SPEAKER_00 0:00

The networking just comes from do a good job with one person, no matter how small the case is. And you don't know what ripple effect is gonna be on that.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

All right, welcome to another episode of Connections That Matter, where we highlight the amazing entrepreneurs in Northern Colorado. How do they network and what connections have they made that's helped them get to where their business is today? And today we got a Northern Colorado legend, Chris Parks, uh, on the show today. Chris, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

For those who haven't uh met you or don't know you yet, share a little bit about what you do.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

I'm a lawyer. I do personal injury. I have represented Fortune 500 companies, and I've represented people that are ditch diggers, and I much prefer the ditch digger. Uh so I represent injured people. Uh and I've been doing it 38 years.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

How do you how do you switch hats from the big companies to the somebody that you know hurt themselves in a car accident uh on their way to pick their kids up from childcare or something? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

It's so easy. I started out representing the big companies. And so there used to be a bank in New Orleans called the the milling bank. And we repres we were the milling law firm. Okay. And so the I I got the bank name wrong anyway, but the the president was named King Milling, you know, New Orleans name, right? And so I'm I'm working at this firm. We had four clients. One was the bank, one was Chevron, you know, and and we were just huge. And I just absolutely hated representing these people because they were just snobby and stuck up and you know, very, very formal. And uh when I moved over to another law firm, I got to represent an individual. And I just thought it was a blast. I was also representing a bank at the other law firm, but representing the individual individual, excuse me, much more fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah. Well, now you have a law firm with your name on it, right? The Chris Park law firm. And so uh, how is that? Is that a different level of pressure where it's your name on the on the business?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Not really. I've had my name on the business since I moved to that other law firm. Yeah. I work for another guy that I used to work for. Uh we became partners about two years in. And so my name was on there. And all that means is you have to sweat all the bills and all the payroll. And the bigger you get, the more you owe at the end of the month. So yeah, it's like any other small business.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yeah. Well, how does networking fit into how you've been able to grow? Um, I mean, some people have seen the billboards with the attorneys and all that stuff in there, but to actually get genuine referrals when somebody comes in, especially in a time of need, they were just hurt or had an accident or a dog bite of some kind. How have uh you've been able to network to get more business?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Well, I've been thinking about that, and it's been different in different places. So when I was in Southeast Texas, which is where I really kind of got started in Port Arthur, Texas, which is where Louisiana, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico meet. Okay, you can find it on the globe, but there's a little town there.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

And that's where a lot of refineries are. It was actually a really small area. And there was I I look through my my uh cell phone just at my contacts, just under the S's. And I was thinking that most of my networking had come from prior clients. But it turns out it's from lawyers and judges, and you know, everyone that I kind of come across in my business is a potential source of a client. And you really notice that in a small town. So Port Arthur is a very small town, and Beaumont is the is the big town to Port Arthur, and most people have never heard of Beaumont. But the networking just comes from do a good job with one person, no matter how small the case is, and you don't know what ripple effect is gonna be on that. So I represented a guy who literally raked yards and he was in an accident, and I represented him for a long time, and then he had a Social Security claim, and I'd never done a Social Security claim before, so I did that and we lost, and I appealed it to the Fifth Circuit and we won. And I did all this because I didn't have any clients.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Well, it turned out he was the yard man also for a federal magistrate in Beaumont. And that magistrate asked me to work on a case for another friend of his, and it kind of grew from there. So it's really, you know, a ripple on the pond kind of thing. That's that's a small town. But up here, it's totally different.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

How is it? How have you been able to do it up here? What's different about up here?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Well, up here, I think it was just sheer luck. I was in my office on a Friday and had a uh a case call in for the guy I was working with, and he was out of town. So I was taking his phone calls. And I I take the phone call, and someone needed someone for um a worker's compensation case, is what they thought. And I was like, Well, tell me a little bit about your case. And they were at the hospital. Their husband had fallen uh like 19 feet and uh uh at a at a mall construction, and before I knew it, I was over at the hospital talking to the wife. She couldn't speak English, she had a little baby, she had three kids, and uh it just it it just luck from that. That case probably got me 25 more cases here in town. Uh and then from that, once you have established 20 or 25 cases, you get more cases from your other clients.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

So Well, you talked about getting uh referrals from other attorneys, and I I think a lot of people that are in the industry find out that they get referrals from people that are within the industries, but is it other personal injury attorneys, people who don't practice personal injury law, or like how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah, it's both uh it's a really small network of people. If you think about the profession, you know, if you were to go down to the federal courthouse in Denver, there aren't that many federal judges.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

And the state courthouses at the different counties, all the judges know each other. So if you show up at one of those courthouses and you do a good job, it gets talked about. And if you do a bad job, it gets talked about.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

No pressure.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

No pressure, exactly. But every word. I mean, literally, if a judge asks you a question and you fib and someone finds out about it, you're done. So it's it's really it's a weird thing. Back in the days when there were no lawyer advertisings, uh, everyone got cases by calling the only lawyer they knew in town and saying, hey, who do I call for a divorce or who do I call for an injury? Those are still the number one best way you get a case. Because if I get a case from Google, I I I don't know if the people are serious, if they're gonna call back or what. If I get a case from a judge, it it's locked. I mean, they're they're coming to me for that reason. They already know, like, and trust the judge. That's, you know, I I'm I'm in. So that's a great way to network. Uh if you can get it.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah. Well, and uh you're you charge based on uh when you win the case, right? So um, which is a unique thing. Uh a lot of people charge either by the job or by the hour, but uh sometimes your cases are multiple years before they close. So how do you as a business owner that you know, like how do you how do you manage all of that as they come in?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

It it's really hard. Uh when I first got started, we started doing asbestos cases. And the guy who brought us into the business used to say you needed a moving van full of hundred dollar bills to do asbestos cases. And I didn't know what he's talking about. These guys were making lots of money. Well, this was back, I don't know, 30 years ago. I had to come up with $100,000 a month to pay just the overhead of our office. So most of that was payroll. $100,000 a month. And, you know, in addition to 20 or 30 employees, we had all their families and everybody's waiting for a paycheck. So it's it's just hard. But what you have to do is you have to budget and you have to be as cheap as you can on the things that you can afford to be cheap on. Um, and then you have to spend money on the stuff that you have to spend money on. So in my case right now, the biggest case I have, I'm spending money like a drunken sailor on experts. But I have to get the best experts because I know the other sides it makes a difference who your experts are. So what I try to do, if if I have a case against a uh, let's say a construction case against someone that's building a highway and there's an accident in the highway construction area, I want to hire their favorite expert. And so the quicker I get hired and the quicker I can find out who their favorite expert is and then screen them and hire them, the better.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

And that that makes a big difference. So I I don't know, I didn't answer your question. No, that's okay. And I I did this because it's it gives you a heart attack all the time. Well, I get I get paid maybe 20 times a year.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

And not only do you wait that long, but you also have to win. Uh you know, so you um what I think is interesting is the you don't take every case that comes across your get your deck, do you right? You can't.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

You really can't.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

So uh I would imagine you take the cases where you bet on yourself that you know you're gonna win. Um what is that like in as far as screening clients, where you're getting the right clients, where you're getting ones that you feel like you're equipped to serve? And um how do you tell the people no when that when it doesn't meet that criteria?

SPEAKER_00 9:30

So in every personal injury case, there's only two questions. I mean, the there's a whole book of jury charges and and it's really difficult. You know, if you have a a benzene case where someone had a lifetime of exposure to benzene as opposed to a slip and fall at a Walmart, you wouldn't think those things had anything in common, but they have everything in common because they only have two questions.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Who's at fault? How much do they owe? Okay. What most personal injury lawyers really try to do is find a case where they know who's at fault, and the only argument is how much. And if you can get those cases, you can stay in business. When you start branching out into questionable cases, then you really have to figure out a way to do it. And the way I do it is I investigate cases for months, sometimes for years. In the last three years, I've investigated five cases that turned out not to be cases. And what you do is you do the full investigation, and then you go over to the client's house and you share everything with them, everyone you've talked to, every video, everything you've done, and you explain what the odds are. And usually the client themselves says, Yeah, I I I guess you know, we can't go forward, or I don't want to go forward. So I try to leave it up to the client, and that's it, it makes it easier on them. But I want them to know 20 years from now that this huge case that uh you know crippled them, uh, that we investigated it thoroughly, and there's no chance.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Um, and if I can take the case, I do the same thing. And so I I once made a guy read a hundred reported lawsuits, a hundred, because there was almost no chance we were gonna win his case. Yeah. And I wanted him to read every case that there was out there that I had found in Texas that involved a shipyard employee suing for what we were suing for. Yeah. There were three where someone won, yeah, and the other ninety-seven or so, they all lost.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah. What about those cases where you think you could win, though? Like 97 people haven't won, but three do it, and you got a case on your desk that is like, I think we got something here. How do you gear up for something like that?

SPEAKER_00 11:40

So uh so John's case is really interesting. He was on a a um a big ocean going drilling rig, okay, and this thing was like 15 stories tall, but it was jacked into the mud in a shipyard, and he was he was going to work. Literally, he had his toolbox and he's walking over to where he's supposed to work, and someone cut a pipe across maybe 40 or 50 feet away from him, and it shot liquid like flames at him. And what it was is it was sort of a napalm that had built up in the bottom of this column of pipe, and it just had so much pressure, it just shot it right onto John. So there was no chance we were gonna win this case. But there's a thing called 905B, which is I'm getting way into the lead. But anyway, I looked under 905B, and it turned out that there were a couple people that had won because they'd been hired to do one thing, but were injured doing something else. And that was an exception. If you weren't doing the job you were hired to do, and the job that you were doing at the time got you injured, then you had this exception. And in John's case, we knew that was the exception, and we knew it early on. And the weird thing about that was it was still a dicey case. We had to we had to do all the work, everything on the case, and then we had to figure out a way to get the employer to admit that what John had been hired to do was not what he was doing. Well, the employer didn't even know that that's what we were doing. Sure. And we sent a baby lawyer to Houston with a script, and he started on a Friday at 11 o'clock, and his job was to wear everybody out, to ask stupid questions all day long. And so we did that, and we got three different lawyers that substituted in, and five o'clock on a Friday, he calls in and he's like, Oh, these guys are like, you know, really mad. They're like, We're they're gonna call the judge. And I was like, Okay, well, go ahead and ask him the questions that are on the employee sign-up uh document. And right there, it was like he was hired to work in the storehouse, but on the day of the accident, they decided to put him to work as a welder's assistant. And and the guy just read right from the deal, he had no clue that that was an exception to the law that we were suing under, and he just admitted it under oath. And so, you know, you you've got to find your, I don't know, your window or or your little your quirk before you start. Uh because if you don't, you're it's they're probably gonna lie.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Sure. So well, and going through all of that or getting the right thing and winning the case um where a lot of people don't win, um that's that's uh we go back to referrals, but I imagine your client was so thankful for you to be able to uh f find that loophole.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

And if you go on my website, you'll find John Stuber's name on a on a on a recommendation. And if I if I picked up my phone, we could call John, put him on speaker right now, and he'd talk to you for an hour. Yeah. He had been turned down by three other law firms. I only took it because it was one of those cases I was such a baby, I had nothing else to do.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

And uh, you know, I just sat in the library for for days hoping that something would happen. And I happened to find this exception on one of these cases, and I was so excited. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Well, testimonials are the backbone of uh any small business. I mean, they you know your online reputation, the way the things people say about you when you're not in the room, and um if they can lift that up. I I think one of the first networking events you came, um, there was an opportunity to give a testimonial, and you gave a testimonial about somebody else in the room, and it was probably the most heartfelt, genuine thing. It really stole the show with the amount of gravitude you think. So let's go to like giving testimonials and really recommending the people that you authentically recommend. How do you highlight them in a way that really captivates the room the way you did that day?

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Honestly, I don't know. I mean, I really don't, but I'll I'll tell you what I did about three days ago. I recommended your networking group. Okay. Okay. And I just told them all about you. I mean, what I've learned about you. And uh, and and I'm I'm not trying to shine you on right now, okay, but this is the uh God's honest truth. So I was in a small networking group in Boulder for a while. I haven't been in any other networking groups. I switched over to Rotary. That's been a very rewarding experience for me. I've never been a joiner of anything. But somebody wanted to join the same group I was in. And I was like, no, dude, you need to go Andrew Johnson, his networking group. And they're like, well, why? I was like, because my friend Brian Lamb told me about it. And there's now like a hundred people in this group, and I told them that what you do, the way that you run the group meeting, and you have content and you have, you know, your decks that you put on on the uh screen for us. I mean, I get more out of your group in 30 minutes than I would reading a book. Because I've got five or six networking books at my office. Sure. Guess how many pages I've read? Five or six of each. I just can't stand going through that stuff. But I mean, you're really good at at explaining to people what's involved. You remember the very first I don't know, you won't remember this, the very first uh networking event I went to, I think we were two months in. Yeah. And you did this thing you talked about, look, the people that are here actually are here because they want to network. And you're here and you want to network. So this is like a target-rich environment. So don't sit there and be shy. I'll walk over and start talking to these people about how can I help you and how can you help me. So I guess it's just trying to be genuine and trying to remember what people say and listening a little bit. And I'm really a bad listener. I mean, I I forget people's names all the time.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

When I just said Andrew Johnson, I was like, God, I hope I got his last name right. Uh but really and truly, it's I think it's just being honest and genuine. And what you were talking about was Brian Lamb.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

And because Brian, I mean, you've seen his videos, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, he's producer of this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

I mean, it's genuine. I mean, really and truly, I have fun with Brian. We probably produced, I don't know, I we're at least at 90 videos on my site. They're all done by Brian, and and they were just fun to do. So I don't know. I just it it's more fun to talk about other people than it is to do your own work. So I think I like networking.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Well, when you give a powerful testimonial, it it pulls the room toward you. I think a lot of people prepare for a networking event with refining their elevator pitch and they hope they highlight their business there. But the people want to get closer, the people want to follow up with the ones that they see are amplifying others. So for some people it's counterintuitive, some people it's totally intuitive. But when you can come in and being a giver, being an advocator, then it then it pulls the room towards you. Uh and Chris, you're uh you're an expert at reading the room, right? You read the juries, you're reading the judge, you're reading the opposition. But uh in a networking room, you're, I'm sure, reading the crowd, uh seeing who's uh a giver, who's a taker, who's the person you want to chat with next. What do you look for in a networking group of people, either in their body language or in their the way that they're showing up is the people to pick out to talk to?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Well, so body language to me, it's just it's just a a piece of the of the pie, right? I mean, it's it's something you need to take in. So most people don't realize your feet are the most important thing in your body language. Okay. So right now your feet are forward and they're a little splayed out, okay?

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Which is really a word. It'll be a duck foot, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

You want that. You want that because it's a welcoming meal. So if I do this to a little child running at me, yeah, you know, I'm I'm exposing my most vulnerable part of my body, right? That's why we we hug like that. Okay. But if I'm talking to you in a group and your feet are both feet are angled away from me, maybe toward a center or or off to the side, you're you're you don't know that that's important, but you're not as interested in me as someone whose feet are toward me and and they're like leaning into me. Okay. And I didn't believe that, but you know, probably the the biggest experts ever on body language are film directors and producers. And you think about did you ever watch Gone with the Wind? Okay. And had did have you ever seen uh the uh the movie they're in Paris and it's Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, and he's a reporter and she's a princess, and she's on on, you know, she's snuck away and she's out dancing with this guy on this barge on the Seine, okay? In both of those classic movies, there's a scene where there's feet under a dress and in Gone with the Wind, um the uh Vivian Lee is got on all black, she's supposed to be in mourning, and underneath her dress, their music's playing, and she's tapping with her feet, and she loses her shoe. And and her foot is trying to find the shoe. Okay. And in the the Vacation in Paris show, it's the same sort of thing. She's it's a shot of her feet and she loses her her shoe. Okay. And the the reason directors would do that, would show that scene is feet. Just just the way you walk shows a lot about how you're feeling. Okay. If you're walking across a room and you have kind of a flat drag to your feet, I mean that already tells you something. You already know something about the person I just described. But if you're walking down a dock toward a sailboat and you're damn near dancing, you know, and you're barefoot, that tells you something else. And so, you know, you can look at people's feet a lot of times and you can tell if they're interested in you. Um you can you can just watch for normal cues. I mean, are are they canted towards you or not? Are there are are they looking at their watch? Are they kind of looking off to the side every time they get a chance to do so? And it doesn't mean that they're not interested in you. Some people are very interested in you. They're just preoccupied with something and they can't help it. But sometimes it does mean they're not interested in you. One of my favorite uh body language books that says sometimes. Dirty old man? Actually, it looks like a dirty old man. Sure. So uh anyway, uh your question was uh how does that help you? Yeah, and I think you just pay attention to cues, you know. If if people uh are looking at you when they're talking to you, that's important. If they're open towards you. Uh let me give you another example. If you're on an elevator by yourself and you lean up against the side of the wall and you're thinking this is gonna take forever, and all of a sudden the elevator stops unexpectedly and the door's open, it's almost impossible that you're gonna keep leaning up against that wall. There's a threat, and you're gonna stand up straight and you're gonna face the door. And it's just humans. I mean, that's that's what we do. So there's a lot of things that you can get out of a simple body language book or a simple article on body language, and you just kind of use that, you don't you don't you don't draw a full conclusion, but let it be part of the of the picture. And if someone's paying attention to you and you know, they're really paying attention to you, if if someone's leaning over and touching you and they start touching you here and then they start running their hand up here, yeah, maybe you're being picked up. Sure. Yeah, there you go. But no, uh it's just part of the picture.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Yeah. And any advice uh to business owners how to protect themselves um against, you know, the unexpected.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yes. And I've represented lots of business owners, especially individual business owners who have hired me in the past. So the first thing is get get some insurance. And what you want on your insurance is you want coverage outside the limits. And what that means, that's very important. And it will be abbreviated. So you have to ask your agent to find this for you. So let's say your limits of insurance in your business is $100,000 and it covers you for general liabilities. So let's say, you know, someone walks into your place of business and they slip on water that was leaking that you hadn't fixed for two days, and they they hit their head and you know, almost kills them. Okay. They're they're in the hospital for a week. If if you only have $100,000, your insurance company's only obligation is to say, we tender our limits here.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Well, what if they want to sue you for more? You know, what if the family of the injured person says that's not enough? We want Andrew to pay. Well, if you get coverage outside the limits, that means that they they defense cost, I'm sorry, defense cost outside the limits. That means you'll be defended by a lawyer, paid for by the insurance company. So you want insurance that includes defense cost. Most people that have a catastrophic accident that puts them out of business, it's because they can't afford to litigate the case for five years. Not because they don't have enough insurance, they can't pay their lawyers. That's where the real pressure comes in. So make sure you get insurance that pays for a lawyer to defend you. That's the number one thing to do. Number two thing would be this is a short podcast, call me. I mean, literally, my cell phone number is easy to get. They can call you. You can share it right now if you're 318-422-1235. I talk to people all the time about insurance and what they need, what kind of insurance they need and where they should get it from. But when it comes to a small business, this is a big deal. Really, really hard to figure it out, really hard to find someone's unbiased. Believe me, I've represented people and helped them avoid bankruptcy. And I've also represented injured people against business owners. Sure. And I I can I can tell you where the where the where you need protection, but insurance is your number one answer.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Right on. Well, Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show. Uh, you know, I love the the unique perspective. I love who you should how you show up at uh in the networking groups and um especially in the attorney fields, we get a lot of like home services, business services, but um a lot of attorney attorneys have some great networkers, and I'm glad you shared your advice uh on the show today.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Thanks, Andrew. I really appreciate you asking me to be here and and having this on your podcast channel because it it's you're doing a big service to people.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Right on, Chris. Well, thank you so much, and we'll see you around Northern Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

All right, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Hey all, thanks for watching. I love networking and building relationships with other Northern Colorado business leaders. So if you want to come meet some of these podcast guests, meet me or meet some other amazing entrepreneurs in Northern Colorado. I would love to have you attend one of our next events. Uh go in the podcast description. There's a way so that you can see our upcoming schedule. And maybe you could be a future podcast guest as well. Thanks.