Our New Building

In this episode, Josh, Aaron and Dave discuss FVF Law’s new building in Central Austin, what it represents beyond just a physical space, and how deeper community roots, local relationships, and preserving Austin’s character reflect the firm’s values and vision for the future. 

 FVF Law is a well-credentialed, overwhelmingly 5-star reviewed personal injury law firm in Austin, TX. FVF strives to be the educational resource for the injured, available to guide those with questions about what comes next. It is FVF’s mission to ensure clients are prioritized and informed throughout the injury claim process, and to secure the best possible outcome. Josh Fogelman and Aaron Von Flatern founded FVF Law to offer a different kind of injury law firm, and a dignified alternative in the marketplace. They hope to show injured Texans that consulting a lawyer after an injury is a natural, and responsible thing to do.

Transcript

0:00:00.5 Aaron : Hey Josh.

0:00:01.9 Josh : Hey Aaron.

0:00:02.4 Aaron : Are you hungry?

0:00:02.4 Josh : All the time.

0:00:04.8 Aaron : What do you want to eat?

0:00:06.8 Josh : Honest Mary's all the time.

0:00:08.7 Aaron : Well, I wasn't referring to right now. I was referring to later.

0:00:12.2 Josh : All the time.

0:00:13.7 Aaron : Oh my God. You are serious.

0:00:16.0 Josh : All day, every day.

0:00:18.6 Aaron : All right. Well, I got good news for you.

0:00:21.4 Josh : I like good news.

0:00:22.4 Aaron : We have a new building.

0:00:23.8 Josh : I heard.

0:00:25.0 Aaron : You paid for it.

0:00:25.0 Josh : Oh, that's cool. Great.

0:00:26.2 Aaron : I mean, we both paid for it.

0:00:27.9 Josh : That's awesome.

0:00:28.7 Aaron : We all paid for it. In fact, we're all going to pay for it.

0:00:32.1 Josh : Right. Outstanding. For the next 30 years give or take.

0:00:36.0 Aaron : And even better than that, it's a block from Honest Mary's.

0:00:39.6 Josh : Yes, it is.

0:00:41.1 Aaron : I don't know how much Honest Mary's is going to pay for this podcast. Hopefully they want to sponsor this.

0:00:44.0 Josh : I mean, I'll tell you what...

0:00:47.2 Dave : Just secure the sponsorship before this telease, then be like, look. 

0:00:50.9 Josh : We're going to hold them hostage.

0:00:51.5 Aaron : Yeah, we're going to make them listen to this and be like, look how good this is. We're just talking about nothing but Honest Mary's. 

0:00:56.1 Josh : Mary, if you're honest and you're watching this, we demand free bowls.

0:01:05.1 Aaron : We can do better than that. We could get those cookies. The brown butter almond... 

0:01:08.5 Josh : Oh, yeah. 

0:01:10.8 Aaron : Whatever those are. 

0:01:11.5 Dave : Are those cookies, are they Josh approved? 

0:01:13.3 Aaron : Are they?

0:01:14.7 Josh : Well, I mean...

0:01:16.3 Dave : Are any cookies Josh approved?

0:01:17.0 Josh : You know, their ingredients, if I were just to guess, it's not that I know exactly what they are, if I were just to guess, I'd say the ingredients are almond butter, maple syrup, baking powder, and salt.

0:01:35.2 Aaron : You are literally ruining our Honest Mary's sponsorship as we speak. We've given out their secrets. 

0:01:40.4 Josh : It's on the post and on the package. They don't tell you in what ratio. You have to ask ChatGPT for that.

0:01:47.0 Aaron : Okay.

0:01:49.1 Josh : Yeah, they're good. Really good.

0:01:51.2 Aaron : They're good. They're so good that even though Josh doesn't like spending money or eating sugar, he acquiesced to my request that we eat cookies last time we went there. And we ate them. It was great.

0:02:06.6 Josh : I'll eat those cookies. Also, my other favorite restaurant in Austin is Pinthouse Pizza, which is like across the street.

0:02:17.4 Aaron : Let's plug them so that we can also get money out of them.

0:02:20.5 Dave : You just cut it based on who says yes?

0:02:22.3 Aaron : Yes.

0:02:23.0 Josh : Pinthouse Pizza, you and Honest Mary's have to have a tug of war across Burnet Road to determine who gets to sponsor this podcast.

0:02:36.1 Aaron : Yes. And we are not going to stop traffic. That's part of the challenge. You just tug it fast. Okay? 

0:02:45.0 Josh : One powered by bowls, one powered by pizza.

0:02:49.0 Aaron : I already know who's going to win.

0:02:50.0 Josh : It's going to be epic.

0:02:50.9 Aaron : Let me tell you something. The Pinthouse Pizza guy, and I know it's a couple, so I don't want to diss the other person, but the husband of the Pinthouse Pizza family is a West Point grad, and he is literally like 6'6". 

0:03:05.8 Josh : That's awesome.

0:03:06.7 Aaron : He's going to win.

0:03:08.1 Josh : I mean... 

0:03:09.1 Aaron : And if he gets... 

0:03:11.4 Josh : He's probably going to win. I don't know what Mary is built like.

0:03:15.9 Aaron : She's honest and true. Yeah, that sounds like a situation. 

0:03:20.7 Josh : I've never met Mary. 

0:03:22.3 Dave : Yeah, but if she's healthy, then she's strong. 

0:03:23.8 Josh : For sure.

0:03:24.8 Aaron : She does eat properly.

0:03:26.7 Josh : For sure. 

0:03:27.0 Aaron : And the other guy's eating pizza all day.

0:03:29.2 Josh : So good, though.

0:03:30.0 Aaron : I don't know. But I can tell you what, if Honest Mary wins and pulls... I don't know what his name is. I've known before, but... 

0:03:38.1 Josh : Ryan? 

0:03:40.9 Aaron : Pinthouse guy, Ryan. I hope his name's Ryan. If she pulls Ryan into Burnet Road and traffic is coming, as a West Point grad, he will probably survive. Like, he'll tie the rope around something before the car hits and, like, pull himself to safety.

0:03:58.1 Josh : I mean, you know, let's just hope that they both survive and nobody gets hurt.

0:04:06.9 Aaron : I'll tell you who's going to win the tug of war. I'll tell you right now. It's a woman named Suzi. S-U-Z-I. She runs a Chinese place called Suzi's that is also on this block. She remembers me every time I go in. I've only been five times over, I don't know, three years or something. And she's amazing. And she just... She seems like the kind of person that would survive everything. And she's survived a lot of changes in Austin. You know, that restaurant has been around for a long time.

0:04:39.8 Josh : A long time. It's good, too.

0:04:42.1 Aaron : And they went away for a while, then they came back because, you know, you can't kill Suzi.

0:04:47.2 Josh : Demand. 

0:04:48.8 Aaron : Demand. And so Suzi will win that tug of war.

0:04:50.8 Josh : I'm pretty excited. I mean, look, we got a new building. It's at 49th and Burnet. It's right in the heart of the Burnet Road, Old Funky Austin corridor. It literally used to be landmarked by the giant lamp stuck to a pole. You know, the building's got a lot of history to it. And we're pretty excited about the prospect of finally kind of having our own true home base we've been talking about. I mean, we got real serious about doing it right around COVID time. Didn't really know what we were going to do through the kind of work remote period. And I'm pretty excited, man.

0:05:38.8 Aaron : You know, on a serious note, our building is our answer to the billboards, right? Like, we are not going to be billboard lawyers. We've decided that our brand is going to be a hopefully very elegant looking building in the middle of a walkable part of thriving central Austin that kind of weaves itself into the fabric of people's day-to-day walk around lives. And stands for the proposition that, you know, not everything you see on billboards is how personal injury law is practiced. There are lawyers who are doing it in a diligent, professional way, who are educating their clients, who are being transparent, who are advocating, you know, who are there for the right reasons. And hopefully that's how it will come to be seen. Hopefully we'll join the ranks of Honest Mary, of Suzi, and of Ryan the Pinthouse Pizza guy on that block.

0:06:33.6 Josh : That's right.

0:06:34.2 Aaron : Pillars.

0:06:34.9 Josh : Yeah, you know, I mean, I really, in all honesty though, when we were talking about what to do and we saw this location come available, I mean, part of our decision making was what can we help this corridor... How can we help this corridor not become even like more chock-full of mixed use, like high rise residential type? Like, can we help preserve the funk? And I think we're going to do that.

0:07:07.1 Dave : There's a phrase about that, preserving the funk, that Austin's pretty known for.

0:07:12.3 Aaron : Keep... 

0:07:13.2 Dave : Keep Austin...

0:07:13.4 Josh : Keep Austin weird. 

0:07:14.6 Dave : Oh yeah, yeah, that's it. So you got your own version of it.

0:07:17.6 Aaron : KAW. K-A-W.

0:07:17.6 Dave : Preserve the funk.

0:07:18.2 Josh : I just trademarked preserve the funk because everyone heard it here first.

0:07:23.8 Aaron : PTF is pretty good. KAW is pretty good.

0:07:25.8 Josh : But I mean, look, you live in that neighborhood.

0:07:28.2 Aaron : I do.

0:07:29.9 Josh : You're raising a child in that neighborhood. You're like deeply, deeply, maybe like to a point that induces some sort of like jealousy and resentment from your law partner, deeply involved in the baseball organization of Northwest Austin. I grew up in Northwest Austin.

0:07:52.0 Aaron : You played in that league.

0:07:53.6 Josh : I played in that league.

0:07:54.7 Aaron : Your brother played in that league. 

0:07:57.5 Josh : I mean...

0:07:58.0 Aaron : One of the two of you was an All-star. 

0:07:59.1 Josh : Yeah, that's right. Only one of the two of us.

0:08:00.5 Aaron : But then one of the other one went and played high school baseball and hit actual home runs in high school. You did that. 

0:08:08.9 Josh : I mean, both of us played high school baseball.

0:08:11.5 Aaron : All right. Well, I only knew the legend of Josh for some reason. I didn't hear the legend of Zack.

0:08:14.6 Josh : But I was definitely better than my brother.

0:08:17.3 Aaron : Okay. That's on record now.

0:08:20.6 Josh : That's on record. And he's not here to defend himself so I feel comfortable. So, but that part of town has like deep, deep, deep roots for both of us.

0:08:27.8 Aaron : Yeah.

0:08:28.2 Josh : And I'm pretty excited.

0:08:29.6 Aaron : Yeah, this is the part of town where Matthew McConaughey said, all right, all right, over there at the Top Notch drive-in, which is still there. This is definitely the kind of north but west of campus part of town that won one of the many tug-of-wars between the north and south that occurred in the '80s over what was then Town Lake. And that's actually the root of our tug-of-war discussion.

0:09:01.1 Josh : Google it. It happened.

0:09:03.0 Aaron : The pictures are amazing, y'all. 

0:09:04.6 Josh : It's real.

0:09:05.5 Aaron : Yuppies versus Bubbas. The Bubbas won most of the time.

0:09:12.7 Josh : They did.

0:09:13.3 Aaron : They were good. They were good.

0:09:16.4 Josh : Well, we're excited to be able to open our doors to the public and become a fixture on that road and to have a permanent home and to eat Honest Mary's and Pinthouse Pizza every day, multiple times a day, as it were. 

0:09:30.3 Aaron : And Suzi's. 

0:09:31.8 Josh : And Suzi's, of course. What you got, Dave?

0:09:34.7 Dave : I think it's super cool that we are Austinites, actually. You know what I mean?

0:09:41.9 Josh : Sure.

0:09:43.4 Dave : You know, you're a native, but you see so many attorney billboards, and you see them in Austin, but then you drive to just kind of everywhere, and you're just everywhere, and there's this lack of connection maybe to the city. And so I think it's really cool that we get to be like, we are local and we are physically here, and we're serving the Austin community. 

0:10:05.0 Josh : Well, the two biggest billboard lawyers...

0:10:06.8 Aaron : Are not from here. 

0:10:08.7 Josh : Are not from here.

0:10:09.4 Aaron : Right. Yeah. Whereas I'll be the guy in the grocery store who's coached seven or eight baseball teams, and every single kid in that store I know in some derivative way, and am sort of authorized by the Little League to yell at. It's great. I'm just like, put that down. They're like, okay, coach. That's what being a part of the community is, right? 

0:10:32.2 Josh : Absolutely. 

0:10:33.6 Aaron : It's like parenting other people's kids.

0:10:34.0 Josh : It takes a village.

0:10:34.9 Dave : Well, and so many of our clients did not come through a Google search necessarily. There's a lot of other ways that we've been able to serve the community through just relationships, through natural relationships that we've had where people have said, oh, I knew this person from another part of their life, and so then when this happened, they referred me to FEF, or they've known one of us, and we've been able to say, oh, this is what we do. And so, yeah, it's just like when you're involved in the community and you're available relationally, at some point, unfortunately, when someone needs these services, there's such a better connection and a stronger point. Because I have the privilege of getting to do some of our client follow-up after their case, and for many people, when they talk about how they found us, it's always, oh, I was referred to you by someone I know. And one of my questions is like, was that enough? Like, did you need to do your own research? And for most of them, they say, oh, no, I just... Because someone I knew trusted y'all, I trusted them, that was enough for me to make that choice.

0:11:41.7 Dave : And so those relationships are what are so, like, foundational for people. And so for us to have another physical opportunity to run into people, to meet people on an organic level, I love that version of relationship building and networking so much more than obviously the billboards that create so much distance and don't really give you a way to really connect.

0:12:02.7 Aaron : I agree.

0:12:03.8 Josh : Yeah, I think, you know, community in the sense of community is super important to who we are and being a part of that community by planting ourselves back where our roots... Replanting ourselves where our roots have been for decades is really a meaningful thing for us. And I'm pretty excited.

0:12:25.6 Aaron : Me too.

0:12:26.4 Dave : We're going to preserve the funk.

0:12:28.5 Josh : Preserve the funk.

0:12:30.0 Aaron : PTF. 

0:12:30.3 Josh : Oh, yeah.

0:12:30.6 Aaron : Oh, yeah.

0:12:31.3 Dave : Nice.