Airline boardroom to disability practice: Sometimes you don't know where you will land.

Marketing Center helps attorney build life his parents could only dream about

Airports are great places for watching. You see so many people, all headed to different destinations. In life, none of us really knows where we will land.

None less so than a young boy from Missouri named Dennis O'Dell, who now, unexpectedly, finds himself a successful Social Security disability attorney. How did he arrive here?

The Keys to a Better Life

"Growing up, we didn't have a lot," Dennis says. His parents were both products of the Great Depression from the Missouri Ozarks. They may not have been highly schooled, but they understood the importance of education: Education was the best way out of the mountains and into a better life.

Dennis listened. He put himself through college, and then through law school.

Into High-flying Board Rooms: No disability clients yet

Recruited by Pacific Southwest Airlines as vice president and general counsel.

Dennis entered a world he could barely have imagined in his youth: negotiating multimillion-dollar deals for fleets of airplanes. Boardroom meetings with the Japanese or Europeans. Expensive suits. Business dinners at grand restaurants.

Yet, Missouri was home. In fact, it was during a trip to visit his parents that Dennis met with his law school buddy, John Schmidt. John mentioned that his Springfield firm, Schmidt, Kirby, Sullivan, had lost an associate. But John wasn't hinting; he never believed Dennis might leave the "jet set." But, he was.

John was incredulous. Did Dennis have any idea what it was like to represent disability claimants - often poor, all in bad health, many with mental problems? Dennis offered to fly back at his own expense so that he could trail one of the partners, Bruce Kirby, for a week. At the end of the week, he declared, "I can do this."

Reaching Out to The Marketing Center

In the beginning of his disability practice, Bruce seemed to have the Social Security disability field mostly to himself. Competition, though, began to increase after Dennis arrived. That's when Bruce and Dennis decided to reach out to The Marketing Center for Social Security Law Practices in order to professionally market the firm.

"It was a momentous step," Dennis says. "If we had not been proactive, we might have ended up behind the 8 ball."

Because he had often worked with the airline's advertising agency, he understands that "the practice of law is very much the practice of business."

Marketing Leads to New Destinations in Life

Looking back on how far he has come since his childhood, Dennis has now been to 25 countries. He scuba dives in the world's most beautiful waters. As a living symbol of how far he has come, one of his daughters is about to enter the London School of International Business.

Like Dennis, we can experience unexpected stops along the way. But if we are open to change and new opportunities, we can get to our destination.

Email us today to find out how you can join our growing list of success stories.