Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Clemko.
Joe, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in Oley, Pennsylvania, a small country town with 1 ½ traffic lights, surrounded by cows and cornfields, about 40 minutes northwest of Philadelphia. My mom was an administrative assistant and my father was a Pennsylvania State Trooper. My brother is also a police officer and on a county S.W.A.T. team. Law enforcement was in my blood from a young age so I decided to go to Johnson & Wales University (JWU) to major in Criminal Justice. I also chose JWU because I was given the opportunity to play collegiate Volleyball. In college, I began to grow both personally and professionally, having taken full advantage of all that an excellent university in a city setting had to offer. Almost overnight I had gained exposure to a variety of cultures, JWU had students from 93 countries and all 50 states. Several opportunities I was presented at Johnson & Wales would not have been available elsewhere. JWU is unique in that all faculty members have industry experience and all students, regardless of their major, were required to take business-related classes, such as business accounting, human resource management, principles of management, and much more. As a result, I was exposed to a whole different world of possibilities, beyond law enforcement. I remember taking human resource management and the professor was the former President & CEO of a $400M international corporation. It was probably the only course I never missed a single class and I was on the edge of my seat every day just trying to soak up the wealth of knowledge that came from his experiences. These classes actually caused a great deal of internal conflict because I wanted to follow in the family footsteps of becoming a police officer, but the other part of me wanted to explore the business world even more. My senior year I decided to start considering graduate school to get my Masters of Business Administration, but because I was struggling internally I also decided to apply for the Rhode Island State Police. This was the hardest interview process I’ve ever experienced in my life. It started in September 2003 with a written examination and 3,000 applicants then it progressed to the physical agility test, oral board interview, background investigation and few other steps. I made it from 3,000 applicants down to 125 applicants by June 2004. I lost many nights of sleep waiting for the results and still battling internally trying to decide if it was really what I wanted to do. Fortunately, that decision was made for me. They cut the remaining 125 applicants down to 60 for the academy and I didn’t make that final cut. It was a blessing because by August 2004 instead of beginning the police academy I enrolled in Alvernia University’s MBA program.
After receiving my MBA I worked in the corporate world for five years between sales and management jobs. I learned a great deal during those five years, but I began to realize I was still missing something more. It was the end of 2009, so it was in the middle of the recession. People were getting laid off or taking lower paying jobs, and companies were shutting down. I did a great deal of soul searching during that time to determine what it was I wanted out of life and if I decided to stay on the current career path could I see myself doing it for the next 20 years. The answer was NO, therefore, I knew I had to make a change. I had always thought about becoming an attorney in the back of my mind, but I never really paid much attention to it. I finally decided to start feeding that thought in my mind because I knew I didn’t want to be 45 or 50 years old wondering “What if I had gone to law school?” I started doing my research, as well as, talking to several attorneys and judges. I began the process to go to law school in early 2010 and by August, 2010 I was to begin classes at Western Michigan’s Cooley Law School. However, I almost backed out of going because about 2 weeks before I was to drive out to Michigan, my father was diagnosed with Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (cancer of the tongue & throat). After talking with my parents about the situation they reassured me they would be ok and I was to leave for law school as planned. Fortunately, everything turned out fine and my father has been cancer free ever since. I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and just the way it is supposed to because had I delayed going to law school I likely would not have ended up in Dallas. Just 3 weeks into law school I met my now wife, Silvia (Bustos) Clemko, who is a Dallas native and also an attorney, which is how I ended up here in 2014. As a die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan, I never saw myself living in enemy territory, but it’s funny what we do for love.
We moved down to Dallas after graduation and it was a struggle at first. I wasn’t from Texas so I didn’t have much of a network and we didn’t take the bar exam yet, so we were in this in-between stage of our careers limiting our options. Thankfully, my wife’s mentor Eric Cedillo was able to hire her as a law clerk and I eventually found a law clerk position with a top corporate immigration law firm. We worked these clerkships as we studied for the bar exam and waited for the results.
I wanted to figure out how I could merge the practice of law and my MBA so I began looking for opportunities that would allow me to do so. This search turned into my next job as a Regulatory Compliance Associate with a publicly-traded financial services company. I worked there for a short period of time because I quickly realized compliance wasn’t for me. Fortunately, I learned a great deal about financial and securities regulations that I was able to transition my experiences over to the Beckmen Law Firm.
The law firm is very entrepreneurial driven since the founder and my partner, Scott Beckmen, is a serial entrepreneur himself. As soon as I started I got thrown right into the fire, structuring and drafting a $50M dollar private equity fund my first few weeks in. As a small firm, besides doing the work we were also encouraged to do our own business development. As I mentioned, I didn’t have much of a network here in Dallas, so I started getting involved in the startup community, attending various networking events, reaching out to alumni on LinkedIn, and grabbing coffee with everyone I could to begin building relationships. Fortunately, I’ve met some amazing people and incredible entrepreneurs in my short time in Dallas and I’ve built up quite a robust network. As a result of my work with startups and early-stage tech companies I got involved with Esports over two years ago and Blockchain over a year ago now. Those two industries have been the bulk of my practice recently and they continue to be our two fastest growing practice areas because of the ecosystems that are being built here in Dallas. It is thanks to the innovators and community builders like Cody Marx Bailey and the members of the North Texas Blockchain Alliance for what they are doing to help support the growing Blockchain and Cryptocurrency ecosystem. The esports ecosystem has also exploded here in Dallas because of guys like Chris Cheney for creating Infinite Esports and bringing OpTic Gaming here, several other pro esports teams recently moved in, the support from the Dallas Regional Chamber & City of Frisco, the Esports Arena being built in Arlington by Populous and Kedreon Cole of Launchpad City for creating an Esports Accelerator in Frisco.
In a nutshell, for me to get to where I am now and working with the groups I am working with it has come down to creating and fostering real genuine relationships. There’s nothing I enjoy more than figuring out how I can help to add more value to others, rather than having the mentality of what is in it for me. It is exciting times here in the DFW metroplex and I’m grateful to have met some amazing people here. I’m definitely looking forward to what the future has in store.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has never been a smooth road and I don’t think I would have it any other way. There have always been struggles along my journey to get to where I am today and I still encounter challenges like everyone else. I embrace these challenges because if I’m not getting pushed outside of my comfort zone, I’m not growing. It is through the battle scars, countless failures, sleepless nights, fear, judgement from others, and my own inner struggles that pushed me closer to wanting to give up a long time ago, but most successful people will tell you it is from these challenges that made them tougher, smarter, and pushed them to grind it out just a little bit longer, leading to what others see today as the success story.
I grew up in a small town in a middle-class family. We didn’t always have much growing up, but my parents always made sure we had what we needed. We were probably considered lower middle class at one time. On the weekends we would go to flea markets and yard sales. I would empty out my piggy-bank and couldn’t wait to go buy “new-used” toys or baseball cards, but the best part was I would get new clothes, well new to me. One day when I was about 12 years old my mom comes home and she said, “I got you these jeans, go try them on.” She was thrilled because she bought me my first “NEW” pair of jeans. I on the other hand was not so excited because they were stiff and tight. They were not like the jeans I usually got from the yard sale that were already broken in. The funny thing is I actually made her wash those jeans a half dozen times or more until I would finally wear them.
I also grew up with asthma and when you play sports as much as I did, having asthma was a constant struggle because my body limited what my mind wanted to do. Growing up there were frequent trips to the ER for breathing treatments and times when I collapsed during a practice because I pushed my body too hard. However, I learned from these struggles, it taught me more about my body and forced me to train harder so that I could compete with everyone else.
I was never the best athlete or the smartest student for that matter, but I always had an incredible support system and work ethic that was unmatched by most. Often times, we try to go it alone and not rely on our support system to help us overcome the obstacles. However, it was by surrounding myself with others that challenged me and didn’t allow for me to become complacent that got me through a lot of my struggles. I know I didn’t get here alone, the struggles have a funny way of humbling us and it’s because of my parents, mentors, coaches, and my wife that I am where I am, doing what I am doing. It’s also a result of many years of hard work. One of my favorite quotes by the Rock sums it up best, “Be humble, be hungry, and always be the hardest worker in the room.” It is not uncommon even to this day that my wife and I will work during the day, then meet at home for dinner and then return to the office for a few more hours at the end of the day or go into the office on the weekends to keep grinding away. Don’t get me wrong we still make sure we have our weekly date nights and downtime, but we love what we do and having someone to share this life with that is in the same profession with the same level of drive and determination to succeed has been a real blessing.
The biggest hurdle I believe I have had to overcome thus far in life was law school and the bar exam. Most attorneys will tell you the same thing. I never experienced the physical manifestations of stress and anxiety like I did in law school, from tension headaches, sleepless nights, and even heart palpitations at one point. It’s incredibly competitive, but what makes it so difficult is the amount of information that you have to digest in a short period of time. It wasn’t uncommon to read 1,000+ page textbooks per course and then take one test at the end of each 15-week course to determine your grade. Fortunately, some law schools are seeing the detriment that this has been for students and have now started adding in more grading assignments throughout the semester or schools like Harvard have now added a pass/fail grading system. The bar exam is another beast of its own that really challenges you both physically and mentally. You have about 2 ½ months to study 20+ different subjects and take a 2 ½ day exam here in Texas. To add to the already stressful time, we took the exam in February when there was an ice storm and the city of Fort Worth was shut down, however, after an hour delay, we were still required to show up to the convention center for the first day. If that wasn’t stressful enough the heater was also broken for the first day and a half so we took the exam in a room that was freezing, probably 40 to 50 degrees. Once you’re done with the exam on day 3 you then have to wait 3 months until you receive your results.
One of the more recent hurdles I had to overcome, was health related. I was recently diagnosed with central retinal vein occlusion, basically small hemorrhages behind the eye that cause you to lose your central vision in that eye. There was no pain or warning signs and it usually happens in someone much older with high cholesterol or diabetes, which I do not have. I went to the doctor in February when it occurred and my vision was 20/400 in my right eye. They sent me for a battery of tests, blood work, echocardiogram and other specialists, but they can’t seem to figure out what caused it. Your mind also has an interesting way of going to the worse case scenarios during times like these. Not wanting to sit back and wait to see what happens my wife and I began to do our own research to figure out if there were things I could do more naturally to help my eye heal itself. One of the most helpful pieces of research that we came across was a book called Blind Faith by John Crittendon. The book is about a man who becomes blind from macular degeneration, but reversed it under the guidance of both naturopathic doctors and medical doctors. Several of the recommendations he made in the book I also implemented and my vision has drastically improved from 20/400 in February to 20/35 in June. It has certainly been a struggle to say the least, but it has made me even more aware of the importance of our health and the power of our bodies to naturally heal itself if you provide it with the right nutrition and supplementation.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Beckmen Law Firm is a full-stack law firm that represents clients in a wide array of industries from Blockchain & Cryptocurrency, Energy, Esports, Private Equity and Real Estate. Our experienced attorneys provide the highest quality, integrity-driven legal services to our clients, using a practical, consultative, client-focused approach to identify and respond to problems and challenges. We strive to maintain a culture characterized by respect, opportunity, entrepreneurship, hard work, mutual empowerment and fair reward for efforts made on behalf of our clients and the firm.
We love working with entrepreneurs because we’re entrepreneurs ourselves. We understand the obstacles and rollercoaster ride that is entrepreneurship. Being a small firm has its perks, when you call us you’re going to speak directly with an attorney. You’re also not paying for us to have granite counter tops, marble floors, or high end paintings on the wall, so we won’t break the bank when you hire us either. We care more about building the relationship with our clients and helping them grow then trying to get rich off of one transaction. If our clients are stuck paying outrageous professional fees then they can’t build their business. We have long term clients and we take pride in that. Our clients have been our greatest referral source as a result of us putting our client’s needs first. We run our firm with the philosophy of servant leadership; we want to help others fulfill their needs and put others needs above our own. We know that if we do that, our needs will be taken care of, through long term relationships and referrals. Being a small firm also provides the flexibility and time to get out into our community. I’m able to help veterans through the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program clinic and hold office hours to mentor companies at the Dallas Entrepreneur Center and Tech Wildcatters. I also mentor students at UNT’s law school and students a part of Enactus at UT Dallas. Getting involved in the community and helping veterans has always been important for me and a lesson that my parents instilled in me as a young boy.
Lastly, being in a small firm allows me to create and manage my practice the way I want to. I am able to combine my work experiences with my legal and business education to provide quality and innovative representation for my clients. My practice focuses on counseling businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and investors with an emphasis on general business transactions, mergers & acquisitions, private equity fund formation, and capital raising. Over the past two years, my practice has centered on emerging technologies, representing clients in Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Artificial Intelligence, in addition to building upon my existing Esports and Securities practice.
What were you like growing up?
Personality wise, it really depends on the stage. I have always been outgoing, friendly, down to earth, and very talkative, that hasn’t changed much. However, when I was younger and up until middle school I was a jokester and would talk when I wasn’t supposed to, which would get me in trouble in class. I have also always been very protective of others and stood up for kids that were getting picked on by bullies. Another story my mom likes to tell is about a kid that was being picked on during the bus ride home by an older kid. I talked to the kid being picked on and one day after the bus dropped us off I made sure the bully knew that he wasn’t going to be messing with anyone else on the bus again. Because we live in a small town, my mom still runs into the boy’s mom occasionally and that story manages to still come up.
Interest wise, I was always involved in sports since first grade I played multiple sports throughout the year. I grew up with a very close group of friends and we’re still very close to this day. We were always active and doing something usually sports related all year long. We would ride our bikes to one another’s houses or the local sports complex to play football, street hockey, baseball, basketball, or shoot pool. My brother was also into sports and he was a much better athlete than I ever was, so our parents were always running us around to practice and games or matches.
During high school I was a very active student-athlete and also began my involvement with coaching and volunteer work. I played three sports: two in the same season (volleyball and track), participated in student government and worked part-time starting at 15 years old. During my senior year I added two college courses in Computer Information Systems at Alvernia University to my academic schedule while serving as President of Student Government. In addition, I volunteer-coached the girls’ volleyball team during the fall semester for three seasons and volunteered at summer camps.
Once I got to college, grad school, and beyond is really where my love for learning began. This is probably why I have nine years of post-secondary education and multiple degrees to show for it. I always loved talking to teachers, coaches, and other adults to try to learn from them and really absorb what they had to share. Ralph Waldo Emmerson says it best, “Everyone is my superior in some way, of that I learn from them.” I hit a stage in my early 20’s where I began to enjoy reading and learning about business, health, self-development, and more. This really accelerated my growth both personally and professionally, which I believe also led me to going back to school in my late 20’s for my law degree. People’s entire life experiences are wrapped up in books they’ve written and when I realized what took them a life time to learn you can learn in a few hours or a few days of reading their book fundamentally shifted my mindset about reading. I also recently read an article that said most CEO’s of major companies read 50 to 60 books per year. If I want to get to where they are then I must model what they do. I now try to read or listen to an audiobook for fun every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.beckmenlawfirm.com
- Phone: (214) 453-2358
- Email: joe.clemko@beckmenlawfirm.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EsquireMBA13
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephclemko/
Image Credit:
Personal Photo – Neal Urban Photography
ESCon 2017 Panels – Pascall Photography
Shaq and I – Inspired Entertainment
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