Luis Scott is the Managing Partner at Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, where he represents people who have been injured or disabled in severe accidents. He is also the Owner of 8 Figure Firm, which provides consulting services and insider knowledge to national law firms. As Bader Scott’s managing attorney, he handles over 150 employees and contractors and has led the firm to be recognized by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as one of the fastest-growing businesses in Georgia.
Luis has received numerous awards and accolades, including Super Lawyers’ “Rising Star,” The National Trial Lawyers Association’s “Top 40 Lawyers Under 40,” and the American Institute of Legal Counsel’s “10 Best Attorneys in 2017” for workers’ compensation.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How Luis Scott’s mentor helped him embrace learning
- The importance of personal development
- What is the critical component of leading a fulfilling life?
- Seven ways reading can transform your life
In this episode…
If you want to grow your business exponentially, you must develop and transform yourself first. Reading is an excellent way to do this, but many so-called gurus reject this form of learning in favor of practical experience. Yet a lack of conventional education limits personal and professional growth opportunities, and reading can reshape your life.
Luis Scott challenges entrepreneurs to read 52 books in 52 weeks. While this may seem excessive, Luis says reading enhances several areas of your life. This personal development method cultivates self-discipline, strengthens your vocabulary to improve communication, builds an ambitious mindset, helps you acquire new perspectives, and increases self-worth. Reading memoirs and self-help books from experts with a wealth of experience also allows you to gain valuable mentorships.
In today’s episode of The Guts and Glory Show, Luis Scott talks about how to transform your life and business in one simple step. He also discusses the critical component to leading a prosperous life, the value of personal development, and how his college mentor helped him embrace reading.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Luis Scott’s Website | LinkedIn
- 8 Figure Firm
- Bader Scott Injury Lawyers
- The Book of Eli
- Abundance Now: Amplify Your Life & Achieve Prosperity Today by Lisa Nichols and Janet Switzer
- The 8 Figure Firm: Nine Proven Principles to Achieve Exponential Growth by Luis Raul Scott, Jr
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by 8 Figure Firm.
Co-founded by Luis Scott and Seth Bader of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, 8 Figure Firm helps transform your law firm into a seven-figure or even eight-figure firm.
After their own law firm scaled from $3.5 million to $30 million in annual revenue in just two years, Luis and Seth started 8 Figure Firm to share their strategies and help other law firms achieve exponential growth.
Visit www.8figurefirm.com to receive a consult call and start scaling your business today.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:01
Get ready to be amazed. Get ready to be transformed. Get ready to believe it is possible. You’re entering the growth zone on The Guts and Glory Show with your host, Luis Scott.
Luis Scott 0:23
Right, everyone, welcome to The Guts and Glory Show. So glad you are here. My name is Luis, I’m your host. And I’m excited to bring to you this topic. And it’s a topic that is really near and dear to my heart. And I get a lot of pushback on this. Because there are a lot of gurus out there who don’t believe in this particular type of method for growing yourself or for developing yourself or building a business. And I believe it’s the single greatest thing that you can absolutely do to transform your life, the single greatest thing that you can do to transform your financial life, your personal life, your relational life. And I get why people say that it’s not it’s not effective, because at the end of the day to really create transformation in your life, you have to take action, there’s no doubt about that. And I don’t want to diminish this, this concept of taking action taking action is required. I remember a friend of mine, or he was an acquaintance at the time, now used to always say, you know, God can’t move a part card. Now, obviously, he was saying that. And just because if you believe in the power and the sovereignty of God, then you know, he’s, he would be able to move a parked car. But I think what he was saying is that it requires us getting on the road and taking some action and doing something. So I don’t want to say that what I’m going to suggest replaces taking action. But sometimes there’s a necessary step that’s missing to take action. I know that was the case for me. And I know that’s the case for a lot of people. And sometimes we need that catalyst to get us to take action. And I believe we do a disservice to people, when we tell them that they shouldn’t do self develop or develop themselves professionally. Because what we’re doing is we’re diminishing the opportunity for the person to become who they were created to be. And so that’s it today, I want to talk about something that’s particularly important to me. And I believe that it can absolutely change your life. And so if you’re listening this morning, or today, or whenever you’re listening to this talk, I want you to ask yourself the question, do I want the best that life has to offer? If the answer to that question is yes, then you should be willing to do everything you possibly can to ensure that that actually takes place. And for different people, it’s going to be different things. But I think that if you do what I’m going to suggest today, your life will be completely trance formed, completely transformed in a way that that I can’t even describe to you, you have no idea, the future that you can have, if you do what I’m going to suggest today. Now, how did I come up with this? This concept or this idea? And before I get into the what I believe are the seven things that that will happen? If you do the challenge that I’m going to suggest but how did I come up with this idea? It takes me back to about 2002 I believe I was in college, and or maybe it was 2004. But I met a mentor. And I felt very fond of this mentor thought he was an incredible human being he was he was everything that I thought that I wanted to be successful business owner, he was liked by people. For me, it was important he was he was a man of God in a great relationship with his spouse. And I thought to myself, Man, this guy is the coolest guy I’ve ever met in my life. Like I want to be like this guy. And I remember taking a ride with him. He took me to a business meeting once I was a young young kid and he wanted to show me what it was like to lead people. And he took me to a business conference or to a meeting. And I remember him telling me that Leaders are readers. And I thought to myself, Leaders are readers. Okay, I hate reading. This is the reason why I got want to get out of school. I hate reading. He said Leaders are readers and he says that we are slaves because we refuse to educate ourselves. And it reminded me of a story that I heard that back in the in the times of slavery. One of the things that many slaves were were were not permitted to do was to learn how to read. They were not permitted to learn how to read. They were not permitted to educate themselves because it is the lack of education that keeps us confined. It is the lack of education that keeps us from growing and developing ourselves to becoming who we were meant to be. I love the movie The Book of Eli, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that that movie but the Book of Eli Denzel Washington, one of my favorite actors, he portrays a guy who’s guarding a book and the entire time In this this evil guy, he wants access to this book, he wants the book. And in in that movie, there’s a line where he says that, once I have this book, people will follow me. When I, when I, when I get the contents of this book, people will follow me. And I will be able to control and exercise power over people. And that was the book that Denzel Washington in that movie was, was protecting. And so there is a tremendous amount of power in in books and in reading, and you’re going to hear gurus out there, they’re going to say things like, and hopefully you don’t, you don’t turn the dial. Because at the end of this, I’m going to share what happens when you start reading. But there are gurus out there who say you don’t have to read, you have to take action, you don’t have to read you know, and they’re the same one selling books, and selling courses, and getting you to listen to their their speeches and an income to their conferences. But somehow you don’t have to read. And what people don’t realize is there’s no difference between writing and thinking. And if there’s no difference between writing and thinking, then there’s no difference between speaking and reading. Now, I’m gonna say that, again, if there’s no difference between writing, and speaking, and thinking, excuse me, if there’s no difference in writing and thinking, then there’s no difference between reading and speaking, okay. And the reason I say that is because if you can think about it, and you can write about it, and you can read about it, then you can speak about it. So think about this train, again, if you can think about it, and you can write about it, then then you can read about it, and you can speak about it. And so our enhanced professional, and emotional and mental maturity happens when we are capable of thinking at a higher level. And I believe that when you look at some of the most enslaved people, because we still have people who are shackled in our society, they tend to be people who have not developed themselves not now you can develop yourself in multiple ways. But they have not developed themselves. And so I believe if you want to break free from that, when I think about the story of my dad, and if you’ve heard some of my, my speeches and podcasts, you know that I have a great appreciation and admiration for my dad who out of poverty rose up, and he rose up through education, no, did he ever become rich, no. But he became an enriched enough to share that information with us, so that we could become rich. And I believe my family and among the siblings that that I have in my children will be better off because of the sacrifice that he made in educating himself. And so I believe there is tremendous power in reading, and the promise that I’m going to give you. And this is what I call the Luis Scott guarantee, if you do the challenge at the end of this, at the end of this podcast, within 18 to 36 months, your entire life will be transformed. I believe that you you can double, maybe even triple your income in that time period. And I’ve seen it happen over and over and over and over again. It’s even happened in my own life. And the first time that I did this was back in 2008. And I doubled my income at the time. And then I did it again in 2017. And I doubled my income again. And I’m in the process of doing it right now. And I’m already seeing the fruits of that materialize in my life. And so I want to read you something. There’s a book called abundance now by Lisa Nichols. And she talks about there’s four E’s on your path to an abundant future. And the first E is enrichment of your whole self. And I want to read a quote and then I’m going to read a little passage on the first page of this. And it says that self development is a greater commitment and a greater requirement than self sacrifice. self development is a greater commitment and a greater requirement than self sacrifice. And I think what happens is that most people don’t self develop, because the commitment to self developing is so strong. It’s it’s such a difficult commitment, whether you go into the gym, or you’re trying to enhance your personal professional life or even your financial development. Developing yourself is absolutely ruling it requires a tremendous amount of patience. It requires a tremendous amount of perseverance, and ultimately, the word of the year for me perspective, it requires a tremendous amount of perspective. And so I think that the reason that people don’t self develop is because they’re not willing to spend the amount of time that it takes to become who they were created to be. They’re not willing to engage in the purpose perseverance that is required. And so if you are right now in a place where you don’t want to be, you’re not making the money that you want to make. You don’t have the life that you want to have. You don’t have the relationships that you want. You don’t have the job that you want. You don’t have the business that you want. You’re not achieving like you want the question you have to ask yourself as Who do I have to become? To access those very things that I currently don’t have? What are the limitations that I have in my life? And where are they being created? Or how were they created? And then how can I overcome those things? So who do I have to become? And how can I overcome those things? And many times, what you’re going to find is that a lot of the answers to those questions is found in a book is found in the very place that many times we reject, which is the getting the education that we need. Now, in this in this chapter, it says, What’s the most critical ingredient to living an abundant life? That was a question? It’s your mindset, the knowing, that enables you to push past limiting beliefs, take on new opportunities with confidence, and succeed in getting what you want. So what’s the most critical ingredient, it’s your mindset, it’s knowing this knowing precedes your ability to succeed and paves the way for you to enjoy abundance in every area of your life, not just financially. And it’s this knowing that you need to develop, to live an abundant life, you’re gonna have to take responsibility for your thoughts, your actions, and most importantly, your reactions to what life throws at you. And I think this is so, so true. If you don’t enrich yourself, it’s very, very difficult for you to become who you were created to become. And many of us are living way beyond beneath, way beneath our capabilities way beneath our abilities. We just don’t even know the limits of our abilities, because we’re not willing to engage in the process of becoming who we were created to be. And I decided 20 years ago that that that wasn’t going to be me, and I want you to know, it’s been tough. It’s been very, very tough. For me, it’s been tough for me physically, many sleepless nights, many nights of anxiety. And when I say anxiety, it’s interesting cuz I never thought I had anxiety. Until I realized I couldn’t fall asleep. Every single night, I had insomnia really mad. And I was being driven by my anxiety, I just thought didn’t have anxiety, because I didn’t feel anxious. So because I didn’t feel anxious. I didn’t realize I had anxiety. But sleepless nights took a toll on me physically, I ended up gaining like 4050 pounds. And that 4050 pounds. It’s not a good look on someone who’s 510. And so it took a toll on me, emotionally. Not living up to who I was created to be. I was emotionally drained. I felt like I was on the economic treadmill of life, it took a toll on me financially, it took a toll on me relationally as many of you know, I was previously divorced many years ago, it took an absolute toll on my life relationally. And it took a toll on me mentally, I began to believe that I wasn’t worthy, that I wasn’t capable that I wasn’t going to live up to the life that I wanted to live. And that’s not what I want for you. And if you feel that way, right now, if you’re having trouble sleeping, if you’re emotionally drained, if you’re relationally drained, you’re financially drained. If you are mentally drained, I want you to know that there is a power that you can access. There is a place where you can go that you can completely transform your life for the better. And it’s all within your control.
Intro 13:13
This show has been brought to you by 8 Figure Firm Consulting at 8 Figure Firm, we help law firms turn into law businesses. Stop wasting your time with gurus who’ve never built a successful business at 8 Figure Firm will show you how to unleash the power of your law firm for personal and financial freedom. For more information, go to 8figurefirm.com. Welcome back to The Guts and Glory Show with your host, Luis Scott.
Luis Scott 13:48
When can stop you from accessing this at least today, there’s not any, there’s not any crime or restriction against reading. And so what I want to share with you is the power of reading and how it can change your life, how it can transform everything about you. And I want you to put aside what these gurus tell you about you don’t have to read, all you have to do is take action. Because if all you had to do was take action, then everybody would just take action. But there is sometimes a problem in your in your mental state that that does not allow you to take action. And so reading can be the thing that unlocks that shackle for you that unlocks that barrier for you that unlocks that moment for you mentally and emotionally. That’s what it did for me. It absolutely transformed my life. So the challenge that I give people it’s the 52 and 52 which is read 52 books and 52 weeks. I know there’s people out there who are saying this is absolute BS. I get it people are going to put it in the comments people are probably going to give me a one star because of this but I want you to hear me out. Just listen to this whole thing. There’s seven things that I believe read He is going to do whether you do the 52 and 52, or you read one book, a month or you listen to an audio, I believe that the first thing that reading does is it helps you build personal discipline, it is hard to sit in a room, free of distractions, and open a book and read it when all you want to do is be on your phone, or watch a movie, or hang out with friends, or go to the lake, go to the pool, go on vacation. It is hard to to, to stop yourself from doing the fun things in life. But here’s the interesting thing about about life. And that is the best things in life come from this doctrine of sacrifice. Now, what’s interesting about sacrifice is that sacrifice is a very interesting concept. If you think about it, I mean, I don’t think any other animal on the planet sacrifices anything, they don’t think about the future you don’t see dogs or cats or horses thinking about their 401 K and their retirement. They just live every single day. There’s no There’s no planning for the future, you don’t see a group of, of chimpanzees planning for the future, and saying, How do I store up for the last 10 years of my life. We’re the only humans that do that. The doctrine of sacrifices is the concept that, that you will give up just today what you want, so that you can have in the future what you need. And when you read, that’s what you’re doing, you’re giving up today, what you want, which is the leisure time, the free time, which is the relaxing time for the future of your life, what you need in the future, which is to be personally developed, and to be the person that you were created to be. And so I think that reading creates a tremendous amount of self discipline, a personal discipline. I started getting up early in the morning, around five o’clock in the morning, which is what I recommend, so it doesn’t interrupt your day. And I would just read 10 minutes, and then it went to 11 minutes and 12 minutes and 13 Finally to 30 minutes, which is where I’ve pretty much capped out every 30 minutes in the morning and just get it out of the way. It’s part of my routine i i walked downstairs, I go get a cup of coffee, drink it black, just to give her the give the energy, I don’t put any sugar in it, I just drink it black. Sometimes I put some collagen. And then I walked down into into my reading room, I open a book and I just start reading. And I do it for 30 minutes, no phone, no distraction, no noise, just me in the book, trying to create personal discipline, trying to learn something new. So the first thing that that reading does for us it, it creates a personal discipline. The second thing that reading does for you is it enhances your vocabulary. And there is a tremendous amount of power in vocabulary. We know this because many employers reject people when they speak without proper vocabulary prop when they don’t speak properly. Now, this may be offensive to some of you. This may be offensive to you listening to it. And you’re in you saying that that’s wrong. That’s discrimination. And it could be and I’m not here to argue whether it’s discrimination or not. But people who speak more eloquently tend to have better opportunities in society, it’s just a fact. And you can you can argue that if you want to the purpose of this is not to argue whether that’s true or not. The purpose is just to demonstrate that reading enhances your vocabulary, it’s going to it’s going to allow you to speak more eloquently, it’s going to allow you to communicate better, it’s going to allow you to have to be interesting, it’s going to allow you to have things to talk about when you’re out in public. Now, for some of you you may be what do they call that personality type of sandwich, or maybe you’re a super outgoing person. And you don’t need to help you with your vocabulary. And that’s perfectly fine. There’s seven things that the reading is going to do and one of you may not need all of them. But to the extent that you need to enhance your vocabulary, and you need to be better speak, as you know, speaking out in public reading can absolutely do that it gives you new thoughts and and ideas that can help you enhance your vocabulary. The third thing that reading does, it gives you new ideas. You know, it’s funny, because several years ago, I used to pray, I’d be like God, why don’t you give me the index Facebook idea. And I would I would jokingly say if I could just get a new idea that I would be able to become super wealthy, etc. I think many of us have thought, why didn’t I think of that? Or why didn’t I come up with that? Reading helps you develop new ideas. Reading helps you come up with ideas you could have never thought about because it starts connecting the dots of ideas. And what I didn’t know 20 years ago when I started reading is that in 2020, I would start a consulting business. And I would write three books that would set the entire framework for helping law firms develop themselves year over year and help people individualised people become financially independent. Because of what I was reading. I didn’t know that into 2004 2005 2008 2017 I had no idea. In fact, the idea for writing this book, the first book, which was the The 8 Figure Law Firm: The Nine Principles to Achieving Exponential Growth, and then ultimately the king of growth. And now, several other books that I’ve written partnerships suck. I’m releasing a leadership book in January of 2024. The genesis of that was the amount of reading that I was doing, and the desire to take what I was learning and put it into a framework that benefited the people that I was consulting. And those ideas came from reading. And so reading allows you to enhance new ideas. The fourth thing is a develops mindset, the proper mindset. I don’t know about you, I’ve struggled with my mindset. If you’ve ever heard of this concept of imposter syndrome, I felt it. Just being totally honest and transparent. I have felt as an impostor, I felt like, nobody’s gonna listen to my podcast. Nobody wants to read my books, nobody wants to hire me for consulting, nobody wants to hire me to be their lawyer. It’s been a total mindset. Issue, like I’ve had to fight this mindset, and reading the stories of other people reading the stories of people who had gone before me and who had failed miserably, but somehow rose from the ashes to become this great success story. Gave me a better mindset, it helped me understand that what I was going through, was overcome, of why I heard something this morning on the way in to the office, and it was that real problems can be overcome imaginary ones cannot. And a lot of times we’re facing imaginary problems, and maybe just reading would help us unlock that imaginary problem and turn our internal perspective into something different. And so I believe that that Reading helps your mindset. Reading also helps you gain mentorship. This is a question that I get when I’m on podcasts as a guest or a speaking engagement. A lot of people ask the question, how do you find a mentor? That’s very difficult. Mentors are very, very busy. And I’ve had people come to me and say, can I ask me if I can mentor them. And I’d love to mentor them, I would love to work with them, and help them but it’s very, very challenging, because you’re so busy. You know, mentorship requires a tremendous commitment to the person and the person to you. And so in the past, I’ve just shied away from mentorship, because it was just too taxing on me, and, and not not beneficial enough for them. But when you read, when you read, you get to get mentorship from people you don’t even know, you get to hear the thoughts and the ideas of people you would never meet. Or people who you would never get into their inner circle, even if you met them give you a story of one of my mentors. He doesn’t know this Gary Vee. He’s a mentor of mine. And he doesn’t know this because we’ve met one time and I took a picture with him. But he doesn’t have time to mentor me. He doesn’t have time to work with me. So where do I get the mentorship from his books, I read all his books. I read them multiple times. And in those readings, I get inside his head. I get inside his ideology, I get inside his philosophy. And he begins to mentor me through the books. That’s the power of reading. So for those of those gurus out there who are saying no, no, you don’t you don’t you don’t need to read. But yet they’re speaking on stages. And speaking is the equivalent of taking words that you could write. It doesn’t make any logical sense when people say that, because when you think about the concept of, of reading, reading is writing the words of someone who thought them. And if you can write the words from a thought, then you can read the words and speak them. And you can speak life into them. So reading is the is the the essence of mentorship, it’s the essence of hearing a speech, if you were deaf, the only way you could hear is through reading. So this idea that reading doesn’t do anything. He’s just not logical. And so reading allows for you to have mentorship. Reading, allows you to have perspective. And this is this is my word for the year. I mentioned this a second ago, but we are so low on perspective. I’m so low on perspective, I should do this introspectively if you’re out there, you probably do not understand or have the proper perspective about your life. And how do I know this is because many of you listening do not realize that you hit the birth lottery. If you’re in the United States, or anywhere in the West, even even if you’re in Europe, if you’re in the United States, it doesn’t matter how into what family you were born in. You hit the birth lottery there are people that are in other countries dying, literally dying to get into this country. And reading allows you to gain that perspective when I read about the atrocities that people have suffered around the world, when they were the atrocities that people have suffered in Latin America, and Europe and Russia, in Germany back in the 100 years ago during the world wars, and I realized that I learned and I educate myself, that we are so blessed to be here. When I realize that and gain that perspective, it changes everything about me, it changes the way that I look at my problems and my complaints and my issues. And my worries, the perspective that we have developed is that we are blessed to be here. And that has come through reading, reading and understanding the way that life is. And so reading can do that it can develop new perspective, and I’m always looking for a better perspective in life. And the last thing that I think reading does is that it builds your belief. I was a kid that just didn’t have a lot of belief in myself. People had told me before I was not going to achieve, I wasn’t gonna be successful in sports, or, you know, to some extent, I just didn’t think I was that smart, being being totally transparent and vulnerable today. But this helped build my belief. This helped build me in a way that I could have never been built any other way. Because it allowed me to go into my private space, and listen to the words or read the words, but listen them in my mind, and read the words and digest them and begin to believe just a little bit more. I began to believe in my abilities, I began to believe that it was possible I began to believe that I was worth it. I began to believe that I could achieve it, I began to believe that people that I had something to say and that people wanted to hear what I had to say. Sure there’s going to be people who are negative. You know, I always tell this joke about the song despacito this pesetas? Was the was a worldwide hit, I mean, billion views. At one point it was being played 10,000 times a day around the world. A billion views, billions and billions of views. And I remember at one time that there was like 100,000 people who gave it a thumbs down on YouTube, I don’t know what the number is now. They YouTube took down a lot of these thumbs downs, options. 100,000 People said, Nope, no good. Not a good song. No bueno. Right. And this is one of the one of the greatest sensations of they’re going to be negative people. And life has a way of tearing us down and taking away the good that we feel in our own life. And reading allows you to build up that belief to enhance your life that in the midst of these problems and trials, you can actually grow up and be something. And so that’s what reading did for me. It develops something new in me, it made me a totally different person, it made me the confident person that I am today. It made me the person that is able to walk into any room, have no anxiety, no stress, and shake anyone’s hand and be totally confident in my skin, knowing that I’m worth it, that I’m capable, that I’m worthy of people like me, and that people want to hear what I have to say. And it was all because of reading. And so I want to challenge you today. I want to challenge you today. Maybe you don’t want to read 52 books in 52 weeks, maybe you think that that’s outrageous. Maybe you think that it’s too much or you’re not capable, start somewhere, start reading five pages a day, read 10 pages a day, read five minutes a day, read 10 minutes a day, do something to enhance or enrich yourself, as Lisa Nichols says, To enrich yourself, so that you can become the person and the professional that you were created to be. And if you do this, you’re going to develop a mindset, a perspective, a belief, new ideas, better vocabulary, you’re going to be mentored and you’re going to develop a discipline that no one will be able to take away from you. And I believe that an 18 to 36 months, you can absolutely double your income if you take these steps. And the only thing that’s stopping you is your personal discipline. That’s the only thing that’s stopping. So go forward. Make sure that you’re enriching yourself that you’re building yourself up. And if you do this, the best is yet to come.
Outro 29:30
You’ve been listening to The Guts and Glory Show for more. And to learn more about Luis hit the website at LuisScottjr.com for consulting opportunities 8figurefirm.com. That’s the number 8figurefirm.com We hope you’ve enjoyed the show. Make sure to like rate and review and we’ll see you next time on The Guts and Glory Show.
