“You always talk about putting the spiritual before the material.” She said, “I need this. I need to be there with my mom.” I said, “Let’s start packing.”
 Sam Assini |
Guest speaker: Sam Assini
HERE IS THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:
Dan Couvrette:
Welcome everybody and thank you for joining us today on the Family Lawyer Magazine podcast. This podcast is part of a series of work/life interviews that we’re doing with family lawyers from across North America to learn about what they do to manage a big practice with the rest of their life. I’m Dan Couvrette, the publisher of Family Lawyer Magazine, familylawyermagazine.com. And today it is my pleasure to be speaking with Sam Assini who is a well-respected family lawyer in Cape Coral, Florida. I invited Sam to share his thoughts about what he’s done to help himself achieve a good work/life balance for a few reasons. One is that Sam runs a successful practice focused on representing men who are going through divorce that he started about five years ago. If you’re interested in visiting Sam’s website it is www.4themen.com. Sam had a law practice in Fort Lauderdale. About five years ago he moved to the west coast of Florida to Cape Coral. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that, and what it was like for him to start his practice over again as well. Thank you very much Sam, for joining me today.
Sam Assini:
Thanks, Dan. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be here.
Dan Couvrette:
Let’ start with talking about work/life balance. Sam, what does work/life balance mean to you?
Sam Assini:
Well, it was very difficult starting out practising law. I opened up general practice and trying to keep up with all the changes in the various areas of law leads you to the law library on most nights. I look at my work/life balance as being my job. You have to look at it as something you do during the day to earn a living to support yourself and your family and I think it’s important for people to realize that — even the employees. When I’m going to hire somebody new I give them the hours and I tell them 5:00 you’re out the door. Hopefully you have a life outside of here and this doesn’t become your life.
I also believe that you have work, family, social life, entertainment and above all a spiritual life. And I try to get into a lot of meditation and prayer. Every morning I start my day out on my patio. I’m on a golf course so it’s kind of tranquil out there. I pray and have some meditation books I read just to get myself in the right spirit to be able to commence the work and deal with the stresses of a family law firm. Finding the balance is difficult but if you work at it long enough you can find that most days you can find the balance.
Dan Couvrette:
Have you been meditating and praying for a long time? Have you always done something to help centre and ground yourself?
Sam Assini:
I started about 23 years ago. I used to have a problem with alcohol and wound up in a 12-Step program and through that program I consider myself a born again Christian. My relationship with this deity I call God has improved over the years and I think that’s the most important thing in my life. And I look at this as being God’s business and I’m here as a trusted servant to run it for him. One of the best books I’ve read is (I forget who it was by) Business by the Book. It was an important book for me. And I realized in that book that my employees were also people growing on a spiritual path and it was important for me not to be greedy with what I am dealt here but to try and share it with them.
Dan Couvrette:
Well, that’s great for you and it’s great for your employees as well. I know that you moved and you really started your practice about five years ago newly. What was the reason for making that change and how did the discipline that you’ve built in your life support you in making the change?
Sam Assini:
It wasn’t easy. My wife at the time and I were married about five years or so and her dad had passed away and her mom was over on this coast and she said “Well, I’d like to move and get closer to my mom.” I had been opened three years and anybody that’s gone into business knows how difficult the first couple of years were and I had all the connections there — judges, experts and referral sources, started to get repeat business and referrals from past clients. I finally in that third year was able to catch up with credit cards and business debt, trying to keep the door open, and finally saw some light at the end of the tunnel. I started actually drawing a salary and she wanted to move and it was very difficult. In fact, we went through a time where we went back and forth for a few months with it. Eventually we wound up separated for about a month. And during that time we were separated, I really started to think about my life and what I was doing and where my priorities were. So we got together for dinner one night and she looked me straight in the eye and she said to me “You know you always talk about putting the spiritual before the material.” She said “I need this. I need to be there with my mom.” And I said “Let’s start packing. Let’s go.”
Dan Couvrette:
How has it been for you now that you have moved and started a new business?
Sam Assini:
Well, I got here and it was a small town. It was very cliquish. Like I said, I came from a place where I had come to know all the judges and was active doing various things. I’ve always been a Guardian of Light at least for the last about 12 years. So I was active in the legal system there. When I came here, I didn’t know anybody. I tried reaching out to certain people and got a cold shoulder. There was nobody here to help mentor, give advice, or introduce me. I found it very strange from what I was used to on the other coast.
At some point here my wife came and started working for a builder and the industry was going down. The bubble here had burst. She was just about to be laid off. I’m running back and forth from Lee County to Broward trying to finish up the cases I had there. I was praying one morning and I said, I just don’t know what to do here, maybe I’ll put a resume together and get a job with somebody. I had spoken to somebody about a job at one point. And in that prayer and meditation one morning it was like, you know, everything you’ve gone through (I’ve gone through a couple of divorces that were hellish), why don’t you just represent men? Focus on men’s rights and at least you’ll be out there helping. You know what they’re going through. They’re being shut out of their kids’ lives, and all the other stuff that goes along with it. And something just clicked in me and I said that’s what I’m going to do. My wife came out; she got a coffee, sitting outside. I said “You know what? I’m just going to do men’s rights.” And she said “What?” She said “70% of your clients are women. What are you going to do? You don’t have any business as it is over here and you’re going to lose 70 percent of it.” I said “I think it’s going to work out. I just believe it’s going to work out.”
I was scheduled for a second back surgery. They wanted to put plates and screws in my back. And while I was in the hospital in that surgery I had my web people change my website around, set up some media stuff, and marketing geared towards men’s rights. At that point my wife had lost her job so I told her, why don’t you just come and work with me. She said “What work? You don’t have any work.” And she wound up coming in and we wound up working together. She’s still with me today. She’s my office manager and we managed to build quite a practice here.
Dan Couvrette:
That’s fantastic. It sounds to me like you have a sense that you’re certainly achieving your potential in life. Do you have the feeling that you are?
Sam Assini:
Yeah, I think I’m on the way. I think that the most important part of life is that spiritual part and being able to help people. I became a lawyer later on in life. A judge that was my judge in a divorce case I went through in ’95 told me to become a lawyer; I was pretty good at it. So I went back to school. But I think, like what we were talking about before — the balance — sometimes you’re getting pulled to see the family, something happens on the job. I just had an employee leave and it just throws everything out of whack. And those are the times that you kind of feel like you’re off kilter and of course all your energies are going in certain areas and not kind of in all the areas and then it takes a while to kind of get back to that balance again. But I think I’m on the right path. I think I know what’s important in life and what’s not. If I keep my focus there everything else just seems to work out fine.
Dan Couvrette:
Have you found that technology helps you? Sometimes it hurts professionals in a big field, they’re always at the beck and call of their business? But are you able to turn it off?
Sam Assini:
When I opened up on the other coast was in ’03. I swore I would never get a cell phone. Being in business, everybody has them and next thing you know you have a cell phone. We have an answering service after 5:00 and the attorneys that are assigned cases, if I get something from the answering service I’ll forward to them with some type of message. This is important, if you can get back to them as soon as you can; if it’s not waiting till the next day. I don’t like bothering, the staff. Sometimes in family law, it’s like stubbing your toe and it’s the end of the world. And although we’re always here for our clients and guarantee return calls within 24 hours, if it’s not that important I’d rather my attorneys wait till the next day till they’re back in the office to make that return call. If it’s any kind of an emergency or something that needs to be addressed ASAP, of course they’re available and they’ll return the call or I will.
The technology we have today is just unbelievable. I get, I don’t know, probably about 60% of my business from the web and if you don’t stay on top of it all the time, by God. About two months ago I got my monthly report on visits to the website and hits and all of this and they had decreased by about 60% over that month and I noticed that calls coming in had slowed down. So if you’re not on top of the technology and actively involved in building it and nurturing it, those little things, if you don’t catch them, the next thing you know a month, two, three passes by and you’re shaking your head wondering, what happened to the new clients coming through the door. So it’s an active involvement with technology. I hire people. Divorce Magazine has been great, to do certain things for me so I can stay a step ahead of the crowd.
Dan Couvrette:
I’m going to give you kind of a wide open question to end our podcast with and that is if you could change one thing in the world, Sam, what would that one thing be?
Sam Assini:
Hunger.
It really sickens me. It bothers me, We were over in Fort Lauderdale probably about three weeks ago and we were down by the beach.on the way to the pier you’re passing people begging for money and then you get down on the beach and there’s these million dollar mansions that are boarded up with hurricane shutters and there’s nobody in them and yet you have homeless people a block away and it just boggles my mind. You know, it’s not only here. I mean you get out of the United States and you’ve got, hunger in countries where people have nothing to eat and kids starving. I look around and we have so much and just that imbalance throughout the world just boggles my mind. I just can’t figure out how anybody in the world given where we are at technology and wealth, why anybody should go hungry, especially a child.
Dan Couvrette:
There’s is an organization that I actually recommend that you check out, Sam, if you don’t already know about it. It’s called the Hunger Project and the website address is thehungerproject.org. It’s actually an organization that myself and my company has been supporting for about 30 years now and the work is done in Africa and India and other countries. I won’t go into great detail on this podcast but it’s an organization that is making a big difference on the planet so you might want to check it out.
Sam Assini:
I’ll look into it.
Dan Couvrette:
But thanks very much for your time today, Sam. I really appreciate you sharing your successes and what helps you stay balanced. And of course one of the reasons why I asked you to do this interview was that I had the feeling that you were a very well balanced individual. I’ve always enjoyed any conversations we’ve had and t so I wanted to give other people an opportunity to hear what’s working for you in your life. So thank you once again.
Family Law attorney Sam R. Assini is a member of the Florida Bar, practicing in Lee County, Florida. His firm’s focus is on Men’s Rights, aggressively representing the interests of husbands fathers involved in divorce and other family law matters. www.4themen.com.
Dan Couvrette is a marketing expert to family lawyers and divorce professionals. The CEO of Divorce Marketing Group, he is the publisher of Family Lawyer Magazine and Divorce Magazine.
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