Many years ago, I moved into an office building. It’s funny to look back on it because back then, we had a very traditional arrangement of lawyers in window offices and staff along interior walls.

Things have changed, and we no longer have any offices for anyone. In fact, our team works remotely, and we have suites of conference rooms in three different cities. Between the technology and the cultural shift, our offices are starting to look very different.

Except we still have walls. The walls haven’t gone away, even with all the other changes.

And a blank wall doesn’t look good.

It needs something hanging on it.

Which leads me to my story about turning blank walls into clients.

Many years ago, I went to an art gallery. It was actually a building housing a bunch of art studios for more than forty artists.

I spent about three hours there that day looking at paintings. You should have seen me stumbling through the place. What I know about art comes from one art class in college where I would have spent all my time texting if only we’d had texting back then. I was, and am, completely ignorant about art.

At the end of my gallery visit, I bought about 10 different paintings from several artists.

They’ve hung on our walls since then.

By the way, one of the artists I met way back then painted the painting above, and it’s for sale (you should buy it).

Here’s the crazy thing:

My three hours in that building resulted in all kinds of referrals. Over the years, we’ve represented some of the artists, and we’ve had more than a dozen referrals from the artists. That day, I met the gallery director, who introduced me to three lawyers who now refer to me. I ended up being invited to a number of events as a result of getting to know the people over there, and I’m still in touch with some of the artists. That three hours has been paying off for more than 20 years.

I thought I was just going downtown to an art gallery to fill up some blank walls. I had no idea that visit was going to pay for itself in so many ways.