Starting a Disability Practice From Nothing with J. Shay Guess, SAM G Enterprises

J. Shay Guess (00:00) I always point back to a client that I had We went in, I got a bench decision at the hearing. Got outside, the client hands me an envelope. She says, Don't read this till you get your office. I told her I wouldn't but I lied. I got my vehicle in the parking lot and I opened it up and it was a suicide note thanking me for the help that I did. If we couldn't get a favorable decision from the judge, she was no longer gonna be anyone's problem. Will Yang (00:47) My guest today is Shay Guess, an EDPNA based in Mississippi who has been doing disability advocacy since twenty twelve. Shay spent seventeen years in county government as a tax assessor and appraiser before a local election changed everything. He was winning by 120 votes before the affidavit ballots came in. He then lost by 1,500. The new office holder Contracted out the appraisers, which meant Shay was out. And a hundred and fifty job applications later, every single one of them rejected for lack of private sector experience. He ended up at a lunch meeting with a old mentor who tested his empathy before she told him what the job even was. That was the beginning of his disability career. In this conversation, we get into what the first five years of a solo disability practice actually looks like when there's no income for stretches, a test where he failed twice before passing it in Baltimore during the riots, and a Christmas Eve moment in a store checkout line that he credits with turning the whole thing around. Shay will share what running a practice the right way means to him, what it's like to build a business alongside his wife Michie, why he never closes a client file, and why you should consider doing the same. And a marketing strategy that involves live music performances that I promise you nobody else in disability law is doing. Without further ado, here's Shay. Will Yang (02:03) Shays, thank you so much for hopping on to Disability Heroes. I'm curious if you can just let our audience know a little bit more about your backstory. I know that it wasn't a conventional journey to disability law. Tell us about yourself. J. Shay Guess (02:17) No, it wasn't conventional at all. We say this a lot about people that are not necessarily attorneys and even some of the people that are attorneys that found their way into disability practice, especially those of us that are EDP and A, non attorney advocates that are in the field, it sort of finds us in some way. And that's sort of my story too. I worked seventeen years for the Itawamba County. Tax office. I w worked for the tax assessor collector until they split the offices into two separate offices in two thousand and three. I worked both sides of it as a commercial appraiser. I did have an IAAO which is the International Association of Assessing Officer designations. I had three of those over the years that I worked with them. And then when they split the offices, I stayed as a bookkeeper for the collector simply because there was a little more money involved, benefits were a little better, and I was already sort of doing that anyway. And then about five or six years into that, I was going back to college at the same time to try to get a degree and I started out going toward accounting. I was gonna become an accountant. And I guess about half a semester into that I was like, there's no way I can sit and just look at numbers all day long. Math always came easy to me and I thought that'd be kinda interesting and which is a good thing about college, I guess. So you get right in the middle of that and you decide, no, that's not me. And I found communications and so you know, acting and doing interviews and public relations and things really interested me and you know, how do you drive the story and how do you make things interesting and then how do you take a product from, development and then you communicate that throughout the world and advertising. So communications just had seemed like it was a broad spectrum for me and coming from a music background, it just seemed like that was gonna help me more in that, with my music, on the side that I was doing. So I went into communications and I went back and worked for the assessor for the county up until the end of two thousand and eleven. I actually ran for the office. He was retiring. My tax assessor, my boss was retiring. And I got into the political landscape, ran for it, and in the you could say in the in the general election there at the last before they started counting affidavit votes, I was winning by 120. It was interesting because once they started counting the affidavit votes, I lost by 1500. So for whatever reason, that changed my life, so to speak. Because the person that ended up getting that office Decided they were going to contract out all of the assessors or the appraisers that were working for the office. And so had to find something else to do because I was one of the ones that were getting sort of cut. I actually tried to start my own appraisal business and actually, approached the board of supervisors. Maybe being one of the contracted workers that they hired, but they left it up to the new assessor. And, politically speaking, you you know, you don't want a person that was running against you out working in the county. Yeah, I I got it. I had a good set down with with the board and and the new assessor and I said, you know what? You don't need the baggage that I would bring along. And so I get that I'm kind of dead weight. So I'm gonna have to find something else to do. So 17 years working in public service amounted to sending out about a hundred and fifty resumes in the private sector and every single one of them getting turned down because I had I had my degree. Didn't matter. I just didn't have any private sector experience. So what do you do? You pivot, you get down on yourself, you spend the eight weeks feeling sorry for yourself, trying to figure out what to do. I mean I was I was looking for jobs three hours away from home that I was committed to even commuting to those jobs if I could have gotten them. And I met with a friend of mine. I I call her my godmother. She does legal work. She's actually a personal injury assistant to an attorney. And she worked in Denver for a number of years, which in Colorado, those insurance adjuster legal type, they're kind of like we are with Social Security, they didn't have a law degree in order to do it in that in that state. So she learned how to do all that and then she moved to Mississippi and spent years working for an attorney there, handling all of his personal injury claims and and writing all of those and doing all that work. So she knew my situation. We went to church together and she said, Look, I got a friend that might interest you in some side of a business that you will need to Maybe look into I met with her good friend that was working for an attorney and the attorney was doing disability work and was deciding that he was getting out of that. He, didn't want anything to do with it anymore, so her job was being eliminated. She heard that I was looking to get into something. I yeah. Whatever it was I was willing to do and willing to learn. So she met with me for lunch one day and I didn't know it was to do with disability. She started asking me questions like, you know, let's assume that someone reaches out to you that is that can't work anymore and they got physical impairments. You know, how would you treat that person? You know, would you give the time of day? Would you brush off? Would you try to help And I was like, Well, you know, that was my campaign. You know, message when I was running for office was I wanted to be the person that's office was open to help anybody that needed it, even if it didn't have anything to do with their their taxes or their appraisals, you know, even you know, wherever I could help, you know, in the in the system of county government, I wanted my door to be open. And so that's what I shared with her. She said, All right, let me pivot. What if you encounter someone with a mental illness? How would you handle that person? And I said the way I've always looked at mental illnesses, I hope people hear the empathy in this instead of the, you know, the you know, instead of it being a a it's just a lack of a better way for me to put it. But in my mind, I've always seen it like, you know, a person that's allergic to cats, they can't help it. You know, cat comes sits in their lap, they're gonna start sneezing. Their body doesn't produce whatever it needs to keep them from sneezing and coughing and getting scratchy and itchy eyes. Mental illness to me is is a chemical imbalance that keeps people from being able to function the way other people function that has those things. And I said, so I swear I've always seen it. It's not It's not something I'm afraid of. I don't understand a lot of it, but I would not put them on the back burner or push them away just because they had a mental illness. And the difficulties that it takes to communicate with people with a mental illness, it just takes a little extra time and a little extra effort, but people are people. You gotta treat everybody as people. I look across the table and she's tearing up. And I said, Did I say something wrong? I mean, I don't understand why we're having this meeting, you know, and she she said, You'll be perfect. And I said, For what? She said my boss is doing away with his disability practice. I'm moving to another state. S there's gonna have to be a void filled because he's got these clients and and of course they're gonna be dispersed or moved and to other attorneys in town. But there's gonna be a need for, some other people to do this type of work. There's already a couple of people in town that are that are helping people and they're very good at what they do, but as you know and as anybody knows that's been in this business a long time. There's always enough to go around. There's always people that need help. There's always people that are in need of someone to help them get over that hump of the paperwork and the and the legalities and things like that. So I started that day. She sat down, she taught me how to fill out an application. She taught me all the forms that were necessary for disability. The phone numbers I would need to call and the the things that I would need to say and how to help people and get them signed up. And so within a week I'd already interviewed my first client. And it wasn't even through her. It was just through a happenstance of hearing somebody say something at a restaurant. And I said, hey, you know, if you don't have anybody to help you, I'm doing that now and, you know, give me a call and we'll see what we can do. That was my first client got within a week and ended up back then it was easier to get hearings, but her hearing happened like at the end of the next year, right? So ended up winning that hearing and it was weird how I won it. I go in and I tell the judge, I like, This is my very first hearing. I couldn't get anybody to let me shadow them, so I have no idea what the protocol is. I don't know what I should and shouldn't do. I didn't go on the internet and try to watch YouTube videos to see what I you know, I don't even think they existed then. But it's twenty twelve, you know, we've we've advanced a lot since then. But he kind of smiled at me and he said, Well, bring your client in and and let's let's go through the hearing and I had I probably did more than I should have. I overloaded the file with as much as I could overload it with, just trying to do a good job And he went through about three or four questions with the client and of course there was no jobs and you know, with the VE and he's like, Mr mr guess, do you have any questions you'd like to ask? And no kidding, the court reporter that was sitting to the to the right of the judge leans back and goes, No, no, no, no. I said, No, sir, no, Your Honor, I have I have no questions. And He went off the record and he said, Congratulations, Mister Guess, you just won your first hearing. Mark my words. It will never be this easy again. And he was exactly right. Will Yang (12:18) felt like you had this really serendipitous journey, but also along the way, as all of these, you know, stones were getting turned, did you ever feel like it was meant to be? Because you mentioned, you know, you were a communications major before as well. You had years in public service as well. You'd your own political campaign too. D is that what kind of led you as you were taking on, this mentor of yours guiding you to this area of law, with some sort of premonition that this is definitely what's next for me. Like there's what people say like the second mountain, right? And finding your second mountain. Did that resonate with you at that time or was that something where, you were just in the thick of war at that time, the fog of war and you're like, well, I'm just going with the motion of things and then afterwards now you look back and you're like, this was this was so fitting in so many ways. Like this was all the plan. How do you think about that nowadays? J. Shay Guess (13:09) Yeah, honestly, at the end of that year, that journey started January twenty twelve, 'cause December the thirty-first of twenty eleven, I had to resign from my position at the county. And I think February, March is when I started with this mentor. And in the middle of all that I found NADR and signed up for the EDPNA test like right away. I guess I took the test the next year, maybe twenty thirteen, but I jumped in like really quick, I mean really fast. Actually it was within it was in a few months. I took it that first year. So yeah it was probably February when I got into into this and then signed up for the test, found NADR, May, I guess it was, to Baltimore to take the test. Didn't know anything about disability really at the time. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. But I knew how to take tests. Didn't pass the test the first time. I failed by like seven questions. Which I thought was probably fool's goal because then I thought, you know, hey, I've got this thing under I almost passed. December of that year, I was wondering if I had done the right thing, if I had spent this whole year learning this new business, and then just kept hitting brick wall after brick wall after brick wall, because it was tough trying to get out, find clients. I was standing in a store, it was around Christmas. And I called my wife on the phone and I said, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this, because we're we haven't gotten a single paycheck in a solid year. I only had like maybe five clients and four of them I couldn't reach on the phone. They had they had gone missing. And I was standing there in line getting some items. Behind me I heard a man and a woman arguing, a little bit arguing. They were they were having a heated conversation about toys that they were about to put back. Because they couldn't afford And because of making some right decisions when I worked for the county, I was still living off of some of my retirement that I had cashed out. Then I was good for another year, year and a half maybe, you know, just barely getting by. And I called my wife and I said, I'm about to lay down I'm about to sacrifice something that is either gonna work or not, but I feel strongly That if I reach out to someone else, that that's gonna come back somehow. And the guy actually won the argument. He's like, look, we'll we'll worry about it later. Let's just get the toys. I'd rather see them happy as to worry about our financial difficulties. We'll figure it out. And they went ahead and they started, I was standing at the end of the I'd already paid out, and I turned around and told the cashier, I said, When they finish, take my card and pay for their Christmas. And I stood right there and did that. Probably you, this audience, and my wife is probably the only person who's ever knew this story. But in the back of my mind, I thought, if I can help someone, then that good deed has to come back into my business somehow. And they argued with me, no, you can't pay for this. We're not gonna accept it. You have to. I mean they stood there just weeping in the middle of the store and I just I just got you know my stuff and I just walked out. The very next year, just through word of mouth, I had one business card I printed. One. That's the only business card I ever printed in my life. In the years that I've been doing this since 2012, I've never had another business card printed. Other than when I worked for a couple of other firms. Personally, for me, never had a business card printed except for one card. And they taped it up above the phone at Acute B at the mental health behavioral health facility at our local hospital. They interviewed me that summer. In twenty twelve and they said that, you know, if they had anybody that they could refer me to and they could, they would. Sometime around spring of twenty thirteen the phone started ringing every single day. And I was at the I had gone and they had set me up a little room to meet with their patients. And I was meeting with them three days a week and I had went from like five or six, maybe seven clients in twenty twelve to over 20 in 2013. And and then but I was having to chase fees. So that made it even harder. It took me about three times to pass that test, to be honest with you. And it's because I had spent most of my time instead of just, you know, I was I was learning what I needed for the clients that I that I had. So most of all of my clients were behavioral health type cases. And so, I had to kind of stop and and step back and go, you know, I've gotta learn everything else in order to pass it. 'Cause I was getting within just a few questions of passing. I mean, you know, I was at that at that time it wasn't just a pass or fail. I mean, you got to know what your percentage was and I was, you know, I was getting like sixty three percent, you know, sixty eight percent. I mean, it was really frustrating. And then the third time being the charm, I went and took the test in Baltimore during the riots when that was going on in twenty fifteen, I believe, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. I had just gotten to the hotel downtown and they they had just dispersed the National Guard from from guarding that hotel. Helicopters flying everywhere all night, twenty four seven while I was there for those two or three days. And took the test and then we had the the conference with NADR was in Atlanta the conference in Atlanta was the next year. So I'd end up passing the E D P and A and then still was having to chase some of my clients' fees because They were some of the older ones. It was frustrating. So I had already signed up at the beginning of the year, I think it was 2015 when they had that conference in Atlanta. And I went over there and I told my wife, I was like, I've I've already signed up for it. Might as well go. But this is my this is it for me. It's my swan song. I'm going to this conference and I'm quitting. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm frustrated. I lost about $9,000 in fees the year before. You know, not very big for. For a lot of firms, but it was huge for a single prop you know, sole proprietor. That was that was a lot of money. Went to Atlanta. I'm sitting there going through the classes, and a gentleman by the name of Dave Chermal walks up and starts teaching a class about, how we're supposed to honor our clients by being advocates where they can't, speaking up for them when they can't, being a bulldog. Because they can't. And I sent my wife a text and I was like, I think I just got my second wind. I think that it's all about me. I've got to get rid of my negative frustration. I've got to get rid of I can't do this. And I know I can. I passed the test. I starting to see clearly, And I'm starting to see all my individual clients that I had at the time, you know, I can do this and I can do this that I learned at that conference. I said, but I gotta have a sign that this is gonna work. You know, there's something some something in the heavens has got to lay down on me here and say, you know, you're meant to do this. I played hooky on one of the days of the conference and decided to take my family to the zoo. On the way to the zoo My bank alerted me through text that I had a deposit. It was my very first direct deposit from my ADP and A. And I looked at my wife and I was like, We need to make sure that this thing is protected and so I was on then. I had my second wind and I mean, you know, from twenty twelve to twenty fifteen, it was three years. I mean, that's enough to frustrate and run anybody off. But I in the back of my mind I'd always remembered, you know, all the all the business gurus out there says that that it takes five years for anyone to start a business and see that business become successful. It takes five years. You know what? Those guys are smart and they're almost correct. It took me till about 2017 to really see the fruits of all the things that I had done those five years leading up to that. Exhausted. My retirement account, exhausted my supplemental retirement account by then, had to refinance my house. I was only five years from paying off my mortgage when I got let go from the county or when I had to leave. Had to refinance, start over, it was tough. Had s two small children, one was about to become a teenager. It was really, really tough. Will Yang (21:53) Before we continue, a quick word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Chronicle. If you're running a disability practice, you know the drill. Your team logs into the ERE, checks case after case for updates, and hopes that nothing slips through the cracks. At a handful of cases, it's manageable, but at hundreds, it's impossible. Chronicle automates that monitoring by checking the ERE and e-file daily across your entire caseload, surfacing what's changing, and keeping your team ahead of SSA activity instead of chasing it. More than 2800 disability professionals are already using it, and you can check out more at chroniclelegal.com. All right, now back to the episode with Shay. Will Yang (22:32) just gonna say, like, and yet through all of that, you had the signs of things were working though, right? Because you had the behavioral health niche that was forming. So when did you really feel like it was then all right, it's blast off? J. Shay Guess (22:44) Well, you know, it's twenty twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, financially it was really getting tough. I had like I some reason or another the way they scheduled it, I had like seven hearings, eight, nine hearings in January. And six or seven of those actually paid out. I had a year's worth of income in one month. That's the first time it ever happened in my life. And then it get to looking at your schedule and like, I don't have anything left, you know. Better get out there and hit the road and try to get some more business and then It's like the rug got pulled out from under us again. She had a interpersonal issue with a conflict with a supervisor where she was working. She was she was still working a full time job through that time. She was supporting us both, you know, in those five years. I got introduced to a referral company and we started taking a lot of referrals through them and that was helping helping the business and and I get a little over my head and my paperwork got behind and I couldn't figure out what was going on. So she was helping me part time but still going to work eight hours a day and I guess the stress of that and there was a conflict with one of her supervisors that had gotten hired into the job where she was at and she called me one day and she said, I can't work with this person anymore And they've got more seniority than I do and I can't go to anyone. There's my person that I can go to. I don't know what to do. I'm I'm gonna try to find another job. And I said, I tell you what, why don't you just come home? Why don't you just come home and help me and let's see if we can get this even more built up and we've cut corners before, let's try it. And she came home that day and started working for me the very next day. And then went from working for me to working with me because her job that she'd had all those years was she was a she was a medical records retrieval person for a medical office. She had done a lot of office management. So it was it was a blessing to me to be able to just sit back and focus on the clients and do all of that and let her just run the office. And she's been doing that ever since. We went ahead a couple of years ago and organized an LLC and she she became partner of that. So she's a partner in the LLC with the disability business. It was a little testy there for a little while. But 2019, I don't know why, it just things just happen for a reason. You don't know why they happened. At some point in business I when I was released from the county, I think I kind of took on the persona of Forrest Gump. You know, and everything in that movie, every time he was presented with something, it was always, Yeah, sure, I'll do that. You know, the guy shows up at the graduation and says, how about joining the army? Sure. You know. Gets out. How about doing this? How about get you know, do it? Sure. And I always thought that just saying yes to Yeah, little opportunities might help the situation. Sometimes that gets you too many irons in the fire when you do that. But I just sort of took it in stride. 2019 rolls around. A friend of mine is a drone pilot. When drones were just just getting out there, and he had his FAA license to become a drone pilot. He calls me and he says, I've got this. Opportunity in California. This was after the the big fire that happened in Northern California. And PGE was contracting these drone pilots, these independent con drone pilots to come and take pictures of their assets. And he says, The money's real good. I trust you. Do you think that you can leave your business with your wife, Michie, and come with me to California And let's do this. You can be my visual observer. Which was really funny because like three weeks before that we laugh about it all the time. Three weeks before that, my wife and I were were going to an event and we got stopped in traffic by the phone company. And they were out there working on the poles and communication lines and things like that. And there was guys up in buckets and there was two or three guys walking around in khaki pants and a hard hat and all they were doing was just kind of staring up at the sky. And I told her, I said, that'd be the job to have. You know, get paid to just stare stand there and stare up. And not have to do it, get in the bucket and do all that. Just stare. Whatn't long he calls me, and that was my job with him, was just to stand there and watch that drone, just stare up in the sky and watch it make notes on an iPad for a PG and E. When I tell you that they they paid us very, very well, it was a very, very well. Like one month working for them was more than a at the time the sixty the six thousand dollar full fee that we were getting from disability. So it was it was a pretty good paycheck to stand there with a hard hat on and just stare up at a drone, you know, twelve hours a day, five days a week. That's that was what our contract was for. And I did that for about two straight months. And I came back, did a hearing and then he decided that he had had enough so he'd come home too. But during that time I was running the business from an iPad in California. She was working in Mississippi. I'd get up at five o'clock every morning and we'd have a a Zoom call. And then she would tackle all of the daily the work. But that was good for her because she was really getting she would really understand what the business was all about. And then twenty twenty hits and COVID comes around, sometime around twenty twenty, twenty twenty one. And there we are again. What are we gonna do? And company called Osterhout Burger and Daily, which was a different name then, hired some folks to do remote hearings and they hired me their title for me, not mine, but their title was a hearing specialist. And so I was writing briefs and going to their remote hearings via phone and doing that. Again, it was just the perfect time and because we needed it. It helped us financially. And then I believe at the middle of twenty twenty one when the everything started opening back up, all of their remote people started coming back. They're in Pennsylvania, I'm in Mississippi, so, it was a it was a mutual, you know, understanding that that I couldn't stay with them any longer. And so they released me with some clients so that I wouldn't just go Cold turkey, you know, and some clients that I had helped bring into them and I appreciated that. Was able to represent those clients in my local area. And then again, 2022, a local disability rep that has been doing this way longer than I have, he reached out and said, you know, we need some help. We got a lot of work to do and he's in the process of going ahead and getting he didn't ever have time to even study or take his test. So he he waited all these years to take his test and he said, While I'm doing that, can you come help with the hearings and and all that? And I spent about from twenty twenty two to the end of twenty twenty four, working for him in his office and helping him get back going and help train another guy that was working with him there. And then I came back home our business had gotten a lot busier here, but my wife and I when we started our L L C in twenty twenty four, we incorporated our music business that we have. So we're music artists, we work with a entertainment company out of Nashville, and we decided that, you know, we're gonna use music to help market our disability practice. And we'll go to do these programs in these communities and, sometimes we have known artists that will market and come in and so that the crowds are bigger and then we tell people within a five or six minute span what we do when we're not doing music. And, you know, you pick up a client here and there and you get to still do music and you still get to do your disability work and it all kind of works together and it's different. Everybody that hears us talk about it say, Well you that's a little bit different approach. To marketing, but hey, I mean you know I mean am I gonna spend four or five thousand dollars hiring a marketing firm to put me get together a jingle and a commercial and put it out on the T V or am I gonna just pay myself to go set up a in a venue and and rent and make it worthwhile for people to come and and hear music and then hear how we do and what we do and then help people where they're needed, That's and that's it. That gets you to twenty twenty six right there. I don't know if that was it's a whirlwind it was just it's breadcrumbs, if you want to know the truth. It's one of those situations where you accomplish something and you go, Okay, because that worked, move on. Keep doing that. And then when you run into a brick wall and something doesn't work, you pivot and you go this way or you go that way. When you hit a brick wall, you turn and you go another way. So it's an interesting business to be in. You meet a lot of different people and just when you think you're ready to hang it up, something will get your attention. I always point back to a client that I had it was right about the time I passed my test. We went in, I got a bench decision at the hearing. Got outside, the client hands me an envelope. She says, Don't read this till you get your office. I I told her I wouldn't but I lied. I got my vehicle in the parking lot and I opened it up and it was a suicide note thanking me for the help that I did. Thanking me for doing everything that I could. But what the note pretty much amounted to was that If we couldn't get a favorable decision from the judge, she was no longer gonna be anyone's problem. And I sat there and wept in my vehicle. That's when it really began to dawn on me how important this work really is to the people that can't work. There's people out there that their life literally depends on what we do and how well we do it. You can't win every case. And even the cases that you are so passionate about. Sometimes you just can't get the information that you need from the medical providers, or you just can't get that over the hump to allow, for the right judge to hear the case. And they're, they're gonna agree sometimes with the Department of Determination Services and you know, it don't work out. That one fortunately did, and I think that was one of those breadcrumbs that said, hey. You know, you mean something to these people. You know, keep going. Another client that I had We went to a hearing and we drew a judge that was a ten percent payer. He only paid ten percent of the cases that he heard. Matter of fact, he effectively he was released from Social Security because he was just so bad. People that were legitimately disabled, he was denying And I drew him for a judge and This lady was really, really bad, but she had the best attitude of any client. She had got to the point where she couldn't breathe. She didn't have money for a doctor. She was borrowing or or getting used inhalers from her neighbors. That's how bad it was. And then he actually didn't deny her, but what he did do was he moved her onset date. When she got a stage four lung cancer diagnosis. And even during the hearing, he said, Why didn't you choose to have the surgery? And I had to make him read the document three times on the record that said by her oncologist that the cancer had attached her heart and her lung lining together, that operating was not possible. And he would read the document and skip over that. Like he would go out of his way to skip over the words inoperable. And I would say, I want you to read it. I can read it, but I want you to read it. And he got irritated at me, but he ended up reading it for the record. And then sat on the decision for four and a half months. Just sat on it. We had to get a congressional inquiry to give us the decision. And the hearing office would say, We're waiting on the judge to give us the decision. We'd write it, but we're waiting on him to give us the decision. And she passed away. Waiting on this judge to write the decision and he approved it, but like I said, he only approved it for like three months prior to the hearing. My argument to that was you don't get a stage four cancer diagnosis overnight. That had to have taken place, I even submitted medical documentation from the Journal of Medicine that it would have had that in her system, at least a year before. She'd have had to have the cancer had it been there. But because he didn't have a quote unquote, legitimate diagnosis until she had gotten bad enough that she went to the ER and they put her through some tests and then and it came back like it did. She didn't have the money. I mean I visited her in her home and you could literally see the ground underneath the the house that she lived in. But it was a spotless place. She kept that place spotless. 'Cause she couldn't live, To this day, and that was like in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, back about ten years ago. Her last voicemail thanking me for helping her as much as I could while she was in the hospital after the hearing, I still have that voicemail on my phone. And every now and then I go to the end of my voicemail while I'm deleting everything else and just play her voicemail just so I can hear. How happy she was just to be alive at the moment. It didn't bother her that we drew a bad judge. She said, It's just the way life is. So our clients teach us a lot more than we learn sometimes from books and experience. But those two clients hold a special place. All of them do really. But those two specifically hold a special place in my heart. And when I get down on myself and I think that I've I've not done right or I've I've messed up or, frustrated because this, that, or the other doesn't work right, I go back and listen to those voicemail and then think back about the client that gave me her suicide note. Will Yang (36:02) what do you think it means to run your practice the right way and so many of the stories that you've shared that's foundational to who you are as a person too in terms of seeing the person whether it was back at that story it's Christmas time making that family's day there's just so many threads that are clear to like the ethos of core firm philosophy how you run it but what does it mean to you in terms of you know when everything's said and done What is running it the right way look like? J. Shay Guess (36:26) Running it the right way, meeting the deadlines for sure. That's that's a given, but empathy. You know, I I I tell my wife, my oldest son now is learning the business. He has started to work for me, he started in October, and we have these conversations all the time. He'll call and he'll say, How do I need to respond to this client? And I'll say, well, how would you respond to this client? You know, what would you say to them? How would you change the way that they're feeling down about themselves? So the right way to me is that every single person that you have in your filing cabinet or in your database, they're people. They all have different problems, they all have different things that is keeping them from working, but you have an obligation to them. To make their voices heard before, Social Security. And sometimes they can't voice it because they don't know how to voice it. Social security sends them these letters, you know, wanting to know, can you do you feed your dog or do you cook a meal? You have to be a communicator for them and you have to educate them. So running the business the right way is a practice, right? It's a practice because every day you're doing the elementary things over and over and over again to make sure that you're the expert. And that's what being expert is, is just doing the elementary things over and over and over and over. And making sure that your clients feel heard, feel like people, feel like they belong in this world and there's somebody fighting for them You hear this a lot of times. That's why we stay within a certain volume. We're not trying to build thousands and thousands of clients. I want to make sure personally I can be hands-on with each one of our clients. At some point in the process, they go from the intake where my son does to the office part where my wife takes care of. And once we get to the hearing part, I do all of those. But even in the process of the intakes, I still do those. I still do the day-to-day office things. I still try to answer the text messages that we get and the emails that we get personally. To me, doing it the right way is doing it as if they're an extension of your family. We have a policy that is different than a lot of people. We don't close out our files. I tell my clients at the exit, when they get their disability started, I say, since you allowed me and you trusted me with your claim, then you're a partner with us for life. So as long as you live, if you need a consultant in any way, you call me back. If I can't help you, we will find somebody that will. And I can't tell you how many phone calls we've had from clients that we represented 10 years ago. And said, you know, you always said that if I had a problem, I could call ya and you would still represent me. And I was like, right, you've already paid me. So what's the problem? Let's see if we can handle it. My wife told me, she said, you know, that was pretty good for the first five years or so. But she said, Now we're running Will Yang (39:28) Yeah. J. Shay Guess (39:30) we're running, you know, twenty twelve to twenty twenty six, that's a lot of pretty good bit of clients that might reach back out and I was like, you know, it is exactly what it is. And I I stand beside that, decision to do that because, it's a life changing moment for them. I don't feel like they're just clients at that point. They're partners, you know, because those are the ones that are gonna talk to their family and they're the ones that's gonna be out and about in the doctor's offices and they're gonna say, Hey, my guy helped me I'd call him right now. He'll answer the phone. And To me, that's what being successful is, And now that we've grown the business to this point, financially I can take that 30 minutes consultation with a client that's already paid me ten years ago. Will Yang (40:15) On the topic of your eldest son being trained to the business, what does it mean to you to build something that might outlast you, passing the baton to the next generation? J. Shay Guess (40:23) Yeah, I have to kind of give him credit for that. Because he was the one that approached me. He was doing retail business. He got out of high school, probably could have played college ball. He told me if I can't get a scholarship to play ball, I'm not paying for college. I will go get me a job. And he hit the ground running and got into retail and at some point, you know, five, six years into that he's he comes to me and he says, You were right about something. I said, What's that? He said, You told me that there would probably come a day when retail wouldn't be what it was when I got into it. And he was spending a lot of his time filling online orders. And not really helping customers anymore. And then what he came into the store and he starts seeing the writing on the wall, though these big box stores are closing all over the United States. And he said, I don't feel like the one I'm I'm a part of will do that. He said, But I see people that come into our business and they get promoted. And it's like the harder you work, the less you get seen. So, you know, If you'll have me, I'd love to learn the business because you offered it to me when I got out of high school. And he said, If you'll teach me, I'll learn. And so we we set him up on a a plan that if he meets certain you know milestones over the next fifteen years that he will either be a partner or he will own it outright. Because at that point I'll probably be ready to retire. And so we've worked it out how he would own it from there on. And we named our our business so that it doesn't really reflect on anything personal with me. And so one of those milestones is he has to get his E D. P N A within the next five years. He's gone to a couple of conferences. I've signed him up on some educational stuff. He's reading through some books. But I can't tell you How many times I will follow up a phone call intake and people will say, Was that your son I was talking to? Will Yang (42:21) Yeah. J. Shay Guess (42:22) And I say, Yeah. And they'll say, I don't know if anybody's ever told you this, but you did right by that young man, because he's one of the most respectful, easy to talk to. He explains everything the way you know we want to hear it. And I tell you that to me, that makes me proud. Because I don't think he learned that from me. I think he he learned that through the school knocks on being on the front lines of retail, for four or five years. And you the customer has to be always right and even though you you have to find a way in the middle ground to, you know, make it work, even when you know it can't. And that's in this business you run across people that they'll they'll hire you and then three or four months later they call you and they say, You know, I was Talking to a friend of mine and they told me that I needed to just ditch you and go somewhere else. And you know what I say to that? I say, you know what? You can listen to your friend and I wish you the best. Just when you find that person that you've switched over to, have them call me, and th we'll make this transition as easy as possible. And they're like, Well, you're not upset? Not one bit. Because this is about you. This is about your peace of mind. This is about your disability. And if you don't feel like I'm doing a good enough job, then you need to go with, you know, let your friend your your obviously your friend's been doing disability work a lot longer than I have. No, no, no, no, no, no. You know, they just saw this ad on TV. That's fine. And what's funny a lot of times is they come back in a like a boomerang. Four or five months later going, will you take me back? We take those on case by case situations to see, Will Yang (44:03) Yeah. J. Shay Guess (44:04) That's what I love about this practice is it's it's never the same. There's always something new. And that's what I tell my son, Will Yang (44:11) When you think about, one of the areas that you invest your time in now is on the NADR community building side. So you've gone from being somebody who just, you know, learned about NADR and then started taking the tests and Like you now are one of the co hosts on the podcast. I'm curious, like, how did that transition go? What inspired and motivated you to want to give back in that sort of way? J. Shay Guess (44:34) Christopher Mazzouli, one of our past presidents, he he approached me in Baltimore. This was I believe it was twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two maybe. It was one of those where we were still in some semi lockdown. So we had a very limited crew at that conference and he approached me and he said, You think you could produce a podcast from your studio? I was like, Yeah, it's it's not a problem. I could definitely do that. Well, I'm not gonna do it by myself, you know. We need another personality, you know, someone that kinda knows like everybody with NADR. And we reached out to Eva at first she was like, I don't I don't know if I can geared that way. But that year that we did that conference in Baltimore, I watched Her simultaneously do an online conference. Because we ever we had online. And then she was live there at the conference too. So she was doing two things at once. She was a moderator for the online audience. And then she was the moderator for the in-person audience. And I told Chris, I was like, she'd be great because she she's already got the voice for it. She already knows, you know, the inner workings of NADR, and then she knows both sides of the business side and the legal side. So we met, got together online and hit the ground running. And man, I guess almost to our sixtieth episode, maybe, I guess. Maybe that's five years worth. You know, that's that's amazing. Will Yang (46:07) Yeah, mo most podcasts don't make it past five, I think. So in that time period, what is what has been some of the biggest learnings from just running that podcast and which episodes maybe if folks are listening and they want to tune into a particular episode among like your favorites. J. Shay Guess (46:23) One of our favorites was we got to interview the whistleblowers for the Eric Conn the Kentucky fraud case, the largest fraud case in Social Security history that happened over a series of several years. Well, we we interviewed the two whistleblowers for that we broke it up into two shows. And That was probably one of the most exciting ones that we've done. Because to hear the backstory and some of the things that never made it to T V. Yeah, some of the things they were able to share in that podcast. We've interviewed people that are just like me that got started from just being in the right place at the right time and and something in life changed courses and they had to pivot and got into this business, you know, and and they they they're small practice like we are, those are really interesting because they really kinda hit home with where most of us are, that are EDP and A's, you know, whether you're working for a firm or whether you're sole proprietor, some of those are are really interesting to listen to because, they They relate. And Phil Literal, that was another good one because he actually started with Social Security when the SSI program was implemented and then he retired from Social Security and then he started his own practice and then he retired from that. To have a fifty year span You know, working on both sides of that table and to have that knowledge in that podcast. I don't we should we probably should have done two or three on him, you know. Will Yang (47:48) And for folks that arent f familiar with NADR and the community there, what do you think the NADR community gives that you just can't get anywhere else? J. Shay Guess (47:56) I actually made this statement in a board meeting when I first became a board member a couple of years ago. I believe that NADRs their footprint with Social Security is the education side of it. You know, we really give ourselves into educating our members and even non members. You can go and and purchase our webinars and come to our conferences and come to our networking events, you know, as a non-member, a lot of times, you know, they open that up. We're more educational based. When we're meeting with Social Security and legislatively we have some of the best people here recently that we've put together. Ryan Heal, which is our you know our policy advocate that's in Washington DC. You know, she is very good at relaying the messages back and forth and being our voice between us and the Social Security and Congress if this policy's changing how do we educate our members on how to do that effectively. And I think NADR has their footprint, you know. The other organizations out there like NOSSCR and ACRD and I believe there's two or three more You know, they have their footprint. I think NOSSCR's footprint in this thing is legislative side. They're very well at positioning themselves and and getting things heard on the hill, and and then The NADR's strong on the educational side I don't think there's ever been a meeting where we talked about being competitive. You know, we're not trying to compete with anybody. We're just doing our thing and and that's our footprint is to be the educational piece and the educational voice. And I think our biggest niche is that We look how this is going to affect our claimant first, our client first, how it's going to affect our members, our EDP and A's and our attorneys, and then go from there. We try to follow that as a as a guiding light. You know, we start there and work our way back instead of starting there and work our way back Will Yang (49:46) Now let's move into the lightning round. So these are just some quick hitting questions to wrap up our conversation here. The first one that I have for you is your favorite or best win that you've ever had in one sentence. J. Shay Guess (49:58) Best win I've ever had in one sentence. Client that had lost her dominant right arm. I read from the the D D S denial that said they anticipated that she would get better. And I looked at the judge and I was like, You can see that she's not better and he goes, Okay. And he paid her. So that was probably That was fun. 'Cause he he shook his head and goes, This is pretty good catch, you know. Will Yang (50:23) That's a good one. Next one is the SSA form that you hate the most. J. Shay Guess (50:28) my goodness. The function report. Will Yang (50:34) What is something that a client said in a hearing that you will never forget? J. Shay Guess (50:38) I had a client The judge asked I don't even remember what the question was that the judge asked, but for whatever reason the client said if you don't believe me, ask President Obama. I have a pair of his shoes and that he gave me and if you don't believe me, call President Obama. He can vouch for me because he's my bro. And that's what they did. He's my bro. And the judge looks at me, And just kind of gives me a nod. There's actually another one that's kinda along those same lines. It was really good, but it was a it would be a tie between that one and the gentleman that had that told the judge that he believed that the government had been watching him and that he built a room behind his house, which all of a sudden I'm rolling my eyes because that building a room is going to negate his physical impairments. And that would not allow cell phone To penetrate or allow communication devices to penetrate that room because he felt the government had been watching him because he he had come uncovered some unclassified information and that they were after him. And the judge actually leans over his desk and he goes, Do you mind me asking what you made that room out of? What made it impenetrable to cell phone waves, radio waves, and listening devices? And he goes, he leans in, he goes, Cardboard and tin. He said, So you and the judge is like He just all the air let out of him. You know, he thought this guy he thought he was gonna take him on this journey. But those are those two right there were a tie. I love I love both those clients. They were my favorite. Will Yang (52:20) Yeah, those are good ones. What are your favorite disability tech tools? J. Shay Guess (52:26) Hmm, disability tech tools. Well, I'm an AI guy. I actually working on a tool that characterizes an intake information. I have to be real careful not to take the client's intake. It's almost six to eight months I've been playing with this. Where I can put intake information into this AI that I've trained to give you the probability of the win and the loss based on the information that you're giving it. And it not only tells you what percentage you have of probability of a win loss based on certain criteria that I've trained it with, but it also tells you what you're missing, you know what you could use to get you over an eighty percent. And it's also designed not to give a hundred percent. I'm trying to work out every little detail and and it's right now I've had to pay for more space because I I hit my sixteen thousand character limit I've had to delete it twice and start over. Because it, once it starts hallucinating, I just I remove it and how to get it how how do I get around that. So but anyway, that's that's one of my favorite tools I've been playing with lately. And I'm gonna tell you, for using hypotheticals on some of clients that that I do intakes with and some hearings where I do it hypothetically and leave things in or take things out. Don't let it see, certain things or don't let it know certain things. And then I take when I go to my hearing and I come back and I get a decision, I plug that into my hypotheticals on how how the RFC was formulated and things like that. And been getting some really good results that hopefully over the next few months the team that I'm working with we can try to see if it'll it'll help more people, you know. That's that's my favorite thing. I love I love artificial intelligence. I believe that Social Security started using it several years ago, because we were told in Denver I think they said seven years they would be doing it a hundred percent doing it. W we were told in Denver. And so I'd made up my mind right then that if they're gonna do it in seven, I need to do it in three. So Will Yang (54:39) In terms of ALJ behaviors that you dislike the most, what comes to mind? J. Shay Guess (54:45) I kind of pivoted to how I approach ALJs now. I look at their percentage, you guys give us a percentage, approval percentage, and I look at that as either conservative or liberal, not win loss. You know, are they conservative if they're thirty, forty percent and lower, they're conservative. In terms of their personalities, I just the ones that I dislike the most are the ones that com completely seem like they're very unhappy. They're very monotone. You know, they look at your client sometimes I ha I literally had one look at my client and roll their eyes one time. I I've also had a judge argue with my client over something that wasn't even pertaining to the disability file. Just recently I had one that sent my client to a CE after the hearing and we had two RFCs from two different times by the same treating doctor that's treated this client for ten years or longer actually, that gave us two RFCs that was consistent with the medical record and he still sends this client to a CE that just happens to be a 70 year old OBGYN and this was a male client that had arthritis. And we had a specialist that gave us two RFCs and the and the the judge still denied it. Still denied it. Of course, you know that's a federal case for us, so we're we're going there. I don't look at the judges as the enemy anymore. I used to. I don't think they're the enemy. You know, I I look at it as what can I what can I sit in front of to bridge the gap between where they're at and where they where I want to be. And if I can't build that bridge, then can't be built. Will Yang (56:27) For somebody else out there that might be thinking about running their disability practice with their partner, just one or two sentences, what's your best piece of advice? . J. Shay Guess (56:35) If you're one of these people that can't sit at breakfast and talk finances without getting angry at one another, then then you need a separate office on each side of town if you're gonna work together to do a business. Fortunately my my wife and I have been partners in music all of our life since before we were out of high school. We've learned how to fight fair. If you know how to disagree without allowing it to affect your personal life, you know, I by all means, you know, this is the best business that you can have with your spouse Don't be afraid to do it. Don't be afraid to jump into it. You have to have a cutoff time. She's very meticulous about everything. She's a little bit O C D and some some but she's she's task oriented, which means that if we had some things she don't want it to go over till tomorrow, she'll work seven, eight o'clock at night to make sure it gets done. And I'm not. I'm eight to five. I can s I can put it aside and come back tomorrow, but you know, you have to make sure that your personality's are not gonna conflict there and otherwise that's one of the best things we ever did. Will Yang (57:44) Amazing. Shay, thank you so much for all of your time today. I know we've covered a lot of ground. There's gonna be a lot of great stories to pull out of this as well. If folks want to get in touch with you, what is the best way that folks can stay in touch? J. Shay Guess (57:59) you can email me personally. It's Shay Guess S H A Y G U E S S S at Gmail dot com. My office number is six one five seven six seven zero seven five five is my office number. If you're a member of N A D R and we do have the talk list. I can be reached there through the N A D. R website as a board member. Outside of that, YouTube, go look at my TikToks and YouTube videos, you know? We're d our our music is all over it as Shay and Mitchie. Is our music videos and our music and and And if you follow me on Facebook, I apologize. I'm a comedian. So you never know when I'm gonna start. But I wanna thank you guys for the work you do and for your wonderful software and just keep doing what you're doing and making it making it a better product. It's it's amazing. Will Yang (58:49) Yeah, we'll need a whole nother episode to dig into the music and the comedian side of of of your career as well. But that'll be part two. Leave it in the comments if if you wanna hear that side. J. Shay Guess (58:57) Yeah, it'll be fun. It'll be fun. Will Yang (59:00) Excellent. Thank you so much, Shay.