John Morgan, founder of Morgan & Morgan — one of the largest personal injury law firms in the country — joins Sam and Shaan to reveal that his law empire is just one layer of a much larger business stack. John walks through his attraction businesses (WonderWorks upside down houses, Alcatraz East crime museum), his legal software company Litify (sold at a $600M valuation), his ad agency for lawyers, real estate holdings, and his plans for a Santa’s Chocolate Factory and a repurposed mall as an immersive gallery. The conversation covers brand building, advertising as a competitive moat, the “fish first, fish fast / cook the fish” philosophy that separates Morgan & Morgan from competitors, and John’s theory that luck plus an entrepreneurial seed determines success more than grinding alone.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), John Morgan (guest, founder of Morgan & Morgan)
Cold Open [00:00:00]
John: I don’t hunt deer. I hunt money.
Sam: You own one of the biggest, if not the biggest law firm in the country. We’ve seen your face on the billboards — Morgan & Morgan.
John: And if you just want to say Morgan, that’d be great too.
Sam: My big vision was this: what if Google was a law firm? What would it look like?
Shaan: You just became a lawyer to fund your carney ambitions. And that’s pretty badass.
John: I built an attraction called Alcatraz East and it just prints money. I’ve got apartment complexes. I’ve got shopping centers that print money too.
Shaan: He’s basically like half Walt Disney, half shark.
John: Where my competition gets beat by me is 95% of them are terrible lawyers. I’m not hunting cockroaches. I’m hunting big game.
Sam: I got goosebumps, John. I love that answer. That was incredible.
Introducing John Morgan: Capital Men [00:00:30]
Sam: First of all, welcome to the pod. I’m from the south — Missouri and Tennessee. I lived in Tennessee for a while. And I’ve been trying to convey to Shaan this idea that I call “capital men.” Shaan’s from San Francisco. He’s lived in China, Australia. He’s been all over the place, but he’s never really spent time in the South or the Midwest.
I was like, “Shaan, there are these guys I know through my dad’s friends, through uncles. These southern guys. They have this draw.” Because of that — because you’re from California — people like you might dismiss them. But they print money. They follow the process, they do thing to thing to thing, they don’t overthink, and they’re just ballers.
And you are a good example of that. I’m hearing how you talk and I’m like, you are exactly what I’m talking about. These capital men — they’re like an onion. They have layers of stuff you don’t even know about.
So for this podcast, maybe we can ask you about your different businesses. You have like ten or something. Everyone knows you as the law firm guy, but that might not be the most interesting thing about you.
WonderWorks: The Upside Down House [00:02:00]
John: Believe it or not, I tell this to my wife all the time — the thing I’m most proud of in all my businesses has been WonderWorks, the upside down house.
Back in the ’90s, my kids were little. We’d go to the science center and it was terrible. The kids wanted to leave before they even got there. And I had a business putting on fairs around America. One of our vendors had this huge tent and everything in it was interactive — touching, feeling — before interactivity was even a thing. And I said, if we built a science center that was interactive, that’s what a science center should be. Where you’re touching, feeling, doing. And where parents would enjoy it as much as kids.
So I went around America looking for interactive things from science centers. I went to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I found a bubble room where you make these giant bubbles. I found another thing called Recollections. I went around the country looking for interactive elements. But I felt like the building had to be great.
And this guy comes up to me who had been with Ripley’s, and he had a rendering of a building turned upside down. He goes, “This is what you should do. Turn it upside down.” I’m like, “Well, how do you do that?” He starts to tell me. I go, “Well, hell, if I could do that, I would do that.”
So I built the first one in Orlando. It’s called WonderWorks. If you Google WonderWorks—
Shaan: It’s this right here.
Sam: There it is.
Shaan: This is amazing. I’ve never seen this. Is this near Disney World?
John: The one in Orlando is very close to Disney World and very close to Universal.
Shaan: Is the inside of the building upside down?
John: When you walk in, you’re standing on the ceiling. You walk through the trusses and now you’re standing on the ceiling. The storyline is: once upon a time in the Bermuda Triangle, the greatest scientists in the world were working on the greatest experiments to better mankind. They were trying to build their own hurricane. It got out of control. The place gets lifted out of the air, spins, and crashes down — in Orlando, Pigeon Forge, Branson, Missouri.
So you go in and you look up — there are the stairs. How are you going to visit? You go through an inversion tunnel where we turn you upside down, so when you exit, you’re defying gravity and walking upside down. Then you go from gallery to gallery to gallery. And that prints money too. Zero debt. I’ll do like $33 million in EBITDA this year.
Sam: Oh, that’s amazing.
The National Fair Business [00:06:00]
Shaan: You dropped into a bit of gold that you kind of stepped over — before that, you had a national fair business.
John: We put on fairs around America. We weren’t the ride owners — we were the operator. Brevard County Fair, Pennsylvania State Fair, Long Island Fair, Nassau County Fair. We’d set it up, promote it, the ride people would come in. It didn’t make a lot of money.
But back in those days — look, I remember the first time me and a guy took a piece of land, flipped it, and made 60 grand. We split 60 grand. We went on a two-week bender celebrating our $30,000 profit. Those first profits were like, “Holy shit.” It was a side hustle. I was a lawyer, but I just made an extra 30 grand getting a piece of land rezoned and flipping it to the developer.
Alcatraz East: The Crime Museum [00:08:30]
John: San Francisco inspired me. I went there once with my wife. We wanted to go see Alcatraz. We get there thinking we’d walk right in. They go, “There are no tickets available.” I said, “Well, we’ll be here a couple more days. When can we go?” “There are no tickets. It’s sold out for the next two weeks.”
And so the way you always solve that problem is you pull out two $100 bills to the ticket taker and say, “Are you sure you don’t have two extra tickets back there? This is not for the tickets. This is for you.” So I got through Alcatraz. And when I went through it, I had this epiphany.
My epiphany: America is fascinated with crime and punishment like nothing else. TV shows, movies, books, Netflix — all of it. And I was in the attraction business anyway. I said, what about an attraction dedicated to the history of crime and punishment?
So I built an attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee called Alcatraz East. It looks like an 1800s prison. It’s the history of crime and punishment. And it just prints money.
Shaan: How big is that business?
John: Five million bucks a year net profit.
Shaan: And how much did it cost to build initially?
John: It’s an interesting thing, because I got a speech called “Failure Can Be Your Friend.” What happened is I first built it in Washington DC. I called it the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. It didn’t do very well. There’s a lot of free stuff in DC to begin with. But more importantly, they wouldn’t let me do anything with the facade. I was just in a building across from the National Portrait Gallery. I was limping along — paying rent, just a little bit of profit. But the landlord came in and said, “You’re not doing the numbers per the lease and we’re going to call the lease on you.” I said, “But I’m paying my rent. Why would you do this?” They said, “We’re doing it.”
So I moved everything and built the structure in Pigeon Forge. The whole thing probably cost $13, $14 million. But at the end of the attraction, I have four things you just can’t believe when you get there. One: Ted Bundy’s VW. Two: Bonnie and Clyde’s death car from the movie. Three: OJ’s Bronco. Four: John Dillinger’s sedan. And I just bought John Wayne Gacy’s bicycle and the Murdaugh golf cart.
America’s fascination with crime is such that people are in there for three and a half, four hours. And it’s an easy business to run because it’s static. Not a lot of moving parts.
Shaan: I’ve been there. I’m a huge crime fan. And when you were waiting to name what you were going to name, I was like, “You’re forgetting OJ’s car.” This is awesome.
Sam: And you made a big bet — because after the DC thing, the normal entrepreneur starts to doubt the concept. It didn’t go well right away, and yet you doubled down in the face of that. Is it blind faith, conviction, or are you just stubborn?
John: It was not that I’m stubborn. You hear everybody give these speeches about failure being your friend — failure can be the best thing that ever happens to you — and yet when we lose, we never go near it again.
What happened was I had some investors from WonderWorks who’d invested in this deal. My wife kept saying, “This is great. You just got to build it in a place where there are more people.” So I sent a letter to all my investors saying, “Look, I’m going to move it from DC to Pigeon Forge and you’ll be part of it.”
Not one person took me up on it. Not one. They all said they were taking their loss.
So I asked my wife, “What do you think?” She goes, “Let’s do it ourselves.” My new money was about $8 million, and I got it back in a year and a half.
Law Firm Origins: The Brother, the Rage, and the Decision to Advertise [00:16:00]
Sam: So what’s crazy about your story is you own one of the biggest law firms in the country — Morgan & Morgan. Before that, you’ve done all these other things. You mentioned WonderWorks as maybe your favorite business. Some of the inspiration came from working at Disney when you were younger. Where does the story start for you? Does it start when you’re a little kid? At Disney? Where does the entrepreneurial bug start?
John: I think the story started for me the same way it started for you — except you’re too young for this to happen.
There are people born with an entrepreneurial seed. A seed. It just happens. For my generation, you could spot those people because they were paperboys or paper girls. A paper route was a beast, because you’re 10, 11 years old and it’s every single day — rain, sleet, snow. If you miss one, you’ve got to go back. You’ve got to collect your money.
I’ll bet you two guys, if you went back to being 10 or 11, you were probably hustling money. You two were probably coding, or—
Sam: Selling stuff on eBay.
John: Selling stuff on eBay, whatever. At my school, I always sold candy. I used to wear army pants with all the pockets — watermelon sticks and bubble gum and not chocolate, because that melted — and I’d make like 10 bucks a day.
Shaan: By the way, John, you know the evidence for what you’re saying? Buffett had a paper route, plus magazines, gum, and Coke. Jeff Bezos had a paper route. Sam Walton from Walmart had a paper route. Walt Disney. Peter Drucker. There’s an insane roster of people that did exactly what you’re saying.
Sam: Oprah had a paper route.
John: That’s badass. And the reason I know all these people: I’ve written a new book being edited right now called Life is Luck. The thesis is: we wake up, we’re born lucky. Born in America, first of all. Warren Buffett calls it winning the ovarian lottery. Just being born in America. And then you make a thousand left turns and a thousand right turns and a thousand U-turns and you end up here — and one different turn changes everything.
Part of my thesis is: the paperboy, the paper girl, these people born with that genetic seed of entrepreneurism — it can’t be taught. It’s just in you. And it’s such an advantage in life.
Nobody wants to be told they were lucky. Rich people never want to hear that. They want to say, “I worked my ass off. I deserve every single penny.” And they are 100% wrong about that, because one different turn… Buffett’s company is basically five stocks. You take those five stocks away from Berkshire, it’s not Berkshire.
Sam: Yeah. AmEx, Coca-Cola, Apple—
John: Exactly. But we see him as this great investor, and his greatness has really been his patience and his understanding of index funds over money managers, and time, and the power of compounding interest.
Sam: I believe what you’re saying. I think that most people, when they get successful, actually do attribute a fair bit to luck — because they realize it. When I sold my company, the CEO got into a really bad accident like two weeks after the deal closed. If that had happened two weeks prior, that could have changed everything. There is a luck component.
But you have — I’ve done some research — I think you have like ten or twelve things that have worked out really well. So there’s a lot of good decision-making on your side too.
Were you always doing these little hustles? Did Morgan & Morgan start as a hustle and turn into a real thing, or were you trying to build something big from the get-go?
John: When I first got out of law school, if somebody had told me they’d pay me $100,000 tied to COLA, I would have said, “Give me the pen.” I wasn’t even thinking like that.
I got into this business because my brother got hurt when I was in college. He became a quadriplegic from an accident. Our family was relatively poor. When you’re poor, you’re helpless, hopeless, powerless — and I was watching my brother get pushed back by big companies. I became enraged at the way he was treated.
So when I went to law school, I knew what I was going to do. I had a lot of job offers elsewhere, but this is all I wanted to do and all I’ve ever done. But I could never have dreamt it at this scale — it was too big to even dream.
Shaan: It’s interesting, because personal injury lawyers have a pretty bad public perception. “Ambulance chasers” — seen as sleazy. But when you think about what you’re actually doing: your brother has this tragic accident, becomes a quadriplegic. Insurance companies and large corporations aren’t trying to pay fair compensation to people who need it most. In many ways that’s a very noble thing, but it has the opposite perception. Is that how you see it?
John: Yeah. When I got out of law school, you weren’t even allowed to advertise. Personal injury lawyers were called ambulance chasers. Everybody wants to look down on somebody. Lawyers — who already had a bad reputation — found somebody to look down on: the personal injury lawyer.
Then you had advertising lawyers, which was another group for the PI lawyers to look down on. “Well, I don’t advertise. I’m above that.”
When I got out of law school, I would have been the last person you’d expect to advertise. I was straight and narrow. President of everything at university. All these job offers. But I didn’t take them.
When I got out, I started going around to the lawyers who did advertise — kind of shady ones — and they gave me their business. I took their bad cases, their tough cases. But I got inside the belly of the beast and I saw the future.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw the future too, but if they were born today, that future wouldn’t be there for them. That was their luck — when they were born. If they were born today, Microsoft is already something else.
So I saw it. I sat down with my wife and said, “Look, this goes against everything I ever thought I’d be, but this train is leaving the station.” That train being: advertise for your services.
Going on TV and Building the Brand [00:26:00]
John: Advertising to get cases — when I was doing it, other lawyers would refer you business and you’d pay a 50% referral fee. So if your fee was $100, you had to give the referring lawyer $50. That hurts margins. And all of a sudden you’re seeing a different way.
It was still iffy when I did it — it hadn’t really become mainstream. But I was so embarrassed about it, I didn’t even do the commercials myself. I had a friend who was very handsome and I said, “Vance, I want you to be my face.” He did it.
Then the bar came in and said, “You can’t have spokespeople. You’ve got to do it yourself.” So I had to take my fat face and go on TV.
Sam: I don’t know, man. You look pretty good to me.
John: But I didn’t like the way I looked.
Sam: Were people not advertising because they were too proud, or was it legally a gray area?
John: It wasn’t gray legally, but it was taboo. Just not done. People who could advertise wouldn’t, because they didn’t want to be shunned at the country club. People who would advertise didn’t have the money. How I got to do it: I went to the bank, borrowed a hundred grand, and went and did the commercials.
When I think back — by the way, my credit was so bad that the TV station would only run my ads if I paid in advance.
Sam: So the order of operations was: you graduate, you know what you want to do. You saw that some lawyers at the bottom of the social barrel were advertising. You didn’t advertise yourself at first — you just went and took their cases. They’d catch the fish, you’d cook the fish. You were in the belly of the beast and saw: this is the future. These guys are getting a lot of cases.
You decided to do it. What let you go against that country club mindset? Larry Ellison once said, “I had all of the necessary disadvantages you would need to be successful.” What was it that you needed to break out?
John: I’ve always been aggressive and a networker, but I didn’t want to do it this way — because paying that 50%. The way I looked at it: they were throwing me their trash. I felt like I was up in a dumpster eating a half-eaten Whopper that had been thrown in. But guess what? It tasted okay. I was living.
But I would rather have had a fresh Whopper right through the drive-thru window instead of climbing into the dumpster. And I knew it was going to happen. I knew first-to-market was always an advantage. If I could get in early enough and become Kleenex instead of tissue, I had a better chance.
My wife was a securities lawyer — very smart. I’m not. I’m part of the 50% of the law school class that enabled there to be a top 50%. Without me, there is no them. My wife was in the top 2%. She’s the foundation.
Why He Chose This Work: Robin Hood and the Tobacco Industry [00:30:00]
John: What happened with my brother Tim — Disney was really treating him terribly. The more we’d fight, the more they’d just crush him. When you’re watching somebody you love that much get manhandled that way, there’s a rage that comes inside of you.
I always knew what I was going to do. I was offered a job and this guy Mark Hulsey wanted me to come to his firm. I told him what I wanted to do, and he helped me get my first job out of law school.
When you wake up and work is not work, you’re a lot better at it. I woke up every day thinking: I’m going to take care of the Tims of the world. So it was never work for me. I wanted to go get my pound of flesh from the people who had bullied us when we were helpless, hopeless, and powerless.
As time’s gone on, it’s been very noble — what we do. The people we represent didn’t do anything wrong. They had things taken from them — their health, their ability to walk, their income. We give them back as much as we can, or compensate them for what was taken.
I liked Robin Hood when I was a kid. I always liked that story.
The people I go against — the tobacco industry. I’ve had many, many trials against them. What do they do for a living? They’re in the business of premeditated murder. They know what they’re doing. In their internal documents, they call new smokers “replacement smokers.” They laced cigarettes with additives to hook people. They gave it to kids. They gave it to servicemen.
I don’t feel bad at all when that’s my enemy. I don’t feel bad at all going after compensation for people who got hooked by a very evil company. And by the way, today those same companies now own our food companies.
Sam: Yeah, it’s crazy.
John: Processed food is the new tobacco.
Building the Brand: ForThePeople.com [00:35:00]
Sam: So just to give us context on the timeline — when you start advertising, how big did your business grow over the next ten years?
John: It was gradual. The way I always looked at it: I had a number for what I thought a case was worth, and a number for how many cases I’d sign up. I’d divide the average fee into the cases, and as long as that equaled break-even, I kept pouring more money into advertising.
If a case was worth $4,000 and I was spending $80,000, if I got 20 cases, that was break-even. If I got double that, that was profit. As long as I was breaking even, I was building the brand. And building the brand was very important.
Shaan: When you say “building the brand” — what’s the John Morgan school of brand?
John: First, I want it to be memorable. When I first got into it, there weren’t even computers. I didn’t have a URL. The first time I really understood what a URL was, I was at a Yankees game with some lawyers in New York and they all had devices called Blackberries.
I’m like, “What are those?” They’re all thumbing through them the whole game. Getting cases. I went back home and said, “I gotta get a Blackberry.” Then when I got the Blackberry, I said, “I gotta get a URL.”
The beginning of the brand was the URL. I wanted my URL to be my mission statement and my branding statement all in one. The two things I came up with: “Justice for All” and “For the People.” I ultimately went with ForThePeople because I was worried people couldn’t always spell “justice.” But we can all spell “for the people.”
I wanted my brand, my mission statement, and my URL to be one thing. So I’d never have to say something twice. “Call Morgan & Morgan — ForThePeople.com” — just like that.
Sam: Who did you take inspiration from for building an iconic, memorable brand?
John: The people I admire most are Walt Disney and P.T. Barnum. I worked magic at Walt Disney World. Every time I’d walk out of the magic store, I’d see Walt Disney holding Mickey’s hand on Main Street. “Dream It, Do It.”
When I was building WonderWorks, I thought: sell the sizzle, not the steak. People will pay just to get behind the curtain, like they did with P.T. Barnum. They’ll pay to get behind the curtain just to see the human pincushion.
How Many Companies Does John Morgan Have? [00:40:30]
Sam: How many active companies do you have right now?
John: I’ve got so many K-1s. I’ve got shopping centers I’ve built, apartment complexes under construction. I’ve got the attraction businesses. I started building Marriott hotels about 20 years ago. I had a billboard company that I sold to Lamar for a lot of money. I had an ad agency for lawyers called Practice Made Perfect that I sold and did well on.
The new thing I’ve got going right now — you know Guy Fieri?
Sam: Yeah.
John: Dave & Buster’s kind of has it all to themselves. So we built our very first “Downtown Flavortown” in Pigeon Forge. It’s basically Dave & Buster’s meets Guy Fieri. We opened the first one about a year ago and we’re building the second one in Myrtle Beach.
Focus vs. Diversification [00:42:00]
Shaan: This fascinates me, because so many people come on this podcast and the message is: you’ve got to focus. Don’t chase shiny objects. Do one thing and let it compound. But you seem to have done both. Your firm has compounded — I think you guys do like two billion in revenue — and you’ve had all these entrepreneurial side quests. How do you square that circle?
John: Here’s how I think about it. The people who tell you to focus are also doing a lot of hunting, fishing, and golfing.
Nothing wrong with hobbies, but for me — hunting makes no sense. You’re going out and killing an animal. Venison? I can taste the fur. I don’t want to eat it. Fishing — I don’t understand catch and release. Let’s go out, catch a fish, rip its mouth open, tear its eye out, and throw it back in the water? I don’t understand that. Golf’s a great hobby, but I’d rather shoot pool for an hour.
All that “focus” that these people talk about? Their focus is going hunting, fishing, and golfing. I don’t have those distractions.
I don’t hunt deer. I hunt money. And I like it. Instead of collecting stamps, some people collect stamps as a hobby. I collect artifacts for Alcatraz East. I hunt presidential notecards. I clip coupons. I am very focused — just not on hunting, golfing, or fishing.
And look, I watch sports on TV. But there are people more interested in Lane Kiffin’s new job than in their own job. I don’t have those distractions.
Litify: The Legal Software Company [00:44:30]
Sam: Can I ask you about each of these businesses? I want to brag about you a little bit, and you can tell me if it’s true or not.
So, you have Morgan & Morgan. But you also have a company called Litify. I think you sold around 60% of the company and you still own 40%, at a $600 million valuation. Is that true?
John: That’s right.
Shaan: Do you have a method where you do the vision and hire a CEO early on? What makes the system work?
John: For Litify, a guy joined me who was one of the smartest young guys I’d ever met. He could do anything. I called it magic carpets — I would say, “Can you do this?” “Yeah, I can do this.” “Can you do that?” “Yes.”
When I first brought him in — I’ve written two books, one called You Can’t Teach Hungry, one called You Can’t Teach Vision — my big vision for the law was: what if Google was a law firm? What would it look like?
That just hit me and I kept going over and over it in my mind. The problem for a guy like me: terrible at math, terrible at science. The idea of coding — no idea. But I had that vision.
I’d been close with Obama’s team. I was talking to guys who ran the campaign in Chicago — Teddy Goff, Elen Creal — about the Google law firm. When I’d talk to them, they’d go blank: “What do you mean, the Google law firm?”
So I found this guy and he got it. The first thing I said was: everything we’re going to do, we’re going to ask “what would Google do?” Here’s what Google would do if it was a law firm: Google would be everywhere for everybody. Google wouldn’t want some cases — they’d want all the cases. And if they didn’t handle cases in-house, they’d refer them out. They’d partner like Uber.
So I was inspired by Google and Uber. I wanted to build the Google law firm. I’d keep a lot of cases, but refer a whole bunch more out.
He says, “What do you want most?” I said, “Transparency and automation.” We had software called Client Profiles — pretty good — but he kept saying, “It’s not enough. We have to build our own software.” That was the last thing I wanted to do. It’s too big. Not what we do. But he finally convinced me.
So we built Litify internally, and we layered it on Salesforce. Nobody had ever done that in legal before. All of a sudden we’ve got engineers, we’ve got a whole team. Salesforce was interested because they hadn’t been in the legal space before, and we could change things however we wanted.
Part of the deal: if lawyers want my referrals, they’ve got to be on Litify, because that’s how we talk to each other. A case comes in that I’m going to refer to Des Moines. I’ve got a partner on Litify. I refer the case to him. He’s got 12 hours to accept or decline. If he declines, it comes back and goes to a second person, then a third.
So it started as something internal and then became so good that everybody wanted it. We started selling it.
Shaan: How much did you invest and what was the time to exit?
John: Fortress put some money in. I was on a bank board — Esquire Bank, which is a bank for lawyers that trades on NASDAQ. Tiger Capital put in some money. From beginning to exit: six, seven years.
And I didn’t really want to exit. But it was time — I needed to focus on the Google law firm. I sold it to Bezmer. They’re very good at this.
Shaan: It seems like there’s a flywheel between these businesses. You built it for yourselves internally, then used your leverage in the market — “if I’m referring you cases, you’ve got to be on our platform” — to get more customers.
John: Exactly.
Practice Made Perfect: The Ad Agency for Lawyers [00:52:00]
Shaan: The second business I think Sam’s going to bring up is the ad agency you created.
Sam: Right — Practice Made Perfect.
John: Here’s how the ad agency worked. My idea: go out across America and say, “If you want to do what I’m doing, I’ll write your ads, I’ll place your ads. And when big mass torts happen, you can put the cases in and then refer them to me.”
So I built this company called Practice Made Perfect. I had all these lawyers across America. I was charging 15%. I was probably making eight or nine million bucks a year just running that business. But more importantly, all those lawyers started referring me cases. When Vioxx happened, or when a mass tort happened, they’d send me their cases.
I thought of it like Global Crossing — I was laying fiber optic across America. But my fiber optic was law firms across America. I’d make money as the ad agency, but I’d make the big money on the cases they’d send.
Sam: Wait. That was its own entity, doing $8 million in income?
John: Yes.
Sam: That’s incredible. Where is it now?
John: I sold it. Here’s why: as I expanded across America, my clients were like, “John, you’re infringing on my territory.” My deal with my clients was: you don’t have to sign a contract with me. You can fire me anytime you want, and I’ll never compete with you. Just a handshake.
But they’d call and say, “John, I saw one of your billboards.” “Where?” “Well, I was driving to Louisville.” “Were you in Kentucky or Indiana?” “I was in Kentucky, but I was driving—” I’m like, “Hey, man, you’re in Indianapolis. I’m in Louisville.”
I was infringing on my own clients.
Shaan: Right.
John: It just became untenable. I was at a crossroads: either not grow the Google law firm, or keep this other business. So I sold Practice Made Perfect.
Sam: How much did you sell it for?
John: About 18.
Sam: So, $18 million. Now — Mass Torts Made Perfect. You had a trade show twice a year for lawyers.
John: Mass Torts Made Perfect. Two times a year, people would come to learn about the latest mass torts. It was a play on Practice Made Perfect — I had Practice Made Perfect for my clients and Mass Torts Made Perfect for all the lawyers in America.
When Johnny Cochran was alive, he was part of it. I was helping Johnny Cochran map out his national strategy, which also helped me learn about going national.
At a certain point — back to your focus question — Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both say focus, focus, focus. At a certain point, Mass Torts Made Perfect was not helping me grow my business anymore. So I let them have Mass Torts Made Perfect, I kept Practice Made Perfect, and I went and spent way more time on the Google law firm.
Sam: How big was the trade show business?
John: It was big, but not that profitable. The trade show made money, but not a lot. What we were really looking for were cases. People saying, “Hey, we’re going to send you our cases.” The trade show itself never made money. It was the cases we got.
Where He Sees Opportunity Today [01:00:00]
Sam: Where do you see opportunity today — what would a younger, more free John Morgan actually go pursue?
John: If I was young, because of AI — and I’m not good at that stuff — I would probably be looking at service industries. Plumbing, electrical, air conditioning. That’s where a person like me could thrive, because I’m good at scaling, good at building teams, good at sharing profits.
But the business I really enjoy most is the entertainment business. The great thing about entertainment — whether it’s Downtown Flavortown, WonderWorks, or Alcatraz East — is there’s no fighting. In my law business, everything’s a fight. Here, you’re just making people happy.
Shaan: Can you teach us how to get into that business? How to spot an opportunity? What does a winning formula look like?
John: Winning formula always goes back to basics. Location, location, location.
My Orlando store does the best. Pigeon Forge second best. Myrtle Beach does pretty good. Branson does less than Myrtle Beach. It’s all about where your locations are. Six Flags is having trouble in America right now because there’s just not enough people going to Six Flags. I like these one-off, location-based attractions where it’s at the corner of Main and Main. Lots of people coming — and people coming to Orlando are coming to spend money.
Shaan: And is the business model just $26 tickets?
John: About $26 tickets. And the value is incredible. There’s probably four or five things inside each attraction that if you went out on the street, you’d pay $20 each. Virtual roller coasters go for $20 a ride — three minutes, 20 bucks. With me, you can keep going and going. Ropes course, 15, 20 bucks a ride. Laser tag, 15, 20 bucks. There are probably five items inside a WonderWorks that would cost $100 by themselves. But here, a family of four comes in for $100 and they leave sweating from all the activities, with a huge grin.
The thing I love about this business is there’s really no fighting. The only thing is when somebody comes and says, “I didn’t like it, I want my money back.” We look at the ticket: if they were there an hour or less, here’s your money back. When they come and ask for their money back and they were there for three hours, we’re like, get out of here.
Winning Story Formulas for Attractions [01:05:00]
Sam: What other winning story formulas do you like? The upside down house tossed out of the Bermuda Triangle — that’s cool. Crime and punishment is cool. What else works?
John: I have one I’m building right now called Santa’s Chocolate Factory.
Here’s where it came from. I’m out at Disney one day, sitting at Ghirardelli’s. Ghirardelli’s is a chocolate-ice cream store. Right next door is a Christmas store at Disney Village. I’m sitting there and I think: Christmas is a year-round business in certain places.
What could I build that would be phenomenal? Willy Wonka — you’d have to pay IP for Willy Wonka. But you don’t have to pay IP for Santa Claus.
What about Santa’s Chocolate Factory? Santa’s living there. This is Santa’s house. There’s a big chocolate factory. There’s ice cream. The booths are made out of sleighs. You’ve got all the merchandise. You’ve got Santa Claus in his workshop. You’ve got pictures being taken. You’ve got elves working there.
And on the hour, every hour, at midnight — the clock turns — dong dong dong dong — the lights go down, and all of a sudden the store comes alive. The train starts moving. The bears are moving. It’s Christmas time on the hour. Kind of a Bellagio moment, where people come. It’s snowing outside.
That’s the next thing I’m going to do.
Sam: I love it. Have you seen Enchant Christmas?
John: Yeah. But here, think about this. What I’m thinking about — because the inside is going to be so phenomenal — I’m thinking about doing something that’s never been done in the history of the world: charging money to come into a retail store. A dollar to come in.
I don’t know if it’ll work. If it doesn’t work, I’ll stop charging the dollar. But I think I can build something inside so spectacular that people will want to get in there to see the clock strike 12. The clock strikes 12, everybody’s up on the counters like Johnny Rockets, all singing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” A five-minute interlude every hour.
I think people will pay to come in and see it. So that’s my next thing.
Shaan: Sam, isn’t it crazy that he’s basically like half Walt Disney—
Sam: Half lawyer shark. Better Call Saul meets Jeff Bezos. One of the wildest combinations.
Sam: It’s pretty funny — you just became a lawyer to fund your carney ambitions. And that’s pretty badass. Particularly in a world of AI. It’s a common theme Shaan and I have talked about: in a world of more digital and AI, screen-free, out-of-the-house experiences are actually more valuable.
John: That’s what I told you. My wife doesn’t understand it when I tell her I’m more proud of my attraction business than the law business — because it’s so unlikely.
Sam: And what’s that business worth? You own almost the whole thing?
John: Almost. I had some limited partners over time. I’ve bought a lot of them out. At roughly 8x — call it a quarter billion.
Repurposing Malls as Immersive Galleries [01:12:00]
Sam: What are you doing with malls? You’re doing something interesting there.
John: Everybody’s tearing malls down because malls are no good. Up in Myrtle Beach, I wanted to build Downtown Flavortown with Guy Fieri. There was a mall on its last legs. There’s an outparcel with a Bass Pro that kicks ass — that’s golden. But the mall itself was dying.
What I really wanted was the JC Penney location to build Downtown Flavortown. But then I got stuck with the mall. I bought it all for an incredibly low price.
So the question is: do you level the mall, or what do you do?
Are you familiar with first principles thinking?
Shaan: Yeah. Elon has popularized the term.
John: And Aristotle taught Elon the term. So you take assumptions and deconstruct them. Right now the assumption is: if you buy a mall, you tear it down, because there’s nothing you can do with it.
I’ve decided to do some first principles thinking. What if I take this older mall — with new technology, LED, illusions — and I don’t tear it down. I just repurpose it. I make it a gallery. The whole mall is illusions. Like when you’re at the Venetian and you look up — so many things you can do with LED. I’m going to call it “The Gallery,” and it’s going to be a museum. You’re going to go to the mall just to see the inside. I’m going to have a zipline from one end to the other. Ropes courses in the middle.
Most malls are now just torn down. That’s what you do. I’m going to take first principles thinking and not tear the mall down. I’m going to make the mall the attraction.
What It’s Like to Work with John Morgan [01:17:00]
Sam: Your wife, your children, your co-workers — what would they say it’s like working with you?
John: They would say I have strong feelings. I don’t want to say “my way or the highway,” because I do a lot by consensus. But once I form that consensus, I execute. I’ll spend a lot of time going around the horn, but once I figure out what it’s going to be, I execute.
They might say procrastination. I might put things off a little bit. But I don’t see it that way — because even on the mall, I’m still thinking about what I’m going to put in it. Over the weekend, I was looking at buildings with painted illusions on the facades. You pull up to a building and it looks like something, but it’s an illusion.
So it’s not really procrastination in my mind. It’s—
Shaan: Thinking.
John: Planning.
What Most Entrepreneurs Don’t Get [01:19:30]
Sam: It seems like you meet a lot of entrepreneurs. If I said, “So many entrepreneurs just don’t get it” — what is it that they don’t get that you do?
John: I have a game I play when I drive down roads. I’ll see a new business coming in and the game is: is it going to make it or not? I’ll see an old Burger King being turned into some health food store and I look over — is that going to make it or not? Usually, if they’re repurposing an old Burger King, they’re probably not going to make it.
What I think they do wrong: they want to do it so badly that they try to put a round peg in a square hole. They want to do it so badly that they forget: location, location, location.
Sam: Would you summarize that into just planning in advance? If you nail one thing, everything else is taken care of?
John: And I also believe: bullets before bombs. You’ve got to test things a little bit. A lot of people try to build two or three at once. Build that first one, that first pilot, and really get it down.
That’s how I do law firms — before I go big in a city, I come in, spend some money on ads, hire a few lawyers. The bullets. When I feel it catching on, then I bring the bombs.
Sam: When I think about why you won and why everybody else is playing for second place — my answer is: you were early. First to market, or very early. Once you figured out the secret — advertising effectively — you were way more aggressive than everyone else. You reinvested capital to build the national brand. Is that right, or am I missing something?
John: You’re missing a very big piece.
One of you talked about fishing. In my business I call it: fish first, fish fast. There are two sides of my business. One is catching fish — fish first, fish fast. The other is cooking fish — the value of the case.
Where my competition gets beat by me is most of them — 95% — are bad lawyers. They’re terrible at what they do. They couldn’t try a case if they wanted to. So they have to take the last best offer. You’ll see people bragging: “Hey, we settled this case for a million dollars.” Yeah, when the case was worth $10 million. But they couldn’t do it.
I started to really look at where my money comes from. 20% of my cases are 80% of my money. But here’s where the money really comes: it comes the Friday before trial. They’ve said no, no, no, no, no. Now it’s Friday before trial. A lot of times they say, “Okay, here it is.”
The next time the money comes is right after jury selection. We pick a jury, they’re like, “We don’t like that jury. Pay us.” Then the third time is during trial — they may say, “Here’s the money.” And the fourth is the verdict.
I get gigantic verdicts. I got a verdict in San Francisco against Google a couple of weeks ago for $500 million. I’m not hunting cockroaches. I’m hunting big game. I’m not happy to get a little bit of money. I want to get exactly what it’s worth.
The other thing they don’t do: there’s a concept called bad faith. If there’s a million dollars in coverage and they don’t pay it, they’re in bad faith. When they come to offer me the million, it’s too late. Most lawyers — because they need the money — take the million. I say no. I go get the verdict. I go get $10 million.
I represented a state senator this year. They were offering us nothing. Finally offered us a million on the day of trial — it was a death case. I said no. We got $100 million.
The disconnect is: they’re not real lawyers. They’re marketing people who take the last best offer.
So what have I done? I’ve got a stable of racehorses that get big verdicts. People who parachute in from city to city. I call it the Walter Payton rule. When Walter Payton played for the Bears, he got the ball 50 times a game. When it was fourth and goal, he always got it. I’ve got my Walter Paytons — I parachute them in and they get these big verdicts.
My differentiator: most of my competition are not real lawyers. They’re marketers who take the last best offer. Their margins are terrible.
My margins on cases I handle internally: about 30-35%. My margins on referrals: 85-90%. And that referral business is getting bigger and bigger as my national footprint grows. When I refer cases to my Uber drivers, it’s not an Uber driver — it’s Mario Andretti.
Sam: I got goosebumps, John. I love that answer. That was incredible. That should be your next infomercial.
Building a Firm That Keeps Its Stars: The Circus Model [01:32:00]
Shaan: John’s a cowboy. You’ve got this cowboy energy, which we love. We have a joke — we call ourselves manifest cowboys. We dream up stuff and make it happen.
Sam: We’re hoping other people start to call us that so we can stop saying it ourselves. When you nickname yourself, it’s not as cool. But I think you actually are the manifest cowboy.
Sam: Law firms can’t really be held by non-lawyers, right? So do you own a huge chunk of this firm yourself?
John: It’s mainly me and my family, but I do have a lot of partners in it. Because when I look at this firm — or all my businesses — I always envision it like I’m building a circus. I want to build the greatest show on earth.
When you see some of these circuses in shopping centers, you know they’ve got an elephant with one tusk and a drunk clown and a seal that’s overheated. That’s a circus. The circus I’m building is the greatest show on earth.
Why do people go to the circus? They go for two reasons. One: they want to see the lions and the tigers eat the man. Two: they want to see the Great Wallenda fall to his death. That’s why they go to NASCAR too — they’re hoping somebody dies. How do you not die? With the animals, you feed them and you love them. I’ve got a lot of partners who make a lot of money because they’ve got a piece of this deal. The second way: you focus. You’re up on the high wire and you’ve got to pay attention. You’ve got to get from here to there.
Three rules to building the greatest show on earth: love them, feed them, focus.
Near-Misses and Risk [01:37:00]
Sam: You’ve won so many times. Has there ever been a point where the businesses almost went under? You seem like a pretty risk-on person.
John: I don’t know about “almost went under,” but I’ve had close calls. I sent a guy up to Atlanta when I opened up there — the wrong guy. By the time I got him out, we were $14 million in the hole. He was a disaster. But now he’s gone and Atlanta prints money.
I’ve had a couple of cities that didn’t do as well as I hoped, like Memphis. And I built a small amusement park called Magical Midway that I ended up selling. Lost a million bucks.
But that doesn’t bother me, because nobody bats a thousand. If you bat .300, you’re in the Hall of Fame. All you’ve got to do is get on base one out of three times. Warren Buffett has five big stocks. You take those away, he’s not Warren Buffett anymore. And he’s the first person to tell you that. That’s why I love him so much. That’s why I have so much Berkshire Hathaway stock. He’s my guy.
Media, Politics, and New Age Marketing [01:40:00]
Sam: You’ve been doing a lot of media lately. I saw you on the Jubilee thing — I’d known who you were before that and I was like, “What the hell, why would you do that?” But you came off pretty good. You’ve done a really good job judo-ing a bunch of gotcha moments. Are you going to run for office one day? Why do you care about being out there?
John: Fish. I want to catch fish.
I’ve had some success running ballot initiatives. My brother — the one who got hurt — desperately needed marijuana to help his situation. I ran a constitutional amendment in Florida to legalize medical marijuana. I spent tens of millions of dollars to pass it.
And when you make money, I believe you have a civic and moral obligation to give back. One thing where I believe the country is headed in the wrong direction — and you’re starting to hear about it — is affordability. It’s because people aren’t paid enough money. That’s the affordability problem.
The minimum wage in America was $8 an hour. So with my own money, here in Florida, I ran a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Everybody told me it was never going to happen. It did happen. I raised Florida’s minimum wage from $8 to $15.
Because of those amendments, I became almost like a politician in this state. Everybody was like, “We want him to run for governor.” When I’d go to the White House, they’d take me aside and show me my poll numbers.
You think about it. But then you’ve got to think about the job itself. I live in Maui five months out of the year, which I love. And I’m 69, so I don’t know.
But really, what I’m doing right now is just being out there. In my ads, I look like I’m working at a funeral home. By doing these media things, people see that I actually have a personality. I’m not a gravedigger.
Look — you can become president if 51% of the people like you. You can get rich as hell if 51% of the people use you. I look at these things as new-age marketing. But I want to make sure there’s enough people watching before I do it.
Sam: So: like and subscribe, leave a comment.
Shaan: This has been awesome, man. I appreciate you coming on. Shout out your new book.
John: It’s being edited right now. It’s called Life is Luck: The Paperboy.
Sam: You’re the best. That’s it. That’s the pod.