Gabriel Levine | [Top Agency Series] From Cab Driver To Top Lawyer, Viral Videos, and Navigating Digital Agencies Through the Pandemic

Gabriel Levine 12:47

But it makes sense. And I thought I would hate it, but I don’t. So they got me a coach, and this coach, whose first name was Michael, I can’t remember his last name is fabulous. And the main there was a bunch of stuff we did, but the main thing that he had me doing was asking people who I thought could help me to help me just kind of like a broad ask, okay, how can you help me grow my business? And, you know, Mike Montero was at the top of the list because he had a loud voice on Twitter early in the game, he had a loud voice in the design industry. People listened to him respect to them, I trusted him. And so I took them to a Giants game. He He’s a Phillies fan. And so I took him to a Phillies game. He’s from from Philly, I was born in Philly, too. But out to San Francisco before I remember, you know, two years old. So we got to the game, and I’m telling him, You know what, they’re what they want me to do. And, you know, what I remember from the conversation is, he’s gonna listen a lot. And then he said, Yeah, I got this. And I was like, Okay, I’ll get you another beer. So I must have been a week or two or maybe more. I don’t know exactly. Later that he called me and said he wanted to do a talk at CreativeMornings, which was I don’t think it’s still going, but I’m not sure,

John Corcoran 14:03

you know, type of environment or something. Yeah.

Gabriel Levine 14:07

For designers. It was happening then. I think just in New York and San Francisco. The way he described it was talking about fucking rainbows and shit.

John Corcoran 14:17

Tophane guy.

Gabriel Levine 14:18

Yeah, I mean, this is basic. I want to talk about contracts. I was like, okay, okay. You think they’ll like that? Yeah, sure. So, we put it all together. And I think it was like my first real big talk. I’ve done a few things, but it was more like MCL II issues or training people. Not like entertaining. And so we did this talk and he titled it fuck you pay me and it went really well. And I started getting clients, like from the 150 or so or 200 people that were in attendance pretty quickly. And then and like get it put your head back in 2011 when there wasn’t a TikTok and there was no such they couldn’t just put a video Go on YouTube and have it go out like it’s not gonna get people ain’t gonna watch it.

John Corcoran 15:05

But Mike, you know, had

Gabriel Levine 15:06

lots of connections, including to John Gruber, who was major amplifier back then and remain so and so the video just went nuts on the internet, you know, and CreativeMornings Vimeo channel was getting overloaded, and clients started pouring in for me from all over the country and even Canada said like, even Great Britain, it was crazy.

John Corcoran 15:27

People emailing us saying I saw this video. Yeah, you know, and remind me, so I haven’t watched a video in a while. But remind me again, what your role is in the video.

Gabriel Levine 15:37

Yeah, so like, I mean, I think he talks for a couple minutes in the beginning about like, you know, this isn’t art, this is your job. This is work. And he has a very well known book called design as a job that followed that talk. And, you know, you needed to get paid for it. Right. And how do you get paid? You have a good contract, you know, so here, I’m gonna introduce my lawyer to talk about contracts, and then we kind of did a stick the rest of the way. Yeah, there’s serious enough, but it was sticky. Yeah. Yeah. Do Were you nervous going into that? Yeah. Yeah, I was. I’m used to big room. Yeah, it was a

John Corcoran 16:11

big room, and also kind of a, you know, an edgy temper thing to do as a lawyer. Yeah.

Gabriel Levine 16:18

And I was still in my 20s. And I, you know, I have sort of a groove I get in with public speaking where the first minute? Well, I think a lot of people have this are very nerve wracking. And then you get into a groove. So yeah, yeah. I don’t think I was quite as nervous as Mike. But

John Corcoran 16:31

do you? Did you tell the firm that you were at at the time that you tell them? Yeah, so we’re gonna do this speech

Gabriel Levine 16:38

thing? Yeah, I did. And they were they’re kind of buttoned up, guys. But I think, you know, they recognized that it was, first of all, it was an outgrowth of their recommended, you know, Coach. And I think they recognize like, hey, this could be good. Yeah. And it was too good was the problem. Yeah.

John Corcoran 17:00

But yeah, how much? How long after that? Did you decide to go off on and do your own thing?

Gabriel Levine 17:08

Wasn’t that long?

John Corcoran 17:11

Because that can be tempting. Like, all of a sudden, you got enough business coming in to cover your overhead, you can do the math really quickly. And it’s like, well,

Gabriel Levine 17:19

why am I taking this smaller amount here? Yeah, without like, talking trash or revealing too much. I wanted to stay there. But I wanted things that they weren’t willing to give me. Yeah. Or at least, you know, two of the three of them were willing to give me so. So I left and I kind of flew my flag under my dad and Alisa sperm. I was just a of counsel, but I needed insurance, and you know, billing and all that stuff. And then after a couple of years, it felt like a real partnership. So I became a partner there and things were working really well for me and

John Corcoran 17:50

partner with your dad. Yeah. And Elisa police. What was that like being a partner with them? Fine.

Gabriel Levine 17:58

We have, you know, very different practices. It was good even at times it was it. Their partnership was, I mean, it was more of like a eat what you kill somewhat decentralized practice. So

John Corcoran 18:12

it makes it easier, because then it’s just kind of like, well, you’re just kind of like sharing office space in the sense, I guess. Yeah, sure. And expenses. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Gabriel Levine 18:20

So it worked out. Well. Yeah. And, you know, my dad can be a very intense dude. But he’s a super chill lawyer. He was like, very comfortable at that stage of his career, at least with the practice. So you know, he plays guitar in his office. And at least likewise, you know, she’s she’s a very well respected expert in the field of equity compensation, stock options, executive comp, you know, negotiating executive ins and outs in connection with mergers and acquisitions. So they’re both very comfortable in their roles. And I think I kind of was too and I was just loving life, you know, my own little practice. After a couple of years, though, it became evident that like, at some point in the not too distant future, they’re fading off, and if there’s always gonna be a stepping stone, so I had to think about my next thing. And I explored options of, you know, could I go somewhere and bring all this stuff somewhere else, and nothing really felt like a great fit, talk to some people. And so I just was like, You know what, I’m just gonna plant my flag. So again, stop me from going long, but I did that in it officially launched January 1 2017. I incorporated groundwork legal, and I practice under groundwork legal for for a couple of years. And I it was, again, too successful, and I had too much work.

John Corcoran 19:34

And was some of it carryover from that original momentum that you have in the viral video and everything?

Gabriel Levine 19:41

Absolutely. There’s another major source that I should talk about at some point of, you know, where I and my partner and our third attorney will soon be our partner get our work in sort of the digital agency space but that to this day, I still not nearly as much you know that I would get one inquiry a week for years about that video. But to this day, you know, every, every few months, somebody’s you know, coming to me because they saw the video. Yeah, 11 years later,

John Corcoran 20:12

that’s amazing. And talk about some of the other things you’ve done in order to build that practice that led to there being too much work coming in.

Gabriel Levine 20:19

Okay. Well, again, at ultimately, you know, the, the, the proximate cause of this again, was was Mike. So shortly after the video, there was something called shop talk that the principals at then Happy Cog, then principals put together which was a very well known web design firm with some, you know, big personalities attached to it. And shop talk was a gathering of sort of, you know, very interesting folks at the top of the web design field in these smaller agencies, these sorts of bespoke agencies. And Mike got me invited. So there I am a young lawyer in a room full of the best prospects I could have. And, and it was fun, and I met a lot of very cool people. And I made the connection to that group. And that group grew into which what is now called the Bureau of digital. And I met at that first one, Carl Smith, who now owns the Bureau of Digital, he’s become a very good friend of mine. And the Bureau of digital is rapidly growing sort of membership organization with resources and events for digital agencies. And so that is a place that I’m connected to, and we, you know, get a lot of referrals and, you know, good word of mouth stuff from there, and we do presentations and create content for them.

John Corcoran 21:47

Yeah, yeah. And talk a little bit about that. How you’ve kind of evolved into this world of digital agencies, because we were talking about this before the little bit before the call. And, you know, it’s no surprise that the world of laws can be a little stodgy and antiquated. And it’s based on this premise that people get registered, take a bar exam in 50 different states. And now, business is conducted across borders across international borders. And, you know, there’s no such thing really as as businesses being confined to one state. And yet the practice of law is kind of like stay, it’s kind of like, still stuck in that idea. So, so how is law adapting? Or is it not? Or how should it

Gabriel Levine 22:35

adapt? Proof? I thought

John Corcoran 22:39

I’d give you a softball, just a small question.

Gabriel Levine 22:42

To my mind not adapting pretty well, not adapting very well. Law is behind the times, like a lot of old stodgy professions. And there’s certainly no reason for a state level bar exam for, in my view, transactional law, at least, you know, transactional business law contracts a contract. There are variations on themes went for things like, you know, anti competitive provisions and things like that. But anybody can look them up and figure them out. You don’t need to take the California bar exam to know that, you know, California has strict anti competition provisions or prohibitions. So, you know, I don’t think the practice law is adapting well, but it also doesn’t seem that people are getting like, you know, pushed around by bar agencies for, you know, practicing in Delaware when they’re seated in New York or California, for example, or, you know, practicing Delaware government or God documents governed by Delaware law, because who cares? So I think it is a national into a certain extent, international practice that we have. And from from our perspective, you know, it’s just, we kind of have to do what we have to do without worrying too much about it. Yeah.

John Corcoran 24:00

I’m curious, though, so much of practicing law is really guiding and counseling your clients

Gabriel Levine 24:09

and explaining things. 

John Corcoran 24:14

How do you work with clients that get frustrated around that basic structure that that law is, you know, this, you know, based on traditions that, that stretch back, you know, centuries, if not further, and a lot of the principles that we operate around today, come from the Magna Carta and come from ancient documents. I mean, how do you deal with that kind of frustration when you’re explaining these things to a business owner that’s, you know, trying to operate at the speed of light? Yeah, it’s,

Gabriel Levine 24:50

That is our true skill. And it’s being practical. So you have to be willing to take risks that lawyers generally They aren’t willing to take, I think, and kind of explain to the client that this guy needs to understand and agree that you’re not providing them business advice, but they’re looking to you for a level of consigliere. You know, it’s not just, you know, tell me what you would strike in this contract. It’s like, we want to work with giant corporate financial Corp. Here’s their 30 page contract, can we talk about what we’re doing and where the real risks are? And how we mitigate those risks? And you

John Corcoran 25:31

got to pick your battles? You know? Yeah, there are some lawyers have incentive to say, No, you need to push back on a through z, you know, the client says, Well, if I do that, I’m gonna lose the

Gabriel Levine 25:42

deal. Right. And you and you have to, you know, every client is different, and different clients have different leverage, you know, one client with that company, you know, might be have enough leverage and enough cachet that that kind of services firm is, wants them and needs them, and they have to have them. And so you need to know that and figure that out with the client. I think, you know, a lot of the some of the older weirder stuff is like everybody, you know, laughs about it, but that the very real thing that I think is really holding the practice of law back, is that everything kind of, in the business world, at least, does it everything, and maybe it’s not holding it back, I think it’s holding it back from being more user friendly, is that everything stems from sort of the fiduciary duties at the investor level, and people having the cya all the way down the chain to you know, we see the service providers, right. There’s, they’re even our clients, though, are sometimes going down the chain to subcontractors, or independent contractors and their employees. And so all these contracts are covering the neck, the ass of the next person up next, all the way up back to the ultimate investor. Who gets the best contract, beat a individual stockholders or, you know, very large shareholders of privately held company. So you see the Genesis have that kind of trickle all the way down to these really unrealistic and frankly, impossible provisions in a lot of contracts, just to sort of shift the risk and until the auditors that they put those provisions in their contracts, and that you have to be honest about that and recognize it and tell your clients and then Yep, pick your battles.

John Corcoran 27:26

Yeah, yeah. So much of practicing law is really client management and managing expectations and communicating with the client really well. And, you know, it’s so often I say, it’s about communication really is like such a critical piece. And so much of disputes that lead to high legal costs come from just a breakdown in communication between parties, or business partners or whatever, or employer employee, all that kind of stuff.

Gabriel Levine 27:55

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, great.

John Corcoran 28:02

You’ve observed a lot of changes from like, what, what are they used to be called, like interactive agencies, web design agencies, to, you know, creative agencies, digital agencies, kind of this evolution and all these different companies, this kind of sector. And you also saw the pandemic, you saw things happen to the pandemic, first of all, how did that affect you, as a business owner yourself? Did it at all? 

Gabriel Levine 28:31

Not really. I mean, we were terrified for small business, you know, generating enough money to pay our employees and ourselves. Pretty much that’s it. And, you know, putting a little away for the future a tiny bit. So we were worried we were worried. But it it got weird. But our year was fine. In 2020, and 2021 was good. And I think what we learned that we probably should have already have known. You know, our practice evolved. Josh has a similar trajectory as me as your business partner, Josh. Yeah. And Jen as well as work with Josh for a long time. And when Josh and I merged groundwork legal and create legal merged in 2017, and became Matchstick Legal. That’s what happened there. And so we’ve practiced for going on for years now. 17 18 19 20. No longer, I don’t know. 18 19. A while. Five years, yeah, under Matchstick. And it’s been really good.

John Corcoran 29:35

So we saw sort of everything moved

Gabriel Levine 29:38

to the web. Everybody saw everything moved to the web businesses conducted on the web. Now, it’s conducted, you know, not just on the web, but on devices call it Yeah, the web digital devices. So what started out as hey, I’m a service provider for creating a company’s presence or an organization’s presence on the web is now and then that would be the web design firm. to a digital agency of I do everything for these folks. And there’s various types of digital agencies or whatever they call themselves to do things from creating complex software applications, whether it be design development, or both of those applications to literally just, you know, placing using ad budgets, which now includes, like, SEO type spending with with Google and LinkedIn and things like that. So it’s all kind of under the rubric of digital agency. And every day, it seems like there’s something new that clients we work with, and clients that might want to work with us, or we might want to work with that they do. And every you know, there’s always a new platform, like, you can be a specialist in how to advertise on Amazon, we have clients that do that. And so it’s, it’s been quite the evolution, and it feels like it, suffice to say It withstood the pandemic. In fact, I have clients that specialize in certain areas like wine, for example, where their revenue went nuts, because everybody was ordering wine online. Yeah, it’s funny

John Corcoran 31:06

thinking back on areas of the economy that thrived, and there’s economy that didn’t, you know, and sometimes surprising, you know, the companies that were really well diversified. And the companies that weren’t because no one really saw this kind of thing happening or or anticipated, or some did, but you know, a lot in it, you know, with you mentioned, you know, Amazon, there’s, there’s Facebook, there’s Google, there’s so many different platforms that are involved in business these days, whether you’re running ads online, I haven’t practiced law in about five or six years now. But it to my mind, it seems like there’s all these different legal elements, issues that can come up between Terms of Service here, and, you know, big tech company, there are many more layers of complexity than there was even like six or 10 years ago. Is that an accurate assessment?

Gabriel Levine 32:00

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a puzzle, putting it all together and the clients like, wait, what? Because, you know, and this is one of the things it’s kind of impossible is there’s seven layers of intermarry, intermediary subcontracting, and big Corp doesn’t want you know, we own everything you give us. No, that’s not how the web works, that, you know, that’s, that’s how, you know, video, video games kind of worked in 1992. That is not and they were 3 million to build back then. That is not how the web works. The reason you can get all this work done for $500,000 is because everything’s pre built, and it’s just piecing it together. And there’s a lot of stuff you gotta license, you know, and, you know, we can’t spell that all out now, because we don’t even know what the heck we’re gonna build for you. You’re bringing us in that is early strategy stage and all the way through, you know, deployment. Yeah, and the privacy stuff, but it is brutally complex. We’re not experts on all of it. But we do our best to kind of navigate and understand it and help our clients again, to make like, prudent choices about where they’re going to spend their legal dollars. Yeah, yeah.

John Corcoran 33:13

What are you most excited about in the digital agency space, as I record this near the tail end of 2022? I’d say for the last five or six months, it’s kind of felt like we’re, we’ve emerged from this pandemic, we’re kind of going back to normal, but what are you most excited about in the digital agency? Space? What do you what are your eyes on? What’s what’s happening?

Gabriel Levine 33:43

That’s interesting. Most excited about maybe collaboration. I think we we represent primarily, you know, from freelancers up to about 200 people shops. And they’re, I think they’re able to compete, not just because of the quality of their work with some of the larger shops and the conglomerates, but also because they have each other’s back in general, and through these organizations like the Bureau of digital, and I get excited when I see the collaboration and when you know, Josh, and Jen and I can contribute to it. You know, we we rolled out a standard agreement for digital agencies back in 2018. And that felt really good. And we gave a talk and it felt, you know, I felt empowered doing it. Because the goal was to create something that is the true standard. And so when we’re talking to, you know, big firm lawyers, and they say this is standard, no, it’s not. When you go to a lawyer, or a general contractor to work on your house, or a doctor or an accountant, or blah, blah, you don’t bring a contract with you. You sign when somebody provides a professional services, you sign their contract. If you want to talk about what standard it’s not what Stan Get the big firms. It’s what standard in digital agencies, and what standard in digital agencies is what we say it is. We represent more of them than anybody else by a good stretch. So I like that notion of sort of, I’m also a bit of a socialist, but I like the notion of like, you know, gaining some power from the bottom up, and hopefully empowering these smaller organizations to kind of continue to exist and thrive. Yeah,

John Corcoran 35:27

it’s interesting, I read a book a few years ago by Dan Pink called just tell us human which was about sales. And it was about there’s this changing marketplace, it used to be that the salesperson knew everything, you came into a sales, it, whether it’s buying a car, whatever he came in, and you didn’t know, everything that the salesperson know now, it was much more a point of symmetry where the consumer is much better educated. And this has happened in law as well, we will have a much more educated consumer, you can go on Reddit, all these different places. Now, you might get wrong information on people that has come in with with the wrong type of information, but that has no doubt changed the practice of law, because so much information is out there. And people can do a lot of research. How has it changed the practice of law from when you started 15 17 years ago? That’s interesting. Yeah. I

Gabriel Levine 36:20

mean, it’s like everything else. It’s a bit commoditized. Now. So you have to distinguish yourself, you know, why pay for a full incorporation package, but you can get everything out there and Stripe Atlas nor Carrington. It’s free online or cost 1000 bucks or whatever. So I think, you know, for us, some of it was dumb luck that we all got into this vertical. But we know this vertical better than digital agencies, anyone else. So and that’s what makes our services particularly useful to that just like anybody else, that you’re hiring, right? If you want advice on certain areas of your business or your life, you want somebody who really knows your business or your life, that thing that you’re dealing with. And so we, you know, for us, as things have gotten commoditized. You know, we’ve tried to be unique in that we provide unique templates, documents, advice, random negotiation strategies for our clients. And also, you know, Josh, Bill, you know, Josh built an entire sort of suite of contracts. And we rolled out a separate LLC and a website called msa.com eessay.com, where people who can’t afford our services can buy a suite of contracts tailored for sort of small studios and freelance designers and that sort of thing. So we’re so we’re kind of growing with that, we are also trying to move back to a more traditional retainer model, because one of the things that we do is we are incredibly responsive, generally very low cost for what we do. And so we’re kind of giving away a lot of what they people can’t get at other firms. So we’re trying like everybody else to move to more of a reasonable retainer model, like a subscription model, in the same way that that MSA service will. So I think that’s kind of what’s happened a little bit with the practice by virtue of the passage of the last, you know, 15 to 20 years.

John Corcoran 38:23

Yeah, yeah. Okay. This has been really interesting. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Where can people go to connect with you reach out, ask your questions, where can they go? 

Gabriel Levine 38:33

Yeah, absolutely. It’s matchstick.legal. And there is a general sort of Contact Us form there where you can hit all of us, it’ll go to all of us. You know, my email is [email protected]. Our phone numbers are up there on the web as well. I’ve got a LinkedIn page that you can hit me up at. I think it’s Gabriel Levine is my LinkedIn profile. And it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

John Corcoran 39:00

All right, Gabe. Thanks so much. 

Gabriel Levine 39:03

You’re welcome.

Outro 39:04

Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.