trace. So I had kind of no mentors when I went to law school.

Kevin Daisey (02:42)
Get on ya.

Brian Beckcom (02:58)
Any idea? I mean, I made really good grades. was on the Law Review at Texas. I was an editor, published a Law Review note, got cited in the US Supreme Court. So I had the credentials. And you know what people did at the University of Texas Law School with those credentials? By and large, they went and worked for big law firms representing huge companies. And so that’s what I did, because that’s what I thought everybody was supposed to do. But I had a trial. think it was my second year as a lawyer.

And I lost, lost to a black plumber named Eric Lagrone who had been hurt falling off a roof. And his lawyer beat my butt in in trial. And as I was handing the check over to Eric and his lawyer, in the back of my head I was saying, man, I’m so glad he’s getting this money. And I thought to myself, uh-oh, I might be on the wrong side of things. So not, not,

Kevin Daisey (03:44)
wrong side of the fence.

Brian Beckcom (03:46)
Yeah, not too long after that, I switched to the plaintiff’s side. I went and worked for a small firm for a couple of years, met Vuk there. We kind of looked at each other. We didn’t really like the situation we were in for a variety of reasons. And Vuk said, I’m leaving. And I said, well, that’s interesting. So am I. What are you doing? I don’t know. What are you doing? I don’t know. What about we start a firm together? Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what happened. And so.

Kevin Daisey (04:05)
We should hang out.

Brian Beckcom (04:10)
That was 20 plus years ago. One of the things, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Kevin, not sure if you’ve seen it, but a plaintiff’s firm with the same partners being in business for 20 years is about as rare as a unicorn. It just doesn’t happen. There are lots of reasons for that. One of the reasons is because people are selfish and greedy. Another reason is…

And we see this all the time. One of the partners starts cheating on his wife and gets his other guy to cover it up, and it becomes a big mess. Or somebody has some sort of health problems or mental problems, or they don’t like what they’re doing, or this guy’s working harder than this guy, and I’m jealous, and blah, blah, blah. And Vuk and I somehow have managed to dodge all of that. And I can tell you, we’re talking about the business of law here on this podcast.

Kevin Daisey (04:50)
you

Brian Beckcom (04:56)
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that one of the decisions we made when we, the day we started our firm is one of the reasons we’re still here today. And that is we decided we were going to be true partners, 50-50 partners. And it wasn’t necessarily my idea. It was a very experienced lawyer when I was starting my firm. said, how do you do it? He says, there’s two ways to do it.

You can be equal partners. That’s a true partnership. Or you can have basically an arrangement where people kind of eat what they kill, and they get more money if they bring in more business. And he says, if you want a true law firm, be equal partners. If you want a group of lawyers that just happen to sit in the same building and have the same letterhead, then do it the other way. And I’m convinced with 20 years of looking back,

that if you’re not a 50-50 partnership, if you’re not an equal, truly equal partnership, your firm will not survive, or you’re to have all sorts of problems. Because it is inevitable that somebody is going to do better than the other person for some period of time. So there’s been a year or two where I have more settlements in Vuk, but then vice versa. There’s been years where I bring in more business, but then vice versa. There’s been times where I set up the computer systems and he’s out marketing.

If it’s not an equal partnership, and I’m working on the computer systems, and he’s out marketing, I’m going to be pissed that he’s doing that because he’s making more money. You see what I’m saying? It’s like having a marriage where one partner gets to do whatever they want and the other one doesn’t. You can be successful. You can make money. But you’re not a partnership unless you’re

Unless there’s some level of equality. that’s basically how I got to where I am today.

Kevin Daisey (06:30)
Well, that’s amazing. I yeah, I’ve seen a lot, you know, doing marketing for law firms, know, partners going away or partnerships folding or partnerships dissolving and then starting their own firms. you know, one of them hires us to continue to help them and the other one, you know, doesn’t. definitely something I see often in this space.

Brian Beckcom (06:48)
It’s like a cliche at this point,

right? Like, this is the cliche that I see a lot.

Lawyers, young lawyers start a law firm, spend a bunch of money on marketing, start bringing in a bunch of business. And the next thing you know, they’re suing each other and breaking up because one guy made five cents more than the other guy. Like it just happens so often. mean, a good friend of mine’s involved in this right now. And I’m just kind of chuckling going, dude, I could have told you that was going to happen the second you open that firm. That’s just the way, that’s just human nature, trial lawyer nature. So.

I try to, one of the things that you talked about Ben Glass earlier, one of the things that Ben really, the details that Ben teaches weren’t super helpful to me. What was helpful to me is the mindset that Ben taught. Ben gave me permission to ask questions about all of this sh*t. Like, who made the rule that plaintiffs lawyers,

and as partnerships had to fight and be greedy and like not like each other and stiff each other on fees. I mean like is there there another way can you just be honest and be fair and not be greedy and maybe you can only afford one Porsche instead of two like and you know what I mean and so so Ben really Ben really 15 years ago changed my mindset about a lot of things.

Kevin Daisey (08:01)
Yeah, Ben, great mindset, just a great teacher, just a great,

Great. You know, just showing you what, you know, what life’s about and how, how it can be and having a firm that aligns with, with your personal life, not just, you know, being a business that runs you. So he does a great job. I love following Ben and watching his content and seeing him in person here and there. was hoping to be in his, I’m usually at his events, but I was able to go to the one he has this year.

Brian Beckcom (08:16)
Yeah. I do too. He’s a,

He’s a good person, is the bottom line. If Ben Glass had $100 million, he would not have a plane. It’s just not his personality. know what I mean? Whereas all his trial lawyers, the second we can afford a plane or renting a plane, that’s all we ever post on our social media. It’s ridiculous. It’s like, hey, look at what I bought. I got a plane. OK. So in other words, in the day of.

Kevin Daisey (08:32)
Ha

Yeah, he would donate a lot.

Brian Beckcom (08:51)
Zoom and video where you could save your clients tens of thousands of dollars you’d rather fly around in a plane to go to a hearing. That’s stupid. But again, it’s this idea that all those travelers are virtue signaling to each other. Hey, look at my plane. Hey, look at my house. Hey, look at my car.

Kevin Daisey (09:13)
Well, you’re down in Texas, so you have a horse.

Brian Beckcom (09:16)
I don’t, but

so see in Texas it’s a ranch. It’s like everybody buys a ranch. You gotta be, you gotta have a ranch. I’ve been trying to talk my wife into letting me buy a little ranch, but she doesn’t want me to do that. And she’s, she’s pretty smart. So.

Kevin Daisey (09:21)
yeah, that has to be ranch.

And she’s stuck with you this long, so you don’t want to mess that up. So you better listen.

Brian Beckcom (09:32)
No kidding. No kidding.

Yeah. Don’t want to jinx things. huh.

Kevin Daisey (09:36)
So when you started your firm,

you you, you, you know, I know we talked before, you know, you didn’t have initial clients. You didn’t have a really source of, of clients coming in. So, and, and you’ve been successful, the partnerships remained a lot of good things have happened. Obviously you’ve met Ben and he’s helped you along the way, but you know, what are some, you know, I guess major other major things along the way that have

led to where you’re at and so running a successful firm 20 years later.

Kevin Daisey (10:10)
Thank you for tuning into the show today. I have taken things to the next level and I’ve started the Managing Partners Mastermind. We’re a peer group of owners looking for connection, clarity, and growth strategies. So if you’re looking to grow your law firm and not do it alone, please consider joining the group. Spots are limited, so I ask for anyone to reach out to me directly through LinkedIn and we can set up a one-on-one call to make sure it’s a fit.

Now back to the show.

Brian Beckcom (10:40)
So yeah, like you said, we started our firm, no cases, no idea how to get cases. They don’t teach you how to market in law school. we had to like, I mean, when we first started out, 99 % of our business came from referrals. And so the marketing was primarily to those referral sources. we used to take, we had Houston Astros season tickets. I’d be taking people to Astros games two or three nights a week, drinking beer, getting fat, feeling like crap.

and spending a lot of time for not a great reward. And so I remember about 15 years ago, I have degree in computer science, I’ve always been into technology, at least for the last 40 years. I remember about 15 years ago telling Vuk, we need to start getting cases online, direct. That’ll never happen, there’s no way. And I said, what if it did?

Kevin Daisey (11:27)
Ha ha.

Brian Beckcom (11:28)
And now 95 % of our cases come not from referral lawyers, but from other marketing type efforts like direct to our potential clients. That’s been like to me the biggest change until about, what’s it, 2025, until five years ago when everybody went into quarantine. And all of sudden we realized, Kevin, that

The idea of, I mean, think about what we used to have to do. When I first started practicing law, the Houston state courts would have docket call on Friday morning and motion practice. And there would be 30 lawyers that would be required to show up at 9 a.m. and sit there.

And if you were number 30, you’d be there for five hours listening to everybody else’s hearing. And I would look around and I would just think there’s $100,000 an hour being billed. Like this is so stupid and inefficient. There’s got to be a better way. I didn’t know what it was at the time. I do now. that, yeah, COVID blew things up and in a good way. And so, you know, I tell people,

Kevin Daisey (12:22)
He’s needed COVID to come along. Change things.

Brian Beckcom (12:31)
This is example I use right after COVID. had a case in federal court in Pittsburgh, and I had like eight hearings one month on different days. Before COVID, that’s $200,000 in expenses for me to fly up eight times for literally a 10 minute hearing. It is so, well, if I got my own plane, it’d be twice as much.

Kevin Daisey (12:48)
You join plane.

Brian Beckcom (12:54)
But of course, everybody that saw me do it would think I was successful, right? Because I have my own plane. That means I’m better than everybody else. think that’s the idea. But anyway, had this. So instead of $200,000 in completely unnecessary costs and expenses to my clients, I had eight hearings that took 15 minutes each that cost $0, because I was able to hop up on a Zoom call.

Kevin Daisey (13:02)
you

Brian Beckcom (13:17)
And the courts have been really receptive to this, which I’m super happy about. Because unlike most of the courts, some of my colleagues, the second quarantine was over, said, everybody else come back to the office right now. And I’m like, why? Because that’s the way we’ve always done it. Well, that’s not a reason. That’s a very poor reason. So I I understand why people want some in office.

stuff. ⁓ But yeah.

Kevin Daisey (13:41)
I’m in twice a week. That’s it. I’m here today.

I record on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That’s usually when I come in.

Brian Beckcom (13:47)
So I’m never in the office anymore. But part of that is because we literally don’t have a physical office right now. We’re building a building. But when my building’s done, which is I think going to be this summer, I’ll be in there about twice a week as well. And you know what I used to do, Kevin? I mean, think about this. Think about how backwards this seems now. And you would probably do this too. When I was working at Fulbright and Jaworski, for instance, I would wake up in the morning in my little box called a house.

I would put on a suit, I would get in my little box called a car, I would drive that box down a highway with thousands of other boxes, and then I would get on an elevator and go up 50 floors to sit in a different box and work from nine to five or nine to seven. And then I would go down that elevator, get back in that box, drive home, go in my other box. And I was literally wasting hours of the day.

Kevin Daisey (14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brian Beckcom (14:35)
Now I wake up, I walk upstairs, I make a cup of coffee, I walk upstairs and I’m working immediately. And there’s no waste of time. I mean, this is so much more efficient for the clients and for the lawyers. It’s hard to overstate. So you ask what the two big changes have been in my 25 years of practice. The first one is the rise of digital online marketing and lawyer stuff. And the second one is the rise of the remote practice.

Kevin Daisey (14:49)
Yep, totally agree.

Yeah, no, those are, we’re just preaching the choir on the digital stuff, of course. But yeah, with the, you know, being a marketing company, digital marketing company, we had kind of gone, we were kind of still old school in the beginning. Like we, we had an office, which we still have. I’m in it right now, but we had every employee here. And the, you know, back in like what 2015, 2017, up until maybe 20.

Brian Beckcom (15:08)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (15:27)
19, we had kind of started going remote at that point to the point that, you know, majority of our company was remote because we wanted the best talent and the best talents, not five blocks from the office or 10 miles from the office. So for us, we started going remote before COVID and by the time COVID hit, were like, we’re completely remote and we have no issues at all. So.

Brian Beckcom (15:48)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (15:49)
So that’s,

and then for us, yeah, did we go back and does it matter? No, I come in here twice a week now because like, well, I like to see a few folks and I got my studio here. Um, used to me out of the house and mixes things up a little bit, but it’s still not necessary at all.

Brian Beckcom (15:57)
Yeah.

agree. The only thing so so far the only thing I’ve been able to the only advantage I’ve been able to figure out with an in-person office situation is that I think there are some instances where being in the same room helps the ideas kind of flow a little differently than they do on the computer screen. But other than that there’s nothing that that is you know you have to be there. And I’ll tell you what it’s interesting Kevin because my paralegal has been with me for 20 years now.

has been remote for 15 of those years. Now, we started on Fridays only. And I said, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to work from home on Fridays. 15 years ago, that was like, and I said, don’t tell anybody at the firm that you’re working, seriously, from home on Friday. Because I want to see if anybody noticed it. Nobody noticed. And in fact, she was getting more stuff done. Here’s the objection that a lot of,

Kevin Daisey (16:49)
care.

Brian Beckcom (16:53)
business professionals and lawyers have to the remote work. How do I know they’re working? OK, so let me translate that for you. My employees are liars and cheaters, and I have to have my eyes on them at all times, or they’ll cheat me. That’s the translation of that comment. OK, that’s really what they mean, right? But not only is that what they really mean.

Kevin Daisey (17:09)
100%.

Brian Beckcom (17:15)
But it’s a bad way of looking at things. So let’s say that you and I are at a firm and we’re in the office. Well, think about this. There’s even a more practical reason. Let’s say you and I are at a firm and everybody’s in the office all the time. There’s going to be some people that are really, really good at the water cooler talk and making you think they’re working hard. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. So in other words, good bullshitters.

Kevin Daisey (17:20)
kind of culture is that?

Brian Beckcom (17:38)
When you’re not in the office and all your work is remote, what is the criteria by which you judge the work? Is it their jokes around the water cooler? Is it there? No, it’s the work. It’s the quality of the work.

Kevin Daisey (17:49)
That’s the quality of the work and the

speed of the work and you know, all

Brian Beckcom (17:53)
So

my point is the remote work is actually a better way to monitor the output of your employees than sitting there and staring at them from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. that’s what people don’t realize. So from now on, whenever your listeners hear a lawyer say,

Kevin Daisey (18:05)
There’s a lot of distractions in the office.

Brian Beckcom (18:12)
I have to have all my people in the office all the time so I know that they’re working. I want you to retranslate that in your mind too. I have a bunch of people working for me that I don’t trust and I think would steal from me because that’s what they’re saying.

Kevin Daisey (18:23)
Yeah, so, you people ask us all the time how we do that and we have a great culture here. have everyone that works here, the managers, everyone. Like for one, they’re not going to let someone in here that is not going to do the right thing. If not, they get filtered out real freaking quick because our people don’t want someone in this group that takes advantage of it, doesn’t do the good work.

It’s if you just have a good culture, which takes time to build. You put some trust in the people and if they’re not doing their work, they, you know, they’ll, they’ll be found out pretty quickly. So, um, but you got all the trust in them. You hire them, you put them, you know, put them through the process, bring them in the door. Um, and if they, if they believe your vision and you have good culture, then they’re going to have to perform or they’re not going to be a good fit. So.

Brian Beckcom (18:56)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (19:10)
But they, the people that are trying to take advantage of you will be scared by that because as they interview and they see the culture, a winning culture, people that get stuff done, they won’t want to take that position. So, yeah, no, that’s a good way of putting it. I like that. Yeah. You’re basically saying you don’t trust your people, which is what it, which means you don’t have people that trust you or want to stay there. They’re just there for a paycheck, which will not ever.

Brian Beckcom (19:11)
Agree.

Yeah, agree.

Yeah.

That’s right.

Kevin Daisey (19:35)
which will not ever end well or lead to someone like yourself building a firm over 20 years with the same partner, the same team. You know what mean? So.

Brian Beckcom (19:43)
It’s interesting because I tell my lawyers that I hire, I say, I’m going to teach you everything I know. I’m not holding anything back. I’m not going to be like some of these lawyers. I’m going keep some trade secrets so you can’t steal them from me. can’t. Look, I could tell you right now everything. I could literally tell you right now on videotape every single thing my firm does for marketing and nobody on your.

None of your listeners could duplicate it. It’s too complicated. It’s been built over too many years. But anyway, the point is, I tell all my lawyers, I’m going to teach you everything I know. I’m going teach you so well that you can be able to go start your own law firm if you want to and be successful. I want you to stay, but I don’t want you to stay for any reason other than you want to stay. You want to be a part of what we’re doing.

You know, so far so good. We’ve lost people, just like everybody else. But our retention is awesome. And most of the time, so people leave our firm for one of two reasons. They either leave our firm because they can’t do the work, they can’t keep up, or they’re going to do something better. So I’ve had three receptionists that are now lawyers.

Kevin Daisey (20:32)
Yeah, it’s gonna happen.

Wow, yeah.

Brian Beckcom (20:49)
I

started as a receptionist, worked their way up to paralegal, applied to law school. I wrote them letters of recommendations. I went to law school and now I’m a lawyer. So I got another guy that just left. He was awesome, but he wanted to go do some internet marketing stuff. And I said, awesome. Keep us in mind. Come back if you get bored. you know.

Kevin Daisey (21:06)
Yeah, I’ve lost, you know, I’ve lost

plenty, not plenty, but a few good ones to start in their own companies. And not necessarily doing exactly what we do. They, you know, niched and once run a podcast production company, that one’s got a videography and social company for financial planning industry. And you just can’t keep some people. They’re, they’re running faster than you sometimes. So, let them, let them go, you know?

Brian Beckcom (21:12)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yep. Exactly.

Kevin Daisey (21:30)
But your retention is higher, I bet, than most because of that. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just all that people will do with it. You know, I think it’s good to have those conversations too. Like, Hey, what do you want to do? Well, and they say, well, I really want to do X, Y, Z. If they, if they can come out and be truthful and feel comfortable, like, yeah, I really, I really want to start my own company at some point. Okay, cool. We know that’s going to happen now. Yeah.

Brian Beckcom (21:33)
Yeah, I think that’s right.

Great. What can we do to help you? Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (21:53)
What’s your time frame? that like really soon so we should be worried or you know is this something you’re trying to do in the next couple years? And have a plan for that. Help them get there.

Brian Beckcom (21:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

There’s nobody at my firm that can’t be gone, including me. And we’ve designed that purposely. There’s nobody that’s irreplaceable. Nobody.

Kevin Daisey (22:12)
My business partner says that. He’s like, me and you can be replaced. Like, none of us are.

Brian Beckcom (22:14)
Yeah.

I want to be replaceable.

Kevin, what I really want to do is I want my firm to run when I’m not paying attention to it because that means I’ve got a real business. I got involved with some public interest work over the last couple of years.

And right when I got involved, and it’s not paying, but it’s something that was going to take a lot of time. Right when I got involved in this, I told my trial team, I said, I’m going to get involved in some public interest work. And I need you guys to keep an on the docket for me because I’m going to be distracted for a little bit with some other things. And guess what? They did that. And we did better that year than we had done the previous five years.

Kevin Daisey (22:52)
Get you out of the way.

Brian Beckcom (22:52)
So what is it? I’m

telling you. So what does that say? Unless you’re not paying attention, what that says is maybe I’m getting in the way in certain areas. I’ve found actually that my staff prefers it. We have this messaging platform used around our firm. They like it when I’m not constantly in there telling them what to do. Because that means I actually have some time and some space to actually do the substantive work instead of responding to messages from me all day long.

Kevin Daisey (23:18)
Yeah, we use Slack. What do you guys use over there?

Brian Beckcom (23:19)
You know, so like that’s

what we use. We use Slack, same thing. We’ve been using Slack for a long time now. It’s super robust, but I’m not in there every 10 seconds peppering them with questions. Like, in fact, I don’t email, text or Slack until two in the afternoon or later, generally speaking. My schedule is…

Kevin Daisey (23:38)
Nice.

Brian Beckcom (23:41)
So I’m completely and totally addicted to reading books and have been since I was in about the third grade, like books are my thing. I read a hundred books a year. And so when I wake up in the morning, that’s the first thing I do. I spend 30 to 45 minutes reading. I don’t look at my phone. I don’t look at my computer. None of that, none of that stuff. Once I’m done with reading for, and it’s by the way, it’s not.

Kevin Daisey (23:55)
good habit.

Brian Beckcom (24:02)
lawyer related stuff. It’s like enjoyable literature, biographies or stuff. And then I start quote “working.” But you know what my first 10 minutes of my quote “working” day usually is? I go out in my back, weather permitting, got on my back porch without a phone, without anything other than a cup of coffee. And I sit there and I start a timer for 15 minutes and I just think.

about what I want to do that day, what’s important, what’s not, just kind of let my mind go. Those are the best 15 minutes of my day because most of us, we’re getting bombarded from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep with incoming information, right? Every time you pick up your phone, there’s information shooting into your brain. And it’s very rare.

Kevin Daisey (24:30)
No distractions.

Brian Beckcom (24:49)
be sitting there for 10 or 15 minutes and not having information coming into your head and boy is it a valuable time. In fact, I think one of the superpowers going forward for young people is the ability to sit there and do nothing. I mean, that is a superpower and will be a superpower. It’s the ability to control your attention.

Kevin Daisey (25:08)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. mean,

it’s tough for us. It’s tough for me to do that. Um, but like I’m thinking about my kids, you know, they’re 12 and 14. Yeah. That’s almost impossible to them to probably think about that, but I’m going to see what if I, I’m going to see if I can get them to, uh, to do some exercises like that. Maybe five minutes, start, start with something small, but they’re just, they’re just wired all day. So.

Brian Beckcom (25:14)
Yeah, me too.

You

Yeah. Start slow. When I started

meditating 15 years ago, I started with five minutes and it five minutes was the longest five minutes ever. Like I was like, how do people meditate for 10 minutes? That is ridiculous. Like, there was five minutes of monkey mind, five minutes of my brain. Just I was like, who the hell is this person saying all these things inside my head?

But then after a while, I built up to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. I could even meditate for an hour. And so, yeah, it’s like exercise. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

Kevin Daisey (26:05)
muscle you got to work I guess.

Brian Beckcom (26:07)
Yep.

Kevin Daisey (26:08)
That’s something I’ve not really tried, something that I’ve been told many times and it’s one of the things that haven’t, or it’s rather like, know, I like to get up, work out, read. And that’s one of the one things that I get told a lot and I haven’t actually done it. So, something I need to do.

Brian Beckcom (26:23)
Yep.

Kevin Daisey (26:24)
You said weather permitting, I bet the, in Texas you probably got a good chance. The weather is decent. I’m in Virginia. It’s all, crime’s a crazy here.

Brian Beckcom (26:29)
The

only time I can’t sit outside in Houston, Texas is there’s like two weeks out of the year where it gets to be like 40 degrees. Other than that, it’s either super hot or it’s like right now it’s super, I think it’s 80 degrees outside right now.

Kevin Daisey (26:48)
It was in the forties

this morning here in Virginia. So yeah, I like it cool like that though in the fall weather, I can deal with that. So looking forward to it. There you go. Get you to sit there with cigar for 10 minutes. Well, Brian, I appreciate you sharing, just kind of like your story and,

Brian Beckcom (26:50)
Yeah.

Good cigar smoking weather.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (27:09)
Some of the things

that you’ve talked about, I think are unique, know, and what’s contributed to where you’re at now. And of course, Kudos out to Ben Glass, if he’s ever listening to my show. He’s been on this show a few times, so. ⁓ Nice. I’ve had Brian on a couple times, his son. His son’s done a great job kind of following in his footsteps as well, so.

Brian Beckcom (27:23)
He’s been on my show twice. Yeah.

You know it’s funny you’d say that because my son is a senior in college thinking about going to law school. First person, the first person I reached out to was Ben. said tell me what it’s like working with your son and then Ben and had a great conversation about that.

Kevin Daisey (27:45)
Yeah, Brian’s really taking hold of things and is running with it.

Brian Beckcom (27:49)
Yeah, he’s doing awesome.

Kevin Daisey (27:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Doing stuff with the, you know, with the whole, with great local marketing and the summits and, know, he’s all, he’s all in. So, yeah, great guy, good friend. And, and again, back to the mindset, you know, I think, Ben does a good job of that piece of it. And, and you seem to have really done well in that area. and stay focused, and true, you know, to what you started out doing. So,

Kudos to doing that. So, yeah. So before we wrap up, guess, you know, what’s on the horizon, anything new that you guys are doing that’s exciting at the firm?

Brian Beckcom (28:13)
Nice. Thank you.

Building a new office, which is going to be awesome. And it’s going to be a modern office. So we’re building three podcast studios. I say podcast studios, three video studios where I can do podcasts, but we can also do court hearings and depositions and meetings and stuff like that. It’s going to have a golf simulator when it’s too hot. and I can practice golf inside. It’s going to have a humidor tent in the back.

Kevin Daisey (28:30)
sweet

Man, I’m coming down to visit. What’s up?

Brian Beckcom (28:45)
So if I want to smoke a, you need to,

so when I, you need to, yeah. And so I’ll be able to smoke some really nice cigars like this one right here in the kind of back part of the office. We’re going to have on the sec, we’re going to have a little courthouse. We’re going to do mock trials. And the second floor is going to be a bunch of offices that are exactly the same. Whether nobody’s… it’s first come first serve kind of deal. So that’s going to be super duper cool. AI is

I’ve been using AI for three or four years, and lately I’ve been using it in such a way that it is a massive competitive advantage over the people that I’m competing with. And I can already see some ways that I can use AI to crush the competition. I don’t mean to say it that way, but it is ridiculous how useful it is becoming for me. And I am way ahead of most people in terms of how I’m using it. So I’m super excited about AI.

Kevin Daisey (29:37)
Take care.

Brian Beckcom (29:37)
AI.

Yeah. Yep.

Kevin Daisey (29:38)
Well, it sounds like you got a passion project,

Brian Beckcom (29:40)
Absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (29:41)
Well, Brian, I appreciate you sharing everything. I’m excited to where you’re at, your success, some things that you’ve done that is somewhat unheard of in your space. Hopefully some folks can learn from what you’ve done and what you shared. What’s the best way for folks to reach out and connect?

Brian Beckcom (29:59)
Brian Beckcom, B-R-I-A-N-B-E-C-K-C-O-M, put that into Google and I’ll pop up everywhere. Website, brianbeckcom.org or vbattorneys.com. But all you got to do is Google me and it’s kind of embarrassing. I come everywhere.

Kevin Daisey (30:11)
You’ll find them.

Yeah, that’s what I tell people sometimes, my name’s kind of unique. So just Google me and you’ll find me all over the place. Hopefully I keep it places that I want you to find me. But as of today, there’s no mugshots.

Brian Beckcom (30:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

that’s right. I may have a mug shot or two, but it’s from when I was in college. And I did community service for that. So you got to experience what your clients are experiencing.

Kevin Daisey (30:31)
⁓ yeah. Put that out there now.

You know, I have a few criminal defense clients, clients that had their own stories and they worked that into their messaging. You know, they were DUI or had different things happen to them that kind of worked into why they do what they do now. So, so yeah, lean into it. Don’t be afraid of it. Well, Brian, I appreciate you coming on to share, man. Please reach out, connect with Brian.

Brian Beckcom (30:54)
Yeah.

Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Daisey (31:03)
He’s done some awesome stuff and he’s still pushing. AI is going to be massive. Get on board. Everyone else listening with AI or you’re going to be left behind. So it sounds like Brian’s leaning heavily into it. So, well, Brian, you stay on with me just for a few minutes. Everyone else listening, thank you so much for tuning in and we’re going to see you on the next episode of the Managing Partners Podcast. See you soon.

Brian Beckcom (31:13)
Let’s go, let’s go. Big time.