From Rock Star to Founding Partner with Ryan Martin

Ryan Martin, founding partner of Aura LLP, joins me on the podcast this week. Once a full-time gigging and session musician and singer/songwriter, Ryan is now an experienced lawyer practising in real estate, corporate/commercial and estates, where he represents businesses of all sizes, from the purchasing and selling of some of the largest franchises in Canada, to start-ups in the retail technology and construction sectors. In his real estate practice, his clients range from first-time homebuyers to clients with large-scale real estate investment portfolios in both Canada and abroad, and he is one of a handful of Ontario lawyers who specialise in co-ownership real estate law.

In today’s interview, Ryan describes his professional journey, shares details about his firm, including how he grows business and the budgets they have for marketing, and offers his advice to other lawyers thinking of opening their own firm. He also shares what has surprised him the most throughout his journey, details his savings and investments, and concludes with his definition of financial independence as well as his plans to achieve it.

Listen to the Podcast – Download the Transcript

Highlights:

As a musician, Ryan’s interest in contracts led him to attend law school after which he practiced criminal law before settling on real estate law, and eventually partnering with an old friend to create Aura LLP.
They do a lot of blogging and a lot of online content to educate and attract business.
His advice to lawyers thinking of opening their own firm is to ensure that they have the right people and that their timing is right.
Ryan and his wife currently invest in RESPs and RRSPs, and are looking to invest in real estate.
Financial independence, for Ryan, is the ability to make decisions without having to think too much about what the financial implications will be.

Quotes:

“It was a diverse path for me. I think a lot of lawyers wouldn’t tell you that they were musicians first, never thought they wanted to be lawyers, and then all of a sudden stepped into the role of becoming a lawyer.”

“A big way in which we grow business is we build relationships, we try to make sure that we foster those relationships.”

“I think people at the end of the day want to feel like the person they’re talking to they’ve seen before, they’ve built a relationship with over the course of having watched videos or interacted with the content, whatever it happens to be, whether it be a podcast or a video.”

“I think that the hope with the law firm is that we can get it to a point where it is stable enough that I can be, as a partner and as a founding partner in this business, somebody who’s not so involved in running a file on a day to day.”