The Marketing Lawcast
Breaking Through To A 7-Figure Estate Planning Law Firm
Curious about how to turn a solo law practice into a multi-million-dollar firm? Join us on the Marketing Lawcast as we sit down with Philip Ruce, an estate attorney from Minneapolis. Philip shares his inspiring story of starting his practice solo in 2014, with the steadfast support of his spouse, and growing it into a thriving firm with five lawyers and five staff, generating $2.5 million annually. His journey from a background in wealth management to becoming Minnesota's highest-rated attorney on Avvo is filled with invaluable lessons on dedication and strategic growth.
In this episode, we uncover the secrets behind effective marketing strategies for law firms operating on limited budgets. Philip explains how leveraging platforms like Avvo and Google Business reviews can significantly enhance your online presence, even when competing against larger firms. Discover how to automate review requests using tools like Zapier and Pipedrive, and learn about the importance of consistent solicitation to maintain a strong online reputation across multiple office locations. Additionally, we explore the benefits of implementing a tiered membership program to ensure ongoing client support and steady income.
Philip also delves into the challenges of scaling a law firm and the importance of delegating tasks that drain your energy. He emphasizes focusing on high-value work and aligning roles with team members' strengths to foster innovation and growth. Tune in for practical advice on business development coaching, building strong referral relationships, and the continuous nature of marketing efforts. This episode provides a comprehensive guide for any attorney looking to grow their practice while ensuring client satisfaction and staff security.
Video version on YouTube
Book your free Discovery Call with my team.
Curious about how to turn a solo law practice into a multi-million-dollar firm? Join us on the Marketing Lawcast as we sit down with Philip Ruce, an estate attorney from Minneapolis. Philip shares his inspiring story of starting his practice solo in 2014, with the steadfast support of his spouse, and growing it into a thriving firm with five lawyers and five staff, generating $2.5 million annually. His journey from a background in wealth management to becoming Minnesota's highest-rated attorney on Avvo is filled with invaluable lessons on dedication and strategic growth.
In this episode, we uncover the secrets behind effective marketing strategies for law firms operating on limited budgets. Philip explains how leveraging platforms like Avvo and Google Business reviews can significantly enhance your online presence, even when competing against larger firms. Discover how to automate review requests using tools like Zapier and Pipedrive, and learn about the importance of consistent solicitation to maintain a strong online reputation across multiple office locations. Additionally, we explore the benefits of implementing a tiered membership program to ensure ongoing client support and steady income.
Philip also delves into the challenges of scaling a law firm and the importance of delegating tasks that drain your energy. He emphasizes focusing on high-value work and aligning roles with team members' strengths to foster innovation and growth. Tune in for practical advice on business development coaching, building strong referral relationships, and the continuous nature of marketing efforts. This episode provides a comprehensive guide for any attorney looking to grow their practice while ensuring client satisfaction and staff security.
Video version on YouTube
Book your free Discovery Call with my team.
Hi everybody, I'm James Campbell, chief Growth Officer for Integrity Marketing Solutions. Welcome to the Marketing Lawcast. Today I'm with client and guest Philip Roos. Philip is an estate attorney in Minneapolis, minnesota, and today we're going to be talking about some of the ways he's built his practice and developed some unique methods for client development and client relationships that I think a lot of firms struggle with or attempt to find, and Phil has sort of found the solution to some of those things. So, phil, welcome to the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, james, good to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. So, phil, as we get started here, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your firm, and what kind of drives you and what kind of got you into estate planning?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're a small firm. I started this place solo in 2014,. Thanks to an incredibly supportive spouse, we got married and I basically quit my job and became a solo attorney and I still have a little imposter syndrome with the whole thing, but I would say, with a drive to build a network and with I think I was often very even as a solo very high levels of client service. I've always been, I think, very approachable to clients. We don't have a lot of legalese, we're very plain, spoken with folks and very relatable, and through that I got very busy and was no longer a solo in 2020. Brought on my first associate, who's now a partner, rory and we've grown to. You know we're still a very small firm. We're five lawyers and five staff. I have gotten away from most of the client work myself and have been very privileged to be able to work on the firm, but watching it grow and watch it become what it is has been a blast.
Speaker 2:I'm in estate planning specifically because I have a wealth management background and I worked with estate planning lawyers. I thought it'd be cool to be one, so I went back to law school when I was 28 years old and I love it. I do love it. It's fascinating, it's endlessly fascinating. I've had the privilege of teaching a tremendous amount of continuing education for lawyers. I teach the Wills and Trusts class at one of the local law schools. I've done that for two years. I'll do it for a third year this upcoming spring law schools. I've done that for two years, I'll do it for a third year this upcoming spring. And I also teach the estate planning modules for the CFP, for financial advisors. So I get a lot of hands-on stuff with that.
Speaker 2:And then as the director of estate planning here, of course much of what we do is a lot of kind of basic planning, but we have some of that more advanced stuff that comes along.
Speaker 2:We're not the type of firm that sees a lot of $20 million estates, but we do run into a couple of them a year and getting into some of that more advanced stuff is it's interesting. It's interesting and it's practical for you, you know for the person, for me, like I need this stuff too. So you know, when you, when you look through through some of the things that we're doing, it's it has, you know, some real concrete effect on on your own life too. So endlessly interesting, wonderful team, the best team that we've ever had is here now. I'm just so thrilled and so privileged to work with them and growing it over over 10 years from zero to we're about. We're about a two $2.5 million a year firm now, which is again not a big firm but certainly bigger than where it was, and seeing that success for the team has just been so fulfilling. I've loved it, love every minute of it.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, you know, I think. And I hear you say, oh, we're a small firm, and then you say $2.5 million. I think a lot of our listeners would go, oh my gosh, that's a huge firm, right? Right, it's all. I think. It's all relative, so it wasn't always two and a half million.
Speaker 2:No, the first year my goal was to break even. I think I had about 15,000 in expenses my first year as a solo and I think I billed just under $15,000. I lucked out and found 10 clients or whatever it was that year, I don't remember. And the next year I can rail off the number. I can run off the numbers in my head pretty easily, I just remember them so well. I think I billed $60,000. The next year and I had an income. I made about $30,000.
Speaker 2:And the next year, after that year three, I uh working as a trust officer at a bank and I think I made about $70,000, uh, at the time. And that third year, my, my salary or my what I paid myself, was $80,000. And I was like, oh my gosh, I did it, like I did it. I could do this, I could I have a job, I could do this and not have a boss, you know, or not have a manager, and I was incredibly busy. It wasn't like it was relaxing, but I, I, I think I heard someone say that an entrepreneur will work 80 hours, so they don't have to work 40 hours, and it was a little bit like that for a while. It's not like that anymore, but it was. It was gratifying, you know, on year three, to actually have an income and be able to realize I could do this.
Speaker 1:Cool. So you sort of had that slow burn of just like you had to put the elbow grease and the sweat equity into the firm. And then at what point did you decide I'm going to invest into my firm. So it sounds like first three years you're like, hey, I'm, I'm making more money doing this than I was working at a job. So today I made it. Right now I'm on the other side of that. So was that sort of like the breakthrough moment where it's like you know, I don't really have a limit. I could, I could go way beyond this. What was sort of the, the motivating factor, cause a lot. I'll just be honest, phil. A lot of folks are in that three-year mark going. This is too hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. So the thing that the marketing thing that's free, the thing you really don't have to pay for, is creating that network of people who also work with your client. For me it's financial professionals, financial advisors I was one and then meeting people like that and you get this like you can't solicit clients, you can't cold call clients we all know that but you can cold call financial advisors and take them out to coffee, right. So when those relationships began to really be productive and I was able to help their clients too I mean, it was a kind of a mutual thing I did realize that really you can meet as many people as you want to meet and there's no end to that potentially. So, if you want to scale, that's probably the core of where business comes from. But then you get that money coming in and you're meeting your needs and you're meeting the needs of the firm. And then it's like, well, I could take this and just keep it right, or I could take this money that's coming in and see if there's other places where we can find clients. And it started out organically doing it on my own, some basic ads. I was doing my own Google ads and I got to pat myself on the back a little for being a total amateur. I think I figured out Google AdWords, remarketing and I figured out some of this stuff and I was very visible, which is good.
Speaker 2:Another thing that is largely free is reviews, and large firms have a marketing budget. When I say large firms, I'm thinking the downtown firms, so they have hundreds of lawyers. I'm also thinking of in our market. We have some what people would typically call a mid-size firm which has 50 lawyers. So I mean, from my perspective, that has 50 lawyers. So I mean, from my perspective, that's a large firm. But I mean from the firm perspective, a mid-size firm has maybe 50 lawyers and then if you're under 20 lawyers, that's what I stereotypically would call a small firm, much larger than us and much larger than a solo. But in my mind I consider us a small firm you touched on this because we're five lawyers and we're not at that 20, 25, 30 mark Anyway. So these larger firms have these budgets and, especially as a solo, a good rule of thumb I've done quite a bit of coaching. I've paid so much money for coaching.
Speaker 2:Here's a couple of freebies. One of the just kind of a rule of thumb is your marketing budget is roughly 10% of your revenue. So if you have $200,000 in revenue this year, if you're not spending $20,000, you might not be spending enough, assuming you want to grow your firm. If you're spending more than that, then you're probably losing some of your ROI. Your ROI isn't there. You should have a 10x. So if you're spending 20 grand, that's perfect for someone who wants to bill $200,000 this year. If you want your firm to bill a million dollars this year, a very easy rule of thumb is your marketing budget is 100 grand and if you're spending more than that, again you're probably spending too much or you're not getting the results you're supposed to be getting. If you're not spending that, arguably you're not spending enough on growing your firm. Anyway, some things, though. When you're a solo especially, you just don't have that. When I build $80,000 that year, $60,000 that second year, even a $6,000 marketing budget was kind of high. I mean, I didn't have a lot of leeway there. So how can you become competitive against firms that have these large budgets At the time?
Speaker 2:Avvo A-V-V-O. If you're not familiar with Avvo, avvo is an online profile that you have, whether you like it or not, if you're a lawyer. They take the public information. They take the fact that you have a law license and you have a profile on Avvo already so people can look you up. And if you don't have any information, it just says there's a little blank box where your face would go and it says that your rating they give you a rating of good and for them a rating of good, I think is three out of five. So you probably have three out of five stars on Apple right now. The trick they play on you is if you want to claim this profile, you have to enter in all of your information. You want your office number and your email so people can get a hold of you. And of course, you put your photo on there and then they have your information. So they start calling you to sell ads and you got to be able to be okay with that. You got to be okay with that.
Speaker 2:But at the time Avvo was showing up very high in SEO, for if you type in estate planning attorney Minnesota, avvo was like the second or third result and I don't see them anymore. They're not showing up for me like they used to, but because of that I knew the way I could stand out on Avvo was to become highly reviewed. So I made an automation that you can do using I think it was Zapier with my Gmail, our email client, our domain is through Google, so we use Gmail and I was able to make it so that. Oh, and the really inexpensive client management system I was using at the time was called Pipedrive. It was very inexpensive, it was like 15 bucks a month or something. So when I would move a client from the stage you know we're drafting documents, I would drag them in Pipedrive over to closed, like we're done. We finished the file. It would create for me a draft email automatically saying hey, sure hope you love the service.
Speaker 2:If I provided five-star service, consider leaving us a review on on Avvo. And that just became something I did every time and two emails send one right away and then send another one in like a week, just a reminder and you can do this. This is free, this doesn't cost any money. You can create it as an automation and you have the little hyperlink in there. So they click and it goes right to the thing where they have to fill it out. And that worked super well and I became, over about two years, the highest rated attorney on Avvo in Minnesota for estate planning. It was like 75 reviews, it wasn't like a thousand reviews. But no one else really does this stuff. So when you have a modest amount of reviews, oftentimes as a lawyer it shoots you up there Because no one asks, no one thinks to ask. So if you look in your area you see all these lawyers who have 20 or 30 reviews. So if you have 70 or 80 in any one of these aggregators it's a big deal. You really show up. So I was getting a lot of clients off of Avvo for free, basically because I was just really highly reviewed and I just always asked for these reviews.
Speaker 2:Avvo kind of started to disappear. Fortunately, at that time I was focusing more and more on the Google business page. I've heard it called the Google free pack, where you search for estate planning attorney and then your market, minneapolis or whatever it might be and showing up in the top three. There there's a little map of your area and then there used to be the six pack. There used to be six and they have it as three now. And showing up in there is important and one of the best ways you can do that is to have a lot of reviews on Google. So exact same method, but it goes to the Google review page and we did it manually for a long time with these little automations and then you've got to manually send the email and we've had so many reviews.
Speaker 2:If you look at us, we have two offices now. We have one in Minneapolis and we have one in Woodbury, which in our area is to the east. So one of ours is kind of to the west side of Minneapolis and then we have an ancillary office in Woodbury, to the east 95 star reviews. When we opened Woodbury we need to get that showing up, so we switched our hyperlink over to that. So if you're leaving a review for us, you're probably leaving one for the Woodbury office and that's up to like 50 in less than a year. And it's just that consistency.
Speaker 2:We now pay for a program that does this for us. So you enter in the email and it sends a text, then it sends a email and then a follow-up email. So it does it for us. Now it also filters out potentially bad reviews. It's unusual that we get a bad review, but if someone rates us as a three, it gives them a feedback form and then, if they really want to rate us on three. On Google, it gives them a link to do that too, but it provides a feedback option. But through this we've continued to build those.
Speaker 2:And if you look at a restaurant, you'll find 5,000 reviews and if you look at law firms, it's usually again 20 or 30 reviews. So having 500, this is largely free. This doesn't cost anything to ask for these things. I have a virtual assistant who will annually pull all these state planning firms they can find online and at least, as of the last time we checked, 500 plus the 50, 550, some reviews 540 reviews is the top, not just in Minnesota but in the Midwest. If you look at the states that are considered the Midwest Illinois, missouri, kansas, iowa, of course, the Dakotas, wisconsin, michigan, et cetera for estate planning anyway, we're the highest reviewed and that is a really good thing to be able to talk about. Right, I mean, you have to. The ethics rules say, if you want to say you're the highest reviewed, you have to say highest reviewed on Google verified, you know, on this date. But that's a big deal and that's free. That's free. It just takes time and consistency, but it didn't cost anything and that was a big way for us to grow and to stand out when people who don't give a fruit to our network.
Speaker 2:Of course, you have these financial advisors, and whoever might be, that's always the thing we're hoping for. Those are the best clients that are prepared. Our financial advisor partners are fantastic. Those are still the ones that we really want. But as far as people who don't have a financial advisor, when they're Googling a state planning attorney, we show up really high, and we were showing up really high even before working with IMS.
Speaker 2:I'll give a plug for IMS here. We worked with a, so we pay money for marketing now, right, two and a half million. If you do the rule of thumb, that's a quarter million dollar marketing budget. So we have some money to use now and we have some leeway to invest in some of this stuff. And we were using this firm before IMS and they did fine. They did fine Uh, not particularly responsive. It was a little frustrating if we needed a change on the website and we largely broke our contract with them in favor of IMS.
Speaker 2:And you remember, james, when we moved to you and I got to say first off, ims is and we can touch on this more later in the podcast but I am the customer service at IMS, even if the results were exactly the same. Service at IMS, even if the results were exactly the same the responsiveness and the ease of working with you guys and how proactive you are and the monthly meetings where we touch base and learn, kind of, where the leads are coming from and where the calls are coming from, and then the promptness with which you make the changes that we talk about in the meeting is and it's just so easy to get ahold of you and like that by itself has been such a load off my shoulders to be able to have someone who's easy to work with. But on top of that part of this is our work. But I can't minimize the fact that we switched to IMS in like December and we've had a noticeable increase in traffic. We were already doing pretty well, but you guys have taken pretty well and really pushed us up there.
Speaker 2:Our SEO results are higher than they've been and we were doing okay, but you guys really brought it to that next level. It's been fantastic. It's been fantastic working with you guys. I've been so excited I'm actually excited about the vendor calls talking to Amber with my monthly call. That type of check-in used to be a frustrating experience for me, with the last one, because we just weren't seeing what we needed to see, and now talking to her once a month is a highlight of my week. I really like the calls with you guys. You're doing a great job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome man. Appreciate that. Amber's really good. I think that's one of the things is we want to work with those firms that are motivated and driven right. They see that there's an outcome, that we can always do better. And Amber sort of sees things that way too, Because I know that when you go through your meetings like, hey, here's the great stuff we did. How can we do better? Right, Like, what can we do next to keep improving? So it's never-.
Speaker 2:And you have to right, and the algorithms in Google change, so you have to be doing the new thing. You have to keep up with it. Avvo used to be the thing and now it doesn't show up, so you have to be doing something else. There's no panacea for clients. I'll talk to someone during a CLE about law firm management and they're like where's the best place to get clients? And like all of it. You have to do all of it all the time and it never stops. It's frustrating, but if you like this stuff, it also could be kind of fun. There isn't one best place to find clients. You have to do the whole thing, but online marketing has been a strong source for us. Again, with your guys' help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, especially when you start developing those referral relationships, that's a great way to get your if you're new to this or you're trying to get your practice rolling the networking, the referral relationships where you can start cultivating real relationships with like-minded people that are going to send you great clients. Well, once you, that's a great way to start. But once you have the authority online now you can sort of solidify that referral. That referral is going to have the confidence that the referral was good right. So that's really important confidence that the referral was good Right.
Speaker 2:So that's really important and I think that's a good. I think that's spot on. I think so if if one of those professionals. So there's two, two things here. I was wondering why it is that our organic clicks were so high, or organic search results were so high, or or where the you know people are finding us. This organic search and Amber mentioned they probably are seeing the ads. They're seeing the ads, but then they're seeing that name and then searching for the name of the firm to learn more and then they're clicking on that and that's where they get into the website and the content on your website. But it's also, as you to your point, through referrals. So the financial advisor will give out a few names, or if they just love us, they'll give out our name, but then they're searching for it, right, and then once they search for it, they want to see everything about us and then they see the reviews and then they see the content and then they see the YouTube videos and then they see all the stuff. Yes, it all plays into each other. If you're just starting out, if, yes, it all plays into each other, if you're just starting out, if you're a year, two or three, those referral relationships Before I had clients.
Speaker 2:That first year I didn't have any clients. I had built 15,000 bucks I am not joking. I probably did three coffees slash a happy hour a day for years. It's all I did was and I had $30,000 in the bank to pay for my life. For the next two years I had an inexpensive life. We didn't have kids yet, right, it was just our little house in Northeast Minneapolis, but I had it down. I was like, okay, I got about $10,000 spent on the firm, so let's see if it's $5 a coffee, but they might get a latte, so maybe it's more like $15 for a coffee meeting. I just had this budgeted on how many coffees I'd left for the year and I did it. I just I was on first dates all the time that first year, but it was helpful and if you're, if you're spinning your wheels, the inexpensive marketing for yourself is those relationships first and then, to the extent you can you know there's some kind of free, freeish online things you can do as well to start to get your name out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And once you get some traction, then you have to commit to your own success and start, like you did, investing that hey, I got there. I got $10,000. How many coffees can that buy me? That's just investing. And so the stakes just get higher and the numbers get bigger as you move along, but the mindset of investing into your firm is still there.
Speaker 2:We're all trying to build something of value for ourselves too. We do really good work for our clients, I think, legitimately we do just really good stuff here. But even with that, you're still trying to build something for yourself, and some of the value for your firm comes from that goodwill that's out there. So when you're investing in some of this, the value of your firm goes up too right you become you have a more valuable asset in that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think let's talk a little bit about that, because valuing your clients that's one of the things I wanted to highlight, because something that you do is a little bit different than what other firms have done or maybe they've attempted to do or thought about, is that you do have a membership programs within your firm for your clients, and I think that's tiered, as you've told me before. So could you explain a little bit about how you've done the membership side of things and how that benefits clients first?
Speaker 2:You bet. So this came out of a need to assist clients in an ongoing manner. It's that kind of awkward thing where the plan is done and during that first year we always want to make sure we're picking up the phone and answering any questions. They have beneficiary designations that they need to get updated or assets need to be retitled, as it goes on and on. As a solo, I didn't have any issue talking with one of my previous clients, just to have a quick call and answer questions.
Speaker 2:The issue is when you're doing four to 700 new plans a year, those random calls start to really add up and it starts to become something you still want to do it. You line my labor clients. I want to help them. I like these families are great, but it becomes such a draw on time that we have to start to figure out something else. So you just start billing hourly. You know how do you set the expectation for them that they can't just call all the time. Now I do want to hear from them and I love them, but we have to watch out for our own capacity as well. So how can we provide value for them in an ongoing manner?
Speaker 2:And where we came down on this is what are the things that they want? They want to be able to know that they can call you whenever they they have a question. Um, they regularly, during that initial meeting, have a question about what is an amendment cost, how? How regularly should I get amendments? And you know when they're when it's three to seven hundred bucks, depending on what they want to amend. You know that that makes them a little nervous to call you and I don't want them to feel nervous to call us. I want them to be able to call us. So how can we work that into some sort of ongoing service plan? And we came down with our plan protection program or our memberships and, as you said, it's tiered and I actually have some public facing material. If I can share the screen for the YouTube, I can show this.
Speaker 1:Should I bring?
Speaker 2:this out. Uh, for those that are watching on video, for sure, let's bring that up. Okay, this won't translate very well for our podcast world, of course, but uh, let's see if you can see this. So the value to clients is that they have the ability to continue to speak with their attorney whenever they want to. So it depends a little bit on the plan they're doing.
Speaker 2:We have found that will plans are very important for younger families, those that aren't looking to invest too much money in their estate plan, and then, of course, they have to be okay with it going to court. Of course, we know that wills go through the court system, so those are things that need to be updated a lot more. We really want people to be doing revocable trust plans. That's typically. Our advice is to try to keep it out of court. So if you have a willed plan, it's just we were doing this anyway and we continue to offer the ability. You can see our little tiered pricing thing here. Continue to contact our staff anyway with questions. You know, if you need copies of documents or something, call us. You know, no charge to talk to the staff, but if you want to talk to an attorney, we're going to be moving towards an hourly billing scenario for that. So we would encourage people to do something a little bit more. If they do a revocable trust plan and they don't want to pay for a membership, that's okay. Obviously, this is probate avoidance planning and we proactively our staff, proactively in our CRM creates an annual touch for the next five years where they are going to reach out proactively and talk to this person and see if there are any questions, see if they've had any issues. If there are, they'll pass it on to the attorney and then they'll determine if we need to do and not get an hourly call of some sort to fix something or address some questions or whatever it may be. I would note, for attorneys, having these annual calls not only solidifies that client relationship and it not only provides excellent service for them, but you're top of mind for them and our clients are happy and because they're happy, they talk about us, but they only do that if they remember us. So you know, trying to make sure we're staying in touch with them.
Speaker 2:That's another free marketing thing I would say is, if you have the capacity to make sure you're keeping your clients close to you, whether it's a Christmas card, we send out an annual I call it the dentist office card. You know where you get that reminder to clean your teeth Around tax time. We send out a postcard to everybody and just say, hey, any new kids or grandkids, any new real estate, anything like that, and just to be top of mind and to prompt them to call if they have any questions about that stuff. So then we get into the paid options here and if you want to be able to call your lawyer really anytime and run through your plan, or you have questions, or I just got this account and I don't know what to do with it, or hey, this happened. Do I need an amendment? All those things you might want to talk to your attorney about, you can do that. It's $290 a year and as long as you're a member of that, you get whatever calls you need with your lawyer. Oftentimes those calls result in the need for an amendment or a change. New child or relationship has changed, or you've had a falling out with one of your personal representatives or trustees. So you know, you've seen these same things.
Speaker 2:When you sign up for something online, it has, you know, all the benefits of each type of plan and for this one as long as you're a member. It's an amendment a year. We'll also do a real estate deed for the year of the labor. Anyway, You've got to pay the filing fees, but we'll take care of it if you move or something that's just included. That's the one we see most people sign up for.
Speaker 2:They like the security of knowing they can talk to the lawyer at any time and that amendments are largely covered. At least an annual amendment is just covered, and so we see that we do have one. We have a vendor who will completely fund your trust for you. They'll collect all your account information. They'll fill out all the forms. They'll change all their beneficiary designations. They'll do the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Also, if someone signs up for the unlimited $590 a year if someone were to die, we will include most of the basic work for a trust administration to see the family through that challenging time and to make sure we're continuing to add value there even after someone passes away. So the benefit for the client is the security of knowing that we are there for them and not nickel and diming them on the time. They can call us, they can ask questions, they can talk to an actual lawyer, not just the staff, their lawyer, assuming the lawyer is here. We have had pretty good retention, fortunately, and knowing that if they have a change they can just make the change, we don't have to deal with these representation agreements or anything. I would say for lawyers, the benefit of this, for a law firm, the benefit of this is it's very difficult for a transactional law firm to have recurring income and this doesn't provide a ton of recurring income but it does provide some recurring income.
Speaker 2:So they sign up and then you have that ongoing small you know payment that's made every year, and I'm trying to stop sharing my screen here. So how do you turn a transactional law firm where you just constantly need new clients? If you finish up with a client, it's not like we're a target corporation as our client and we just build it every month right, it's do the planning, potentially never see the person again. How can we tie them closer to us? How can we maintain that client relationship and stay top of mind? How can we provide that value to them so they know and they have their peace of mind and they know that they can come to us anytime, while also trying to maintain some level of recurring revenue? Even though it's not a ton, it is something, so it's really everyone kind of wins with these.
Speaker 2:Our goal this year was to we just launched this this year was to have 10% of clients on this and we've definitely exceeded that. I'd say we're closer to 20. And it's great. It's great, it's been a successful launch and I'm very happy that we've done this and the clients seem happy as well. Yeah, I think it's brilliant. It's been a successful launch and I'm very happy that we've done this and the clients seem happy as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's brilliant and I think it's really helpful for clients to have that option right, because the more serious the client takes it, their planning and their future and their kids and all that stuff they want to have that option of security. It's the same thing for signing up for their estate plan in the first place, right.
Speaker 2:And when you're top of mind like this and when you're touching the client regularly like this, they are more likely to your point to make sure they keep this updated. If they buy a new house, they know that they have to do something. They know they have to do a real estate deed. So many times I know that your listeners have had this experience. Someone has, for example, a house in the revocable trust. We get it all tied up, we're all set to go, and then four years later they move and they don't put that house into the trust right. So now we have a probate and when we have something like this, you're just in front of them more and this.
Speaker 1:You're just in front of them more and they're just more likely to seal those loose ends up. Yeah, brilliant. I think a lot of attorneys, a lot of law firms, have considered the idea of a membership program. They've thought about it, but they haven't pulled the trigger, they haven't said the words to their client, they haven't put the plan in place. Why do you think that is? Is it just trepidation of trying to oversell? What do you think that is?
Speaker 2:We tried a number of things.
Speaker 2:We tried to do for $500, you'll get five amendments over the next five years. We tried that. That wasn't particularly popular. We tried it. It didn't work. We tried that that wasn't particularly popular. We tried it. It didn't work. We tried to do a funding program where it was $1,500 and we'll fund the whole thing for you. It was just a flat fee and that didn't take off either.
Speaker 2:Everybody wants to fund their own trust. Typically, I think there's first off. It takes work. You got to put this together and you got some big decisions to make. Meanwhile you're running a whole firm and that is. You're busy. It's experimental, so you have to try it, which means you got to put the whole thing together and be prepared for it not to work. And that's frustrating and scary.
Speaker 2:Little things like how do you make a recurring payment? How do you do that? How do you create an automated recurring payment for people? How do you create automations to help them sign up for this? You know that we absolutely love HubSpot. I know you guys are a lawmatics company. Typically we are absolutely all in on HubSpot. It has been a game changer for us with tracking where things are coming from, tracking average revenue. It calculates the percentage likelihood of each client seeing it through based on how they've been interacting with our website and everything of that nature. And they also have payments so you can send, you can program this in. You can say there's a $99, excuse me setup fee and then it's 290 bucks a year and if they pay through that, they do it. It automates it All. This automation has provided so much functionality for us and when we try something like this, it takes some of that load right Because you can create it once and then it kind of runs.
Speaker 2:I would say the amount of work and the worry that you're doing it all for nothing is part of what makes law firms not innovate, because you have to be willing to experiment. I've been very fortunate and I think one of the reasons we've tried these things is when I moved away from the bulk of my client representation. I have time to mess around with some of the stuff and try some new things, and we've had some things that haven't worked, like I said, but this one fortunately has. So we have some new projects we're working on now. I won't touch on them today, but I'm very excited about what's coming in the future. Some new initiatives that we're working on Well, I'm sure we visit this probably at another podcast. Initiatives that we're working on Well, I'm sure we visit this probably at another podcast. But being able to do some experiments and try a little bit of innovation here and there, to the extent you can, in a stodgy old field like estate planning, is exciting and keeps your day interesting, for sure.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So I want to kind of end with this, because you have set yourself up to where you're not tied to meeting with clients day in and day out, where you have to draft documents and do all of that. Was that a vision of yours, that you wanted to grow to that state, or does that just kind of become a natural thing where you're like, hey, for this firm to grow, I've got to step out of this and into this role? Or was that something that you had had a vision, cast a vision for earlier in the career?
Speaker 2:I sent out a letter to all the financial advisors who I know, letting them know, and the phrase I used was that I am the bottleneck towards growth. I need to have time to do this other stuff If we're going to continue to grow and take care of our clients more and more clients, but also our staff because they need that growth and they need that security too. So for me to put the time that was needed, I had to step away from client work to be able to do this. So that's the reason I was the bottleneck to growth and even in this role, I think I'm a competent CEO for a $2 to $3 million law firm. If we become a $5 million law firm, I'll probably have to bring somebody in for this, because that's starting to get outside my wheelhouse.
Speaker 2:One interesting thing about if you're considering growing your firm, and if you're considering growing your firm such that you're no longer working with clients or whatever it might be, look at the things in your job, in your role right now, and you have some things where you sit down at the computer and your whole day disappears because you just were so in the zone you sit down. You just completely lost track of time because what you're doing is so interesting and fun. And then you've got these other jobs on the to-do list and you look at them and they sit there and you know you got to do them and you're just like, oh, I got it, I had an. Eventually you have to do it. And you spend a morning just grudgingly getting through this. As you grow your firm, those things start to be done by other people. Grow your firm, those things start to be done by other people and it might very well be in their wheelhouse.
Speaker 2:Some of the stuff that for me just is grinding there's someone else where that's their day. They're looking for those type of jobs and I remember kind of looking at the retirement clock and like, all right, I got my 20 years here and slowly my job has become one where I'm really only doing the stuff I like. And when you have a day that's full of this creativity creating the membership program or creating the marketing material, or creating the automations or all this stuff that I love to do your day is really fly by and I don't know that I need to retire. I like what I do and it's productive. You know, I could do this for a very long time because I just really, I really, I really like it.
Speaker 2:So if there's anything about your position as a solo or whatever it is and you want to grow out of that growth is the way that happens is so someone else will eventually take over those duties.
Speaker 2:Someone else will do the accounting and the bookkeeping, someone else will do the marketing, the SEO work, right, ims, and yeah, that's why I will say that, as much as my clients are watching this, I love, I want to emphasize, I enjoyed my client work so much. I'm a little bit of an introverted guy. You might not be able to tell from this podcast, but I am an introverted person and being on with clients is easy when they're in the room because, again, I really like working with them. But at the end of the day I'm just like I got to take a nap because I've been presenting basically all day and getting some of that energy back for all these other things has been positive as well. I do want to emphasize I do love working with my clients, but having the ability to step away from that and use that energy somewhere else has been very important for me.
Speaker 1:Thanks a lot. That's great. I think that a lot of folks that are trying to do where you are in your genius and maybe where you're not in your genius, find somebody who is, and now things tend to roll a lot smoother and open up more doors everybody wins when they're in the right seats doing the right work.
Speaker 2:You know it's good to offload this stuff to someone who you know finds energy with that. That's that's a helpful thing to develop your business and to grow it. Everybody kind of wins when that happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, Phil, just as our last little bit here, what advice would you give to attorneys who are trying to scale? They've maybe done the free thing, Maybe they've reached that $250,000 mark in their firm and they're saying how do I get to half a million or how do I get to my first million? What advice would you give them that you think they could take home to the bank and help start making that progress?
Speaker 2:I think one of the hardest things is letting go of some of the work, and that has to happen for you to have the time and the ability there's only so many hours in the day. There's only so many hours in a day. There's only so many copies you can do. You got the client work. While you have the client work, you also have the networking. Possibly you also have all your vendor calls. I know I was there. I did all of this.
Speaker 2:The hardest thing for me was that, first hire, I was paying for coaching. Oh, that's something that I would always recommend. Coaching is expensive but very worth it. There are things you're missing, there are efficiencies you're not seeing and they are costing you money, and if you can pay someone to help you through those, it is a very, very good investment. Coaching is something that I'm so happy I got involved with.
Speaker 2:That was probably three years in when I hired my first coach. I used a company called Southwestern Consulting and it was actually business development coaching, specifically finding clients, how to put myself out there. So, first off, coaching. But through that coaching I realized that here I am licking stamps and I'm printing out the client packets for the things we're going to go through during the meeting. I'm sorting these and I'm spending an hour or two of my day sorting this stuff and getting the mail out and my coach was like, okay, so take the amount of time that, take what you could have, the work you could have done for clients during that two hours. What is that worth and what's your rate? Is your rate 250, 300 bucks? What is your? What is your hourly rate? If you have one? And you could have paid a big salary for an assistant just with that, just with the ability to take on one extra client.
Speaker 2:So getting past that was very challenging. So that hire, and that's part of your investment in your firm, right? So I think largely willing to invest in your firm, willing to invest in your vendors and getting past that initial fear and realize that if you're doing all this stuff yourself, you are throwing money away. You're not. It feels like you're saving money by doing it yourself. You're not. You're doing $15 an hour work when you should be doing $300 an hour work, right, or whatever your rate would be. Getting past that hill was hard for me and it's probably hard for a lot of people. Once I did easy peasy to do it a second time right, or whatever your reading could be. Getting past that hill was hard for me and it's probably hard for a lot of people, but once I did, easy peasy to do it a second time right.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah, great habits build on top of each other. Phil, thank you so much for your time today and for sharing with us some of these insights. I think for folks to understand that you don't just start off with a two and a half million dollar firm. You start off where you break even first, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Not even sure if I was going to do that that first year. But you look back at it fondly but also like I'm glad that's done.
Speaker 1:Glad that's over with Right. So if you're in the middle of that season, keep persevering, keep pushing through, keep following those steps. Invest in yourself. Don't do the $15 an hour work. Do the $300 an hour work, as you would put it. Don't be scared about putting your membership program together If you see an opportunity within your firm and within your clients that there's a need there, like Phil has recognized, don't be scared to put that together.
Speaker 1:Reach out to, like Phil has recognized. Don't be scared to put that together. Reach out to IMS. We can even help you with understanding those things. Don't bother Phil. He's got enough on his plate right. But think about ways you can continue to maximize yourself and your resources and take away from Phil those free things you can do. Build those reviews. Have that be a staple in your practice. Phil's got 500 reviews, the most reviews in the Midwest. One of the reasons that we wanted to interview him for the podcast is what authority that builds and it all feeds itself. Don't neglect your relationships and don't do the cheap work. Phil, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. It's been great. Thanks, james Phil. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1:Appreciate it, my pleasure. It's been great Thanks, james. No-transcript.