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Speech Transcript (very little editing so not exact)

Dara! Thank you so much for coming on. Please introduce yourself to the time to shine did a podcast varsity squad, but first, what’s your favorite color, and why?

My favorite color is navy blue row, not quite black, but kind of a deep color kind of like that sapphire that keeps sapphire

blue, like the color of their your letters on the wall that it has

may have something to do with the with the color scheme for the logo.

I love it. And navy blue is kind of like an attorney like kind of like, you know, kind of like the badass attorney, but at the same time, you’re there to serve. I love it. So let’s get an attorney is what I am in my parallel life. Okay, it’s you know, I’m I’m a business coach now. And I actually I’m a coach to quite a few attorneys. But, you know, that’s something that I, if I had to do it again, I would do it 100% I wanted to be an attorney, but I did seven years and in the military and it just got out. I was like I’m gonna do something where I don’t need a degree. You know, they got into the real estate world and then in the coach. So can you give us the roots and kind of like the story up to now?

Yeah, so the roots are a kid who really wanted to be a forensic scientist or a coroner realized that math and science were not my thing. So got pretty quick into debate and those kinds of things. So I knew I would go to law school, came out of law school, went to law school at Emory University in Georgia room at a law school and got a job at a firm that was half insurance defense cases, so hired by insurance companies to defend their insurance and Personal Injury property damage type cases. And the other half of the firm was maritime cargo claims. So stone electronics out of a cargo ship of a cargo ship. We had some pirate cases which were kind of interesting. Lots of like moldy and spoiled fruits and vegetables. That was not my favorite

was there for you to go on site and see these things ever.

I went on site in like ports to see see different things that have happened. I never got to actually go out on the ships and I never met a pirate but I did hear some crazy stories.

But I bet so you wanted to be kind of like the forensic scientists or corner which I mean, in that line of work. Basically you will never run out of business unfortunately Correct. What made that switch though into the into being an attorney?

Math and Science was not my thing. So I, my great grandmother at the time said, Well, I don’t know how many people want to be friends with a woman who touches dead bodies. And that really wasn’t the reason that I got at sort of off of that track. But I just found that, you know, I had much more of an aptitude for writing and reading and researching and those types of things than I was gonna do with with the sciences and the maths.

I love it. I love it. And so you, you went to you worked in Georgia, or I’m sorry, where did you work after you left Emory that that company

in New York, New York, I came back to New York. Yeah. Beautiful in

you. And then now this is like transactional law and litigation that’s kind of far away from that world now. Right? Well, you did before. So let’s get us there.

So real quick. So 911 happens, I lose my job because they lost some clients. Through a series of, you know, hey, I know somebody who knows somebody. There’s this guy, Scott Taylor, who’s hiring. And Scott Taylor is the tea in Rosenbaum and Taylor now. So he hired me 20 plus years ago, and I worked with him at a firm before him actually at a firm for 10 years. We formed this firm at 11 years ago. So the litigation to the transactional really was I spent a lot of time sort of grew up professionally doing insurance, defense. So I met a lot of companies, but a lot of clients were embroiled in lawsuits, and developed a great relationship with them, helping them get through those issues. And they started asking questions about, well, I’m forming a new business, can you do that for me? How did they get stuck in this thing in the first place, I thought my insurance would cover it. You know, I’m having an issue with my business partner. So organically, we started doing more of the business advising business strategy, transactional work, we still do litigate. So love the courtroom, I love that still have a taste for blood there. But I recognize that I think it helps more people, if you can help people avoid it in the first place, or work through it without combat.

I love that if you can actually avoid the kind of so I get to ask a question, which hopefully you’re comfortable answering this, but how did the shingle end up with your name before his

we joke that we say Age before beauty. And Scott actually is 2020 years older than me. So those of us that people who know us think that’s funny. Oh, you know, we joked for years when he was my boss, we joke for years at the Old Firm saying, Well, this was Rosenbaum and Taylor, we wouldn’t have to do this or we this was Rosenbaum and Taylor, we wouldn’t have this issue where we could do things our own way. And it was always called Rosenbaum and Taylor. So that’s sort of how it you know that that was its name once we decided to leave.

But I think that’s really cool. And for him, again, again, please don’t take this wrong. We have a lot of attorneys. And I know that friends are huge egos. Which I want that I want my attorney to have a monster ego right now. But that’s really cool that he, you know that you guys came up with that name, because it flows like Taylor Rosenbaum doesn’t flow like Rosenbaum? Yeah.

And I think also, one of the things we thought of was that, you know, I would be around hopefully, longer than he would be around practicing, because he’s got 20 years on me. Yeah, I sort of made sense for me to go first. But there was no fight about it, no debate about it. It just was okay, we’re going out. There’ll be Rosenbaum and Taylor.

Love it. So when you’re starting to work with clients in one hour, maybe you’re kind of in the discovery period, you know, is kind of coaches to find like kind of a secret sauce to a blind spot. How do you dig to get to facts, with clients that are really not too forthcoming with the information?

I think the first thing is to make them comfortable. So I want to make them understand that I care, I’m not working through a checklist, and I’m not just trying to get to get them off the phone or trying to make them feel bad about something or make them feel stupid and make them feel like they don’t know something or they’ve done something wrong. That’s the probably the first thing. The second thing is to learn the business, you know, to really understand what the business does, how it runs, who the key people are, and where the pain points are, you know, what drives you crazy? What’s what’s annoying about your clients? If you could have more of this type of client, unless it that type of client? What would that look like? If you could have easier cash flow? What would that look like? So if you could have a better relationship with your business, fellow business owners, what would that look like? So there’s lots of pieces to it that I tried to get involved in and try to understand lots of pieces of the business because they all work together. So I don’t want to write a contract in a vacuum or negotiate something in a vacuum or hand them an operating agreement. And we’re telling them that they can go find one online. I want my solutions to be personalized to what they do.

I absolutely love that you sound like a coach. I mean, 100% because, again, I’m not a consultant like I have, like I said three attorneys I coach, they’re pretty high powered. And you know, it’s funny, they forgot more about law than I’ll ever really ever cared about, well, maybe I would care to know because that’s what I always want to do, but that I’ll ever know but a coach is really the person that I’m coaching has the problem inside them or the obstacle but they also have the solution in there. Right? I love that you’re digging deep in not just getting the facts, man, like you’re getting, you know, the the emotion behind the business learning the business that’s been there. That’s frickin awesome. So well, maybe you’re still in a discovery period and making sure you’re the right horse for the course. For the course, I like that one. Yeah. Is there any good question that you wish they would ask you? But never do?

I think that you I mean, anybody seeking to hire any professional, I think should ask questions about people’s experience. And I think you also want to ask enough questions to get a sense of someone’s personality. Because I think that relationship is really important. I mean, there are people who call me and it’s like, Okay, listen, you know, I want to go after this guy I want blood I want it’s like, okay, well, now I know who they want me to be. And I know and I can, I can fulfill that or it wasn’t, I just need to get through this, I need to get through this negotiation, I need this contract. I don’t care what it says, Let’s just try to make it as good as possible. So I think they need to ask enough questions to understand that somebody can meet your needs the way and be for you who you need. There are clients who contact me who need a lot of hand holding, who need more of the cheerleading, you can do this, you got this, this is going great, no problem, that little speed bump, but we got this. There are other people who and I think there are people who would contact an attorney who does not have that in them. Everyone has different skill sets. I mean, I think those that can’t you know, that’s the caricature of the attorney, you know, screaming and yelling and slamming the phone down. Maybe he’s a super nurturing person, maybe a super empathetic person, but maybe not. And I think that you want to be comfortable, you know, you want to be able to pick up the phone, you want to ask a question, you don’t want to feel like, I’m going to be bothering my attorney, or my attorney is going to feel like I should know this already. Or I made a mistake. And I don’t want to share that with the attorney because the attorney is gonna give me a hard time. But

I love that. So that’s beautiful, that you’re like this, like, you’re like a coach, attorney, like you’re there for them. And let me ask how do you as kind of a boutique firm, I’m using that kind of loosely, but more of a boutique firm, how do you handle the competition out there that are maybe kind of headset phone jockeys with 1000 attorneys, like, what do you say maybe that would do differentiate you from them?

I think there’s, there’s, so there’s a place for all of us in the marketplace. But I would say that for that our size, first of all leads to agility. I mean, we can, you know, we can excuse me, we can take on things, it doesn’t require a committee of 12 people to have 11 votes to decide that they’re going to take on something. If this, this partner, and I decide on things pretty, you know, pretty quickly and like it will take the time that sounds good, let’s do this. Yeah, you’re also gonna get me or my business partner involved in every case. So at a place where you have 1000s of attorneys, you’re probably going to have a lot of the work done by somebody who’s Junior and nothing wrong with that we’ve all been junior at some point. But I think that having a partner on file, who you can call in, who knows you and knows your matter very quickly without looking through the file. And you know, I gotta call you back in three hours. I think that should give the clients a lot of confidence. Because, you know, yes, two heads are better than one. So if I have an associate working on the file, and I’m overseeing that associate, that should give the client a lot of confidence that the work is being done, and I’m doing it efficiently. So I’m going to do it at the lowest rate I can, which is having the associate work on things that are appropriate to keep it at the associated rate. But that big picture stuff and bigger decisions, and the overarching strategy is going to be mine. So it’s a cost efficient way of handling things. And it’s a way of I think giving the client a lot of confidence that they have people the right people handling it,

I love it, and you’re they’re getting you, right, it’s like, that’s fantastic. So what then you feel your strengths are?

I think I’ve been told that like that compassion is one of my strengths. I’ve been told that getting that, you know, clients were calling and some people call, they’re in the middle of a crisis, I’m being sued. There’s a court appearance tomorrow, I don’t know what to do, I forgot to get an attorney or I didn’t get an attorney, or I didn’t want to get an attorney or whatever it was. So I have a way of calming things down. And I think that that helps a lot and it helps with my clients. And I listen, I’m willing to hear them scream and yell. But if they you know, once like Okay, let’s get past the emotion of it. Let’s focus on what we need to focus on. And I think the only thing I do is take the temperature down with my adversaries and with you know, with the other side, because we’re not going to accomplish very much yelling at each other and sending threatening letters and nasty emails. Sometimes they’re necessary sometimes that’s just who you have on the other side and you got to play ball with them. But if I can take the temperature down and get things down to like, Okay, let’s look at this objectively, you know, you’re not gonna get everything you want. I’m not gonna get everything I want. How do we come to an agreement and how do we not how do we come to an agreement without having our clients go through? You know, three years of litigation, super costly, super emotional. very stressful. How do we just get to what we think the endpoint is going to be?

Love that I love it? It seems like you appreciate that as well. So tell us maybe a little bit about a weakness that you feel Yeah.

I would say that it’s gonna sound like one of those my weaknesses, I’m too organized. I would say or I’m too perfect. I think the weakness for me is that I get emotionally involved sometimes. So there, because, you know, the way I look at it is, you know, every day of the week, I’m saying words like, you know, trial, subpoena deposition, motion, you know, Default Judgment, bankruptcy, I say this stuff all the time, this one got sued, I’m assuming this person, the clients I’m dealing with, for the most part are not professional litigants. And they’re not comfortable with I got a subpoena, or I have to sue somebody. And the way I look at it as a small business owner, myself, these people don’t want to be in the courtroom, and they don’t want to be the board room yelling about, you know, some legal dispute a business dispute, they want to be out there making money and doing what they do. They want to be providing their service or offering their product. So, you know, I, I feel deeply how important whatever the matter is to them. And I definitely take it home with me, sometimes we’re, you know, I know a client, like I’m working on something with a client today. And I know I spoke to her yesterday, she was really emotional. And she said, I’m not going to sleep tonight, because I want to make sure that I’m giving you every last email and every last piece of paper, and I’m going to just be stressed about it. Right. So you don’t let me do my job. Let me let me do the response, then you can take a look at it. I don’t want you working through this through the night because it’s gonna drive me crazy. And we’re gonna have to sit down and go through everything anyway. So let me take all the information you provided to me, let me put together just the discovery responses. Let me take that off your head. So you know it. I think my weakness probably is that it bothers me when my clients are, you know, really preoccupied or kind of haunted by an issue they’re dealing with.

I love that you’re transparent about that. And that means you frickin are human. Hello. Beautiful, beautiful. So, have you seen the movie Back to the Future era? Sure, of course. Okay, let’s get the DeLorean with Marty McFly. Okay, let’s go back to the double Deuce the 22 year old Dara. Okay, what kind of knowledge nuggets? Would you drop at her not to change anything because you’re living a fun journey, right? But maybe shorten the learning curve, maybe blast her level up maybe just a little bit quicker?

I would say that I would give her more liberal confidence. And a little bit more self assuredness. I think you know, for the most part, you probably hear this from other people. You don’t learn how to be a lawyer in law school, you learn how to think like a lawyer, you learn some basics. But I mean, I went to school in Georgia, I didn’t learn anything about New York law until I started studying for the bar. And I think that I didn’t, for the first several years of my career, really appreciate the other skills that I was bringing to my practice that weren’t just necessarily, you know, the law and how to apply the law. And I think that’s, I think that’s what made me different, ultimately, was that I understood that, you know, my people skills were important, and that my communication skills were important. And my problem solving skills were important. But in those early years, it felt very much like, you know, I have to be a master of all the legal principles, and I have to be able to, you know, know the case off the top of my head, and men make that perfect argument. And that’s certainly all important stuff. But I didn’t realize how much the soft skills were going to really kind of make my career for me.

That’s great. I’ve never heard an attorney say soft skills, but it makes all the difference, I think. Beautiful. So how do you want your dash remember that you know, that little line between your incarnation that your explanation that you lifting W hopefully is way down the road? Yep, there but how do you want your dash remember?

I would say that I want it I certainly want to be remembered for for helping people. I think you know, I that’s what I that’s why it’s not really I will be honest. It’s not why I became a lawyer became a lawyer because I like the reading and writing and I thought I wanted to argue things in court. And I still love trying cases. But I came to a point where you know, helping people to me, it’s just so rewarding. So personal professional. One of the reasons I started the podcast was I love connecting people. So I love you know, I always refer to it kind of as that little memory game where you turn over the card. It’s like I found a strawberry. Where’s the other strawberry? Right? Yeah, I want to find the person who needs to meet the other person. And I do that a lot. But you know, I can spend my I can spend my whole day doing that, because I’ve met a lot of people I’m blessed, and a lot of people who I think would be great, you know, great meats for other people. eautiful I started the podcast, but I figure it’s a shortcut. You know, I get to be on the podcast, and I can get their message and their story and their information out to a whole bunch of people without making all those individual referrals. So I would say I want to be remembered as you know, whether it’s you know, as a mother, as a wife, as a sister or friend, daughter, as somebody who helped people

and authentic and personal and that’s fantastic. So then what would Let me ask you this, what do you think then? People misunderstand the most about their

I was told by a very dear friend years ago that I don’t make a good first impression, really. I think that you know, it, it takes a few minutes to get to know me. And it doesn’t take a few years, it takes really just a few minutes. I think that, you know, a lot of people, it’s not just me, a lot of people are judged by the outside. I remember walking on it when I was working for different for I remember walking onto a construction site and meeting my client. And he grabbed my hand and said, I’m about I’m about to talk construction with a woman with a French manicure. And I said to him, you know, and I said, I use this a lot. It’s a gem. I like being underestimated. It gives me the advantage. And I do use that. But I think I think that, you know, there are not that many Oh, comparatively, there’s certainly many women trailers, the comparatively they’re not as many, right, I think the reputation from TV and all that kind of stuff than that. Some attorneys are there many attorneys get in many female attorneys get is, you know, real tough as nails, you know, nasty, difficult to talk to super aggressive. I have all that in me. I mean, I’ll, I’ll take a fight. And I’ll end it. It’s, it’s all good for me. But I don’t know, that’s sort of the that’s not the part that I wanted to play all the time.

Well know that at least you’re transparent about that. And, you know, it’s funny, because the East Coast, you know, from the Midwest, where and again, I’m six one up to six and pretty well put together. And like if I meet somebody, I’m like, Hey, I give them the big Fergie hug. Right? Yeah. And like I’ve learned when I moved down here, the east coast of Florida that people from the eastern seaboard don’t like that effort. Effort. Like you said, it doesn’t take years to get to know somebody. Right, right. But then I started I do a deep dive on pretty much anything that that triggers me or not triggers me, but then I get very interested in, found out that up there a lot of people they live on top of each other. And what’s so important to them is space. Yeah. So once I started meeting them, and just shaking hand and doing business or you know, meeting them at parties, or whatever it was that then next thing you’re like, 30 and they’re hugging me, so it was like at first I thought man, there’s so frickin me. I don’t think like me, you know, but they’re not and so I’m glad that I was humble enough in my own little way to do that deep dive on it. So yeah, what is Darras definition of a life well lived.

I think I’m gonna I’m gonna go with freedom as a word. I like you know, I think that a life well lived looking back for be you know, I was able to do what I wanted the way I wanted to do it, you know, and just kind of live my life as as happily as possible. I love it. I love it. That’s it to my way.

Beautiful. Todd decide today. Podcasts versus squad. This is Scott Ferguson. We are back with my good friend Rockstar. Humble yet. Killer. Yeah, Rosenbaum and Dara, you and I are doing we might meet one day and we sit down and maybe break some bread have a bed and we could probably talk 1520 minutes on one of the each one of these questions but we then are leveling up lightning round. You have five seconds with no explanations. You’re ready to go. Okay, yeah. What’s the best leveling up advice you’ve ever received? Be yourself. Sure one of your personal habits that contributes to your success. Self Care. Beautiful. You see me walking down the street and you’re like, Yeah, Fergie. Looks like he’s a little bit in his doldrums. What book might you hand me?

That’s a good question. I will I will look back at my hand. Look at my back of my bookshelf. I’m gonna go with the road to success.

Beautiful. Beautiful. What’s your most commonly used emoji when your text finally face? Beautiful nicknames growing up?

None. My parents intentionally gave me a short name that they didn’t think could be nicknamed easily.

Just checkers, a monopoly. Monopoly eautiful favorite portrayal of any attorney on the big screen or small screen? I liked the good wife. Okay, very cool. Go to ice cream flavor. Becky red. Oh, sorry. There’s a sandwich called the Darrow Rosie. Build that sandwich for me.

gluten free bread because I’m a celiac. And I’d probably go with you know, grilled chicken, lettuce, tomato, kind of simple,

beautiful, favorite charity and organizational aid to give your time or money to.

I will tell you that very timely. National Ovarian Cancer Coalition.

Thank you. Thank you for saying that. And last question. You can elaborate on this one a little bit. But what’s the best decade of music 60s 70s 80s or 90s?

I mean, 80s girl, girly. Okay. Yeah. I would say eight And 90s But you know this I am a lyrics person and I can still sing along to most of the things I’ve heard from the 80s

Oh my god, it’s so true. It’s like, I graduated 9090 So I just turned 50 But it’s like that whole 10 years you had, you know, the big hair don’t care. You had the start of rap with the Beastie Boys and Run DMC, you had the, you know, invasions from you, too. And Duran Duran, and now they’re using these days are using hooks from their songs. Yeah, people uses like, Take on me, you know, buy in, like one of his it’s like all of them have the hooks from the 80s. It’s why the ad is I would go back in anytime. So yep, there, how can we find you, my friend.

I’m on LinkedIn all the time. So just my name on LinkedIn, and our website is Rosenbaum taylor.com. No, and, and I’m always happy to hear from people, always happy to even if it’s not something that I can work on, or work with you on. Always happy to find somebody and refer you to somebody or just to kind of give you a few minutes of my time to talk about, you know, where I think you might want to look for resources.

Would you be in a connector? Dara? Do you have attorneys and other states that like let’s say someone lived somewhere that you might be able to connect them with? Absolutely. Very cool, very cool. If give me one last solid and leave us with one last Knowledge Nugget we can take with us internalize and take action.

I would say gosh, there are so many I can try. I would say find a community find your people. And that’s gonna be your it doesn’t have to be the community you live in. It is a community of people who you know, like and trust and that sort of, you know, kind of cliche, but people who you know, you can count on, you need that stable of professionals who you can count on, you need people who have are running a similar business who you can ask questions of, because, yes, their competition in some cases, but you know, there’s plenty of work for everybody generally, and plenty of you know, plenty of customers for everybody. And also find the people who have had a journey like yours or at the stage of business that you’re at, because they are going to be a tremendous wealth of knowledge for you and you and you for them, of you know, things they would think they did right things they did wrong and things they found challenging and things they would do differently next time.

I love that and we just had like, I didn’t know how this was gonna go squad. But it was kind of a free masterclass on how to live life good, but still be driven. I love that she just mentioned kind of what we call our plus equals minus, where every day you know, my clients and people that I coach, they have to find someone that’s where they want to be and learn from them, find someone equal to them and trade with them, and find someone not minus to them, but that they want to get to where you’re at and help them. And I know that my good friend, Dara does that, you know, she wanted to be a forensic scientist in a corner. But math and science were her thing. So she parlayed into being an attorney, which she’s a rock star, and she’s big on making the client comfortable. She doesn’t have a checklist, she really listens and understands their business pain points. And she asked what would it look like if this pain was resolved, and I love it that she doesn’t go into every, we’ll call it a transaction, being combative, it’s got to get there, she can, she can knock a lot, but she would rather do it. Without that, you know, she wants you to when you’re starting to work with an attorney, to ask about their experience their lineage, see if the personalities match, make sure that the right horse for the course make sure they’re gonna meet your needs, and be who you need. You the client needs to make sure that they are you know, she has a little bit of a smaller firm, but in other smaller firms out there that are looking to grow. Remember, you have the agility, and the more time to give personal service, which will build the client’s confidence. You know, she believes that compassion is a strength. So we’re keeping calm to get past emotions, and focus on what needs to be done. You know, when she was younger, and she’s telling this to even if you’re just in a transition to build your confidence, and if you’re trying to learn something like my good friend Leah Woodford says Get your asking here, ask people people will share with you remember, communication is super, super important in anything in life. You know, she’s gonna remember to some of this authentic and help people not just personally and professionally, but she’s literally kind of planting trees. She’s never going to sit in the shade because she’s a different kind of attorney that’s out there. You know, she wants to live a life where she has freedom to express. You know, just like Frankie said he did it his way. And that’s what she wants for you. And first off, and lastly, find a community member. Your vibe attracts your tribe, your vibe and good you’re going to attract those people. That’s how I attract Dara, is that we both vibe on a really high level and Dara levels up her health. She levels up her well. She’s humble hungry. She’s our diversity letter here at time to shine today. Thank you so much for coming out there. I absolutely love your guts. Thank you so much. This was terrific. Yeah, I’ll talk soon. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode of time. The shine today podcast proudly brought to you by Southern New Jersey real estate real estate excellence who can be reached at 561-249-7266 and online at www dot Sutter in nugent.com. If you’re a business owner or professional who would like to be interviewed on top to shine today, please visit time to shine to date.com Flash guest. If you liked this episode, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts. There’s a link in the show notes to our website. Also there you will see a recommended resources. We hope that you will support our show by supporting them. If you like where you’ve been listening to it’d be great if you could just give us a five star rating and tell your friends how to subscribe while you’re at it. I’m your host Scott Ferguson. And until next time, let’s level up it’s our time to shine

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