Entrepreneur Perspectives – Guest: Blake Harris – Company: Blake Harris Law – Host: Eric Kasimov

[00:00–00:02:00]

Blake shares the pivotal moment he chose to go all-in on offshore trusts—despite it only making up 25% of his revenue at the time. This decision changed everything.

[00:00:00] Blake: I just took a day, had an aha moment, and realized, although offshore trust only compromised maybe 25% of our overall revenue. If I don’t ever go exclusively into this area, I’m never gonna have this area blow up, and I’m never going to reach the level of wealth that I want doing basic estate planning.

[00:00:32] Eric: Entrepreneur Perspectives is produced by Quiet Loud Studios, a production company and content network. Learn more@quietloudstudios.com. We’re just have a conversation. It’s kinda like we’re doing right now. And I love that idea of like people coming in. So like one of the things I was thinking about when you think about attorneys, right?

[00:00:48] Eric: That you got this law firm and you’re sitting, you got the mahogany desk, like this old school way of performing, I guess you could say. And you mentioned your team’s coming in. So my question is, where is your team based out of? [00:01:00] When you say my team’s coming in, what do they do? Obviously it sounds like very remote situation, right?

[00:01:04] Eric: So what does that look like?

[00:01:06] Blake: So as far as what does my team look like? We’re in about four different continents, seven different countries, which is great because it allows us to better serve clients. I’ve got some team members in Europe that they start off. Well before we wake up in America, and then I’ve got other team members in the Philippines, in New Zealand, and they start working later than everyone else.

[00:01:28] Blake: And we’re really able to accommodate clients from all around the world. And we work with different banks and trust companies in many different time zones. So it’s very much a global practice.

[00:01:40] Eric: Yeah. So you’ve been remote, so this wasn’t a COVID thing where you said, Hey, let’s go remote like a lot of other companies have done.

[00:01:45] Eric: You’ve been remote.

[00:01:46] Blake: It was trending that way. COVID definitely cemented us as a virtual law firm. I mean, I’m, I’m happy clients in person if they wanna come down to Miami. We, I meet clients a few times a month down here in Miami, but majority of our clients, [00:02:00] we don’t end up meeting in person. I do make quite an effort to get out there in person and meet with not just clients, but trust companies, bankers, other attorneys.

[00:02:00–00:04:30]

Blake explains how his law firm operates across four continents and why a remote structure gives them an edge. COVID didn’t start this—it just confirmed their path.

[00:02:09] Blake: I am a big believer. Showing the power of the internet and podcasts just like this. But I’m also a big in the in-person connection. There’s just a special energy that you exchange with a person that you are not

[00:02:20] Eric: able to do over a Zoom call. So you said before, like you’re not always meeting with the client in person, but at some point are you meeting with them in person?

[00:02:28] Eric: Most of my clients, I

[00:02:30] Blake: never end up meeting in person.

[00:02:31] Eric: You don’t end up meeting. So you’re building trust through this scenario, right? Through content, through podcast and phone calls. And then they’re gonna listen to you and be like, okay, he, he knows what he’s doing.

[00:02:40] Blake: Correct. Yes.

[00:02:41] Eric: Okay. How are you then getting that?

[00:02:44] Eric: Is it become where like you start off any business, people get to know about you, right? They learn about you, they see it. Then there’s word of mouth scenarios, and then it’s then they can go validate you on social media. Yeah. You’re nodding.

[00:02:55] Blake: Yep. So I mean, in terms of marketing, there’s two aspects of marketing.

[00:02:59] Blake: There’s the social [00:03:00] media, the internet marketing, and then there’s. Person marketing where you meet with people in person, you go out to conferences as do speaking engagements, and it’s only that combination that’s really going to get you the best possible results. And I find over and over that people tend to be good at one or the other.

[00:03:17] Blake: They’re either very comfortable going out in conferences and meeting with people in person, but then they’re a little bit camera shy or they’re happy having a computer screen all day, but they refuse to go out in person. I think it’s the combination of the two is really what’s going to make a business grow the best.

[00:03:32] Blake: Yeah,

[00:03:33] Eric: I’ve seen that a lot. If you think like websites early, two thousands and, and not, and even more recent, right, keywords. And so you follow this formula, you stuff it with keywords, you show up, you get the results, you get the contact people reaching out to you. And then social media is even got, obviously the algorithm game, but it’s the combination of effects of all of it, of all of it working together, of your podcast, of your social media, of meeting the person, of talking about going, you know what I mean?

[00:03:57] Eric: Like it’s not this A to B, [00:04:00] just the dynamic is real.

[00:04:02] Blake: And to your previous question of, yes, we get word of mouth referrals as well, whether they’re past clients, just other professionals or attorneys that have been consuming our content for a while. They may come across someone who needs an offshore trust and while the referral source, while the client may not have heard of us before, the referral source may have been consuming our content for a few years have had time to grow and trust us, and those.

[00:04:28] Blake: Pretty easy to convert clients when they come from a trusted referral source.

[00:04:30–00:06:45]

Why Blake doubled down on both content marketing and in-person networking. He highlights how clients come through a web of trust: podcasts, referrals, and years of content consumption.

[00:04:33] Eric: Absolutely. Which is a part of the combination of that word of mouth thing. When did other, you said other attorneys, right? So they’re probably talking to their clients and they’re saying, okay, you need to talk to someone like Blake.

[00:04:42] Eric: We need to look at some asset protection, offshore asset protection. When did attorneys start to say, oh, ’cause you just said they’re consuming your content. Right. ’cause I’ve talked to a lot of attorneys and I know, I know an attorney down in South Florida. Who actually basically had to leave his firm that he had been with for a long time because he was creating content, because he [00:05:00] was big on social media.

[00:05:01] Eric: That law firm wasn’t ready for that. Right. When did it become for you that other attorneys were like, this is a, we’re okay with it now? Because there was a point in time when I don’t think they were, but you might have had a different experience.

[00:05:14] Blake: I posted on social media a few months ago, a screenshot of a text message, which said, Hey, Blake, you know other attorneys make fun of your content.

[00:05:22] Blake: And I respond with, yeah. Have you ever heard of John Morgan? Who’s the CEO of Morgan Morgan, the world’s largest injury law firm, and for many years he did. What other attorneys were afraid to do? What other attorneys made fun of him, and that’s go on TV and market and advertise. Now he’s a billionaire. I have a view that if you are speaking with an attorney who refuses to go on camera, I find that a little bit suss.

[00:05:50] Blake: I’m a little bit concerned that if you can’t stand by what you say, if you’re not willing to have it recorded, if you’re only willing to give legal advice and the. Your own office where you’re not [00:06:00] held accountable, there’s no way of holding you to what you promised. That seems a little bit suspicious. So I have taken a very different approach, which is that the more social media I can do, the more that I can put myself out there, the more confidence and trust that I’m gonna build with my client and referral sources and my entire team.

[00:06:17] Blake: I encourage social media to be used as well. I think that it is the tool to use. We go back the clock by 30 years, I wouldn’t be on social media. Social media didn’t exist. I would be writing books and writing articles, and though I’ve done a bit of that in my current practice, the way people communicate and connect is through social media.

[00:06:38] Blake: You go into a coffee shop, the person in front of you is sitting there on their phone. They’re not reading a book, they’re not reading a newspaper, but they’re buying shoes right there on their phone. If you want to get in front of your customers, you have to be on social media.

[00:06:45–00:09:10]

Blake addresses other lawyers mocking his social media presence—and why he couldn’t care less. A mix of childhood resilience and support systems gave him the confidence to show up online.

[00:06:51] Eric: Yeah. When did you develop the.

[00:06:54] Eric: I don’t know what it is. Maybe the audacity or the feeling of like, I don’t give a shit what they think. Right. You said before [00:07:00] like, do you know that they’re making fun of you and you’re just kind of smirked? You’re like, that’s awesome. I could care less that they’re doing that win. Did you have that when you were a kid?

[00:07:07] Eric: Did you have to go through something to get to that point? Like what was that like? Not that this is a psychology experiment, right, but

[00:07:13] Blake: it’s a good question and it’s a wonderful thing that I have because I know a lot of people, their biggest fear, I think death’s, their biggest fear. And then after that is public speaking and it’s really holds a lot of people back from taking chances and putting themselves out there and getting some great exposure.

[00:07:33] Blake: I don’t know what it was. I think that having somewhat of a humbling childhood where I was not very big, I was picked on some, and you hear some negative feedback along the way, and you get tough. I mean, I guess for some people it weakens you and you die, but sometimes the kid who was overweight gets picked on and goes on to be the strongest of all the kids and becomes a big muscle builder and grow stronger from it and having.

[00:07:58] Blake: Taking in negative [00:08:00] feedback early on, I was able to not, like you said, give a shit what people think. And from there I’ve been very comfortable putting myself out there on the internet. And when the internet says not nice things, it doesn’t bother me, it rolls off. I think a lot of that actually comes from partially getting toughened up early on, but also I think it has to do big with.

[00:08:21] Blake: Connectivity and having people in your life who you trust and you believe, and they believe in you and they will support you. The option of fear is connection. And if you have a good foundation, it does not need to be a big foundation, but one or two family members who they have your back, you’re gonna be more confident going out there.

[00:08:42] Blake: The saying I like is confidence is not, they’re gonna like me. Confidence is I’m gonna be okay if they don’t. And when you get to that. Where you can give a speech and I’ve given speech to where I woo the crowd and I’ve presented some times and it’s been less my best [00:09:00] performance. But you just keep going.

[00:09:01] Blake: And, uh, endurance is really the key to running a successful, a successful business, endurance and willing to accept some shots and pushback from people.

[00:09:10–00:12:30]

How a Google search, not law school, led Blake into offshore trusts. He’s now running the largest law firm focused exclusively on this niche—and explains how he actually learned the trade.

[00:09:11] Eric: Yeah, we hear about like the standup comedians when they go out there like you see like a Chris Rock or Theon, like they go and perform and they just bomb, right?

[00:09:19] Eric: And they’re trying new jokes out and no, no one’s laughing. And then they get the special, they get the Netflix special, and then it’s like, oh my God, it’s amazing. You’re like, yeah, but it took me five years to get to this day to even have this conversation and to go through all that humiliation, let’s just say.

[00:09:31] Eric: But they’ve built it up. Right.

[00:09:33] Blake: And I heard that about Jerry Seinfeld. I’ve, that’s. I think some of the things he says are funny, but I’ve never found him to be a particularly funny person. However, he has such consistency. He was the one who every single night was at the comedy clubs and just kept pushing forward and kept pushing forward, and now he’s probably the richest comedian in the world.

[00:09:52] Blake: It’s endurance trump’s talent nine outta 10 times.

[00:09:56] Eric: Yeah. You’re in this whole legal [00:10:00] world and education’s a big topic of conversation right now. What’s your background with, obviously you have a law degree, right? You got your bar right, all that stuff.

[00:10:08] Blake: Uh, so grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. Went to undergraduate and law school at the University of Florida.

[00:10:14] Blake: Gators got out there as soon as I. Got my diploma, went up to Colorado, working for a trust law firm there, I think it was my third day on the job. I Googled what is the most complex or most expensive type of trust, and I discovered offshore trust and I pretty much fell down that rabbit hole and have been following that my entire career.

[00:10:33] Blake: Shortly after I left and started my own law firm. Now I run the nation’s largest exclusively offshore asset protection law firm. So it was just something that pretty much called me early. I say that I didn’t pick this life. It very much picked me and I enjoy it. It’s taken me all around the world. I’ve traveled to close to 50 different countries.

[00:10:53] Blake: I’ve built up a great team. I’ve found friends and people I care about in different parts of the country, in different parts of the world, and I’ve been able to pull together [00:11:00] a team of talent that I would never be able to pull if I never left my hometown.

[00:11:05] Eric: You looked it up, right? Like you googled it. Was there anything in school?

[00:11:10] Eric: That made you good on this path or was this like, I’m online late at night, figure this thing out.

[00:11:14] Blake: Should I take a few minutes and bash on school if you want? Yeah. The only time I ever short trust mentioned in school was by my trust professor, who was a great professor, but he just said that he would never set up an offshore trust for a client.

[00:11:28] Blake: And I went by afterwards and said, Hey, you said you’d never set up an offshore trust. Why not? And he’s explained well, I would never set up an offshore trust unless certain criteria are met. I said, you know what? Keep teaching. Never set up an offshore trust because this is gonna matter. Competition I have when I get out into the legal world.

[00:11:48] Blake: And sure enough, this field I’ve been in and the competition is relatively small. There’s a handful of attorneys who will set up a Cook Islands trust from time to time. But in terms of attorneys who’ve dedicated their practice to Cook [00:12:00] Island Trust. There’s very few others like mine.

[00:12:03] Eric: Yeah. So you had to go through the education aspect of it was like you have to get it, you have to get the degree to get to law school, to get your law degree right, to get your bar.

[00:12:11] Eric: That’s the, it was like correct tickets, checkpoints, but they had came

[00:12:15] Blake: from the street or came from the. Flights. It came from actually partnering with attorney who did this type of work, who wrote the initial legislation for the Cook Islands back in the 1980s, and then getting out there and actually meeting with the trust companies in person and meeting with the bankers in person.

[00:12:30–00:17:30]

[00:12:32] Blake: And just like we started off the conversation, there’s a special energy special about information. This industry does have certain history and secrets to it that people are a little bit more hesitant to share. But as you build relationships with people and get more comfortable with people, you can uncover more information and negotiate better deals for your clients.

[00:12:51] Eric: When you’re looking at bringing on people to your team, whether they’re attorneys or staff or whatever, are you looking at their backgrounds in college? Are you looking at what [00:13:00] they’ve done? Like how are you finding them? What’s important to you when you’re hiring?

[00:13:04] Blake: So a couple of different questions you threw out there.

[00:13:09] Blake: Most of the team, I would say, of our. I think we’re about 15 now. Only one person came in with industry knowledge. We hired somebody who was working for one of the trust companies for seven years, and he brought a lot of knowledge to the firm. Otherwise, pretty much all the knowledge we have has been by me teaching the rest of the team, and I’ve had my own path of learning and partnering with attorneys and buying and spending a lot of money, and then meeting with people and learning from working through cases with clients.

[00:13:41] Blake: So. It’s very hard to find somebody with industry knowledge. There’s just not a lot of people who do this type of work, and finding one that’s gonna be a good fit for the firm is difficult. So if they come in with industry knowledge, we welcome it. But I’d say we have a pretty solid brain trust and being able to take care of anything in the [00:14:00] offshore industry.

[00:14:01] Blake: So more important to me is finding somebody who is teachable. We do things differently than other law firms. I say, I run an no BS law firm. I’m not micromanaging my employees and having them sign in and sign out at the beginning and end of each day, you’ve got a job to do to take care of the job, and we’re not too concerned about how many minutes you’re logging in on your computer.

[00:14:23] Blake: So it’s very much a culture fit that somebody is smart enough to learn quickly, somebody is going to be very responsive, somebody who we can trust, somebody who can. Do the job and be trained with it. So in terms of what, I look for somebody who’s humble enough to take orders, somebody who will have good follow through, someone who will treat the clients well, somebody who doesn’t bring any drama.

[00:14:48] Blake: The general things in terms of where we find people. It’s been some unique ways that I’ve hired people over the years. One of my assistants used to [00:15:00] work at the front desk at the building I used to live in. I noticed that he seemed like a nice young man. I started speaking to him and realized this young man is brilliant and we could actually use somebody smart like this.

[00:15:10] Blake: So he went from being the front desk gentleman. At Conduent building in Denver to working for an international law firm, and now he’s traveled literally all around the world with me. Another person. I was following his social media for a while. It was completely unrelated to law or anything we do, but I just thought that he was very well organized and he made very clear arguments, which just made sense, and I just liked the way he presented and he and I started interacting through social media.

[00:15:40] Blake: I’m a social media influencer as well, so we kind of clicked there over time. We became friends and then when we had a position opened up, he joined the team and he’s done a great. Job, another person I mentioned that we worked with at the trust company together, and then we did find someone through a Craigslist and we found someone else through a recruiter, and then we found another group of, uh, [00:16:00] team members through an online job board in the Philippines.

[00:16:03] Blake: We hire people from different countries who could work different hours and we’ll take more competitive rates than Americans will take. Another person who I recently hired was, uh, doing Muay Hai with me. He was a bit younger than me, and I just noticed that he had such good discipline in the way that he did his martial arts training, that I figured that discipline would be carried over to other parts of his life, and it very much has.

[00:16:28] Blake: I am always on the lookout for new talent. Even if we are not looking to hire, I’m always looking for talented individuals who would help the team grow because. A business can be slowed down for a variety of different reasons, but pretty much comes down to two different things. Either you’re not getting enough new business, so you got to do more marketing and go on more podcasts with Eric, or you need more people to actually do the work when the business comes in.

[00:16:55] Blake: That could be the bottleneck in the business as well, and I don’t wanna be in the position where we’ve [00:17:00] got. Overflowing, but we don’t have enough people to do the work, and so I’m always lining to future employees. I just had a Zoom call yesterday with an individual who’s referred by a friend of one of our attorneys that will probably be offering a job to, and it probably won’t be for another few months, but I’d like to have that.

[00:17:19] Blake: Chess piece lined up so that the moment we’re rugged and move forward, we don’t have to start from scratch and then potentially find somebody who doesn’t work out after two or three months. So I’m always looking for new talent. Even if we’re not hiring, I wanna have a pipeline of good people ready to go.

[00:17:30–00:22:00]

Blake explains how offshore trusts aren’t shady loopholes—they’re strategic, legal protection, no different than insurance. He walks through how and when opposing lawyers learn the money is out of reach.

[00:17:35] Blake: So. Whatever job you’re doing, whether it’s running a law firm or backing groceries, do the best job because somebody’s watching you and you never know when someone’s gonna pick you up and say, Hey, I like what you just put on social media about making music. Why don’t you come and run my help, run my company?

[00:17:52] Eric: Yeah. That’s amazing. You’ve built this system to where, and it’s in the content, it’s in the hiring. It’s been acquiring clients where [00:18:00] it can come from all different angles. You’re not like, here’s the one set we’re gonna go, this is it. And then if an individual, like you just said, is backing groceries or creating content of their own, right, I would look at someone like they might graduate with a marketing degree.

[00:18:13] Eric: That’s great. Have you ever been on a podcast? Have you hosted your own podcast? Have you written a blog? Are you on social media? What have you actually done that? I can see? And that could be like, oh, that’s really good. Yeah, of course we’d wanna hire you because when we get put on an application, you get 150 applications in this marketing world now within 24 hours.

[00:18:29] Eric: It’s crazy. And most of ’em haven’t done anything in marketing. So it’s very easy to stand out if that person showed up. Well, here’s the podcast that I’ve done. Even if it’s not great, it shows that initiative and then you’ve built the system to do all of those things and you’re like, I can only imagine, like that DM shows up for that one guy you just like started interacting with.

[00:18:46] Eric: He’s like, wow, I’m talking to Blake. This is fascinating. Next thing you know, here he is doing this stuff. And if you had asked him probably a year or five years prior, he never would’ve thought that he’d be working for you, right? No different than you never thought you’d be working in offshore [00:19:00] trust, right?

[00:19:02] Eric: Man planned. God laughs. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. You mentioned before, and we talked about it a bit, about people laughing, right? Or people judging, or people thinking, uh, I don’t know about that. And you start getting into the offshore asset protection, offshore trust your, your professor’s like mm-hmm. You don’t wanna do that, right?

[00:19:19] Eric: And then you get other people out there and be like, okay, so what are we doing? We’re hiding money now. It’s like the bad guy’s always gonna win because he puts the money in a place. But then you think about it, like, you know, thinking about our conversation today, beforehand. And I’m like, okay, so if you’re a doctor.

[00:19:33] Eric: And you do everything right, but you still get sued, right? Because who knows what happened. Right? And is it fair that that doctor now has to get sued and let’s say they didn’t do anything wrong or whatever, but they know they have money, they’re going after ’em, so they’re just protecting it. It’s no different than someone’s fire insurance on their house or life insurance or car insurance or whatever that might be.

[00:19:54] Eric: There’s so many different analogies there. I mean, people will insure their televisions now, so. And this is not an insurance question, [00:20:00] it’s just one of those things of maybe backing it up to my original, where I got go down this path of when people hear that you are in offshore, like asset protection, offshore trust, is there judgment out there?

[00:20:14] Eric: Is there questions Are there, the people are like, I don’t know about that. Like. You see what I’m getting at, and you’ve probably heard these different things, whether it’s blogs or podcast or whatever, and people making opinions on, not necessarily what you do, but just the overall thing about offshore.

[00:20:27] Blake: Oh, people make opinions about what I do.

[00:20:29] Blake: No doubt about that. I mean it, I kind of joke that it’s one of the family questions of is what Blake does for work, even legal. I come from a family of attorneys. I’m the one who’s flying to the Cook Islands and helping clients open bank accounts in Switzerland. Eric, I do not subscribe to the theory that there’s anything honorable, that there’s anything noble about being weak, about being unprotected, about being vulnerable, about being in a position where somebody can come and take advantage of you.

[00:20:57] Blake: I believe just the opposite. I think that the most [00:21:00] noble thing individual can do is make themself as safe and as protective as possible. Build up the best fortress you can, and that’s actually in line. Most of the way America sees law and business. If you have a car, people can say buy car insurance. Why?

[00:21:17] Blake: In case you get sued. If you start a business, someone’s gonna say, form an LLC. Why? To protect yourself in case you get sued. If you start to accumulate a few hundred thousand dollars, somebody may even say, put that money into a domestic trust. Why? In case you get sued. If you start to get a few million dollars, somebody.

[00:21:34] Blake: Who cares about you and is wise, he gonna say, put that money into an offshore trust. Oh, all of a sudden offshore this seems sketchy. This seems weird. The truth is Americans and not you, I, Eric, and not anybody who’s listening to your podcast, but the rest of Americans overwhelmingly or very narrow minded, most Americans have never left the United States.

[00:21:54] Blake: Those who have most have not gone anywhere beyond Canada or Mexico, but. [00:22:00] People who are going to see the most success in the decades to come. They’re the ones who will think globally to solutions, to their problems and all of short trust is legal, it’s ethical, it’s smart business.

[00:22:00–00:26:30]

Typical clients? High earners with $1M–$10M net worth. Offshore trusts give them leverage to settle—not to dodge responsibility. It’s not about hiding—it’s about strategy.

[00:22:10] Eric: Yeah. That’s it. I like how you, um, ended that there and just stopped because there’s nothing else to say.

[00:22:16] Eric: There’s nothing to defend. It’s just is what it is. Right. What are examples of. Simple examples that don’t, like, I don’t get it right, not me, but anyone listening or whoever that might be, who’s never gone down this path or even like looked into, what does this look like? What’s a typical situation that you would deal with?

[00:22:34] Eric: Like is it a doctor, is it someone who’s a, like a tech founder’s, accumulated a lot of money, they’re married, whatever, like they’re just trying to protect it. What does that typical situation look like for you?

[00:22:44] Blake: So 30 years ago, the industry was overwhelmingly medical professionals, doctors, surgeons, worried about a malpractice claim.

[00:22:53] Blake: But that’s very much changed and the industry is much more fragmented now. Yes, we still work with a number of doctors. [00:23:00] We also work with attorneys, engineers, architects, as well as a lot of social media and entertainment personalities, business owners, real estate investors. Most of our clients are married.

[00:23:13] Blake: It tends to be the husband that contacts us. We, we do have quite a few single individuals. Most individuals are between about age 30 and age 60. Most have a net worth somewhere between about one and $10 million. There’s a common misconception that in all short, trust is only appropriate if you’re 10 plus million.

[00:23:32] Blake: Most people up offshore trust million, those are who most are. Leverage the most. If you’re worth a hundred million dollars and you can hit with a $5 million judgment, you pay it, you move on. No big deal. But if you’re worth $3 million and somebody hits you with a $5 million lawsuit, you need to settle and an offshore trust is going to buy you leverage to settle.

[00:23:56] Eric: Got it. When that lawsuit comes in, they don’t know yet [00:24:00] that the money’s offshore. Right. When does that. Come to the other attorneys that are making this judgment like, right,

[00:24:06] Blake: so the cards are in your hand when you, well, when I tell the client it’s appropriate will reveal that there’s an offshore trust.

[00:24:14] Blake: However, if we don’t want to tell the opposing party, they’re not going to find out until after the lawsuit is over. They’ve won their case, they’ve got a judgment, and then they call the client in for a debtor’s examination and they have to, at that point, fill out a financial affidavit. And at that point they say the offshore trust exists, but simply disclosing the trust in no way compromises the protection of the trust.

[00:24:37] Eric: So they find out afterwards, correct. They’ve already know the lawsuit’s over and they’re supposedly right at this point having to pay their sum of money. But then they realize like the money’s not here to pay it.

[00:24:50] Blake: Well, and then at that point you realize you brought this whole lawsuit, you got your $5 million judgment, but the person you’re suing, they’ve got a car in their name that only has [00:25:00] $25,000 worth of equity.

[00:25:01] Blake: They’ve got an offshore trust, but the value of the offshore trust. To the client, it’s technically $0 because they’re discretionary, beneficiary, and all of a sudden you say, oh wow, we just got this big judgment. Can we get a hundred thousand dollars settlement? And at that time, we can decide whether the client wants to pay some settlement just so there’s no judgment hanging over their head.

[00:25:21] Blake: They don’t have to worry about getting called back for another debtor’s exam. Okay.

[00:25:25] Eric: In that scenario is this like you’re looking across the table and they’re just disbelief?

[00:25:29] Blake: So it’s a few different situations. I mean, if it’s a situation where the trust was set up before any lawsuit got filed, then somewhere before the lawsuit is finalized is typically when we’re going to reveal the cards, reduce the clients copy, they have to pay for litigation.

[00:25:45] Blake: But sometimes it happens after there’s a judgment. Then you say there’s an offshore trust and the opposing party says, oh, shoot, we just waste a lot of time. Yeah. And then at that point they can determine, do they wanna try to go to the Cook Islands and litigate there where they’re not going to succeed?

[00:25:59] Blake: Or [00:26:00] do they wanna just take some settlement offer? Or do they wanna just sit on the judgment? But ultimately, most plaintiffs needs to wanna get paid, and a settlement is an order. So is it Ty?

[00:26:10] Eric: I keep saying that word because it seems. Appropriate here that when you see a judgment go through that it’s that money is usually not changing hands at that number.

[00:26:20] Eric: So if it’s $5 million, it’s like they’re not actually getting $5 million. Correct. Okay. You’re saying only if they have that offshore trust.

[00:26:27] Blake: If you’re dealing with a corporate defendant, you may get the full $5 million. If you’re dealing with an individual and their money’s protected with the trust chancellor, they’re not gonna get that full paid on the full judgment.

[00:26:30–00:29:00]

Blake doesn’t waste time trying to change minds. Instead, he focuses on educating people who are already interested or curious. The rest? They can follow his content at their pace.

[00:26:38] Eric: When the word comes up offshore it, again, this is narrow-mindedness. This is like, okay, we’re thinking Ponzi scheme, we’re thinking Epstein, we’re thinking Diddy, we’re thinking all that kind of stuff, right? Because those are the things that you hear in the media all the time, right? And that’s what is cycling through social media feeds, what people have to go on because it’s like, well, what are they gonna do?

[00:26:55] Eric: Dig deeper into it. No, they’re not going to. That’s probably where a lot of the [00:27:00] conversations come from. ’cause that’s what family members or friends or. Outsiders that you’ve never even once spoken to are hearing. And so that’s kind of what they’re thinking. But then it also goes into the client. So there’s probably a lot of education on your side to help people understand this is why you should do this thing.

[00:27:16] Eric: What is that timeline for that individual who wants to make this move? Are you dealing with a lot of reluctance or just there a lot of, I, I would imagine you don’t want to get in the world of convincing someone constantly because you’re, you’re looking for the people that are interested in it and have already kind of come to the table and they’re, they’re further down the path.

[00:27:33] Eric: What does that look like for you when it comes to not even selling it, but just talking about it? Yeah. Well,

[00:27:38] Blake: I’m not taking my time trying to convince somebody to set an offshore that doesn’t want to or is against it. However, there is. Usually some clarification that needs to take place and there’s a lot of misconceptions that need to be addressed.

[00:27:56] Blake: Will I still have access to my money? Yes, of course. I’ll be able to take a [00:28:00] distribution anytime you desire. Am I going to lose my funds, the foreign trustee? No, of course I can. The money still be invested? Yes. Is it legal? Of course. Is it gonna be reported to the IRS? Yes. And we’ll provide guidance on how to complete the reporting requirements.

[00:28:15] Blake: So. In terms of where clients are in the process? Well, because the amount of information that my firm has already put out, it’s all over the place. Sometimes we have people call, we’ll have a conversation that lasts less than five minutes, and they’ll hire us right on the spot. Other times people will contact us and it’ll take them another six months or a year before they’re ready to pull the trigger.

[00:28:34] Blake: People just come in at every single different point of the process, and if somebody is. Kind of close to being ready to go. I’m happy to take the time to get them over the finish line. If they’re early in the process, I’m happy to educate them and steer them in the right direction. Maybe they wanna take some time to review, to watch more my videos on social media, or to read one of the books I’ve written and, and moved them along.

[00:28:55] Blake: If somebody contacts us and they are just looking to be told [00:29:00] this can’t be done looking to be convinced of something that they’re not going to switch their mind on. No, I’m not out here trying to convert anybody, but I’m happy to educate and dispel some of the myths. Yeah.

[00:29:00–00:32:00]

At one point, Blake did more than just offshore—but it diluted the focus. He decided to say no to everything else (even domestic trusts) to go all-in on the thing he does best.

[00:29:11] Eric: Are you using other attorneys, so, ’cause you’ve built this niche business and someone comes in there and I don’t know, they, they wanna talk about estate planning.

[00:29:20] Eric: Are you taking those types of projects on or are you handing it off to another attorney?

[00:29:25] Blake: We are exclusively offshore, so if an somebody wants domestic estate plan will refer them to a attorney in their area to handle the estate planning matters. I think it’s a part of the reason that other attorneys are comfortable referring business to us because we’re not competing with them.

[00:29:40] Eric: When did that, has that always been the case? I know you got into this early, but early on were you trying to say, well, we need to have, we need more money, we need more revenue, so we need to take on, we got this case, we gotta litigate this case and domestic stuff. Right? What, when did that switch happen? Or was it immediate in like just total confidence to go forward with it.

[00:29:56] Blake: So I’ve been an attorney for about 15 years. I’ve always focused on the [00:30:00] trust sector, so I’ve never been one who’s doing car accidents or divorces. I’ve always been in the trust sector. And early in the career we did a variety of different types of trusts. We were doing asset protection trusts, both domestic and international, so some of the more basic stuff.

[00:30:14] Blake: But for about the past five years, we’ve been exclusively offshore. We got out of the basic estate planning because it was a distraction from the area that I wanted to go after. And then within the asset protection world, we actually dropped doing domestic trust as well quite a few years ago because I saw how it would actually play out when the client needed a domestic trust.

[00:30:36] Blake: And it was so, such weak leverage that I really felt like I was doing a disservice decline by setting up a domestic trust. And for the past several years, we’ve been exclusively offshore. And with that we’ve set records in the Cook Islands. We’ve been told by one of the leading trust companies that we’ve registered more trust over the past few years than any other law firm in the world.

[00:30:55] Eric: Wow. Did you have guidance or was it your own inner workings to say, [00:31:00] let’s go forward with just doing offshore trust? I mean, you just said before like you felt like it was holding you back on the other side, but was there other people behind you saying like, go all in with it? And the reason I ask this is when you think about a lot of bus people are building businesses and they’re going in many different directions and, and sometimes it makes sense and other times it’s like you’re distracting yourself from it.

[00:31:20] Eric: So as people listen to this and hear what you have to say, someone has said, no, no, no, this is what we do and we’re the best at it. That’s where you can be number one in the world, right? Like you’ve been told. What did that look like though, for you to make that move? Or like, you obviously play with a lot of confidence in your mind, so I Maybe it was just that simple to say, I know what we need to do and we’re gonna go do it.

[00:31:41] Blake: It’s something that I had wanted to do for many years, for quite a while. I’d wanted to do it. I had a breaking point, aha moment about four or five years ago when I realized that this practice that I’m growing, it’s. Servicing a lot of clients, but it is not as [00:32:00] profitable or servicing clients as well as I would like, and I just took a day, had an aha moment, and realized, although offshore trust only compromised maybe 25% of our overall revenue.

[00:32:00–00:36:30]

Miami is home base, but Blake could work anywhere. Travel is a big part of his lifestyle, and he makes it work seamlessly with client and team needs.

[00:32:11] Blake: If I don’t ever go exclusively into this area, I’m never gonna have this area blow up, and I’m never going to reach the level of wealth that I want doing basic estate planning. So I took the leap about four or five years ago. I didn’t have anybody tell me that it was the right move. I had a lot of people who were very nervous about me making the jump, but ultimately I feel like I was guided by some higher spirit that said, Blake, this is your calling and I don’t regret it all.

[00:32:38] Blake: It has allowed us to become much more skilled than would ever be if we were trying to focus on doing several different areas of the law. It has allowed us to become much better on marketing. People know exactly that. I’m the offshore guy. I’m not somebody who sells a bunch of different types of trust.

[00:32:55] Blake: It can be very confusing if someone’s talking about a lot of different things. Nobody’s gonna know what you’re talking about, [00:33:00] but when you talk about one thing over and over, people know you as the guy for whatever it is you keep talking about. You stick to.

[00:33:07] Eric: Yeah, that 25 percent’s interesting because like you might’ve said, oh, it’s 75%, it’s the biggest part of our business, and it wasn’t.

[00:33:13] Eric: Right. No. Like you had to get there some. Yeah. That’s fascinating. Yep, yep. Because I think a lot of people sit, can look at their business. You can pull out your profit and loss. You look at it and be like, okay, well this doesn’t make as much money, so we can’t. You know, this is what makes the most, let’s focus on that.

[00:33:27] Eric: And sometimes it’s not the case. Right,

[00:33:29] Blake: right. No, we definitely went up to what was a smaller practice, smaller portion of it. But it’s hard to initially convince someone to set up an offshore trust. Once you set up a lot of them, it actually becomes a lot easier and things start flowing. So it was a gamble, but I’m don’t have any regrets about taking it.

[00:33:47] Eric: Yeah. Cities matter. Where you live matters. Miami’s like a international city. You go there and you know, Spanish might even be, it feels like, I’m not saying it is, it feels like it’s the first language, English, the second language. Mm-hmm. You can get anywhere in the world from [00:34:00] there. Being home based in Miami for yourself is probably a massive deal.

[00:34:04] Blake: Miami makes sense. It’s a. Growing town. I live at the beach and I’m 25 minutes from an international airport, so it’s easy for me to hop over to Europe and connect on the West Coast to wherever I’m going. In the South Pacific, it’s a city where clients are happy to come and meet. Clients wanna meet ’em.

[00:34:24] Blake: Happy to meet them here. I do spend about half of my time traveling. I’d say about of my travel, about half. It’s domestic, going to different cities in the United States, and the other half is international. I also like the warm weather. I’m originally a Florida boy. My family’s here in Florida as well.

[00:34:42] Blake: Miami’s a big city, so it, it makes sense for me, but it really doesn’t matter too much where I am. I don’t know that my practice would be all that different if I was living in Seattle.

[00:34:51] Eric: Yeah.

[00:34:52] Blake: Or Cancun. Yeah.

[00:34:53] Eric: Yeah. But your plan is stay there. Miami’s growing. Yeah, I was just there. I was uh, where we, coconut Grove [00:35:00] area and then you get out.

[00:35:01] Eric: So you got that little nest right? You go, it’s amazing area and you branch out and it’s just, it’s huge, right? It’s tons of traffic, a lot of people there, a lot of people moving there, especially post COVID or during COVID I should say. Where are we going in Miami? Like what’s your thought process on that?

[00:35:16] Eric: And like, cities are fascinating and a lot of people are moving around and everyone’s coming, you know, Charlotte, we’re in Charlotte, North Carolina and it’s just. I don’t know. Greater Charlotte’s like 120 people a day move here type of thing. I’m sure Miami’s got similar type numbers. They’re just gonna, it’s gonna not stop.

[00:35:30] Eric: Right. So your thoughts on cities Miami, if that’s of interest to you, like what that looks like going forward, what do you think?

[00:35:38] Blake: I mean, I’m here for a reason. I have the ability to pick up and move anytime I want that much headache. I’ll keep Miami as the home base and kind of the headquarters for my team.

[00:35:50] Blake: I’ve got lots of my team who come through and work. Outta Miami from time to time as well. But like I mentioned, I’d spend a lot of time traveling [00:36:00] myself as well, mostly for business. But if I’m over in Al Lumpur for a conference, I might pop up to Thailand to do a few weeks of Muay Hai training. If I’m in Europe I’ll for business, I don’t mind sticking around a little bit longer to enjoy some, uh, wine and food in Europe.

[00:36:18] Blake: So I like that I am. Traveling quite a bit, and when I travel, it’s mostly for business and I enjoy meeting people from all around the world. But for a home base, Miami just makes so much sense.

[00:36:30–00:39:00]

Blake reframes sales not as sleazy persuasion but as trust-building through knowledge. If you believe in what you’re offering, selling it should come naturally.

[00:36:31] Eric: Yeah. Well, you’re developing a lot of perspective. It’s, you had mentioned it before for people who have left the country and learned and met other people, and then you’re, you’re finding people to work for your company and at all points, right?

[00:36:41] Eric: There’s so many different ways to do it. So you develop all these different perspectives on things that keeps you. Really, it gives you the edge, keeps you ahead of the game and understanding like the dynamics of how people work, which then I would imagine plays itself out into the different clients that you start working with, right?

[00:36:57] Eric: One perspective, I’ve seen a lot, especially in [00:37:00] maybe younger generations, and I don’t know this because I’m seeing you come in here, it’s 10:00 AM on a Tuesday and we’re having a podcast, right? So you’re thinking about content. You’re thinking about this is a way to market, this is a way to build trust.

[00:37:09] Eric: You’re in the sales world, right? You’re not convincing people, but at the end of the day, you are educating people and that’s a form of sales. When you’re talking to people, I would imagine it’s important that they have that ability to sell, right? They have the ability to talk about things with confidence and to ask for the checks to say, this is the next steps.

[00:37:26] Eric: Because like you said before, you’re not gonna sit around and convince people to do it. You’re not overselling somebody, and then they’re gonna go down some path that they never really wanted to go down. Why are people allergic to sales? Why are people allergic

[00:37:38] Blake: to sales? Suppose it can be a little bit intimidating and sales can have a negative connotation to it.

[00:37:45] Blake: But if you believe in a product and you understand it, ’cause you need to have both the belief that you’re doing something good for somebody by helping them with the service and you need to understand the service, the basics of that, I can tell you just you put your money in this and safe protect from lawsuits, [00:38:00] but there’s certain technical aspects of it that people want to understand better, and you need to have good product knowledge and you need to have a good.

[00:38:08] Blake: Background and reputation to stand on. So trying to sell an offshore trust if you’ve never done one before, is going to be an uphill battle. But when you have the Blake Harris law brand behind you, and you have our Rolodex and our experience and our team, and the results that we’ve gotten for clients behind you, it actually becomes quite easy.

[00:38:27] Blake: So I think that sales is nothing to be afraid of if you’re properly trained, if you’re selling the right products, if you’re selling the right team, then once you do it, you’re gonna realize. This is not bad. So I think that it’s just a matter of what you are selling.

[00:38:41] Eric: Yeah, yeah. Getting support behind it too, right?

[00:38:44] Eric: Like it’s bigger than you, which is always the case, right? People can be in sales and have a service team behind them, and you’re not even selling, you’re selling all of it, right? The product, the team, the service, and it’s confidence, I believe. Confident that you know that the product stands by itself.

[00:38:58] Blake: Exactly. You’re selling [00:39:00] our experience. You’re selling our network, you’re selling our, our reputation. And when you have a good team, network and reputation to stand on the things, sell themself.

[00:39:00–00:41:00]

With 250K+ followers on TikTok, Blake knows it could vanish overnight. He explains why the platform is only one part of a broader media ecosystem he’s built intentionally.

[00:39:09] Eric: Yeah. So TikTok, you’re really big on TikTok. You have a huge following there. You wake up one day, well you, we kind of knew it was coming, but then TikTok disappears, I’d imagine.

[00:39:19] Eric: No big deal. You have other channels as well, but what was your first reaction? Or did, was it like total confidence? This will come back in two days.

[00:39:26] Blake: I had no idea what was gonna happen to TikTok, but it only represents maybe 10% of our. New clients. So while we don’t wanna lose that, it’s not gonna be death for the business.

[00:39:38] Blake: If any one social media platform goes down, the business just evolves and grows over time. We didn’t have TikTok three years ago, and if it’s gone tomorrow, we’ll still be around three years from now. So platforms come and go and they grow and they shrink, and that’s just part of the game. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

[00:39:56] Blake: Ski. Yeah.

[00:39:57] Eric: Yeah, I get it. Well. You know, [00:40:00] it’s hard because to try to be, you know, if you look at like a small business and you have all these different platforms, let’s say there’s seven main social media platforms and, and then there’s other things. You get email marketing websites and you know, podcasting, all that kind of stuff.

[00:40:12] Eric: And you could go all in on one or two. And if those one or two change like podcasting’s big right now, but what does that mean and how do you get there and how do you clip it and whatever. And then it’s like, eh, the podcasting thing died out. And I’m not saying that’s gonna happen, but things change. You know, the rate, everyone thought, oh, the radio’s be great, or the transistor rate television.

[00:40:28] Eric: So it’s hard. But just to kind of diversify, and I think there’s something in our conversation that I’m seeing from you that I think a lot of people could take is. There is no one size. Right? But you have this one path that you’re going down, and that stays the path, and that’s the confidence that you have in the offshore trust.

[00:40:45] Eric: Right? And so you’re gonna do that, and then everything else that you’re doing with it, right? Yeah. Tiktoks a big deal. I mean, you got, I don’t how many followers is, it’s over 200,000 followers or something crazy like that. Two 50. Two 50, sorry. Yeah. So, you know what I mean? So it’d be 300 by the time someone listens to it.[00:41:00]

[00:41:00] Eric: And that could change, right? That could be considered rented land, as they say. But you’re not going anywhere because TikTok goes down. Again, how do other people play off of that to say, okay, well what does that mean for me? Like people build this massive YouTube channel. YouTube could change the algorithm tomorrow.

[00:41:00–00:44:00]

Eric reflects on how Blake’s content makes it feel like you already know him before you talk. This is the new standard in trust-building and branding

[00:41:14] Eric: And they do. They’re changing it constantly. So I don’t know what’s gonna happen. And most even Mr. Beast doesn’t totally know what’s going on at YouTube. He might be the closest one that would, might get the inside knowledge first. But you see what I’m getting at though when it comes to, yeah, don’t marketing brand.

[00:41:29] Eric: Yeah, all that. Don’t make your personality

[00:41:32] Blake: your follower count. Don’t make it how much money you make or how much money you have, make it how hard you work, and that’s something nobody can take away from you. The business will go up and down, but as long as you are consistent with your efforts, you’re going to always see results and you will come out on top in the long run.

[00:41:54] Eric: What did we not talk about as it relates to offshore asset protection that you wanna make sure that [00:42:00] we address today? Unless we covered it all?

[00:42:02] Blake: Well, we hit all the main points. Uh, asset protection is not just for the super wealthy. Most of our clients have between about one and $10 million in assets. In terms of pricing in offshore trust, it’s different than a domestic revocable trust.

[00:42:16] Blake: You’re looking at around 20 to $40,000 to seven offshore trust. Takes about 30 to 60 days in terms of our law firm, as I may have mentioned at the beginning, we are the world’s largest exclusively offshore asset protection law firm. I’ve spoken at events both domestically and internationally, written several books on the subject, myself and the other attorneys who work with me, we teach continuing legal education, so other attorneys who do this type of work, we’ve taught me to them how to do it.

[00:42:43] Blake: Chat, GPT has named me as the number one asset protection attorney in the world. And. As of the recording of this podcast, we’ve never once had a client lose a penny from one of their trust.

[00:42:54] Eric: Yeah,

[00:42:55] Blake: if you want to get in touch more, share the socials. The handle is [00:43:00] at Blake Harris Law. My website is blake harris law.com, but every major social media platform, Blake Harris law.com, lots of education about asset protection and just generally information about traveling, running a business, and a little bit of my humor in there as well.

[00:43:15] Eric: Yeah, well I’ll tell you what, if I’m gonna have a interview or conversation, I should say like this and I can go online and it, you make it very, and Blake Harris isn’t like some random name, like just, you’re the only one, right? There’s a lot of Blake Harris. You show up on any social media account, on any video I want, any podcast I want, so I could go and listen and learn about, and I would ex, you know, if anyone’s interested or just learn about your story about niche businesses or why you would show up on a podcast at 10:00 AM on a Tuesday when you’re running this big international business.

[00:43:43] Eric: You could go learn about Blake, right? And I could go do the same thing. So when I come in here, I’ve already seen you, I’ve heard you talk. I can see like the humor, like the style, the whatever it might be, get the jacket on. So nothing’s a surprise and it just, it makes the conversation just, you can go right into it, which I’ve always thought [00:44:00] that way.

[00:44:00–end]

Blake closes with key takeaways—offshore trusts are for smart planners, not just the super-rich. His track record? Not one client has ever lost a penny through a trust his firm created.

[00:44:00] Eric: And you know, a lot of people I’m talking to are doing that type of thing. And I’ve heard from people who have hire headhunters and they go sit down with the person that they’re bringing into them as the potential hire. And if that person has content, that person they’re interviewing already knows them.

[00:44:16] Eric: Right? And they’re showing up for a reason. ’cause if they didn’t want to be there, they would’ve told ’em like, this isn’t interesting to me. I don’t want to be here today. ’cause they got to see the content. So no one has to waste time with it. So this is an incredible medium. And then to say you can educate people, like you said before, if someone was interested in it, but they weren’t really there, you could just send them a video, a blog, a book.

[00:44:37] Eric: Uh. Whatever that might be, and they can further educate themselves whil