Robbie Crabtree | How to Move the World with Your Words

Srini Rao

Robbie, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Robbie Crabtree

Hey, Serenity, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk today.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. So I found out about you by way of your publicist. You told me a little bit about the work that you did. And when I kind of saw that you had made this transition from trial lawyer to entrepreneur who teaches something called performative speaking, I was like, okay, that sounds typically like a typical unmistakable interview where the trajectory is definitely not linear. You're like, how the hell did that happen? All of which we will get into. But before we start, I want to start by asking you, where in the world did you grow up and how did that end up impacting the choices that you ended up making throughout your life and your career?

Robbie Crabtree

Yeah, so I grew up in Houston, Texas, and it's in a little suburb called Kingwood, which I have described, like, I have, do you know Kingwood? Is that why you laugh?

Srini Rao

Ha ha.

Srini Rao

Well, yeah, but finish the story and then I'll tell you my Kingwood story.

Robbie Crabtree

Perfect. So I like to describe it a little bit of my childhood was very much like if you've ever seen the show, leave it to Beaver. Like my dad went to work. He was, you know, in a professional role, very white collar. Then my mom stayed at home, took care of me and my sister. I had, I went to, you know, the public elementary and middle school and they were very nice and you had good friends and it was safe outside. And it was just kind of like that idyllic childhood coming up.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Robbie Crabtree

But I was very into sports, very into school, and my parents really pushed me to make sure that I was getting the most out of that. And so it was really those kind of, that blend of competition in the sports world and a really kind of strong emphasis on grades matter, school matters, focus on this, that really started to kind of form who I become. And ultimately one of the things that actually

played a huge role in the way that I grew up in and ultimately turned out was by playing sports, we traveled all over the city, all over the state, all over the country to play in baseball tournaments and basketball tournaments, which is what I played in. And I remember being exposed to so much more of the world because Kingwood was a very kind of, you know, upper middle class to lower upper class environment. So you're around a lot of people, to be honest, who look like me, and it was this upbringing, playing sports, going into, you know,

inner city of Houston where I would later learn like these schools were to get into them you'd go through a metal detector just to get in because there were so many shootings on a regular basis. But I remember when I was growing up that didn't seem scary to me. It was just like a place you went and played and you met new people. So I really credit my parents for one having us in like a very safe place to grow up but then exposing us both me and my sister to like very different ways of life and making sure that we weren't staying in this very sheltered kind of bubble that Kingwood is.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Well, the reason I laughed is it's kind of funny that you mentioned sports of all things. So I grew up in Texas and I played on my seventh grade basketball team and it was the most improved player, which just means you're the shittiest player on the team. And I very distinctly remember going to a basketball tournament because you know that you probably had this too in junior high. They have the A team and the B team and the A team is kind of like the really, really good players who are more than likely to become the varsity basketball team. The B team is basically people like me who, you know,

some athletic activity when they're in junior high who are probably not going to be on the varsity team. And I remember going to Huntsville for a basketball tournament. It was mainly the A team that played in the tournament, but we were so far ahead. My coach finally put me in and one of the teams that came there was from Kingwood. And I remember looking at these guys like, Jesus, these guys look like the Chicago Bulls. They had matching socks, like warmup jumpers, especially coming from Bryant, Texas. You looked at that and you're like, what the hell?

So, you know, I think that it's interesting you brought up this whole idea of, you know, the bubble of privilege that you grew up in, because that was literally where I was going to go with this. I mean, when you grew up in an environment like that, outside of just, you know, going to play games at schools, how do you, you know, have a sense of, you know, reality and awareness of how much privilege that you've been granted in an environment like that? Because, you know, like I said, I know Texas has phenomenal, you know,

extracurricular programs. I mean, I was in high school band there, and I think Texas is a breeding ground for world-class musicians. I'm guessing Kingwood is as well.

Robbie Crabtree

Yeah, it's an interesting world because they take all that stuff so seriously because parents are looking for any advantage possible to get their kids to the next level. And that was your example about the basketball team with warmups and matching everything. That was totally the truth. I mean, I played on those teams and we all had them. Even like our select teams and everything, it was honestly kind of ridiculous as you look back on it. But we loved it growing up and we thought it was so cool and we're trying to be our favorite professional basketball player.

The way that I actually dealt with this was when I got into high school, I realized that the high school isn't the environment that I wanted because it was so homogenous. I wanted to expose myself something different because I had been used to growing up and playing in all these different environments. I was like, whoa, this is just truly a bubble. This is where I spent all my time and it was massive at the time. Kingwood High School was like 5,000 kids.

there wasn't like very much interaction. My classes were huge, even though I was taking like all the AP and advanced classes. So this isn't the high school experience I want. So what I actually did is I ended up transferring to a private high school, which sounds like, oh, Robbie just like went to like, from one bubble to like another bubble. But I went to a private high school called St. Pius X. And St. Pius X is by far like the cheapest private high school to get into. Back at the time it was like $5,000 a year to get into, which most of the other ones were

15 and above and it was also majority minority students Which was important to me because I didn't want to just be around people that just look like me that had the exact same upbringing I really do believe that we get better with diversity of thought diversity of opinion And the only way to get that is to go somewhere where there's going to be that diversity of thought and opinion and experience Not staying in this bubble where i'm just going to basically fall into group think and hear the echo chamber that i'm so used to

So I went to a private high school and went to St. Pius X, and it was the best decision I ever made. Like it absolutely transformed my life. I'm super close to those friends to this day. I got an incredible education. I ended up playing on the state baseball team. We ended up winning the state baseball championship at the highest level my junior year as I was playing first base in that game. Like it was just one of those experiences that really set me up for success, not only in terms of my own education, my own sports.

Robbie Crabtree

but also just the friends and the experiences I made and being exposed to people who didn't just think the same way that I did, because that's really where I come to life because I love debating, I love thinking, I love this kind of intellectual exercise of seeing is my idea right or is it wrong? And not because I care is it right or wrong, just more because I care about that intellectual exercise. It's just fun to me. And I finally got that at St. Pius, which continues to be just like this huge kind of.

beacon of light for me every time I think of Houston. Like I just have the fondest memories of my high school experience.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Well, I want to come back to sports, but I do want to talk briefly about this whole group think idea and, you know, people who think just like you because you know what I think is interesting is that I think there are a lot of misperceptions about Texas that are often formed, you know, or shaped largely by what we see on the media because it's really easy to come to the conclusion that Texas is just filled with nothing but racist rednecks and having lived in Texas, I can tell you that's, you know, nothing could be further from the truth. Yeah, that's there. But I remember my mom very distinctly

Thankfully, when we moved to California, she made one comment. She said, you know what? People are not nice here. They don't talk to you in the grocery store. And you know, we live in Bryan, Texas, keep in mind, like a predominantly white town. And my mom thought everybody there was really friendly. Like when you go to the grocery store. Granted, we were very lucky because Indians are, you know, model minorities by the stereotype, right? People are like, oh, these are the doctors, lawyers, engineers, and professors of our country. So you can do nothing. But I had friends whose parents were, you know, like educated, well-to-do.

openly racist against black people. It was insane. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. But what I wonder is based on your experience, like what misperceptions do you think that the media creates about people in Texas in general? And, you know, because I think it really kind of goes to your whole point of group think.

Robbie Crabtree

I think one big thing to keep in mind when we're talking about Texas is it is a giant state and it has very distinct parts of the state. The cities are different from the rural areas and the different cities are different. You go to El Paso and it's a very different city than is Houston, which is very different than Austin, which is very different than Dallas. You start seeing the differences. If you start actually putting yourself out there.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Robbie Crabtree

You realize not everybody's a cowboy, not everybody is obviously certainly not racist. Not everybody thinks one way, not everyone approaches it one way. And I always tell this, like I grew up in Houston and the food scene in Houston is amazing. I don't know for people who listen, if they've ever watched the Anthony Bourdain show Parts Unknown, he actually did an episode on Houston and it was really well done. And he showed kind of the diversity of Houston that there's a huge kind of.

Vietnamese population that came over during the Vietnam War that were really welcome into Houston There's this kind of like underground rap culture that took part With kind of the chopped and screwed movement and you've got these you know cars that are painting these candy colors and you've got Just a real kind of diversity of people and opportunity there that's there and every time I go back There's like all these different pockets you can go to and get incredible food. That's like truly authentic to that region

because you have such a melting pot in Houston. And I'm using Houston as an example because that's where I grew up. But throughout the state, it's very much like that. Now, you have pockets of people who still think in a very backwards way, but that's what you're gonna have in a large state that's very mixed and diverse. And so you've got, you know, poverty issues in the major cities and in the rural areas as well. And poverty doesn't mean it's just to one ethnic group, like it's across ethnic groups, depending on where you are.

And so yeah, we still have farmers. Yeah, we still have some cowboys, but we've got tons of city people. We have Fortune 500 companies. We've got the tech industry. You've like, if you look at the tech industry people in Austin versus the oil and gas people in Houston, they're very different crowds. So the sooner you realize that it is just this huge state with tons of different people, part of what you've got to do if you want to be in Texas is figure out which part of Texas do you most align with? Where do you want to be? Where do your values fit in? Because it is such a diverse group of people that live there.

Srini Rao

Well, I spent more time in Houston than I wanted to as a kid because there were no Indian grocery stores in College Station, so that was the thing my sister and I dreaded the most. It was like, you know, Saturdays at Hillcroft, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

Robbie Crabtree

Hehehe

Robbie Crabtree

Uh-huh.

Srini Rao

Well, OK, so let's go back to high school sports. As a person who was an atrocious athlete who didn't stand a chance at being on a varsity basketball team and somehow never learned that I could get better, what are the lessons from playing at the level that you did that you brought later on into your life to do what you've done?

Robbie Crabtree

The thing that sports taught me the most is really kind of two things. And there's a great Mike Tyson quote that sums up number one, and it's, learn to do the things you hate, like they're the things you love. And I remember that was so important to me as an athlete because there's so much of being an athlete that sucks. The early morning workouts, the like being hurt, being injured, being tired.

when you're in high school or in college having to find time to get your work done so you can continue to pass your classes and do well, so you can keep playing. There's having to deal with failure in the sports world, having to go to practices on a Saturday, getting your coach upset with you and having to run conditioning because you and the team screwed up in some way. These things are terrible, but the truth is they make you better. There's always...

If you have a good coach, that is, there's always a reason behind them. Like even some of those punishment moments, if you will, were designed to like bring the team closer together because you had to get through it together. You were cheering each other on. You were trying to make sure everybody got across to finish line. And at the time, you just are cursing the coach under your breath, but you later on figure out what it's about. It's about creating that sense of team. And so again, that quote from Mike Tyson has always stuck with me of, you've got to do the things that

aren't fun and do them like you love them because that's ultimately what leads to success. That's what allows you to be prepared when you actually step into the ring. And that leads to number two. This has really been kind of the way that I like to think about both my career as a trial lawyer and now as a business owner and entrepreneur is this idea that sports teach you, it is all about teamwork and at the same time, all about the individual. And the reason I say that is because especially playing baseball and playing baseball in college,

the team could have the greatest chemistry ever. But if every player is going up there because they haven't been actually putting in the work on their own to say, you know, become a better hitter. If every batter goes up there and strikes out, it doesn't matter how good the teamwork is and the team chemistry is, you're not scoring any runs, which means you lose the game. On the flip side, if you only care about yourself and you only take care of yourself, then you run into other problems where maybe somebody is on

Robbie Crabtree

second base and you're competing with them to make sure you have the most runs scored on the team. Well, now you're going to purposely do something to prevent them from scoring. So you might swing and strike out or on a relay play. If you don't have any sort of team chemistry because all you've been worried about yourself, a ball could go to the center field wall. And when the center fielder comes to throw it in and hit a relay, that relay may not be there because you just want to say, I don't care. I don't need to worry about the rest of the team. I'm just going to take care of myself. And again, so you fail.

The key is in sports is you have to have personal responsibility to put in that work, to make sure you're doing all the things you need to do. But at the same time, realizing you're part of a team, you're part of something bigger and that you need to be focused on the goals of the team. And I think that's what makes the most successful trial lawyers. It's what makes the most successful people in the business world is the ones who say I've, I'm going to take care of myself, but I'm also going to make sure I'm doing what's in the best interest of the team.

And when you combine those, that's where you really get this magic. And I learned that again, playing sports and having to go through this, because I saw one year we had terrible team chemistry and everybody's just worried about themselves and we lost another year. We had great team chemistry, but nobody cared about themselves and we lost. And then the, then there was the, the other two years where it changed, where it was a blend of both of those. And as a result, the team saw the greatest success that it had ever seen. And that's really kind of that magic formula.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I think that, uh, you know, it's funny because this is, you know, a really important lesson, but I think that part of the thing that, you know, having sort of, uh, social media and the internet is called it caused is, you know, sort of this excessive level of self interest and self obsession where people are, you know, excessively concerned about, oh, you know, how do I get more people to listen to my podcast? How do you, and

You know, as somebody who went through that experience, what do you make of the world that we've built today where you have people constantly obsessed with how they look on Instagram and teenage girls basically Photoshopping their stuff to appear more attractive, which apparently has all sorts of other issues that we are starting to learn about.

Robbie Crabtree

It's an interesting world that we're living in now. And I think the shutdowns really didn't help because you actually isolate a lot of people. And I think you need that sense of bringing people up together. So I think sports are very important. It could be band, it could be theater, it could be music. It doesn't matter what the vehicle is, but I think kids, especially when they're coming up, need something to learn these lessons. I think if we look throughout history,

you see where like there were these rites of passage, right? Where you had to go through these trials and tribulations to essentially move into adulthood, to move into society and play that role. And when we remove those kinds of rites of passage because things have been shut down and we're just saying, ah, people will be fine, kids will be fine, I think that that's a real problem because it doesn't allow them to develop, it doesn't allow them to learn those skills. And the truth is, oftentimes you don't realize you learn them until later on.

When I was playing sports, I wouldn't have told you that I was learning this lesson. I wouldn't have learned it until later on it. And it goes back to that Steve Jobs quote that you can only connect the dots when you look backwards, when you look behind. Because in the moment, you have to just focus on moving ahead and trust that things are all gonna make sense at some point. And with kind of this culture of self obsession and isolationism that it feels like we've really gone into, I don't know what that looks like in the coming five, 10.

Srini Rao

Hmm.

Robbie Crabtree

20 years. Now, hopefully the idea, I certainly see enough of this on Twitter, but that's its own sort of ecosystem is this idea of playing positive sum games and that a rising tide lifts all boats. I think if we can promote more of that, of the less of dog eat dog world, the better off we'll be. But again, I think it's gonna be a challenge because you have so much desire for attention these days. Kids, you ask them what they wanna be. The number one answer is a YouTuber or a TikToker.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Robbie Crabtree

Like that's what they want to be. Well, if you're a YouTuber or a TikToker, there's only so much time, there's only so many eyeballs that are out there, which means you're competing for attention. So when you start to grow up in this world of, I want to be this thing, and that means like if somebody else's, if someone's watching their show, they're not watching mine, that creates this really negative mindset, if you will. And my hope is that there are ways to figure out this creator economy and the movement with, especially,

the Gen Z and youth of how can we encourage them to work together to not be so self-absorbed and say, it's fine to like wanna look good on Instagram, there's nothing wrong with that. But there are healthier ways to do it than Photoshopping it and making it look fake. Like I think some of the most just terrible examples are where people go and rent private planes just to take photos and they're not actually like flying anywhere. And it puts this false idea into so many millions of people's minds.

Srini Rao

Ha ha.

Robbie Crabtree

that like I should have a private jet, that I should have this fancy car, when in fact like they just went and rented the Lamborghini for the day and took some photos with it. But they're manipulating you because they understand that your attention is precious, that that's what drives their dollars. And so I think if we can start to get away from some of these ideas and try to get more grounded in reality of what does like your best self in reality look like, instead of like what does your best self in this like false make believe world actually look like.

Srini Rao

Yeah, no, I'm so glad you brought this up because I've been writing a lot about the creator economy and sort of how I think it's actually far more broken than people realize. And one of the things I said is that, you know, the creative economy is interdependent. It's not, you know, just independent creators who exist in isolation. Everybody depends on each other. I think the, you know, worst culprits, unfortunately, are platforms who've built, you know, their backs on, you know,

effectively slave labor people who've done all this work for free you know like that's what I don't think people realize about platforms like Facebook it's like billions of people are doing all this work for free creating content for free and Mark Zuckerberg is turning it around and selling you know your attention to advertisers for fortunes

Robbie Crabtree

It is the hard part with social media because you want to use it because it's the easiest way to get distribution. But at the same way, you're really just helping the platform to grow and monetize your creations. And so that is part of what's interesting about the NFT movement, the Web3 movement of how can we actually incentivize and give creators really ownership over their audience in a way that still helps them with distribution, but doesn't essentially steal.

the content and steal really their income sources that they should be making themselves.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so how in the world do you go from high school baseball star to trial lawyer?

Robbie Crabtree

Yeah, so I think the first piece of this is I decided to become a history major in college, which is not exactly the major you choose if you want to, you know, do anything substantial after college because the liberal arts these days are very looked down upon. But you know, I looked at it as it's college, like the whole point of going to college is to learn and do something that I'm interested in. And I've always been a huge history guy. So I was like, I'm going to study history. My dad hated this.

hated it. Like he could not have been more upset that I was choosing to be a history major. And I was like, I just find it really interesting. And essentially the way that I was able to convince the parents that this was a good idea was that I was like, I'll just go to law school afterwards. Like that's what you do. You go to law school. And I was like, ah, parents will be happy because, you know, that will be like the first person in the family to go to graduate school and get a graduate degree. And that's like a, you know, moving up in the world. And so I can sell them on that idea, which is essentially what I did. But.

The history major is really what started it because it basically left me no other option but to go to law school if I wanted to, or to, I guess, go and get a master's in history. But I didn't wanna teach history. I wanted to learn history so I could understand what was going on and apply it to the future. But then you kind of combine that love of history and the rules and understanding the way things work. Plus my favorite TV show at the time was The West Wing. It still is to this day. And I would watch that show and be like,

Oh, they're all lawyers and maybe I want to be like a speech writer for the present or play some role in policy. Well, that is a good thing to be a lawyer too. Plus I'm looking at it as being a lawyer feels very competitive to me. Like you watch law and order, you see what they do and you're like, ah, that looks like a good thing. And my mom would always tell me every time she went to jury duty, she'd come home and she'd be like, Robbie, I'm telling you that guy, he looked just like you.

It's exactly what I could say. I could just see you up there, son, because you love to debate and argue and show people you're right. This is totally for you. And I was like, ah, I don't know that that's for me. Because at the time I'm thinking I wanna be one of the Harvey Specter-ish lawyers that makes big dollars up in the top of a Manhattan skyscraper looking out over the world.

Robbie Crabtree

And then I got into law school and ultimately I was like, I do love competing. The first moment I got sucked into some sort of mock trial competition, I was like, ah, this is the thing. And so that was really kind of the way that it led down to being a trial lawyer.

Srini Rao

What kinds of clients did you deal with primarily?

Robbie Crabtree

So for the first seven years of my career, I was a assistant district attorney. I spent the first couple of years in Denton County and then went to Dallas County. And so early on as a trial lawyer, you're essentially dealing with, you know, like my clients are actually the state of Texas. It's the people who have been harmed or the state of Texas itself. The people I'm going against are obviously the ones who have broken the law in some form. Now, early on, you're dealing with low level stuff. You're dealing with driving well intoxicated, low level drug offenses, you know, simple assaults, things that aren't that serious.

The most serious that you're dealing with early on is assault family violence type cases. So domestic violence where it's not that serious. It's just you can basically track it to when early domestic violence happens. It generally ramps up at some point and leads to like much more serious things where somebody gets seriously hurt, you know, or killed potentially. So you try to get on the front end. You try to resolve that early on. So those were serious cases because oftentimes those victims of those cases have been in kind of the cycle of abuse for a long time and it just finally got to a point that they had to report it.

For the majority of my career, I was really dealing with violent felonies like aggravated robberies, manslaughterers, sexual assaults, ultimately got to where I was trying, murders and capital murders and handling those. And then the last year of my career as a prosecutor, I handled all child abuse cases. And so that meant sexual abuse of children as well as physical abuse and even some child death cases, whether that was starvation, beating, whatever it was and dealt with that world. So...

Realistically, I was dealing with some very dark, dark stuff and having to kind of day in and day out step into this world that most people don't realize exists or don't want to realize exists. And just having to really like take ownership of these cases because at the end of the day, they were mine. From the moment they came into our office, they were mine. I dealt with them the entire way. I'd deal with the victim, I would deal with all the witnesses. I had an investigator assigned to me to help me basically put all the pieces together.

I would have to pitch things to the DA himself if I wanted to do certain things. And then of course, you know, I'm dealing with the judge, the opposing counsel, and then oftentimes was going to trial on these cases, which could be, you know, weak, weak plus long trials to try to get justice on these cases. And that was the first seven years. The last year I focused on some trial work and private practice. I tried to on the defense side, I tried both a child abuse case and a murder case. I thought they were wrongfully accused.

Robbie Crabtree

Ultimately ended up with not guilty verdicts on both of those, then moved into my own firm and was doing some civil rights violation type work, cases where people have been harmed or hurt because of their race or gender and was suing the entities that had done that before I finally was like, you know what? I want to move out of this world because it's pretty dark and I wanted to move into what I'm doing now. So those were the types of clients I was dealing with. So they were pretty serious and it was people who were really suffering real harm. So victims who had lost loved ones or who were dealing with real trauma.

and still going through that event on a daily basis because that trauma just sticks with them for so long and trying to get them to tell their story, to be able to share it, to be able to step into a courtroom and face the person that did that, that was always an ongoing challenge but something that I really enjoyed and like not a, I don't enjoy somebody's suffering but I enjoy being able to help that person through that process and to see that kind of change in their eyes by the time we finished the case.

Srini Rao

Well, the reason I asked is because, you know, we've had people from the other side of this story here, numerous people who have been incarcerated. And I wonder, as somebody who was a trial lawyer, when you look at the criminal justice system, you know, like we had Sean Askenazi here, who was a criminal defense attorney turned chocolate maker. And he was telling me, he said, people take plea bargains all day long for crimes they didn't commit. He said, because if they didn't, he said that he said, if everybody went to trial, the justice

come to a screeching halt. But you've been on the other side of this. And when you see situations like the things that Bryan Stevenson at the Equal Justice Initiative deals with, and these wrongfully convicted people who spend decades in prison only to come out and realize that they were innocent all along, what do you make of that from your side? What parts of this are broken? How do we fix it?

Robbie Crabtree

So the first thing I'll say is there are definitely parts that are broken and there are definitely bad actors on both sides. And this goes to both prosecutors and defense attorneys. Each of them has a job to do and too often times they're not doing it in the right way. So a defense attorney shouldn't let that happen and a prosecutor should not be getting a plea bargain from someone who didn't do it. One of the things that I love to do the most is I would actually talk to a lot of defendants even as a prosecutor. I would tell the defense attorney, I was like, and this comes from building a reputation in the community.

of you can trust me basically. Like the reputation I always tried to build was you can trust me, I wanna do the right thing. If they're good for it, I want them to be held accountable and I will do everything in my power to make sure that happens. But if there's a reason that like, they can prove that they can show me that they didn't do this, or there's an underlying reason, right? Sometimes there's underlying reasons for cases that like they did it, but when you hear their explanation, you're like, oh, that makes sense. And one of the things I would do is tell defense hearings, like,

you're saying this thing, you're saying your guy didn't do it or your girl didn't do it or there's some sort of, you know, mitigating factor and I need to understand. And I was like, let me talk to them and I won't hold anything against them. Like if they tell me that they, you know, committed a new crime, I won't even hold that against them. Like I just want to hear from their mouth what's going on and just talk to them. And oftentimes I would lead to a situation where I would, I would dismiss cases. Like I was very, very well known for dismissing cases for like, I had one case where I was

I was like 95% sure that this had happened, but there was like 5% where I was like, I'm just not there. And for me, if I didn't know it had happened 100% of the way, like I didn't want, I would not convict that person. And so we, but like at 95%, I can't dismiss the case cause I'm like, I mean, everything is telling me that this is good. And so they wouldn't take a deal. We ended up going to trial because we thought that the judge would ultimately.

you know, find it not guilty. And that would kind of solve the situation. So the family could still get their day in court, but like we shouldn't be proving someone sending them to prison for a really long time if we're not absolutely sure that they did it. And by the end of the case, we had actually gone through and the judge called me up and he said, I'm gonna find the person guilty. And I was like, oh judge, okay, I need to pull this case then. Like, so even though the judge was getting ready to announce guilty, I pulled it off the trial docket and we ended up like resolving it a different way outside of that, you know, honestly,

Robbie Crabtree

made a lot of people in my office very upset because they're like, you had this, this guy. And I was like, I wasn't a hundred percent sure that they had done it. Like I can't convict somebody at that level, especially the cases that I was dealing with the ramifications that came with it. So I think it's on prosecutors to do a lot more work. I think it's on prosecutors to spend time talking to as many witnesses as possible, talking to defendants, if they'll talk to them, talking to defense attorneys and really like

really spending the time to investigate because the worst thing that we can do is make people who are innocent take plea bargains to make them guilty of stuff. Like that just messes with their entire lives. And it also is just ethically wrong. So I think what happens is too many times prosecutors in this country, and this is true, you know, many years ago is far worse. It's getting better these days, but there's still an underlying problem there where your judge on your results

based on how many big sentences are you getting? How many cases are you on trial on and winning? Right? And it can be easy to win a case if the person looks good for it, but you're like, ah, maybe not, but they've got a criminal history and who really cares? It's not gonna hurt anybody. So you go to trial and you win it, and it's, let's say, or for instance, it's something that they don't really need to go to prison for a long time on. I think we see this with drug cases a lot, where maybe somebody's got under a gram of

cocaine or something on them. And they've got a drug history and so you're like, oh great, we can use enhancement paragraphs and we can get them up where it's like 20 years to life for this low level amount of cocaine. They're not a dealer, they're not a supplier, they're just a user. And people will go and try those cases and get huge sentences and be like, look, I took this drug user off the streets, like this criminal. It's like that goes against the very fabric of what we're trying to achieve there.

But it looks good for those people because they can point to the stats of I sent this person away for X number of years. I've tried X number, you know, even me like I tried 102 cases. I tried a lot of cases, but I also was trying. I also dismissed a ton of cases to the point that when I left the prosecutor's office, the assistant district attorney role, I had defense attorneys coming up to me repeatedly telling me why are you doing this? Like you they were able to work with me and they wanted me to stick around.

Robbie Crabtree

because I did think that my job was not just to go to trial and not just to convict people, but was also to find the truth. And if someone didn't do it, or there was some sort of mitigating reason to find a different work around, to do the right thing. And I always appreciated my bosses at the Dallas DA's office because they gave me that flexibility. They gave me that freedom and that ownership where if I made a mistake, it was on me, but it should be. It should be my responsibility. If I screw up, it should be on me.

But if I get it right, then that should also be celebrated. And as a result, the DA never kind of stepped in, never tried to hold my hands back, never tried to go against me and really just said, look, these are your cases, you know them best, we trust you, do the right thing. And that was always the guidance I got from the people at the very top of my office. The question was, do you believe this is the right thing to do? That was always the question. And all I'd have to say is yes, this is the right thing to do. And then they would say, do it, just document it, but do it.

And I appreciated that because I think that's the mindset that we need more of is, is this the right thing to do? If we start looking at it through that lens, sometimes the right thing to do is to let somebody who committed a crime off because that's the right thing to do. Now, it doesn't mean you should be soft on crime. That doesn't mean that we should, you know, turn our streets into, you know, like what San Francisco has kind of become these days. Like we need to hold people accountable. We need to figure out ways to deal with it, to make cities safe, to make sure people have public safety and trust in their institutions.

but there are other mechanisms that we can use if we get more creative with things.

Srini Rao

Well, let's shift gears and start talking about the work that you do today. How, you know, I mean, it seems in some ways sort of a natural transition to teaching people about speaking, but let's talk about this whole idea of performative speaking, what it is, you know, and how you've made that segue into what you do.

Robbie Crabtree

So during law school, I was on the national mock trial team at SMU law school. And that's really what led me to becoming the trial lawyer that I was. And it was right out of law school, I started getting asked to come back and coach. And I was like, it's too early y'all. Like I don't have any experience to bring to these people. Like you shouldn't be asking me to come and teach somebody if I've never actually been in the trenches myself. And so every year I would kind of tell them no, no. And finally, after my fourth year,

As a trial lawyer, I think I hit like 50ish trials. At that point I said, okay, I'm good to come back and start teaching this and coaching, you know, the national trial team. So that's what I did. And I'd say that's really where things started because what I was figuring out during that time is can I take the things that are working for me that I've had to learn in a courtroom? You know, whether that's like human psychology and game theory and strategy and competitive storytelling.

and all these different pieces that go into being a successful trial lawyer, can I teach them? Can I take them out of me? Things that I just do out of instinct that I've learned and put into practice. Can I turn them into a way that I can help others? And so in that mock trial team, I started to see the results. They started winning. They started winning awards. They started getting recognition. I was like, Oh, okay. This thing is actually working. Like this is onto something. And so I did that for a couple of years because obviously one year isn't enough to really validate it. So

I had good results, I wanted to do it a second year to validate it. And then the third year I wanted to really validate and make sure, okay, I feel like if I can do this three years in a row with people, I've really got something here. Sure enough, that happened. And during that period of time, as I was moving into higher roles in the office, I would start also getting inbound requests from people that were oftentimes on our juries, right? Not like actually sitting and listening to the jury trial itself, but we're in that big jury panel, that panel of, you know, a hundred people that we talked to, to figure out who our 12 jurors are.

and they would see me doing this stuff and they'd be like, you're really good at this. Like, do you teach people? Do you help people with this? You know, I'm a entrepreneur, I'm a business owner, I'm a lawyer at my own firm. Is there a way that you can like teach us because that was the best job interview that I've ever seen. Again, this is just because it became very natural for me over this time to get in front of people and talk and figure out how to get them to share their deepest, darkest secrets so I could figure out, are you a good juror or not? Do you have past trauma that's gonna affect you? Are you...

Robbie Crabtree

trying to manipulate me so that you can, you know, bring your own form of justice onto the jury. And that's when I started getting this idea where I told my co-coach of the mock trial team at the time, I said, I think there's a way to grow this. Like, I think there's a way to get out of the legal world and teach people this skill. I remember he kind of laughed at me and it was like late 2019 that I was telling him this. And I was like, I think it would work for the tech industry.

Like I'm getting some inbound interest and I think there's like this clear crossover for these founders and entrepreneurs who are really smart and have these big ideas, but they're just terrible communicators. And he kind of laughed at me and at the time I was like, all right, like, you know, there's really nothing to push forward on here, but like I had this idea kind of stirring in my head. And then when COVID hit, COVID is really what like launched all this stuff. So I mean, during this time, like I'm working with a handful of people, just kind of like

one-offs, right? So lawyers who are running for political offices would come to me and say, hey, can you help me with speaking? Can you do some speech writing? Can you do these sort of pieces? Strategize with me around strategic communication. I was like, cool, totally good with that. So I started getting my hands wet in that, but it wasn't until COVID really hit. Whereas you can imagine being a trial lawyer completely shut down because you're not going to court anymore. Without course being open, I can't be a trial lawyer. I can't go into a courtroom and do what I do best. Arguing in front of a judge.

that gamesmanship with defense attorneys or the, or prosecutors, once I switched sides or other side of the litigation aspect, I'm not dealing with jurors. I'm not trying to read witnesses. I'm not doing any of that stuff because it just completely shut down. And so it was really during COVID that I said, hey, I'm gonna really just like spend COVID diving into this, which is when I left my law firm job and said, I wanna go and create something of my own. And in creating that something of my own, I started to put these ideas out there. I started writing, I started tweeting, I started.

you know, putting material out there that was showing how I was thinking and trying to demonstrate some level of leadership in that space and a different perspective because I think that's the thing that makes us unique is there's plenty of people who teach public speaking, right? There's plenty of people who can do that, whether they are a former actor or theater person or maybe they were a founder themselves and so like they've seen success or they're a keynote speaker and they understand how to get up on stage and deliver.

Robbie Crabtree

But the thing that I thought was different was I've got this trial experience where like the stakes were as high as they can possibly get. Where it's not just like my words matter because I'm trying to make people like me. It's literally somebody is facing going to prison for the rest of their life if I'm not successful like in that last murder case that I tried and defended. And that's a different level of stress. It's a different level of kind of, you know, weight on your shoulders that you've got to deal with. And I was like, if I can understand how to move in this world.

and especially with jurors who are absolutely against me when I'm bringing these cases to them, I'm sure that I can help these tech founders. I'm sure I can help these entrepreneurs. And so I really started dialing in on this messaging and started working with a number of tech startup founders around their pitching for fundraising and strategic storytelling and leading their teams. And kind of all of the skills I developed as a trial lawyer really translated nicely because I just understood all the different dynamics that they were dealing with.

when it came to communication and storytelling. And so it just kind of felt very natural as I got more and more into this world. And then it just kind of started to take off where like word of mouth, people started telling their friends and telling other founders and just opportunities started to pop up because I was willing to what we call, right, build in public to put these ideas out there, to share so many of my ideas, to write articles on it, to give workshops on it for free, just like to put the ideas because I wanted more people to see how they could.

improve themselves because I think there's this idea that opposable thumbs are the most important thing for humans and I disagree with that because opposable thumbs, right, like help us to hold on to things but it's storytelling that actually allows us to know what's worth holding on to. And we look at any of these greats like Ben Horowitz said, the story is a strategy. Steve Jobs has said the storyteller is the most important person in the world because they basically shape the vision and the values of the future.

And time after time after time, it's just storytelling. Look at why Nike and Apple and Tesla are so successful. Look at why Pixar is so successful. It all comes down to storytelling and being able to move the world with your words and by painting this vision. And so I said, we need more of that. We need more of this hope and inspiration in a world that's very fragmented and argumentative these days. And is there a way to bring more of this kind of hope and light and goodness with the way that we speak into it? And I thought, hey, there's a way to do this. So I started moving into that space.

Srini Rao

So I guess naturally the question is then, how do we do this? I mean, I know we've got about 15 minutes left, but if you were to boil this down to principles that people can apply to their own work, whether it's communicating digitally through content that they create or even when they're doing things like pitching, what do people do wrong and what can they fix to make their communication, to your point, something that does move the world?

Robbie Crabtree

So I think the first thing that so many people make the mistake of when they're speaking or communicating in general is thinking that it's about themselves. They're judging it on how they feel. And the truth is really about the audience. It's about connecting to them. It's about how is the listener going to react when you say this thing or hear this thing? How is the reader going to react when they read your title, when they read the first sentence? How are you hooking them? How are you thinking about where they are and where you want them to go? So I always think the first...

kind of the foundational stuff is you've got to switch your mindset into thinking like your audience. When you think like your audience, you ask yourself two main questions about them. Where are they right now? And where do you want them to end up at? And if we figure that out, we essentially create this chasm in between the two generally. Where they start at is not where you want them to end at. So you've got to figure out with your words, with your communication, how do we actually bridge that divide? And that bridging of the divide,

really comes down to kind of the second core thing that you need to understand. And most salespeople will understand this, even though they oftentimes don't do it is, humans make decisions based on emotions. We are emotional creatures. As much as we wanna say we're not. Now, we justify the emotional decisions with logic and reason. So the mistake a lot of people make is one, oftentimes they'll only use logic and reason that doesn't actually move a person to make a decision. Or they'll only try to make it emotional, but they don't give any logic and reason to back it up.

and then that person's not gonna make that buying decision or is not going to get the result that you want because you haven't given them anything to justify it with so they can go to their friends and their family and say, I made this because of A, B, and C reason. That has nothing to do with emotion, even though that's actually what happened. So that bridge that we have to ask ourselves is, what does our audience need to feel in order to get there? When we think of that, that's where we start to really dial into this emotional piece.

And once we've got the emotional piece, we can figure out how can I basically structure? How can I frame it? How can I give that logic and reason that data and numbers to help them justify it so that I can give them essentially the ammunition they need to go and say, this is why I made a decision and it is the right thing to do. When we start thinking that way, we start to really understand the foundation of great communication. Now, how do you actually do it yourself? Like once you've answered those questions, now you've got work on your end.

Robbie Crabtree

And the way that I love people to do this is to think, if your audience needs to feel this emotion to get to the end goal, when have you yourself felt that? When have you gotten through an experience that you felt that exact same way? Maybe it was on a trip, maybe it was when you were watching a show, maybe it was when you were listening to music. Something in your life has probably made you feel that exact emotion that you're trying to trigger. So if we think about that, go back to that source. What is that source? And then we reverse engineer it.

So to give a quick example, the murder case I was talking about that I tried as my last trial, it was a murder case that was on the defense side and I really thought that my client had acted in self-defense. And I totally believe this, I believe that he was in fight or flight mode based on all of like the human psychology that I knew, based on speaking with plenty of psychiatrists and psychologists around this issue and also.

in terms of how the interrogation went, it was totally backwards and it looked like a self-defense claim if you just talked to police officers. Like if you basically change the dynamic to this being a police officer and civilian interaction, it would have been self-defense all day long. So I said, well, if we've got that, if we've got like this fight or flight, plus this would have been self-defense if it was a police officer situation, I figured out how I could give the logic and reason essentially to back up what I was gonna try to create emotionally. But going into closing argument, to get that emotion where he didn't have to go to prison,

for this case because at the time he's looking at, you know, 25 years to life in prison, I went to a scene from the West Wing and it was season one, episode eight, and it's called Take the Sabbath Day. And there's a conversation between Tobi Ziegler and the rabbi and it's around capital punishment. And the conversation is going about how vengeance is not Jewish. Now, of course, I'm not going to use that line, but I changed that to vengeance is not justice. And I use it as my theme throughout the entire piece of this closing argument.

But not only that, I was paying attention to what they did in this scene. Why did I always feel kind of like this sadness? Why did I always feel these chills? Like what was it that spoke to me in that scene? And it was a way that they were having the conversation. It was very slow and intimate and quiet. They were seated very close to one another in a almost informal way, but talking about a very heavy subject. There was kind of a dark lighting in the room. And then there was this very melancholy music being sung by this female singer up on stage.

Robbie Crabtree

And so I'm thinking to myself, how can I recreate this? Because that's the vibe, that's the emotion that I want them to feel. If I can do that, I stand a chance. Because if they can feel that same sense of sadness and melancholy and like, maybe this just isn't the right thing, maybe Robbie's right, maybe vengeance isn't justice. And to try to really recreate that. So when I delivered this closing argument, I got up and everything was very, very slow. Everything was very quiet. There were long pauses. I tried to speak as close as I could to them. I was trying to have almost like a whisper conversation.

because I knew that that's what I needed to create from them in order for them to feel that emotion that I had felt previously. And ultimately that is what led to that not guilty murder verdict where my client ended up going home on that case, even though this killing was on video. And don't get me wrong, it is an absolute tragedy. Like I am not minimizing that. It was a horrible situation. But I did believe he acted in self-defense. And so understanding how to reverse engineer that emotion that I myself had felt and then translate it.

to my jury is ultimately what led to that ability to move them over that bridge. And then by giving them the logic to justify it, they felt comfortable explaining that to their friends and family when they went home, which is really what we have to think about. We've got to move them and then make them comfortable explaining their decision to others. So I think if we can start thinking about that reverse engineering of our own experiences, that's why I always keep an inspiration list. This is why I create things like story banks. This is why I always have kind of resources at the ready.

to go and review in case I need to find something like this. And if more people would do what my friend Justin Micheloy, who was the speechwriter for General Mattis and General Petraeus and Secretary Panetta for a while, would do, which is he says, preparation creates precision. If you prepare, you can be precise. And that's how you really move people. But so much of the work as a speaker, as a communicator, comes behind the scenes where nobody is paying attention, where nobody is seeing the work you're doing.

so that when you step on stage or when you write that piece or when you are in front of the Zoom screen with investors, you are nailing it because you've put in the time, like you just know it's so deep to your core and you've thought through all of these pieces that you need to be able to move, like a conductor of the symphony, of the orchestra. That's really your role as a communicator is to understand how all the pieces move together and to create this beautiful music with your words and with your communication style.

Srini Rao

Wow. Well, this has been absolutely fantastic and really eye opening and thought provoking. I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Srini Rao

Hey Robbie, did I lose you?

Robbie Crabtree

Yeah, I've got you back now, Srini Rao.

Srini Rao

Sorry, did you hear the question? Okay, sorry. Josh, make sure you edit this out, please. So I have one final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews with the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Robbie Crabtree

I did not.

Robbie Crabtree

I think the thing that makes somebody unmistakable is knowing what they care about on such a deep level that they can't stop, that nothing's gonna get in their way. And it's a question that gets asked to me a lot about making this pivot of like why go from being a trial lawyer to doing what you're doing with performance speaking. And I tell people,

You know, the answer I can give them, the easy answer is, as a trial lawyer, you're always trying to minimize risk. And in the work I do now with performance speaking, I'm trying to maximize rewards. I give them the answer to about how I was tired of dealing with so much darkness and making sure that the nightmares didn't happen or trying to deal with the nightmares instead of working with people's dreams. And those are good answers and they're true. But the question that really keeps me up, and I think every person should have a question like this.

because I think this is what makes somebody unmistakable. The question that drives me when I wake up, when I work throughout the day, when things are tough and I don't feel like putting in the time, it's simply this. How can I help people with world-changing ideas to communicate their ideas to actually change the world? And I've been obsessed with this question for a very long time, even before I started performance speaking.

because I've always been talking about this. I always wanted to play a role in things that change the world. And I remember having a conversation at the time I was flying on a plane back from a trip with an ex of mine at the time. And I was, I spent like five hours of this flight just talking to her about like, how can I do this? How can I find a way to answer this question?

Now the question wasn't quite as clearly defined at the time, but I knew I wanted something that would have this impact, this legacy that would change the world. But I didn't know what that thing was because like, I'm not smart enough to code. I don't know how to create technology. I don't know how to build an app. I don't know how to do any of these things. And over time, again, going back to that Steve Jobs quote where we can only connect the dots when we look backwards. All those dots ended up lining up from my childhood.

Robbie Crabtree

and playing sports and the education I received and going to the private high school and being a history major and writing a senior thesis and playing college sports and being on the mock trial team and going to be a trial lawyer and then coach the national mock trial team, it all finally connected to this place where I can say, that's the question that drives me. That question of how can I help people communicate their ideas to actually change the world? I think every person needs that. Now you may not have it today.

because it can take time. Like I just said, it took me years to get there. But that's the type of thing that makes somebody unmistakable. When you have that core principle, that core value, that core sense of what is the one thing that if I can answer, life will be successful, life will be worth it, I can leave a legacy, I can be happy looking back on my time on this earth. I think that's where people become unmistakable. When you have such a clarity around that idea and around that vision. And hopefully people will explore that for themselves.

And figure that thing out and realize that you can't rush that process, which sucks to say, because it does like you want that answer, you want that thing. But at some point, those, those dots will connect and you'll have that thing that truly makes you unmistakable.

Srini Rao

Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, wisdom and insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work and everything that you're up to?

Robbie Crabtree

Yeah, it's pretty easy to find me on social media. You can find me on Twitter at Robbie Crab, on Instagram and LinkedIn at TheRobbieCrab. You can also check out my website where I write pretty regularly on RobbieCrabTree.com. And of course, feel free to reach out to me on direct messages or anything on any of those, you know, social media platforms. I handle all that myself, so you'll.

You'll get responses from me and I'm always happy to chat more about some of the work I do one-on-one in a group setting, in different ways with businesses and training as well. If anybody ever wants that, happy to chat about what that looks like because that's kind of the fun nitty-gritty stuff that we get into.

Srini Rao

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.