(00:00:00) Rick: So 2019, 2020. But then the pandemic happens. And what did we all do? We switched from working in the office and talking at water coolers to sending messages back and forth on teams and slack and even text messages. So now that evidence became very necessary.
(00:00:16) Courtney: Hi, my name is Courtney and welcome to how they scaled it, where scaling is done with both sides of the brain. Today I’m excited to welcome Rick Clark. With a career spanning over two decades in legal technology and e-discovery. Rick founded Wave Software and EFI analyst and co-founded the Master’s Conference, one of the leading events in eDiscovery education.
(00:00:37) Courtney: ESR analyst was acquired by cloud nine, where he now serves as VP of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships. We’re going to dive into Rick’s journey as a founder, his insights on scaling a business and how he’s built businesses that thrive in an ever evolving industry. Rick, it is such an honor to have you here. Please welcome or welcome to how they scaled it.
(00:00:56) Rick: Thank you so much, Kurt. I’m really happy to be here. And thank you for having me.
(00:01:00) Courtney: Amazing. Well, let’s dive right into kind of where you started. So you joined in the legal technology space in eDiscovery in 2002. What brought you into that industry?
(00:01:13) Rick: Well, let’s say back that it wasn’t as much technology as it was the legal industry. Back then it was paper. Right. So I’m in the legal eDiscovery space now, but then it was just discovery. E-Discovery hadn’t even been coined yet. So. But what that means is the general legal process is exchanging, data or documents from one counsel to the next.
(00:01:34) Rick: Right. So, really fun, you know, nowadays is very fun because the evidence is neat. But back then, very sort of a process that needed to be done. So for me, it was just the first thing out of college. I had talked to other folks that had gone from, basically a books during college door to door.
(00:01:52) Rick: And a lot of us went into the legal, discovery, support space. And so, that was my first job. It wasn’t until around 2006 that, the technology boom of, of our industry started to really happen.
(00:02:08) Courtney: Yeah. You’re really on, like, the cutting edge of it, too. Like you’re like, right at the beginning because you founded Wave Software in 2006. So what kind of led you to that company?
(00:02:19) Rick: So, through a series of partnerships, one of the things I would recommend to everybody is find your people. And if you can stick with them throughout your industry or through your career, in your industry, it’s really beneficial. So, I had known some folks that were in Orlando, Florida, where I was based at the time, starting the software company, not really knowing what to do, but I just at the time was just really good in sales.
(00:02:44) Rick: And that was my, you know, one track, you know, and so I helped them launch it. And so for, for us, it was, in 2006, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure made some additions that included electronic evidence as part of the discovery process, making it essentially a mandate. So before it was recommended, and it was needed, but it wasn’t mandated.
(00:03:08) Rick: So for us, we were right at the early stages and a great time to do a start up for specifically what we’re doing with Wave software.
(00:03:15) Courtney: Yeah. And I mean, I like just you mentioning that you were like going door to door selling books, like how much the world has changed in such a short period of time, but for you to kind of be like, right on the edge of, like in the legal space and then into the legal technology space being right at the beginning of it.
(00:03:33) Courtney: Do you feel like you’re like, often an early adopter of things like technology, or were you just kind of like right partners, right time?
(00:03:40) Rick: I’m I wouldn’t ever say if you do that. Jeffrey Moore crossing the chasm. I’m not on the left side of the chasm, meaning I’m not really a general early adopter or need to find the right thing. So I was the right place, right time. But I am very technical. That also helped in the startup because the hats I wore was sales, marketing, but also product support and making sure that I can talk the talk to the digital forensic folks and talk to their language and how my software worked within their world and then into the e-discovery world as well.
(00:04:12) Rick: So became very technical. But that’s pretty much it.
(00:04:17) Courtney: Yeah, yeah. That’s interesting. So you kind of started the master’s conference not too long after you started Way of Software, is that right?
(00:04:25) Rick: That’s correct. In fact, funny, the funny story there is we were we had started wave Software. There were two dominant, conferences in our space. One was called Legal Week, actually legal tech at the time. And then, and they had they were sort of on one was in the summer, one was in the winter. And so we had our two big conferences as well.
(00:04:46) Rick: They were expensive. There were thousands of people there. And so we said, well, why don’t we start our own conference to help prop up our software company? Right. So, oh.
(00:04:56) Courtney: Just start a conference. No big deal.
(00:04:59) Rick: We’ll see. Here’s here’s the problem. We’re Panera Bread. There were napkins in front of us in pens and a lot of unlimited coffee. So ideas were flowing everywhere. And we just said, okay, what if we start a conference? And literally, that’s what we did. We turned a, an idea into a three and a half day thought leadership specific conference, not a trade show, which essentially were the other ones.
(00:05:20) Rick: Right. And so we got the all the, the bright minds of the day. And we continued to do that today, but bring them into the room and, and give people access to those individuals, as they, you know, throughout the duration of the conference and even afterwards. Certainly.
(00:05:37) Courtney: So to differentiate yourself from kind of and was it legal tech or legal week.
(00:05:44) Rick: Or legal week? Yeah.
(00:05:44) Courtney: Was it mostly like these things? Just they cost a lot of money and there’s not as much access like what were the things that you were like, how are we going to stand apart from these like massive giants in the industry?
(00:05:56) Rick: Great question. And that is the significant difference between them though. So trade shows like Legal Week, we’ll just take Legal Week. I just came from it last week. It was one. Yeah. But Legal week is all of legal. That is legal operations. So all of the software that that benefits all of the various, you know, parts of a law firm is what that caters to.
(00:06:20) Rick: So there are thousands of people. And so if you’re at a booth, let’s say you have people walking by, you try to get their attention and give them to you and do the exchange. Well, I would say 70% of them would not be applicable to our specific niche industry of e-discovery. So we wanted to put together eDiscovery specific thought leaders that is now expanded into cybersecurity, digital forensics, and others as well, that support, e-discovery or it’s a part of, but yeah, we wanted a very specific niche, part of the legal.
(00:06:55) Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I that’s that’s a good point. And that’s I feel like that’s like really key for SaaS products and tech products. And legal tech is kind of meeting down, like finding the little thing that that’s big enough to, you know, make some money on. But but isn’t everything because of the everything of the world are covered by these like really giant corporations.
(00:07:17) Courtney: So if you can kind of like find a little area where you can create a little, a little community. It seems to have worked really well for, for the master’s conference.
(00:07:26) Rick: It has and has worked for, the, the e-discovery community writ large. I mean, there’s now Georgetown. There’s, there’s actually a really a handful of other, discovery conferences that, have popped up since then.
(00:07:40) Courtney: And I want to get back to the master’s conference, but you did have quite a few other things that you’ve kind of accomplished that I do want to touch on. So after Wave Software, well, you’re kind of creating this master’s conference. You went on to build ESG analyst. What was the inspiration of kind of moving in that direction?
(00:07:57) Rick: So having been in the space for a while, we so our industry is very, adverse to change, especially adoption of technology. So even back then in 2006, lawyers were like, let’s forget the emails. Let’s stick with the file cabinets. Right? Well, then in the mid teens, they said, well, let’s ignore the cell phones and the slack in the teams data.
(00:08:23) Rick: What message communications. Let’s still stick with email and documents. Right? We have it now figured out. And so back in 2018, my partner and I had had put together our heads. He had had a lot of the software written already, to address basically your cell phone data and which would include and social media and others. And so he said, hey, let’s go to market with this.
(00:08:46) Rick: And so we did. And the, the industry as a whole was still like, yeah, we’re still trying to avoid the cell phones and other things as part of evidence. But then until they couldn’t. Right. So 2019, 2020, the then the pandemic happens. And what did we all do? We switched from working in the office and talking at water coolers to sending messages back and forth on teams and slack and even text messages.
(00:09:12) Rick: So now that evidence became very necessary. So we had a year to get a lot of good market feedback on the platform itself. So think of it as a year one beta testers, and some cases to then going full blown not hockey stick but but very fast aggressive growth.
(00:09:31) Courtney: Yeah. I can’t believe that they weren’t bringing in slack and then like all these like other I am messages and tell this is crazy.
(00:09:40) Rick: From their perspective. So if I’m a defense counsel I don’t necessarily want write things that people speak very cavalier on. As part of evidence that they can get away. They’ll get away. Yeah. And so but now they’re on.
(00:09:53) Courtney: The other side. You would think that, like, if I was, like, prosecuting, I’d be like, bring it all in. We want it all.
(00:09:58) Rick: And he would that those arguments went back and forth quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah man I really they couldn’t argue it away anymore and it’s now a part of it, right.
(00:10:06) Courtney: Yeah, yeah. So now just kind of thinking about the industry as a whole, the majority of evidence is it, is it like slack messages and things like that, or is there still quite a bit of you know, documentation like paper, documents.
(00:10:20) Rick: Paper, not necessarily, but email and all of the, the documents that are created within a corporate environment that it’s still the lion’s share of it. What they find, though is depending on the case, I had one I was I had spoken at a conference in Miami and somebody come up, he’s like afterwards and he’s like, we spent I don’t know how many millions of dollars reviewing emails.
(00:10:45) Rick: And it all came down to two WhatsApp messages that we finally put into discovery, like for the very end. So, so it’s, it’s still there’s a lot of lessons being learned out there, right? Like we’re still sort of spending a lot of money and, and having those challenges, but they’re learning from.
(00:11:04) Courtney: So yes, I analyst kind of was an answer to that, where it’s like you have all these messages, all this online stuff. And then ISI analysts like organized it and put it through the process. Is that kind of what the. Yeah.
(00:11:15) Rick: So this way okay. So let’s say there is a an employee who was trying to take, something from the company, let’s say a spreadsheet of all their clients. Yeah. Right. So what we would put together is text messages where that person might be talking to somebody. Geolocation, where they were, in proximity to certain events.
(00:11:35) Rick: So I don’t know if you know this, but every time you take a picture, fire up Waze or something, there’s geolocation points that are stored in a table on your phone. We took that table and did the lookups for them. So the data was just there. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And let’s say you plug in a thumb drive, then you, start start looking up, or you start finding, different data points and downloading it and saving to that thumb drive.
(00:12:00) Rick: Right. Pulling that thumb drive out. That’s all recorded in log files on your laptop. Yeah. So we would pull all that data together to say, okay, so, Gary was in, you know, Montana at some little summit and was doing talked about, exchanging a list and getting hired and getting a bonus and all those things. Right. So those are the things that we can just naturally put together by taking all of that data and dumping into our system and then automatically chronologically put that all together to tell that story.
(00:12:32) Courtney: Right, which is probably a lot faster and easier than having your people do it, like manually. So huge value to the customer.
(00:12:41) Rick: Exactly, exactly. Right.
(00:12:42) Courtney: So obviously you weren’t the only software company that was kind of grabbing onto that opportunity. So how are you able to scale that company, like during that time period? Because I’m sure it was kind of a challenge.
(00:12:57) Rick: I imagine it was for the whole industry as well. So, but where we really shined was so our industry solved the email and word docs, PowerPoint, Excel files, all the files, that problem by converting everything to a document. Now that’s great for just flipping through, tagging, you know, and and shipping it off to, opposing counsel as a production.
(00:13:24) Rick: But what we found was short message is that sometimes they would take an individual message that was a document. It might take 24 hours, make that a document, but it’s going through a document review process. Whereas what we did was we took all of the metadata, put it in there, made it look like something you would see on your phone or on your on your laptop as far as like chatting and texting.
(00:13:46) Rick: And then they were able to tag at the individual item level. So one of our big cases was we had a C-suite executive delete everything off of this phone. And it doesn’t like. No, we’ve argued against getting cell phones, but we really need your text messages. So did you talk to about such and such a thing?
(00:14:06) Rick: That person identified over 100 people. And so we put all of those 100 plus devices in our system and restructured those threads as if it came from this phone to begin with. Oh, wow. In a document review platform, it would be very difficult to thread that together. That’s why we came in, because we weren’t converting everything to a document first from all those 100 phones were duplicating.
(00:14:28) Rick: And we’re creating the right, you know, rate review structure. So that’s one of many very large hundreds of device cases that we’re able to do because at scale, document review just became very good actually.
(00:14:41) Courtney: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess what you got us was really forward thinking about it because you knew that the way that it was working before just wouldn’t be functional at the like the scale at which people messaged each other. I mean, people just when you think about like when you’re going back and forth with someone on slack, it’s so many more messages than when you’re going back and forth on email.
(00:15:00) Courtney: So I imagine you were looking at, okay, this is how it’s being used. Let’s make it as easy as possible and as fast as possible, which I’m sure took a lot more development time, but is that kind of what made you stand out against your competitors during that, that time or anything else that you were like, we’ve got we’ve had to kind of differentiate ourselves away from these other document, review services.
(00:15:25) Rick: Another way was we also knew that people spoke across channels. And what I mean by that is you send an email, then you switch over to teams and you continue the conversation over teams, pick up your phone and use WhatsApp because you think it’s encrypted end to end, and you’ll never nobody ever see this message. Yeah, those are the things we would also thread together, naturally through the way that we organize the data.
(00:15:47) Courtney: Yeah, it just sounds like you brought humanity and, like, human experience into the way you were thinking about the software, like how to build, actually, like, how do people communicate, and then how can we, like, translate that into something that these layers can actually use?
(00:15:59) Rick: Exactly. Right.
(00:16:00) Courtney: Yeah. So, what point did you guys decide you wanted to go for an acquisition? So you were acquired by cloud nine. Congratulations. Very exciting. What was that process like?
(00:16:12) Rick: Well, it was it was coming to a head out of space. So, for all of you out there who were doing startups, just, you know, be ready for a wild ride if you’ve never done one before. And we were underfunded to start. Thank you. With that. Sort of helped out a lot, with all of our investment money shrinking immediately.
(00:16:30) Rick: But, but what we end up finding was there were a few of us running this, so I was running, everything from sales, marketing, but also getting into project management. And there’s a whole different head space. And and tolerance and patience and everything for being a project manager. So working, all night long on cases and getting data ready and all the things that we had to do just we were growing too fast for the small amount of people we had.
(00:16:59) Rick: And so, Cloud9 knocked on our door and we engaged with them, and then we got married.
(00:17:06) Courtney: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think that it’s like either we hire a bunch more people and that’s going to be. And who has time to hire? You know, effectively hiring takes so much effort and time. Or there’s this like great solution where we immediately get all the resources we need. And I mean, if it’s very price and, you know, they value you enough, then that acquisition probably felt like a huge weight being lifted off of you.
(00:17:31) Rick: All of that is true. And when hiring people was like, you know, we’re in legal, legal cases come and go. So you hire five people to cover because you have a big case, and then it’s there’s not a big case for another few, you know, months or whatever. It’s so it’s a load balancing issue. And so really and truly Cloud9 came along at the right time.
(00:17:51) Rick: All of those things. Yeah. Fantastic. And, and and I love working with them. It’s it’s, it’s a good culture too.
(00:17:58) Courtney: Yeah. Did you when you started with. Yes, I analyst did you plan on an acquisition? Was that kind of like the plan from the beginning, or is it just become more obvious as you moved through, the year.
(00:18:09) Rick: We were open to both. So our plan was let’s build to sell, but that’s also build to, to grow as well. So we moved to whatever. And, you know, it’s wild wild West. You a startup even though you think you look at the total addressable market and you’re like, oh, there’s billions of dollars in a sliver. And all right, well, you know, again, it’s startups are hard.
(00:18:31) Rick: Yeah, but but very fulfilling. You know, for a lot of, a lot of the time.
(00:18:36) Courtney: Yeah. And I know that a lot of founders kind of struggle with after the acquisition because you’re integrating into a new company. It’s a new culture, it’s a new thing. And like, your baby is no longer your baby, but you still are so close to it. How was that transition then with cloud nine?
(00:18:54) Rick: Wonderful. Because of all the teams, I. I had a mentor I’d been working with for many years, and he said, Rick, you were acquired. Now you need to unlearn certain things, right? So I learned unlearn first and foremost how to project manage. Yeah. And over time I learned how to demo the software because we had we had all the right people in place to do that.
(00:19:16) Rick: So I spent my first year training all of those folks on how to do those types of things. And, and really get me to my, my highest and best contribution. That was really in the thought leadership space. Yeah. Leveraging masters to get our message out and then those types of things.
(00:19:31) Courtney: Yeah, I know it sounds like partnership has really been like a key element of your success from the very beginning. And just like making relationships and figuring out how to best use those, which is why you’re the head of strategic partnerships now with cloud nine. But yeah, let’s let’s go back to the Masters, because I feel like that’s kind of been the biggest throughline through your career.
(00:19:52) Courtney: Yeah. And it seems like the kind of like the most important thing, that you are continuing to do. So you’ve scaled to over 15 cities, which is extremely impressive. As someone who’s, you know, not like I think it’s just crazy that you’re able to plan a conference. So when you started doing them, was the planning of the conference really challenging because did you guys hire an event planner to do this, or did you do it on your own?
(00:20:19) Rick: We hired a a full time person, to really help run, you know, those types of elements. And then the rest of us are really just volunteers that we help out with either content, bringing people to the space, you know, sort of running the strategy and those types of things. But, but yeah, I mean, it’s it’s it took us hiring employees to actually really run that side of the business and doing, you know, 12 to 15 conferences a year is, you know, it’s a lot because they’re single day.
(00:20:53) Rick: Right? So you got to pack a big punch. And then you’ve got to, you know, sort of load balance the, the economics of it. But yeah, it’s it’s, you know, one of the biggest things for Masters is a lot of these, these, markets we go to don’t have conferences they can go to at a regular or like at all.
(00:21:12) Rick: And sometimes, for, for what we’re doing specifically. So serving markets like Denver and Miami and others that don’t have them is really a blessing to them because some of them can’t travel to the legal weeks or to the Eddys or Georgetown to University of Florida. Like, those are, you know, so this is just a really good way for us to, to bring the conference to these folks.
(00:21:34) Courtney: Yeah. See, you’re not only making it more accessible, but you’re also giving people who can go to those other ones an option for a much more like, thought leadership focused in much more like niche information, which I think is probably why you’ve had so much success. When you start, when you had your first conference at the end of it, were you like, we’re going to this was amazing.
(00:21:57) Courtney: We’re going to expand? Or was it like, oh, that was like really hard. And a bunch of things fall apart, but maybe we can keep doing it.
(00:22:04) Rick: All of them. Yeah. Like every year we’re like, oh my gosh, that was such a big lift. Yeah, it was great and profitable and all the things. But for me, I was really focused on way of software. So I ended up, early on we put the message covers in. So company and zone sort of thing with its own, team running it.
(00:22:27) Rick: And so, it was always in DC, for the first, probably 5 or 6, six of them. And then it was when we went on the road and went to sort of in Chicago and then went to other cities spring to then because, you know, like I said, Georgetown, EDI, there there were other eDiscovery conferences that popped up, that were, you know, also getting that.
(00:22:51) Courtney: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, do you go to every single conference?
(00:22:55) Rick: That’s right. I did like two years ago, went to like all but two. And I was like, I was like, I don’t think I could do this.
(00:23:04) Courtney: No. It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting. So now that you have, like, you kind of have it rolling, how are you kind of keeping it fresh, making sure that it’s still relevant and valuable to all the attendees?
(00:23:16) Rick: Great question. And it’s it really has everything to do with our board. So Kevin and Bruce, they do a lot with the content. And it really and also our, the folks that help us, build out the curriculum. Right. So, not only is that the sponsor, but it’s also people in those cities. Hey, it’s a really important thing in, Denver to talk about ECS, right.
(00:23:41) Rick: And so or Atlanta for, for certain reasons. And so we, we build a curriculum around that. The challenges are facing, a lot of those, those markets, and some of them are certainly general AI is very general because it’s, you know, there’s still needing for adoption and but yeah, it’s it’s really we try to keep it relevant.
(00:24:01) Rick: And then the speakers themselves that are invited to speak on these panels, they bring their expertise. One of the neat things I saw last year into this year is the development of AI, specifically in e-discovery. How that is changing almost month to month adoption, even getting sort of the ball snowballs rolling down the hill there. And so it’s neat to see from from month to month those changes.
(00:24:28) Rick: Sometimes for me it’s every other month because yeah, all of them anymore.
(00:24:31) Courtney: But yeah. Yeah. Is so when you first say to your career adoption extremely slow, I mean even until very recently, but now you’re starting to get lawyers who grew up in the digital age and probably are able to adopt technology faster. Do you think that, like, people are, do you think that lawyers are adopting the technology faster than they used to?
(00:24:52) Courtney: Like with AI, like more people are open to it? Or do you think it’s still a very slow industry?
(00:24:58) Rick: I would say AI has the the opportunity to be the fastest adopting or adopted, technology in our space for a few reasons. One, people are used to, using AI, whether they’re using Netflix or, you know, something in their general world or their ChatGPT to write some, some articles or those things. It’s, it’s getting that’s that’s a big hurdle, right?
(00:25:24) Rick: Is, is the usage of the technology. The fear of the technology gets mitigated, because of our closed system AI models. Right? So they’re not it’s not reaching out to the public. Everything is contained. It’s all their data, all within that model. So the fear is quickly going away, right. And also Lexis and Westlaw have done a great job of incorporating AI for research.
(00:25:50) Rick: So they’re able to find articles very quickly. Well, when you’re doing your in discovery and you want to find those very important emails or those WhatsApp conversations, I can help you find that very quickly. So whether you’re using it for a review workflow, or you’re using it for, just investigation, like, I just want to see what’s in my data here.
(00:26:15) Rick: Opposing counsel doesn’t need to know that I’m doing that. They just need to know that they’re going to I’m going to fill by the order, and they’re going to get their production as as we agreed upon. And yeah.
(00:26:25) Courtney: Yeah, it does feel like it kind of just gives you like a little bit of an edge. And if you can guarantee that the data is accurate, then it does kind of feel like a no brainer. I just, it’s this is such a slow moving, industry that it’s crazy that they waited until 2019 to start looking at slack messages, but now they’re like, well, I might work.
(00:26:46) Rick: Well again. It I think the reason why they, they would argue today is because they know that it’s, you know, you know, what you find sometimes in emails in the 2000 and early teens, you know, right. You know, silly emails. But me more. Yeah, they are for some reason so cavalier on slack teams and certainly text messages or apps, that they think aren’t going to be discovered.
(00:27:09) Rick: But yeah.
(00:27:10) Courtney: Yeah. So true. So, kind of on your partnership strategy and kind of building these communities to, to make this conference a success, what advice do you have for people who are like developing those strategic partnerships, like what do you look for in a good partnership?
(00:27:28) Rick: Great question. There’s a few things. The first one, I think is, before you look for partners at all, identify your services and software gaps and see what is out there that could fill those gaps. So then the next, next round is look for someone who’s going to be around for a while. Has good a good reputation, all the sort of normal things you would think of, but also then have the meetings and how well are you working together and talking in those meetings?
(00:28:00) Rick: How how is the hate using the words. But you need, you know, five.
(00:28:07) Courtney: Okay.
(00:28:07) Rick: I think that’s better. Oh, yeah. But how is that working? And I think those, those are some of those, those really important elements. And then also have 1 or 2 of that same type, as you’re going through the process like Inc a deal with two different forensic companies, let’s say for us, and work with them.
(00:28:29) Rick: And then over time, you’ll find the one that really, fits, fits better. And because you’ll find that they could say they’re the exact same company or doing the exact same thing, but because they do things a little bit differently, whether it’s nuanced or very overt, you’ll know that as you go through and through those projects together.
(00:28:49) Courtney: Right? Right. And even, like if I’ve always found that with partnerships that even if, like, one element doesn’t work, if you guys have like a good connection, they always come back in some other capacity, especially in the startup world where everyone’s starting a bunch of different businesses and they go on these like crazy, wild, you know, journeys in their career that even if like taking the time to work on that relationship early on, eventually will come back to you.
(00:29:16) Courtney: You know.
(00:29:17) Rick: That’s exactly right. And especially right in my very niche small industry. The week last week for me was a reunion of all of my favorite people. And, and so, people go from company to company and you just never know where you can help them, and they can help you as you sort of navigate your careers together, within this orbit.
(00:29:40) Rick: So I, there are very few, actually, there are probably no, like, competitors that I’m like, right, right, right. So it’s it’s I know those people are going to be moving around. Let’s always keep friendly, good professional relationships. And, you know, so no matter what, if for those are listening, if your industry is large, it’s still probably small in some ways.
(00:30:04) Rick: Yeah. Keep keep the relationship strong or at least cordial. Then most of the year, like me, I would say the biggest strong point you can build is your network. And, being a good person, don’t build a bad reputation, in any form. And.
(00:30:24) Courtney: Yeah, yeah, industry. There really aren’t any bridges that are worth burning in your career. I felt like you can feel so petty and so hurt by something that someone’s done or, you know, some kind of slate that you perceive, but you just got to suck it up.
(00:30:40) Rick: Yeah.
(00:30:41) Courtney: You know, over it. And eventually it might come back to, to be a really good thing for you in the long run. And I, from all the people that I’ve talked to on this podcast that’s come up time and time again where it’s like, oh, this terrible thing happened. But ten years later, something kind of cool came out of it.
(00:30:56) Courtney: And whether it’s from the relationship or, you know, whatever.
(00:30:58) Rick: Like I can give one story. Yeah, I have we have time. I have this guy. I’ll call him Steve. So Steve went to one of my parties in 2007, and it was like this huge party wave software is put it on with a few other partners. And, and it was really great. And, but this guy Steve comes in and he’s like, I was like, oh, who are you with?
(00:31:18) Rick: You know, just being, you know, it was like, I’m with so-and-so and I’m going to take put you out of business. And I’m like, whoa, what? Why have I now had an arch enemy for years? But I’d have friends tell me they’re like, they’re like, no, Steve’s actually a really good guy I don’t like. And I’m like, well, he’s right.
(00:31:35) Rick: It was what he said. It’s like, well, he probably was in a moment of of whatever. Like, yeah, we go now, Steve and I are great friends. We are becoming partners with, with cloud nine and his company. So like, it’s it’s funny, it’s so, I never acted on anything like. But it was just one of those, like.
(00:31:53) Courtney: You’re just like, oh, I have this person.
(00:31:55) Rick: Yeah, yeah. And it’s kind.
(00:31:57) Courtney: Of fun to have a nemesis.
(00:31:58) Rick: At both ends. Yeah, well, but now it’s turning out like, He’s honestly and truly one of the nicest guys in the industry. So it was just, you know, young early days of our careers, right? Right. It’s everything.
(00:32:14) Courtney: Sometimes that’s really funny. Yeah. So, kind of to start wrapping up here, when you think about your career as a whole, you’ve scaled multiple businesses, you’ve gone through an acquisition, you’ve built this really great conference. Are there any, like, lessons that you wish you had learned earlier that would have kind of helped you either accelerate that or make it a less painful process?
(00:32:37) Rick: I would say, across the board, if if you know your partners and who you’re working with, like get to really know them. And, and also have all the agreements and everything you need in place, just make sure it’s all copacetic at the very beginning, you know, because there’s always just this sort of gray area down the road and or it can so just it sounds silly or it sounds like it’s a lot of extra work or like, oh, I trust Gary.
(00:33:07) Rick: Gary is great. But honestly, like, just spend the time to make sure everything’s inked and everything is like all agreed upon from the very beginning, because I’ve talked to so many other folks going through things that I’ve gone through and they’ve said, yeah, I wish I could have done this better with a contract or agreed upon this thing because it sort of, you know, but that that’s probably that’s one of them.
(00:33:29) Rick: And then we’ve really seen that a lot. And that is just like, find your people. Early on and, and that’s your team, right? That’s your core team throughout probably your industry. You’ll lose them along the way. They’ll get out of the industry, or something. Right. But, but just have your group and then continue to add to them, and really just be nice.
(00:33:51) Rick: Be good to keep everybody around you, no matter what position you’re in, no matter how many millions of dollars you’re making, be good to the people around you, and they’ll be. They’ll do the same.
(00:34:01) Courtney: Yeah, I love that. I think, we lose humanity a lot. Within the tech industry. And even, like, with AI coming in, and I think that we lose, we lose it a lot. And I think centering yourself and remembering the relationships, remembering the people is so important. So I’m really glad that you said that, because sometimes I’m like, oh, what are we even doing here?
(00:34:25) Courtney: I also think, when because when you’re talking about, make sure you’re on the same page with people, like, not assuming that your partner wants the same thing that you do. That’s why a lot of times people are so in their own head and they see this vision for their company, and their partner is just like has a slightly different vision.
(00:34:43) Courtney: And that leads to like really hard discussions like later on. So the earlier you do it, the earlier you can either change each other’s mind, which is ideal. So then you’re on the same page or you can say, oh, I that’s not what I want. Like let me find someone who does want what I want. Because when you think about like these types of especially like a co-founder, that person, that partner is I mean, it’s like as close as, like a spouse, like you’re in it every single day with them.
(00:35:13) Courtney: So it is so important. So I, I love that advice too.
(00:35:17) Rick: Yeah. And be a good listener in those conversations. Ask the questions. Extract out as much as you can. Yes be heard, but make it secondarily and hopefully you’re part of the team. But don’t assume that either you have to ask a question and then make sure you’re sort of answering those questions. If they’re not being asked, along the way as well.
(00:35:35) Rick: But yeah, just make sure there’s a clear understanding of, of vision and where you guys want to go with it. Yeah.
(00:35:42) Courtney: Amazing. So what’s next? You’ve got you’re over at cloud nine doing VP of Marketing and Strategic partnerships. You’ve got the Masters conference going. What what are we going to be seeing coming from right clerk in the next couple years.
(00:35:56) Rick: Oh I mean it’s always going to stay within the thought leadership. I love what I’m doing and I love the education part of it. So for me, it will always continue to drive down that path. And then also I think sort of business coaching, if there are other folks along the way who are doing a start up.
(00:36:13) Rick: I’ve never done this before, you know, take some some of those folks every now and then and, help them, avoid as many bumps and bruises and skin needs as possible. Just set them themselves up for, for better successes, as well, because I think, you know, especially in our industry now, people are innovating like crazy.
(00:36:32) Rick: They’re coming up with really neat things. And, you know, going over a year for me without a paycheck was really difficult. Can you do that? Right. So have those, like, for me, having those conversations and educating in that space as well, as the, the thought leadership things within the industry, those are things I’ll be looking, looking to do.
(00:36:51) Courtney: Amazing. Well, I’m really looking forward to that for you. And, and I highly recommend, I think that you’ve got some really great insights and such great experience. Of kind of your journey is such a good one that people can kind of follow and see the ups and downs, mostly ups. You always ended up well, that’s good.
(00:37:12) Courtney: So that’s awesome. Awesome. So, where can people find you online?
(00:37:17) Rick: So LinkedIn, Rick Clark, there’s probably a lot of us out there. But if you do Rick Clark eDiscovery or cloud nine, that’s that’s that’s a great way to reach out to me. And, we’d love to connect and and offer support and ideas of, the type of.
(00:37:33) Courtney: It’s amazing. And we’ll link your, your bio on our, on our site. Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show, Rick. This was really great conversation.
(00:37:41) Rick: Courtney. Thank you so much as well. You’re a great host, and I love, the conversation today. It’s it’s it was really great. I appreciate your time and, and, everything here. So thank you.
(00:37:51) Courtney: My pleasure. And thank you to everyone at home or on the go for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please make sure to subscribe, share with a friend and leave us a review. And if there’s anything you’d like to hear on an upcoming episode, just let us know. For more insights and, and stories, please follow us on LinkedIn or visit right Left agency.com and we’ll be back next time with more stories of success, innovation and marketing strategies to help you grow.
(00:38:16) Courtney: Thank you.
