Darin Klemchuk | Leading from Within: How Personal Growth Fuels Law Firm Leadership

Elise Holtzman: Hi everyone, it's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge podcast. Welcome back for another episode.

Imagine walking away from a stable Big Law job. No book of business, a second child on the way, and starting your own firm from scratch—not because you had to, but because you believed there was a better way to practice law and lead people.

My guest today did just that, and more than 20 years later, he's still doing things differently—from building a thriving IP boutique to speaking and writing about leadership, culture, and human performance. He's rethinking what it means to be a lawyer, a business owner, and a leader in today’s legal profession and beyond.

Before we dive in and talk to him, today's episode is brought to you by the coaching team at The Lawyer’s Edge, a training and coaching firm which has been focused exclusively on lawyers and law firms since 2008. Each member of The Lawyer’s Edge coaching team is a trained, certified, and experienced professional coach and either a former practicing attorney or a former law firm marketing and business development professional.

Whatever your professional objectives, our coaches can help you achieve your goals more quickly, more easily, and with significantly less stress. To get connected with your coach, just email the team at hello@thelawyersedge.com.

I'm delighted to welcome my guest today, Darin Klemchuk, who is the CEO of Klemchuk PLLC, a leading IP law firm based in Dallas, Texas, which provides litigation, anti-counterfeiting, trademarks, patents, and business law services.

He’s also the co-founder of Engage Workspace for Lawyers, an executive suite built by and for lawyers. He writes and speaks about human performance optimization, marketing and business development, leadership, entrepreneurship, law firm culture, and intellectual property law.

What I've learned about Darin is that he is passionate about all of those topics, so I'm excited to dive in and talk about some of them. Darin, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Darin Klemchuk: Well, thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Elise Holtzman: Absolutely, I'm thrilled to have you because you are doing things differently. You and I both talk to a lot of lawyers, and we know that there’s kind of a way that people have done things in the past. I think that you set out to do things a little bit differently.

So I am curious about how this whole thing got started with the launch of your law firm. I know that you talk about having a Jerry Maguire moment of launching this firm without a portable book of business. That’s kind of a compelling story. So tell us a little bit about that. How did this all come to pass?

Darin Klemchuk: So I started Big Law in 1997, and about two years into Big Law, the dot-com boom-bust cycle happened. I’m a very goal-driven, achievement-oriented person. So when you leave law school and you're competing on grades and whether you make Order of the Coif or not, or Law Review or not, the next thing becomes whether you're going to make partner or not in the law firm. So I was along that path of competing to make partner.

But the summer before I left, there was a pretty significant cultural change where “profits per partner” became very, very important, partly driven by the dot-com boom, where essentially private equity and venture equity firms were taking recent law grads, which forced law firms to—my salary basically doubled from when I started over a five-year time period.

So the economic pressure essentially redid the practice of law in the early 2000s. At that point, I decided that the brass ring wasn’t really what I wanted any longer. According to my own ethos, I didn’t really want to put myself through the partnership vote and then potentially take a spot for somebody else and then leave, or have the partners that I worked for use up their political capital to get me elected as a partner and then leave. I just couldn’t look myself in the mirror.

So rather than do that, I left the firm about 30 days away from the partnership vote. My wife was eight months pregnant with baby number two. The only business I had was a settlement agreement that we had, we were on round two of edits. I literally had no business whatsoever, but I had a lot of optimism that I could do it. I had some money saved up.

So my goal was to go for a year, and if I couldn’t, I mean, the worst thing that could happen to me in that situation is I would just go get a job at the end of that year. So I left in January 2004. By May of 2004, I was already making more money than my base salary if I had stayed at Big Law, and then I never looked back. So it’s been 21 years. That’s it.

Elise Holtzman: Most lawyers are not natural entrepreneurs. Some, of course, are, but I think most of us aren’t. We self-select into law school, we’re pretty risk-averse. So you took this leap, which is probably not so typical. How did you build this law firm so quickly? How did you get your first clients?

Darin Klemchuk: The lawyer that I left with, who’s also Big Law, he was a corporate lawyer and he had kind of a stable of corporate law clients. And as luck would have it, all eight of them got sued in our first year. It was bad for them, amazing for us in terms of luck. So that led to multiple trials, an arbitration, and a trial in our first year. So that was kind of a piece of luck number one.

Then the other thing I lucked into—and at the time, I really never thought about it but in hindsight, it makes sense—is that I figured the easiest way for me to get business was to know as many lawyers in Big Law as possible who could have conflicts or had clients that needed somebody with good experience but a much lower rate.

So I was kind of playing the rate arbitrage and the conflict opportunities. So starting January 16th of 2004, I was obsessive about going to lunch with lawyers multiple times a week and have done that the entire time. I invested massive amounts of time and money in building a network.

Now, at the time, I never had any idea that that would be all that successful, it was just a natural thing to do. But it's now a fairly deliberate thing that I do.

Elise Holtzman: I know that you write on a couple of blogs. I mentioned that you love to talk about things like leadership and human performance and entrepreneurship and law firm culture.

Is that something that you started out with, or did those interests grow over time as you started to develop other people, hire other people onto your firm?

Darin Klemchuk: I think those seeds are planted in my youth, because I can remember when I was a child that I always had a longing to own a business and kind of lead people.

I grew up extremely blue-collar. On my dad’s side of the family, every single person worked in a factory. I’m the first one with my surname to go to college. I so far exceeded any expectations of what my family thought.

But I can recall in my youth hearing stories about bad bosses at the dinner table. It just, for whatever reason, kind of stuck.

Then after graduating from college, I was an engineer at Boeing. And then the first Gulf War happened and I felt a calling. So I took a leave of Boeing and I went to Fort Benning in Georgia and did basic training at infantry school, and I became a non-commissioned officer.

Then I was kind of on a path of either doing active duty and trying out for special forces or go to law school, and I flipped-flopped around and I went to law school. Then I was in leadership positions in Big Law, like recruiting committee and some other things.

So by the time we started that first firm in 2004, I'd already had a fair amount of leadership experience. But then, as an entrepreneur, now you get to do three jobs, right? You're a leader, you get to be the chief rainmaker, then you got to provide legal services. I haven't escaped those three jobs since I left, but you're kind of forced to do all three.

Usually, most firms are kind of—you can tell by looking at it—whatever the performance obstacles are, it typically is because one or more of those three functions are not being met. And most people will strongly gravitate towards one of them and usually will not want to do another one. So, for me, I love leadership. I don't like management.

Elise Holtzman: What do you see as the difference between leadership and management? Let's talk about that because I think a lot of people lump them together.

Darin Klemchuk: I try to keep stuff real simple. So for me, I do it by tense. So leadership is future-focused. Management is now focused. Coaching is past-focused.

So a leader, in Darin's definition, provides direction plus inspiration to get there. A manager sets and holds standards to get us from A to B. A great coach will set up conditions of collision and then give space for someone to experience it and then learn from it.

Elise Holtzman: When you have the opportunity to talk to people about leadership, what are some of your favorite lessons to talk about or stories to tell? I know you have one that you mentioned to me when we first met about the 62-minute plank hold. I think I was standing there with my mouth hanging open when you talked about it. So tell me a little bit about that one, and then perhaps one or two others that are meaningful to you.

Darin Klemchuk: Well, let's start with more obvious ones. If anyone listening to this podcast, if you put it on pause, close your eyes, and just think about the worst team you've ever been on in your life, all the way back to sports or whatever, then also think about the best boss or best team you've been on, that pretty much answers the questions because it is a universal human norm about bad leadership and good leadership.

Here's a simple way to explain it. As a leader, you've got two choices, you have two styles: you can lead by example, or you can lead by title. We all know that lead by title is not a great way to go or a great experience. Lead by example is brutally hard, but it gets the best results.

Elise Holtzman: What do you do to lead by example? What are some of the characteristics that you think people on your team see from you that inspires them and motivates them to be better?

Darin Klemchuk: I'm naturally inclined to lead from the front type. I mean, my goal, obviously not perfect on this because I'm human, but my goal is I will never ask somebody to do something that I won't do myself. That's number one.

But keep in mind that another critical aspect of being a good leader is the self-awareness to know what you're not good at or what you don't like to do. Then the humility to staff around it and be vulnerable and talk about it. So I have certain things that I really don't like doing and other things I'm not great at. I'm just super vocal about it in the office. If people just know, growing up in Big Law—and I went to Vanderbilt Law School and always been in competitive environments—as lawyers, I think we're basically trained to at least say outwardly that we're great at everything, which is ridiculous, because we're not. Because we're also humans. And I think a lot of trouble that lawyers get into is that lack of self-awareness, which leads to trying to do everything, being all things to everybody, which is yet another recipe for, at best, mediocre leadership. So embrace what you're weak at.

Elise Holtzman: I talk about that a lot because I think many lawyers show up with that pressure to feel like they're good at everything, and that outwardly, as you say, they have to show the whole world that they're good at everything. So the mantra becomes, "If I want something done right, I have to do it myself," when we know, in fact, that it's the opposite. If you want something done right, find the best person to do it, and you go do the things that you're a genius at. Whatever your core genius is, let somebody else handle their core genius. So I think that’s an important one. I think no matter how many times we talk about it, people still need to hear it.

Darin Klemchuk: An example, give me a sec. I'm a natural extrovert, and I have an entrepreneurial mindset, but I’ve met a lot of lawyers who are exceptional business developers that are introverts. I love working with introverts. I mean, I can't hire enough introverts because there's a lot of pauses with introverts, but it cracks me up to hear from introverts that they can't be good at business development.

"Well, I'm not that big at whatever." Totally wrong. I mean, introverts, I think, actually have a key advantage because their need for people to care about them is a lot less than the extrovert. So if you take an extrovert and an introvert—like an introvert has thought about it with some confidence—and they both go to a networking event, if the introvert spends some time before the event, figures out there's five key contacts that he or she needs to make at the event, and they have a list and they go, and the deal they make with themselves is that they leave the event the moment they've had a meaningful human contact with each of the five and has a setup for a follow-up, and then they leave after 30 minutes or whatever, they will get so much farther than the extrovert who has a high need for social acceptance and will spend a lot of time talking to everybody in the room.

But the introverts laugh at them because they've already gone home and they're by themselves, but they got more value because they got the five contacts.

Elise Holtzman: And they're really good listeners. So people really connect with that. And, you know, they feel heard. And what human being doesn't want to be heard? So I want to go back to this 62-minute plank hold thing. So tell me a little bit about this and remind me what it is and what it means.

Darin Klemchuk: Yeah, so, 62-minute plank hold. I mean, I don't want to scare anybody off from checking out this group, but it's called unbeatablemind.com, and it's one of those peer-to-peer, it’s got a lot of elements to it. It's a peer-to-peer mentorship group. It is focused on personal development, like whole, integrated personal development. So, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and intuitional, and also leadership development.

Some of the tenets of Unbeatable Mind is that they use what we'll call physical triggers—like a very long plank hold, or hundreds of burpees or whatever else we did—to very quickly get to somebody's mental and emotional space and then allow you to kind of sort of examine it.

So one of their tools is this thing called Big Four of Mental Toughness, which is positive self-talk, positive visualization, focusing on your breathing, and breaking bigger goals into doable chunks basically. Then the fifth bonus one is called FOO, or Focus on Others.

I should say that Unbeatable Mind was founded by this Navy SEAL named Mark Divine.

So there's a lot of Navy SEAL-esque aspects to it—kind of all the things you would expect. And so they gave us a class on the Big Four of Mental Toughness. And unlike most classroom experiences or peer-to-peer masterminds, they're big fans of, "Alright, we've talked about it, now we're going to put it to use."

So we get the 30-minute lecture on the Big Four plus FOO, and, "Alright, so now we're going to put it to use, guys. Everybody get in the plank position, and we're going to go until I say stop." I knew we were sunk on that. I've done other ones that were like 30 minutes or 42 minutes. I knew we were sunk on that one because one of the guys in the room, it was his 60th birthday. And I just knew—just knowing Divine—that number 60 would get in his head and somehow this would be the hour-long plus plank deal.

So yeah, we got in the plank position. The rules are basically no body part can touch the ground except for your hands, elbows, and your toes. You can kind of shake it out, but you basically had to be in that plank hold the entire time.

If you asked everybody in the room whether they could hold a plank—well, you're shaking your head right now—so like, could they hold a plank for 60 minutes? I think every one of us would have said, "Heck no, that's a forever time."

So about minute three for me, I'm shaking uncontrollably and I'm starting to get the negative self-talk: "How the heck am I going to make this? I don't know how long it's going to be, but I'm going to guess more than 40 minutes." We're on minute three, and I'm just a shaking mess.

Then your mind starts to run and get away from you, right? And it's not being really all that productive. So the way Divine kind of sets up that class is that we just cycle through each of the five tools. In fact, you could do a minute on each or whatever, but you're basically having to get reps practicing each of these five mental toughness, mental control tools.

You just kind of keep going. One of the ones I found to be really helpful is the positive visualization. Because if you can—I mean, I literally went to Hawaii and just tried to escape that experience in my own head doing it.

Breathing is another one that works, kind of a five in, five out monitor on the breathing, is really, really effective. In the worst-case situation, if you're about to quit, you can just look at somebody else and yell at them to offer encouragement. That sometimes is enough to get you to not quit, you know?

All right, so that was the experience. But here's how you can apply it. First way you can apply it is that, at least for me, all humans kind of experience pain relatively speaking. So what I'm experiencing now, I'll evaluate as good or bad based on what's happened to me in the past. It's been three or four years since that plank experience, so I've had few things happen to me since then that were worse than that plank experience.

So in my mind, when I'm starting to get that negative self-talk, I'm like, "Oh Darin, that's nowhere near as bad as that 62-minute plank." That kind of calms it all down at that point.

But also, getting that many reps under that level of stress with those five tools really helps you use the tools in the moment.

So for example, for anybody in your audience that takes depositions, a lot of chaos happens at a deposition. You've got to think through what you're trying to get. You have to think through your questions. You have to look at the witness and listen to what they're saying. You've got potentially objecting, obnoxious opposing counsel, you've got a court reporter, and you might have somebody right next to you giving you notes.

So that's at least six, then you have your own inner chatter. That's like seven things that are happening while you're trying to take a deposition. Those same five tools work amazingly well at calming things down and keeping you focused and taking a deposition.

Elise Holtzman: Obviously, you are seeking out this sort of thought process and support and tips and tricks to help you be a better person and a better lawyer and a better business owner, all of those sorts of things.

One of the other things that I know you do is that you join a variety of peer networks. So I know that you have been involved with Vistage over the years. You've been involved with EO, the Entrepreneurs Organization. I know you're involved in some other sorts of networks.

So how have those peer networks influenced your growth as an entrepreneur, as a managing partner, as a person?

The reason I'm asking this question is because I think that some people join these groups and they say, "Yeah, well, I did that for six months," and then they move on to the next thing. They don't necessarily stick with it or find the value in it the way I think you have.

Darin Klemchuk: You know that book "Think and Grow Rich?" there's an entire chapter on masterminds, kind of late, I think it's like eight, nine, or ten of his 13 processes. That's one of the few books I've read over 10 times. I've read it numerous times. I get something new every time I read it.

As you pointed out, I've done a bunch of these peer group or networking groups. Here's kind of—and I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these things—so I'll just give you my 20-plus-year experience on this.

A few of these I've never joined with the intent of getting business out of, but I've gotten business, literally every single one I've ever joined, ever. So there's that. If you can get some portion of the price paid as a result of business development, you're into the green at that point.

The second value in it is you just learn things. Some of the best learning I get from being in those groups is the interaction you have with somebody else when literally everyone in the room sees that person for who they really are, while they can't see it themselves.

Because we're all trapped in our own stories about ourselves. It's kind of like being in a water bottle. You can't really read the label because you're in the bottle, right? You can look out through the water bottle, but you can't read your own label. But in that mastermind, everybody can read the label. It's just you can't. So that's a twofer, right? Because you get feedback from others that it would have been very difficult for you to understand yourself. But you also get to see how others create these limiting stories that are "God, I'm stuck," and then how they will fight so hard they keep the story going even when it's totally not true. Not a single person believes it. Even the person that's trying to deny it.

I think that's probably the best value out of these groups. And then the other one is, if you're in a really good group where there's accountability and people have to commit to certain goals, let's say, I found enormous value in those groups. Because I guess I'm just so competitive or I don't want to let people down that I pretty much always nail whatever the goal is that I commit to in the group.

So if you're somebody who sells these kinds of groups—practice tip—if you can get the participants to dollarize the value of their goal that they want to get done at the end of the group, it should have a monstrous ROI versus what you're charging them, right? And everybody participating in the group should have that same analysis.

So that's kind of how I did it. I figured out, like, "Okay, this year I want to do X and I know that X is worth at least $100,000 to me. So if this group's $40,000 plus some time, you know, that’s a two-and-a-half ROI. And I'm about a 99.9% certainty I'm going to nail it."

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I love this because—well, first of all, I get involved in these groups as well. I have similar reasons, but also it's just, it's so fascinating and it's interesting to me. I feel that I love learning. I think it keeps me excited and vibrant, and I don't sink into ruts as much as I might without them.

Also, I have programs like this where, as you say, I create the programs. What I love about what you're saying is something that I talk about a lot, which is the idea of an investment rather than a cost, right? If you look at something as an investment—an investment of time, of money, of energy—and you can see that it could potentially have a return in some way, maybe it's not the money, but it's something else, then it may be worth doing. If it feels like a cost? "Okay, run screaming the other direction."

But part of the challenge is, I think a lot of people don't view things as an investment. They just look at the—as you say—they look at, "Well, this is going to cost me $5,000 or $10,000 or $40,000," and obviously that's too much money, so I shouldn't be doing it.

So I think your message is a good one. I think it's one to hear over and over again. You're passionate about these things, and obviously they make a difference for you.

I know you're also passionate about your practice. One of the things I learned about you in, as I told you, stalking you and doing a deep dive on your experiences, is that you've designed some software-driven anti-counterfeiting programs for luxury brands. I'm just curious about that. That's not something that I hear all the time. You don't hear about lawyers who are running law firms designing software.

So can you tell us a little bit about that? What made you decide to do that? You mentioned that you're really excited about it, so I'm really interested in knowing more.

Darin Klemchuk: Anti-counterfeiting and IP enforcement programs are one of my absolute favorite areas to practice in law. I've done IP litigation for 28 years at this point, but what's fascinating to me about trying to stop counterfeiters is that it's not just a legal thing. It's a criminal behavior, and it's also technology-driven. So you've got three things going on.

Then it's business, right? A flood of fake whatever really hurts the owner of the brand. So you've got four different things going on. Part of it is coming up with programs that are both effective legally and cost-effective for the client that stop it.

So that in and of itself was interesting. That's kind of where my software writing was centered on, making this thing very, very efficient. So you could staff it with multiple people and kind of drive the project efficiently.

But then you have technology. As you know, technology evolves faster than law does. And so what's always interesting to me is that we figure out ways to stop these bad actors. Then there's a new form of technology that comes along. Because they're highly profit-driven and they don't want to get caught, they start pushing technology, and so they're always on the cutting edge of technology, which just makes it incredibly challenging, I think. Then you’ve got to come up with new legal ways to solve that problem.

Elise Holtzman: When I talk to you, I find that you're one of the most excited people in the law that I've met recently. You're excited about all of the things that we've talked about, and you must be super busy. What is it that drives you these days? Is it always something like just improving a little bit more every day? Is there something else in particular that drives you?

And also, when you look at others who maybe don't have the same sort of enthusiasm and get-up-and-go—let's call it—that you have, what do you think separates you?

Darin Klemchuk: Again, going back to—I grew up very blue collar and kind of working class, with a little bit of a working-class kind of self-concept. Then I went to Vanderbilt, which was loaded with Ivy Leaguers. Nothing negative about that, it’s just that I was the state school undergrad, and I was in this Ivy League environment.

Then I went to, at the time, the largest, probably most prestigious, oldest firm in Dallas, Big Law. So I kind of grew up always thinking that I was like everybody else, because that’s sort of how I grew up.

So then, you know, my mom was always trying to apply that golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated. Okay. So I did that for most of my life.

Then in 2013, a friend of mine that was in this networking group had me take this behavioral assessment called Culture Index. I mean, this is one of—there are a bunch of these different behavioral assessment tools out there. I took this Culture Index profile, and it turns out that my visionariness is in the upper 99.9% of all American adults, and my willingness to follow rules is in the lower 90% of all American adults.

That combination—apparently, since that test has been around and they've kept track—I’m one of like maybe eight, like a single-digit number of people that are that wide of a spread between visionariness and kind of free-spirited creativity.

So I'm just a real outlier personality in that respect, I guess. People had said stuff to me before, but I just kind of discounted it. But when you see the actual results on paper—whether it's Culture Index or any one of these other ones—it really kind of sunk in to me.

So I'm just wired that way. I'm kind of all speed forward. I’ve got lots of plans. I have a sense of urgency. I tend to iterate problems rather than get stuck on them. I’m like water, I’ll just figure a way around it. I’ll just keep trying to get there.

That was at least nine years into a leadership, like in a significant leadership, role. So I had been doing this for quite a while. It explained a lot of my failures in the past or mistakes that I made.

Then I had to realize that the platinum rule as a leader is a far better rule than the golden rule. That is: treat others how they want to be treated, not necessarily how you want to be treated. Because this is true for everybody: if you have a real outlier personality trait and you apply the golden rule, treating others how you want to be treated, you’re just freaking people out.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, this was a great anecdote. I talk about this a lot because I am—as listeners, people who listen frequently know that I talk about this—I am master certified in a set of personality tools.

A lot of lawyers tend to show up very similarly, right? We self-select into the law. Most lawyers are not these huge visionaries. Most lawyers are sort of rules-oriented.

So if you're in a leadership position, as you say, and you are an outlier, it can be very challenging, particularly if you don't have the self-awareness and/or the other-awareness to understand that the people that are around you, they can be motivated and driven to do fantastic things, but they're not going to do it necessarily the way you do it.

And so I think that from a leadership perspective, that can be very challenging. And what I love about your story is that you're saying, "Hey, listen, I'm willing to take a look at myself and I'm willing to make some shifts based on what I see because I'm not convinced that I know everything, and I'm not convinced that I'm not capable of making mistakes. I also don't want to sweep the mistakes under the rug."

So at least for me, that's the takeaway. I think that over the years, I've noticed that people who can do that—people who are willing to have that self-awareness and other-awareness—wind up becoming successful. Much more successful, and also happier.

You and I haven't had a chance to talk about this, but you mentioned this idea that you're fascinated by the concept of happiness. Just reminding myself of that now. So tell me about that. Don't we all sort of know what happiness is and have this idea of what it is? What is it that fascinates you about happiness?

Darin Klemchuk: Happiness is kind of like money in respect that it's like a human made up thing that people believe is really important. Principles of Psychology say that you get results based on actions, and people take actions based on their beliefs or their mindset. So that whole thing is super intriguing to me. And as a parent of three and having kids do things—and trying to get them to not leave all their stuff downstairs and trying different things—but what I realized was that the thing that drives beliefs is a new experience.

Basically, beliefs are a story you tell yourself about an experience. One of the best ways to change a belief is to give somebody a new experience, and then they rewrite that story.

But as that relates to happiness, I think happiness is something that—everybody's got their own definition of happiness or their own story about it. What I found is that lasting happiness comes from hard things: sacrifice for a higher purpose, relationships, doing things when you don't want to do.

Eating a cheese pizza might make you happy, but it's sort of fleeting. That’s kind of the hedonic treadmill type of happiness. But lasting happiness comes from hard stuff.

Elise Holtzman: Bouncing off of the idea of having new experiences—and this is something that you sound like you're regularly doing, right? So you're getting involved in all sorts of organizations, you're reading things that are helpful to you, you're writing things that could be helpful to other people—what do you see around you in terms of people who aren’t doing those things?

So you see this as driving you forward. When you see other people who are getting stuck in a rut, what do you think about that?

Darin Klemchuk: Well, let me back up and talk about law a bit. I suspect you already know the statistic, but in most businesses, happy employees are more productive, in most businesses. I mean, that's such an obvious thing it's not even what we're talking about.

But what's really interesting to me is there are studies that actually say that that's actually not true for law. If you think about it, we're sort of a jaded, pessimistic, paranoid bunch, right?

And if you have a high-stakes agreement or dispute or whatever, having somebody that agonizes over where a comma goes or is sort of an Eeyore—like, “We'll see, oh well,” that kind of attitude—those people actually have a competitive advantage in certain kinds of areas of law.

And then, you know, I'm in Dallas, so we've got lots of billboards and they just—I'm not going to mention names—but there are a fair amount of narcissists and sociopaths that practice law. You know, the Rambo litigator types or whatever—every state's got them.

These folks also have a competitive advantage because they'll just do things that normal people, normal lawyers, won’t do. So we're in this kind of weird profession where not-so-positive personality traits actually make people more successful.

I honestly find that really interesting. "How can you be balanced in a world where we have fights over comma placement?" and things like that.

So I try to—when I'm at my best—I try to give a little sunshine to people that are kind of more of the rule-follower types and try to get them to laugh a little bit.

Elise Holtzman: Well, those of us who are rule followers appreciate that, Darin.

Darin Klemchuk: Yeah. I also tend to be a little more emotionally available than your average lawyer. So, you know, that helps.

Elise Holtzman: Oh, this has been more of a wide-ranging conversation than I usually have with people. So utterly fascinating. I think we could go on and on like this for a very long time because, like you, I’m fascinated by these topics.

But I do want to wrap up here, as much as I like to keep talking. So there's a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show.

There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to growing a thriving law firm—understanding that you've got all of these different personalities and you've got things that make us show up as lawyers the way we do—what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you as a leader, but is important for people to hear?

Darin Klemchuk: I would say that one of the greatest tragedies in life is being loved for the person you are pretending to be.

Let that sink in. It's about self-awareness, authenticity, who you are as a leader, who you are as a lawyer, who you are as a parent. None of us are 100%, but the greatest tragedy is pretending your way into success, only to find out that people are loving you because it's not you.

Elise Holtzman: That's a lot to think about. And a good place to end. So thank you so much, Darin, for being here today.

Darin Klemchuk: Thank you.

Elise Holtzman: Thank you, and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.