S2 E05 | Susan Jones Knape

Susan Jones Knape:

And I spoke to the head of the firm and said, “I love everything about you, but I do not like the way the industry is advertising. In fact, I believe it is hurting you, because there’s so many people out there, it’s not just me. There are a lot of people who have such a negative view of plaintiff attorneys because of the type of advertising that’s being done.”

Luke W Russell:

Welcome to Lawful Good, powerful partners, a series about interesting and caring folks that we know and trust whose journey has brought them to collaboration with the legal community. I’m your host, Luke W Russell. I’m not a journalist. I’m not an attorney. I’m trained as a coach. I love human connection, and that’s what you’re about to hear.

Luke W Russell:

My guest today is Susan Jones Knape with A Case for Women. From an early age, Susan was taking a stand in high school. She was voted most likely to be killed picking up beer cans on the side of the road because of her drive to take care of the environment. Susan built an ad agency that she ran for years, and later went on to build some of the most iconic lawyer marketing campaigns.

Luke W Russell:

Today, she runs a company she co-founded with her daughter, A Case for Women. As we listen to her story, you might notice that there’s a thread in all of her work. She’s always taking a stand for something. For Susan, running a business is an outlet for affecting change in the world. Join me as we settle in for a journey of overcoming limiting expectations around gender, what retirement might look like for someone who has a never-ending pool of ideas, and discovering what it meant for validation to come fully from within. Susan, what type of home produces a woman like you?

Susan Jones Knape:

That’s a great question. I think a lot of people look at me from the outside now, and they see a person who has built a successful business, who drives a fancy car, who travels around the country, who has some great handbags, and they think, “Wow, she must have worked hard, but she must have had it pretty easy, or had some great luck along the way to be where she is.” And what I want to say to those folks right now is, you’re right about the working hard, but everything else, you’re dead wrong about.

Susan Jones Knape:

And the fact is that, my life, I’ve had more difficult times than easy times. I have had some tragedies, some of which I do not even want to speak about. And I can tell you, though, that it’s because of those difficult times and because of the tragic circumstances that I’ve found myself in on more than one occasion that I am the woman I am now, and that I am motivated every single day to get up and to help women who need the help of plaintiff attorneys.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. When did you start realizing that women weren’t treated equally? Was that something you learned from your mom, your peers, or someone else?

Susan Jones Knape:

I definitely did not learn that from my mom, who was a very traditional Southern woman. I honestly was late to wake up. I was in my 40s before I woke up and saw that the work that I did wasn’t resulting in the same results that the work that the men around me did was resulting in. And I really grew up, and in the first 20 years of my career from age 21 to say, 41, I thought it was all about doing a good job. And I thought if I did a good job, and every day, just worked hard to deliver quality product, take care of my clients, be responsible, whatever it was, and put in those hard, long hours that I would be successful. And literally, I was in my mid-40s when I realized that there was a different game being played, and I wasn’t even on the playing field.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Half of the people I interview have pretty strong views about the importance of faith in a God. Has faith, or religion, or whatever word you prefer influenced your life?

Susan Jones Knape:

Another good question. Absolutely. I have a very strong faith, and I did develop that as a teenager. And that strong faith has given me the backbone that I’ve needed to get through some difficult circumstances. And I’m an extraordinarily optimistic person. I’m not optimistic because I think I’ve got some secret sauce or because I think that I’m going to have a lucky day, I’m optimistic because I genuinely feel like I know this in my bones. I genuinely know that there is a meaning to this life that is beyond everyday understanding, and that I have been guided in my life, sometimes through adversity, to get to the place I am right now, where I have the ability to influence, on a daily basis, thousands of women and help them through adverse situations.

Susan Jones Knape:

I have absolutely no doubt that I can see it at this age, that the things that happened to me in my 20s, and my 30s, and my 40s, all happened to prepare me for this moment when I could take all that wisdom, all those lessons learned through adversity, and put them together into a business that I never saw coming. But here I am now, five years later, into A Case for Women, and I’m exactly where this was all intended for me to be.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah, that’s a really powerful perspective. I’m curious, how did you earn the label in high school, most likely to be killed picking up beer cans on the side of the road?

Susan Jones Knape:

Did my daughter tell you that? That’s what it says in my high school yearbook. And it’s interesting, I’ve always been drawn to causes. I’ve always wanted to make a difference. I didn’t understand that I could make a difference through the business world, but I always wanted to make a difference.

Susan Jones Knape:

When I was in high school, I was very much passionate about the environment, and I was very concerned then about what we were doing with the environment. And this was before climate change was even a thing, but this was just routine pollution of waterways and so forth. And in my spare time, on weekends, this is true. I would literally go out and be picking up the trash from the creeks and the highways in our area, because I felt so committed to making our environment a better place for the future.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah, you were in high school, and starting to be in that space of looking to the future, maybe thinking… I mean, were you thinking about college? Did you feel like college was accessible? And maybe another stack in this question, did you feel like maybe you were actually getting to choose the path, or maybe that you were being pushed down a certain path?

Susan Jones Knape:

I didn’t even have the presence of mind to think about whether that was a choice. And my family, my parents did not go to college, but it was assumed that I would go to college, and it was assumed that I would go to the University of Texas, because that was the place that you went to in Texas. All of that was assumed for me, and I never questioned it. The only career advice I got, at one point, I asked my mother what she thought I should major in, and her… I’ll never forget her response. She said, “Well, you probably want a degree in education or nursing in case you ever have to work,” emphasis on the word have.

Susan Jones Knape:

A career wasn’t anywhere in my field of vision whatsoever. Now, that didn’t mean I wasn’t motivated to do a lot. For example, I love picking up trash on the side of the highway. I loved making political statements. I was active in the community, but work as a business entity wasn’t in my field of vision. And I don’t think anybody really knows this, but I do have a degree in elementary education, particularly in special education, which I taught for exactly one year.

Luke W Russell:

You said this, you go to college, you are getting a degree in elementary education with your specialty. Now, when did your interest in modeling start? Was that high school or college?

Susan Jones Knape:

You know, I’ve always had two passions, and I guess not much has changed, because even though I’ve gone through some twist and turns in my life, these two passions remain the same. I’ve just found the good way to express them, and this is from as far back as I can remember in my childhood. One, I’ve had a passion for doing meaningful things, whether that was… You’re using the pickup trash analogy. I could talk about other things. I started a non-profit right out of college that had to do with cleaning up the air in our community, just done countless things that were very cause-oriented and mission-driven. But the other part of me that’s been with me from day one is that I’ve loved to dress up. And I love fashion, and I love that whole industry of modeling and really using runways and photography to make beautiful statements.

Susan Jones Knape:

Again, I’m telling you stories that I haven’t told to anybody in a long time, but after a year of teaching special ed kids, I decided that wasn’t really where I wanted to invest my time. And I said, “You know what? If I’m ever going to get into the modeling profession, I need to go ahead and do it now,” because that’s not something you can start later in life, although that’s becoming a thing these days. And I literally walked into a modeling agency here in Dallas that was up and coming and said, “I want to do this,” and signed up and began about a two or three-year career in modeling, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and which was… In a way, I did not anticipate a great preparation for the rest of my life, because if you can get on a runway in front of say, 20,000 people in a swimsuit and be comfortable, you know what? You can give almost any presentation and be comfortable.

Luke W Russell:

For sure. Yeah, I was going to ask what kind of fashion you were involved with.

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, since I was doing fashion in Texas, it was, at that time, mostly local retailers, Neiman Marcus being the biggest of those that now has a big nick-global name. But there was a large industry back then of local manufacturers and local retailers, and Dallas was considered really one of the five hubs nationwide of the fashion wholesale business. There were very big runway shows, modeling the clothes that were coming out that season, et cetera.

Susan Jones Knape:

And like I said, it was a great way to learn how to be comfortable in presentations, if you will, a great way to… Also, another thing I learned from the runways is that you can create this presence when you’re on a runway of being totally in control, and being in the flow, and presenting a certain elegant image. You go backstage from that runway and it is complete chaos.

Luke W Russell:

Really?

Susan Jones Knape:

And you go through the complete chaos of changing clothes and doing all of that in a nanosecond, and then you drop that chaotic vibe, and you get back on the runway, and you present differently. And I have found that many times, life is like that. And many times, business is that way, where you might have something going on in the background that could be a big distraction to you, but in order to succeed, you have to just set that distraction aside, you have to go out on the runway of life or the runway of business, and you have to act like you are in control, and you got this, and you’re presenting how you want to be perceived. And that’s, I think, on me. That’s on all of us to present how we want other people to view us. And at the end of the day, that came in handy as a life skill, way beyond fashion.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. With having an interest in fashion for over so many different periods, do you find it delightful when you see comebacks in what people are wearing as suddenly trendy that was trendy 30, 40 years ago?

Susan Jones Knape:

I actually love that. I’ve kept a lot of my clothing from back in the day. And my daughters, I have two daughters, and both of them are very happy that I kept the clothing that I did. And my only regret about that is I didn’t keep absolutely everything, because as you know, vintage clothing has become really a thing now. I’ll tell you, too, if I could add something without you asking me the question, this has been a dichotomy in my life because my core as a person is to help people and really do things that create meaningful change to help this world. That’s what makes me tick every morning, but I also love fashion.

Susan Jones Knape:

And because those things have seemed to not mesh, I’ve struggled with that at different moments in my life. In fact, when I was in high school, if we want to go back that far… And my father was in the clothing industry, so I grew up in this industry, too. But if we want to go back to high school, I felt so guilty about having nice clothing when there were people who were hurting in this world, that I took all of my pretty dresses and gave them away. And I wore my ragged jeans and work shirt for months on end. And of course, my parents were all upset about that, but that was my way of making a statement, and also sort of saying, “Hey, I don’t need these things.”

Susan Jones Knape:

It took me many other decades of going back and forth on that yo-yo to be comfortable and go, “You know what? As a woman, I can do meaningful things, I can help people, I can create a successful business, and I can buy pretty clothing.” Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. And I honestly wasn’t until I turned probably 55 that I began to be comfortable with really being who I am on both fronts. It’s fine to drive a nice car. It’s fine to have a Chanel handbag and to also give a lot of money away and do some cool things.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah, that’s really beautiful. When you were in college, in your undergrad, you met Anthony, the man you would eventually marry at what I was told a “fairly young age”. What would a fairly young age be? And do high school and college kids nowadays have a clear view of age?

Susan Jones Knape:

Oosh, yeah. A fairly young age was 16. We actually met in high school.

Luke W Russell:

Okay.

Susan Jones Knape:

So, very young age. And we got married the second we got out of college at age 21, which now, I don’t think anybody gets married at 21. Both of my… My daughters are 31 and 33, and neither of them are married. And when I bring up the subject, they kind of go, “Oh, mom, we’ve got plenty of time. We’re not going to rush into this,” which I think is much healthier.

Susan Jones Knape:

Look, I think we were so young. We just hadn’t had time to develop ourselves as people. And I’m really glad that both of my daughters have had their 20s to develop themselves and to find out who they really are. And now, they’re both in relationships that I see as healthy. And I just think you can’t do that when you’re… When you’re 16 years old, you don’t have the world-view to be able to really understand what you want in life.

Luke W Russell:

So after you got married, it was a while until you had kids? Is there a right time to have children?

Susan Jones Knape:

There’re pros and cons. And there’re, of course, a lot of people who write about this. And it was intentional for us to wait, but the pro of waiting until your mid-30s is that you’ve got, hopefully, some stability in your life, and you’ve established your career, and you have some money in the bank, and all of that. The con is that, the older you get, the less energy you have, presumably, to run after kids. But I think it’s such an individual situation, and I’ve seen it turn out beautifully at different ages, and I’ve also seen things explode at different ages. For example, we waited until I was 35 to have our first child. And part of that waiting was to be really stable before having a child. And what I didn’t foresee was that in six years, my life that I thought was so stable was going to blow up, and I couldn’t have foreseen that.

Susan Jones Knape:

The fact that I waited and tried to be conscientious about providing the perfect home to bring a child into, you can plan that all you want, but life has unforeseen things. People can get sick, there are accidents, there’s all kinds of things that can happen that we can’t foresee. I think that’s a very individual decision. And no matter what you do, it doesn’t matter how much you plan, you have to, in yourself, find the ability to be resilient. And when things don’t go the way you’ve planned, you’ve got to get up every day and do the next best thing in front of you. And that’s all any of us can rely on.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Were there any authors that maybe you never met, but really influenced you, maybe in those formative 20s years?

Susan Jones Knape:

I was influenced more by the political arena. And I can tell you moments that I was so profoundly influenced, and this goes back even before high school or college, but to junior high. I remember when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. And that particular moment in watching that on the news on Walter Cronkite just did something to me. Up to that point, I had been kind of a classic junior high girl drill team, not very deep in terms of my understanding of the world and the inequities in the world.

Susan Jones Knape:

And when he was killed, for some reason, that just put a shot of adrenaline in my arm. And I remember that moment, I remember the pictures of him falling to the floor in that kitchen. And then I remember the train carrying his body. And that was a wake up call for me, when I said, “You know, this world isn’t just, and there need to be more heroes, like Bobby Kennedy in it. And what am I going to do here?”

Susan Jones Knape:

That lit my fire. It really did. That moment completely lit my fire more than any author later on. And maybe it was my age, that it sort of hit me, I would’ve been, I guess, around 14 at that point, but there was something in me then that said, “He made a difference, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I want to make a difference, too.”

Luke W Russell:

Wow. Now, if I have it right, around 1982 was when you founded your ad agency in Texas that you ran for roughly two decades?

Susan Jones Knape:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Luke W Russell:

And so during the course of your work, I read that you refused to do any work for tobacco or other companies that were objectifying women. Could you give me some examples of things that you said, “No, I will not work for this”?

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, that’s true. Our ad agency, we did a lot of cause-oriented marketing. That’s what it’s called now. We worked for a number of big national organizations that you would know, American Heart Association, the Centers for Disease Control, and we ran campaigns that were designed to educate people and positively influence behavior. I can give you one specific example, where I turned down a large amount of business, and this was with a large oil company, ExxonMobil. And they had wanted us to do a campaign to really change the public perception around… This was after the Exxon Valdez incident, but they had wanted us to change public perception around that and around their safety, so that if there was ever another incident like that, they would be seen in a more favorable light by a jury, and I just couldn’t do it.

Luke W Russell:

Hmm, yeah. Do you remember your first client, and after you opened the agency?

Susan Jones Knape:

The very, very first client, interestingly enough, was the Dallas Opera, and I do remember that. And that might seem odd to be a first client, but they gave us the opportunity to do just some beautiful work for them. And it was a perfect match at that point because they needed an agency that was very cost-effective. And since we were brand new, we were very cost-effective. And we did the work for them for, I’m sure, well below what anybody else would’ve charged, but they gave us the opportunity to really do beautiful work and to pretty much have a free rein on what we did.

Susan Jones Knape:

That began a portfolio for our ad agency, showing our ability to design and create beautiful imagery, which back at the time, this was, of course, before the internet. Everything was print advertising, and beautiful imagery was much more important than it is now. It’s still as important, and it’s still important part of website development, but back at that point, it was real photography, not digital photography. And there was just a much greater emphasis on the design, and that was right up my alley.

Luke W Russell:

Now, where did you find this? And maybe, how did you discover this within you, because you grew up in a context where a career wasn’t even on your mind, and yet, you find yourself hustling for one thing after another?

Susan Jones Knape:

I think there must be some DNA at work there, because you’re right, the environment that I grew up in did not really honor hustling in women. It just wasn’t seen as proper, but my dad was at heart, a hustler. He had his own business, and he was at heart, a hustler, so was his father and his brother. And I think I just got that DNA from them.

Luke W Russell:

Now, you had a playpen in your corner office for your kiddos. What would I have seen and heard if I visited your office back then?

Susan Jones Knape:

Yeah. Yes, when I had Jordan, and had an active ad agency, and I was 35 years old, I just wasn’t prepared, because I think many parents are for the overwhelming love, instantly, that I had for this tiny baby. And I thought beforehand, like a business woman, “Oh, well, I’ll go back to work on this date, and I’ll hire this childcare service, or I’ll do this and that, and basically, contract out some of the child-rearing.”

Susan Jones Knape:

But when I had her, I realized, “I can’t do that. I can’t separate myself from this baby. I can’t do it.” And I was really distraught because our income as a family depended on me keeping this ad agency going. I had a brand new baby, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of her.

Luke W Russell:

Now, you eventually became a single mother in the early 90s, if I have my timeline right. Can we talk about mom guilt?

Susan Jones Knape:

Oh, sure, we can. It would’ve been… Let me think. It would’ve mid-90s. Yeah, I think mothers feel guilty almost all the time. It’s just a thing that is part and parcel of this intense relationship that you have with your children. And I know that guys have intense relationships with their children, too. I don’t want to take away from that, but this, just the DNA, mother-child bond is so significant that I think given our culture and what is expected of women, whether they’re working or not, there is always some degree of mom guilt because the standards to which mothers are held are just impossibly high.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Can you interpret this old saying for me, a man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done?

Susan Jones Knape:

Oh, yeah. I’m going to take it back a step and tell you about my experiences as a single mom in the workplace and what my daughters say about it now, because I hope that every woman listening out there will pay attention to this.

Susan Jones Knape:

When my girls were older, and then I was working for a period of time for someone else, and I had less flexibility, I would lie if I had to take off time to, or I had to, or chose to take off time to pick up my daughters from school, or go to the dentist, or go to ballet class, or whatever. I would never ever, ever tell the truth, that I was taking off time to do something that was related to my daughters, because I would’ve been thought of as less than if I said that.

Susan Jones Knape:

Now, all around me, though, and I was in a very male environment, men would every day say, “Hey, I’m leaving the office early to go pick up my son, take him to soccer.” And resoundingly, folks would go, “Oh, you’re such a great dad. I wish my husband would help out, like you do.” He would get positive accolades for the same thing that I would’ve been sort of mentally demoted for. And I just knew that in my bones, so I lied to cover up any trace of my children potentially interfering in my life.

Susan Jones Knape:

The other thing that I did, and every working mother goes through this, back then, the car phones were a big thing. And if I had my girls in the car and I was taking a call with a client, they’ll laugh about it now, but I would tell them beforehand, “Hey, I’m going to be… I’m talking to somebody who’s mean, and they don’t like kids, so you have to be really, really quiet.”

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Oh, man.

Susan Jones Knape:

And they would be very, very quiet because they were used to this. Again, I see guys, particularly now, on the phone, I’ll be on a Zoom call, and a guy will have a child run in, and that’ll be a cute thing, and it’s sweet. Back then, it wasn’t cute or sweet. I had to cover up. And I had a lot of guilt about that. I always felt that I wasn’t doing enough for my daughters because I wasn’t there 100% of the time. And when I was with them, I would get phone calls that I would need to take, and I’d have to tell them to be quiet, or something would interfere, and it would take away from my total concentration on them. I did feel guilty.

Susan Jones Knape:

And sometimes, I would just… I mean, there were moments when I would just break down in tears and think, “I can’t keep doing this. It’s too much.” My financial reality was such that I had to keep doing it, so I did. Honestly, if I had had a choice, I think I would’ve just said, “It’s too hard,” because sometimes it was absolutely so brutal. And what I would also do is save a lot of the work, which every mother does, until my daughters went to bed. So, feed them, bathe them, get them to bed, and act like I was going to go to sleep, but in reality, I was going to go to my home office and work for another three or four hours because I had to keep up with everybody else.

Susan Jones Knape:

Not only did I have mom guilt, I was exhausted. But here’s what my girls say now, because they’re old enough now that I’ve had this conversation with them to say, “Hey, did this bother you? What do you remember about this, because I hated being away from you? And I’m so sorry I was late for picking you up from school. And I have all of these feelings that…” And both of my daughters have said, basically, “Stop it, mom. You were fine. We always knew you loved us. We always knew you would be there. And frankly, you were more involved in our lives than many of the mothers who were ‘stay-at-home’ mothers, because when you were with us, you were really with us, and you were involved. Whereas they got involved in so many other activities, and I’m not dissing stay-at-home mothers at all, but you were really there for us.”

Susan Jones Knape:

Now, they have assured me that that didn’t ruin them for life. And I’m joking, but as a mother, you just kind of think, “Oh my God!” And you worry about them, but they’ve said, “It was not a big deal.” And they’ve also just recently said, “You know, I was always really proud of what you were doing. And I thought it was so cool that my mother, she dressed up in a suit and she did important things,” and they were proud of me. And that just made my heart sing because I never knew that they felt that way.

Luke W Russell:

What do you want men to know?

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, what I want men to know is that, first of all, in the workplace, I want men to be accepting of women’s schedules and accepting of the fact that women can do three things at once. Women can be on a conference call, soothe a sick child, and cook dinner, all at the same time. Every woman I know can do three things at once. It is not a problem. So, be accepting of the women in your office. And if they need to leave early to go home, and they tell you they’re going to finish that brief later, or they’re going to finish doing that financial analysis, or whatever it is, don’t give them a hard time about it. Don’t make them stay in the office and produce that work. Let them go do it. Let women have the flexibility they need to run their lives.

Susan Jones Knape:

I have never, ever, ever been taken advantage of by a woman. If she’s telling me she needs flexibility to better balance what she has to do at home with her work, that is always paid off in spades and in productivity. So, trust her. If she says she can do it while she’s at the park with her kids, let her do it at the park with her kids. She will end up being happier, and you will get a better product as a result of it. That’s the big thing, listen to her and believe her.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. When we talked to August, your daughter, she shared her fondness of a memory of when you signed up her and Jordan for swim lessons, and that you also signed up yourself as well.

Susan Jones Knape:

That’s a good one. We loved our summer swim lessons. And this hurts, even when I talk about it right now, I never had a summer off ever with my children. And I always wanted to have a summer just off to, as I would say, experience summer as a verb that never happened. But we did find our own ways to create joy, and swimming lessons were just a place of joy for us. They loved the water. I love the water.

Susan Jones Knape:

And so, I decided rather than just having them swim, and I wasn’t a swimmer, I didn’t know how to swim, that that was something they loved so much, I wanted to be a part of, too. That was an activity that we could share that didn’t require us to take off a month, or go somewhere. We could go pretty much any day and swim at the pool. We all learned how to swim together, and that continues to be something that we really enjoy.

Luke W Russell:

Hmm. Now, you eventually went on to work as chief marketing officer for Baron & Budd, you were there for roughly a decade, and really built out some robust marketing campaigns, including the mesothelioma marketing that helped push the envelope for plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Luke W Russell:

I guess, for starters, how did you find your way into the legal world after having been working with such a wide range of types of brands and medical associations?

Susan Jones Knape:

That was interesting. Someone who was a partner with Baron & Budd chanced to see me at an event in Dallas. He knew the reputation of our agency in terms of doing what I would now call… Some of it was really public policy work. I didn’t use that phrase at the time, but that’s what it was. He knew that I had a strong experience in that arena. And he came up to me and said, “We are looking to build a marketing department internally for my law firm, Baron & Budd. Would you be interested?” And I said, “No, I don’t think so,” because I didn’t know what a plaintiff firm was really.

Susan Jones Knape:

But the tiny bit of image I had of a plaintiff firm was negative because of the nighttime TV ads. And it felt very ambulance-chasing, and I didn’t like it. It felt cheap. I told him no, but he insisted that I come over and talk to them, and meet some of the people and find out more about what they did. And really, just to be nice to him because he was a longtime friend, I did go over and meet several of the partners at Baron & Budd, and learned about what they did.

Susan Jones Knape:

I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “How have I not known this world even existed, because here are the people who are not only picking up the beer cans on the side of the highway, they’re filing lawsuits to make sure more beer cans don’t end up.” I mean, I’m talking figuratively, but they’re filing lawsuits that make sure this doesn’t happen in the future. This is amazing. All the things that I had been passionate about, they were handling and creating change through the use of civil legal action.

Susan Jones Knape:

I fell in love with what they were doing. And I spoke to the head of the firm, Russell Budd, and said, “I love everything about you, but I do not like the way the industry is advertising. In fact, I believe it is hurting you, because there’s so many people out there, it’s not just me. There are a lot of people who have such a negative view of plaintiff attorneys because of the type of advertising that’s being done. I am happy to come on board. I would love to be your CMO. I’ve got the right experience, and I’ve got the personal passion for what you’re doing, but I will never, ever, ever create one of those ads that is such a turn off to people.” And he agreed to it, and I worked for Russell for 11 years.

Luke W Russell:

When we come back, Susan shares with us how her relationship with her daughters changed over the years. Stay with us. I’m Luke W Russell, and you are listening to Lawful Good. Season two is about powerful partnerships, interesting and caring folks that we know and trust whose journey has brought them to collaboration with the legal community.

Luke W Russell:

In our next episode, a business spotlight, Susan and I discuss what her company, A Case for Women has to offer, and if it is something that would benefit you or someone you know. By highlighting companies like A Case for Women, we create an opportunity to help make Lawful Good possible financially. As you can probably imagine, Lawful Good requires an enormous amount of resources to make happen. One way we do that is by featuring people we know, like, and trust, many of whom we have a referral relationship with.

Luke W Russell:

After you finish up this episode, check out our business spotlight to learn more about A Case for Women, and how they connect women with powerful legal advocates. When we left off, Susan shared with us how she became involved in the legal marketing world. We pick up the conversation with Susan sharing about the shifts in her and her daughter’s lives.

Luke W Russell:

During those years, did your relationship with your daughters pass through seasons?

Susan Jones Knape:

Absolutely, because they went through junior high and high school while I was there.

Luke W Russell:

Hmm, yeah.

Susan Jones Knape:

Those were really formative years. And they saw me, I think, very engaged in the work, and of course, heard me talk about it all the time, because when we would get into a new case area, they were old enough to have dinner conversation about whatever it was. And I’m absolutely sure that that planted seeds in their own thoughts about what they would do in the future as they saw me personally making, creating meaningful change for people and impacting lives, but they also saw this whole universe of plaintiff lawyers and what they were doing.

Susan Jones Knape:

And I made sure to talk to them about it all because I was so excited, and they got pretty excited about it as well. And this continued even into the early college years, and I think it influenced Jordan’s decision to ultimately get really involved in women’s studies at Pratt University. And she did a program there called critical and visual studies, which had a heavy emphasis on the growth of feminism and how women were not treated equally in so many ways, but she saw this in real life terms in regard to some of the lawsuits that Baron & Budd was involved in, and I was involved in.

Susan Jones Knape:

And AAJ produced a book that I remember showing to Jordan years and years ago, and it was called The Disproportional Harm to Women. And this was about drugs and medical devices. And it was a long-range study of how drugs and medical devices hurt women so much more than men. And that, I think was one of the moments that things clicked for her to thinking, “It’s great to be on the feminist bandwagon, and write, and do things, and read, and be active, or go to marches, or all of that, but nothing quite changes things as much as a lawsuit, or winning a lawsuit.”

Susan Jones Knape:

When it came time, and we’re racing ahead here, but when it came time to start A Case for Women, Jordan was right there at the beginning, and involved in the Essure birth control lawsuit, which was the first case type that we took up. And prior to that, she had done quite a bit of writing as a freelancer for Baron & Budd. The girls grew up in their formative years just hearing about all the Save the World lawsuits, and they got the bug, too.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah, I love that. So it was in early 2016 when you founded A Case for Women? Do you remember the moment in which you knew you wanted to do this company?

Susan Jones Knape:

Absolutely. I actually have an email that I wrote to someone, and I’ve kept it all these years, and I wrote it, and that email encapsulated the vision of A Case for Women, but that was after quite a few years of having this sort of idea and thinking about it. But what happened over my period of 11 years of working with Baron & Budd, which was an amazing experience, getting to see a law firm from the inside out, and being involved in every single case type, it was amazing.

Susan Jones Knape:

But I saw that women were so frequently the decision-makers in their family about legal action. And yet, they really were not thought of in a lot of the marketing that went out, didn’t really speak women language. A lot of the marketing speaks male language, and I think that’s because men are largely the partners in these law firms, and they assume that anyone will respond to the same language that they would respond to. But the fact is that women respond to a very different kind of tone and a very different message. For example, a man is more likely to respond to language about large settlements. Women, not so much. They’re more likely to respond to language about helping other women.

Susan Jones Knape:

I saw that there was a really gap out there in legal marketing, and that there was an opportunity to create a company that would explain civil legal action in a way that women would listen and respond positively. That light bulb went off while I was at Baron & Budd, but I didn’t quite crystallize until I realized, not only that women were being hurt more and that women were making decisions in their families, but the other thing that happened was Facebook became a really big thing around the same time. And Facebook was really the moment that I said, “You know what? There’s really a there, there place, and I need to go there,” because we started using Facebook for Baron & Budd in a very big way to put out messages for new clients.

Susan Jones Knape:

But Facebook, as you know, is a very important tool for women to communicate, even more so than men. There’s plenty of men on Facebook, but women really use it as a way to process information and network with other women in a way that guys don’t. And so the combination of women being hurt more, of the sexual assault cases that were just coming to the top of the surface, of Facebook becoming a thing, and of women being the decision-makers about legal action in their household, I realized, “Now is the time to start this business because there’s a real opportunity to reach all these women who need what law firms have to offer, but they don’t know how to access it.” What we do is help women access this life-changing legal action, and that’s our mission.

Luke W Russell:

So you also founded this… I think you founded it with Jordan. Is that right?

Susan Jones Knape:

Yes, she’s my oldest.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah, and what was those conversations like? And I want to two-part this also, and you can figure out how you want to answer it, because I think like, what were those conversations like? But also, what was it like for you as a mom to be like, “This is such a beautiful place to be in with my daughter”?

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, lots of layers to that. A Case for Women has surpassed what either of us envisioned five years ago in terms of its growth and its far-reaching implications. We couldn’t be happier, but you take everything one step at a time. She felt as I did, that there was this fabulous opportunity. Neither of us knew, 1000%, it would work. What I said to her is, eyes wide open, “I think there’s this big opportunity here. I’m willing to jump in and work really hard. And if anybody has a chance for success, we do, but I can’t promise you. If things go wrong, here’s an exit strategy, but what we’re going to have to do is jump in, work our butts off.”

Susan Jones Knape:

That’s basically what I said. “Do you want to jump in with me and work your butt off, and not know if you are going to make anything at the end?” I don’t know if that sounds too appealing, but that was the deal. And she was so excited about it because she had such an interest in women’s rights. She’s just been wired that way from the beginning. And I’ll tell you, she’s my daughter, who was writing letters about nuclear proliferation when she was in sixth grade. She’s a cause-oriented girl, too. And so it was, “Let’s give this a try,” but I tell you what, you just can tell when something’s going to take off, and within a month, we could just tell that this was going to take off.

Susan Jones Knape:

Baron & Budd became our first client for Essure birth control cases, and the rest is history. She’s worked like crazy. And she has developed skillsets that I couldn’t have possibly imagined at the time. In fact, she’s like a tech genius. She’s a systems genius. And if you knew me, you would know I’m not a systems genius at all. Her abilities have really complimented mine, and vice versa. And we can’t imagine now doing anything different, but at the time, it was a big jump. It was jumping off the high board, if you want to put it that way.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Could you give us a brief overview of just how A Case for Women works, so our listeners understand the organization a little better?

Susan Jones Knape:

Right, I’m happy to. A Case for Women, first of all, we’re the only woman-owned company in the legal marketing space. But the way we work is that, to our law firm partners, we are a vehicle for them to sign quality cases across a wide variety of mass torts, or individual litigation types, such as sexual assault, or mesothelioma, or any other kind of thing where someone has been injured.

Susan Jones Knape:

We are a vehicle to get quality signed cases. We do this ethically, we do this through digital advertising, and we do this through a very sophisticated proprietary system of advertising and that leads to a very committed plaintiff, not someone who isn’t really sure what they signed up for, but someone who is committed, who qualifies, who’s ready to get going and answer the questions from the law firm, and do this thing.

Susan Jones Knape:

On facing the plaintiff side, they view us as really an advocacy group for various issues relating to women and different harms that they might have endured. We’re both. As a marketer for the law firms, we combine marketing with advocacy, so that we’re reaching women with messages that they can relate to, and where they understand how the puzzle pieces fit together. For example, I wish I had $1 for every time a woman had said, “Well, why should I do this, whether it’s an Essure birth control case, or whether it’s a paraquat case, or an MSU sexual assault case?”

Susan Jones Knape:

And the answer is always, “Because this is going to create change. The more women we have sign up for this, the greater our chance to give a signal to this rotten corporation, that what they did was bad. Because if we don’t hit them in the pocketbook, nothing’s going to hit them.” And creating change is what we’re all about.

Luke W Russell:

I love that, and such a full circle. Yeah, do you consider yourself an entrepreneur, a business owner, both, or something else?

Susan Jones Knape:

I’m an absolute entrepreneur. And on the one hand, it was a little scary to jump out and start A Case for Women. I put everything I had on the line. I’m in my 60s, I’m putting everything I have on the line, so I’m sure, if there’s a CPA listening to this, they’d go, “Why did you do that? That’s not what you should have done,” but I just knew it in my heart that it was going to be successful. I had a vision for it, and that’s my entrepreneur, hustler side of me.

Susan Jones Knape:

And frankly, it took all those decades of life experience to get to the point where I could make it successful. I think starting it any earlier, it wouldn’t have been successful, but absolutely, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m also, obviously, a business person now. And I’ve learned to be a business person through all my years out there making it in the business world, but I’m an entrepreneur. I’m always thinking of new things that A Case for Women can do, and ways we can expand and grow our presence, and do. I’ve got some cool ideas for things we could do next year. We might be adding some things to our offerings.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. How would you rate yourself as a boss?

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, I’ll tell you this, every single person who’s ever worked for me and then left has come back and said, “Oh, Susan, I didn’t realize what a great boss you were.” I think I’ve got a pretty good reputation as a boss, although I can drive people crazy because I’m entrepreneurial. And therefore, every day, I wake up with a new idea. I’ll tell you, I’m bad about this. We’ll have a big project going on, and everybody’s got their steps and their timing all lined up, and then I have another idea. And I’m famous for launching those missives and driving people crazy.

Luke W Russell:

Susan, I have a series of questions. We’re going to do a little thing we call a high-velocity round. I have a series of ridiculous yes-no questions, but the only rule is you can’t answer just yes or no. You can say yes or no, but you got to give me more. Also, if any of them you’re like, “Where did this come from?” every once in a while, we get some weird questions that come in here that was inspired from something in a research that make less sense in the moment. Are you ready?

Susan Jones Knape:

Yeah.

Luke W Russell:

All right. Are you a serious person?

Susan Jones Knape:

I’m a serious person to a fault. I have to have my family members sort of shake it out of me sometimes to chill out, because whatever new thing is in the news that’s important and is serious, I’m going to gravitate to.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Is there ever an appropriate time to curse about somebody?

Susan Jones Knape:

Curse?

Luke W Russell:

Yeah.

Susan Jones Knape:

Oh, yeah, totally. In fact, I raised my kids saying, “It’s always acceptable to use the F word if it’s an acceptable situation. As long as you’re using it when appropriate, I am totally okay with it.”

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Is it possible to sit still without being asleep?

Susan Jones Knape:

No. I’m having trouble sitting still right now, because I’ve been sitting still too long, because I can’t move from this microphone.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah, I hear you. Do you plan to raise bees when you retire?

Susan Jones Knape:

Oh, I’d love to. That was one of my… I saw myself raising bees. Back when I was in college, I envisioned that in my future. I could see that happening.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Does the correct way of eating ice cream involve a fork?

Susan Jones Knape:

Yes, because what you want to do, first of all, you want to buy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream that has a lot of little chunky things in it, chocolate bits, or cake bits, or whatever. And then the best way to eat the ice cream is to, very late at night, pick out all of those good pieces.

Luke W Russell:

I’m told that you are the type of person who might take one bite out of something, like a donut that someone else was saving. And so my question is, are you also the type of person who will leave one spoonful of ice cream in the container for someone else to find?

Susan Jones Knape:

Yes, I have been known to do that on more than one occasions. And I probably do that every night around 11:30.

Luke W Russell:

Do you need a new hobby? And by the way, your daughter says yes to this question.

Susan Jones Knape:

Yeah, I think it’s time. I can tend to work myself, work a little bit too much. And so it would be good to get something that gets me going in a… Get my brainwaves going in a new direction.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. And do you use the label feminist to describe yourself?

Susan Jones Knape:

Not so much a label person, but yeah. I would say, yes, absolutely.

Luke W Russell:

What’s that mean for you?

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, for me, I just… Standing my own ground and owning my womanhood in all the ways that it should be owned without apology is what it means, and really pushing to not be subjugated to the patriarchy. Now, the crazy thing is I don’t even think I’d heard the word patriarchy until about 15 years ago when a therapist said that to me in a certain context, and I had to go and look it up, and I realized what that meant and what kind of power that it had on my past life. And I was in the process of changing myself from the inside out. And so, not seeking the approval of the patriarchy and not feeling dominated by what our culture says, or all the BS that has been fed to us. I can’t even believe. That would be a whole another podcast, but yes, I’m a feminist.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. I was just chatting with a woman the other day, and she was just talking about how women are so often expected to be masculine, whether that’s something like aggressive, assertive, or dominant, et cetera, but then when they are, they’re often called a bitch. Have you experienced that?

Susan Jones Knape:

Oh, absolutely, yes. I’m still sure people call me… There are people out there who would call me a bitch, and there are people also who call me an ice queen. That’s another thing.

Luke W Russell:

What’s that mean?

Susan Jones Knape:

Oh, ice queen? That means, because I can control my emotions in a heated meeting, so they’re calling me ice queen. That’s not a nice thing to be. It’s a negative thing. But yeah, that happens all the time, and it really just infuriates me.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Have you had to fight your way to have a seat at quite a few tables?

Susan Jones Knape:

Everything’s my fight, and my life has been a fight, absolutely everything. In my personal life and in my business life, it’s been a fight. It was a fight to get my first job. It has been a fight throughout everything. Now, that fight has given me so much knowledge and a strong backbone to be able to do what I do now and own my power in a way that I couldn’t possibly have owned it, even 20 years ago. But yes, absolutely everything has been a fight.

Luke W Russell:

Can you tell me more about owning your power?

Susan Jones Knape:

Being comfortable with my power. I had power before, but I wasn’t comfortable with it. As a woman, I thought that I needed the acknowledgement of a man somehow in a business realm to validate me. I was looking, in many ways, for that kind of validation from some external source. And now, I realize I am that source. I don’t need them. I don’t need that validation from anybody else. I am that source. And that took some emotional therapy kind of work that I did on myself, and also a number of these circumstances that I’ve gone through professionally.

Susan Jones Knape:

But wow, I own my abilities. And the kind of things that I used to fall prey to, “Oh, she’s the creative thinker, she’s not the money person, or she’s not this or that,” that is just also… Those are just bullshit cliches. My gut instincts about running the business are better than anybody with 10,000 spreadsheets. And I own that now. And in the past, I would’ve felt intimidated by those 10,000 spreadsheets. So, being comfortable with who I am and being okay with being successful. And that’s a life-changer and is a business-changer.

Luke W Russell:

And how powerful that is for you to be modeling that for your daughters.

Susan Jones Knape:

Yeah, that makes me happy.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Have there been men along the way that have supported, empowered, maybe made space for you?

Susan Jones Knape:

I would say that there has been one man in the professional space who made space for me and empowered me to a certain degree, but it was also clear that the empowerment had a cap on it. There was that one person. And the only other man is my current significant other, who has been incredibly supportive and empowering of me, both professionally and personally, and is a joy to be with.

Susan Jones Knape:

And so, I’m so happy that he is in my life. And interesting, I found him… Once I stopped looking, I think for men to validate me, I found this wonderful man who actually does validate me, but I tell you what, you can imagine just being in my career for so many decades and being a woman among a lot of men, I was used, but I wasn’t recognized or compensated accordingly.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Would you say you were born with confidence and determination?

Susan Jones Knape:

Yes, I do think I was. As I think, most people are born with confidence and determination, but along the way, it can get kicked out of you, right?

Luke W Russell:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Susan Jones Knape:

I think I look back on myself, as a very young girl, I absolutely had grit, which I think I still have today, but there were periods in my life when I just lost it because either I thought it wasn’t the feminine way to be, or I thought, “Oh, all the guys know more than I do, or if I act that way, nobody’s going to like me,” or all those different things that we tell ourselves. But that inner grit is certainly something, along with my faith that has given me the backbone to get through everything that I’ve gotten through and start this fabulous business now.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. How has your why shifted over time?

Susan Jones Knape:

No, I don’t think it shifted at all. I think I’ve gone back to my original why. I’m now living the exact person who sat there and watched Walter Cronkite talk about Bobby Kennedy’s murder.

Luke W Russell:

Wow.

Susan Jones Knape:

And I had also talked about Martin Luther King, when he was shot. I am that same person who was profoundly affected by those moments in time and wanted to… I wanted to jump out of my chair and do something, but I didn’t know what to do. And I’ve actually, in a long, circuitous way, come back to be exactly that same person.

Luke W Russell:

Wow. When we spoke to your daughter, August, she said that one thing she really admires about you is your resiliency. For the person listening, especially any women who might be questioning whether or not they have it in them, whether they have the grit, or the resiliency, or the confidence, what would you say to her?

Susan Jones Knape:

I would say that if she has any inkling of going out on her own, or whether that’s business, or whether… Or just taking anything that has any risk to it, if she has any inkling that that’s something she wants to do, she should act on it, because our culture has taught women to so submerge those feelings, that if she’s got an inkling of it, that tells me right there that she’s got it in her to be successful, because that inkling has already had to surpass all the messages of, “Oh, you can’t do it. Oh, it’s dangerous. Oh, it’s this. Oh, it’s that. It’s not a smart financial move,” all of that. She ought to act on that inkling because that came from inside of her, and that’s truth, and that’s real, and that tells me she has the grit to go ahead and take it all the way through.

Luke W Russell:

Hmm. As a mother, how have you surprised yourself?

Susan Jones Knape:

It has surprised me, just overall, how much I love watching my daughters grow up and develop their own personalities, and even as adults, how involved I am in their lives and excited about what they do. I think I thought once they were out of college and sort of on their own paths, that we might not be as close as we are, but we are super close, and on almost a daily basis, I know what’s going on in their lives. And that just makes me so happy, even though they’re on… One’s in California, and one’s in Washington, DC, and I’m in Texas. We’re all over the place, but it surprised me to see how close we remain and how much joy that gives me to still be a part of their lives.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Do you think you’ll ever retire?

Susan Jones Knape:

Will I ever stop doing meaningful things? No. I think it’s so hardwired in me to just make things happen and do good stuff. I don’t think I will ever, ever stop. Now, the form that that takes might change, or maybe I won’t do it 12 hours a day, seven days a week, but it’s just hardwired in me. In fact, we just launched a 501(c)(3), a fund for women, which is another passion project, and I want to see that grow. There’s an infinite amount of good that can be done, and I don’t see myself ever stopping doing it.

Luke W Russell:

What are you looking forward to?

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, on the personal side, I’m looking forward to seeing my girls over the holidays, because during COVID, we didn’t get to see each other very much. That’s on the personal side. We’ll take a nice family vacation then.

Susan Jones Knape:

On the business side, I really am looking forward to developing some new sides to A Case for Women, if you would, to do even more than we’re doing. And I also am very excited about this foundation that we have created. One of the things that we have discovered is that many of the women who inquire to us, they’re not going to be able to qualify for legal action, but they’re coming to us because they’re in a dire circumstance, and they just need a little help to get through whatever’s going on in their life. We created this foundation to do just that.

Susan Jones Knape:

We give gifts, $500 or less, immediately to women who are in dire circumstances. And there’s no questions asked, there’s no paperwork to fill out, there’s nothing crazy. Literally, they tell us their situation, and we say, “We’ll cut you a check and FedEx, or we’ll do a cashier’s check. We’ll FedEx it tonight, so you have it tomorrow.” And that has already helped so many women who otherwise, literally, wouldn’t have food on the table. We’re talking about immediate need, and I am excited about making that even bigger and helping more folks through that.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Do you ever feel like you’re running out of time?

Susan Jones Knape:

No, and that’s probably really weird that I don’t. I was having that conversation with a friend this week, who she’s really winding down and feeling the need to slow down. And I was thinking, “I don’t feel that at all.” And sometimes I wonder if something’s wrong with me, that I don’t have that sense of it at all. I have an infinite amount of things I want to do, and every intention of doing them. And it just doesn’t occur to me… I can’t put my head around that there would be any stopping now.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. When you think back to the 80s, and all that you were standing for and pushing through and doing, and the difference you were making then and over the course of your life, is the world changing in ways you hoped it would?

Susan Jones Knape:

In some ways, it is. And in some ways, it isn’t. It is in terms of women having a greater voice, and women understanding that when they’re hurt, sometimes women don’t even realize if they’ve been raped, that it was rape, and that’s just, again, because of the cultural messages and women tending to blame themselves. I like the fact that women are acknowledging what’s actually the truth in their lives.

Susan Jones Knape:

What I don’t like is the hatred I’m seeing in this country right now, the backlash against women’s rights, what’s going on in my home state right now with our governor, and there’s such meanness and bitterness. And that just makes me so sad, and I’m struggling with how to even deal with it. What we are doing is, at our little corner, working on it to be a voice of reason. But that does bring me sadness.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Do you think you’ll write a book or give a TED talk someday?

Susan Jones Knape:

I would love to. You know, I did write a book on money. Did you know that?

Luke W Russell:

You know what? I did, and I totally forgot that whenever I wrote this question down. But yes, I do remember that.

Susan Jones Knape:

I do have one book, and McGraw Hill published it, The Money Rules. And that was a different kind of book. I would love to write a book, yes. That’s also on my list. I’ve got several in my head right now.

Luke W Russell:

Hmm, okay, Susan. It is your 80th birthday celebration, and people from all throughout your life are present. A gentle clinking on glass can be heard, and a hush washes over the room. People raise their glasses to toast to you. What are three things you would want them to say about you?

Susan Jones Knape:

Well, the first thing I want them to say is that she took good care of her girls. That’s the most important thing to me. The next thing they would say is she became who she was meant to be. And the third thing would be she sure left a mark.

Luke W Russell:

Season two is about powerful partnerships, interesting and caring folks that we know and trust whose journeys brought them to collaboration with the legal community.

Luke W Russell:

Thanks so much for listening to us this week. This podcast is produced by Kirsten Stock, edited by John Keur, and mastered by Guido Bertolini. A special thanks to the companies that make this project possible, Russell Media, and The SEO Police. You can learn more about these groups by visiting our website, lawfulgoodpodcast.com. I’m your host, Luke W Russell, and you’ve been listening to Lawful Good.