About
A lawyer named Shmiddy walks into a keynote…
Twenty-plus years building professional credibility is a long time to spend while everyone still calls you Shmiddy. I gave up fighting it somewhere around the second bar exam. What follows is not a straight line, and that is rather the point.
Friends have called me Shmiddy since I was a kid. It has followed me through two states, two bar exams, boardrooms, depositions, a film set, and a lot of stages. At some point I realized the nickname was not the thing undercutting my credibility. It was the thing making me memorable.
On paper I am an attorney and an executive. I founded Universal Law Group in 2003, have practiced law for over twenty years, and served as Chief Compliance Officer and then Chief Legal Officer of a health and wellness company with more than $3 billion in lifetime sales. Contracts, negotiations, litigation, regulatory work, transactions, and the kind of executive decisions that keep you up at night. That is the part of the resume that gets me in the building.
What the resume does not say is that I did not want the job. One of my clients grew faster than anyone saw coming and asked me to come in-house. I said no. I had spent more than a decade building my own firm and I was not interested in trading my name on the door for someone else’s. They asked again. This time the offer included my wife, who was managing the firm with me, and our daughter, who worked for us. So we went together. I joined as their chief compliance officer and was later elevated to chief legal officer. It is the best decision I never planned to make.
The part that actually explains me
Here is the list, roughly in order, and I promise it is not a brag. Drummer. Young father. Construction worker. College student. Long-distance phone salesman. Direct sales. Limousine driver. Timeshare sales. Law school, married, with four children at home, paying my own way. Attorney. Entrepreneur. Recording studio owner. A real estate closing firm. Chief Compliance Officer. Chief Legal Officer. Actor. Humorist. Speaker.
Written down like that it looks deliberate. It was not. At the time it looked like a person taking the next available thing, occasionally because it was interesting and often because there were people at home who needed dinner.
Then it started combining
Selling long distance over the phone taught me to be told no by strangers without taking it personally, which turns out to be most of what a lawyer does in a negotiation. Driving a limousine taught me to read a room from the front seat. The studio taught me how creative people think, which made me a better lawyer to them twenty years later. Timeshare taught me what I never wanted to be, which is its own kind of useful.
None of those paid off when I did them. They sat there. Then they intersected, and produced a career that none of them could have produced alone. That is the idea I keep coming back to on stage: experience does not only pile up, it converges. The dots do not merely connect. They combine.
What I am not claiming
I am not suggesting anybody copy this sequence. It would be terrible advice. Some of those years were genuinely hard and a couple of those decisions were plainly wrong, and I am not going to dress them up as secretly perfect because the ending worked out.
What I am claiming is narrower and, I think, more useful. You are probably sitting on more than you have credited yourself for. Not because everything happens for a reason, but because you actually did learn things, and meet people, and find out what you are not. That is worth something the moment you go and get it out.
Why I talk about this
Because I keep meeting people who are waiting. Waiting to feel ready, waiting for clarity, waiting for the company or the market or somebody senior to hand their motivation back. I have been that person. Waiting is the most expensive thing I have ever done.
So the argument is this. You do not need the destination. You need to know who you are, what you will not trade away, and which direction is worth walking. Then you move, and the moving hands you the information you were trying to think your way to. Keep the principles fixed. Let the destination change as often as it needs to. And when something finally deserves everything you have, go maximum velocity, because exploring forever is just standing still with better excuses.
The rest of it
My wife and I have been married about thirty-five years, which either qualifies me to give advice or disqualifies me from ever giving it again depending on which of us you ask. Four adult kids. A growing pile of grandkids. I have done my time in Toastmasters. I still get nervous before I go on.
For the record keepers: licensed to practice law in Texas and Virginia. Founder of Universal Law Group, established in 2003. Named one of the Top 10 Corporate Counsel in the world at the 2024 OnCon Icon Awards. A Forbes contributor since 2020 and an official member of the Forbes Business Development Council, where I write for Forbes.com about leadership, meaningful work, and why serious people should not take themselves too seriously.
A lawyer can become an executive. An executive can build businesses. A businessman can walk onto a film set. A grandfather can pick up a microphone and find out whether he is funny in front of strangers.
Attorney. Executive. Entrepreneur. Actor. Humorist. Husband. Dad. Grandfather. Not one of those was on a five-year plan. Which is the part I would want you to take from it: you are not finished becoming.
The receipts
The award itself
Top 10 Corporate Counsel, 2024 OnCon Icon Awards. Winners are chosen from global nominations by peer and public vote, and there is no fee to enter, to be a finalist, or to win.