Law firm stuck in "meh" mode? You CAN be the go-to powerhouse!
Join marketing guru Andy Stickel and DITCH the daily grind. We'll show you how to:
This episode is for YOU if you're a:
Stop settling for "just another law firm"! This episode is your roadmap to becoming the legal powerhouse everyone wants to hire!
Bonus! We'll also cover:
Andy's Law Firm Growth Acceleration Bootcamp (June 4-6, 2024 - 100% virtual!) is your secret weapon. Learn how to overcome challenges, build a dream team, and achieve your 3-year vision. Check it out: https://smbteam.com/
Ready to build a THRIVING law firm legacy? Tune in and let Andy Stickel be your guide!
____________________________________
Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
Want to connect with Brian?
Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
Connect on LinkedIn
Law firm stuck in "meh" mode? You CAN be the go-to powerhouse!
Join marketing guru Andy Stickel and DITCH the daily grind. We'll show you how to:
This episode is for YOU if you're a:
Stop settling for "just another law firm"! This episode is your roadmap to becoming the legal powerhouse everyone wants to hire!
Bonus! We'll also cover:
Andy's Law Firm Growth Acceleration Bootcamp (June 4-6, 2024 - 100% virtual!) is your secret weapon. Learn how to overcome challenges, build a dream team, and achieve your 3-year vision. Check it out: https://smbteam.com/
Ready to build a THRIVING law firm legacy? Tune in and let Andy Stickel be your guide!
____________________________________
Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
Want to connect with Brian?
Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
Connect on LinkedIn
What I talk about is how to have a better law firm, and what we realized is that there's really only four categories of problems. The first one is lead generation inconsistency. Then the second thing is you have to have a flawless intake system, because all the leads in the world are useless if you can't turn them into clients, right? So once you have leads and then you have a flawless intake system, the third step is a self-managing team of rockstar employees, right, and that's a team that runs your law firm the way that you want it run, handles your cases the way that you want them handled. So, once you've got your leads, you've got your intake and then you've got your team running everything for you. The fourth part is free from the legal chain.
Speaker 2:Brian and a team of pros talking about the hustle and the real life pros. Hey guys, welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs. Today I am with Andy Stickle, the Chief Marketing Officer at SMB Team. Andy, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm fantastic.
Speaker 2:How are you doing? I'm awesome man and so people, if they don't know your name, probably know you as the guy who pops up in their social media feeds and says, hey, lawyers. I consider you to be like the master of the marketing. Call out and so talk to us a little bit about how you got started working with lawyers, why you chose that niche and what you're doing today.
Speaker 1:So what's funny is that I actually got started working with lawyers by accident. I was actually going to go to law school and I worked at the US Attorney's Office and I worked at a private firm and I realized that I just did not want to be a lawyer. So luckily I did that before going to law school. But I got into marketing and I was doing basically just. I had a marketing agency but we did just marketing for everybody. So we did marketing for what was the gym, la Fitness and Sports Clips, haircuts. We had some pretty big companies that we did marketing for. But I was traveling a lot, I didn't like it and I was hearing about this stuff called social media marketing that was actually working really well for some of the restaurants that we were working with. So I was like I'm just going to start a social media marketing agency. That'll be a lot easier.
Speaker 1:And I did this as my daughter was two months old first child, two months old. So I figured what better time to leave my stable business and get rid of that and then start a new company? So I started working and a family friend who my mom was talking to she went on to become my business partner. But she used to be national sales director at Law Info and Law Info, if anyone doesn't know, is now owned by Fine Law and she was their national sales director and she wanted to leave that company because she was worried that she had a suspicion that what she was selling to lawyers was actually like garbage. And then I started talking to her. We started looking. So my mom was like Andy just started a new business, you want somebody, you're looking for something to sell. You two should link up. So she set up a call.
Speaker 1:We started talking because I didn't want to be the face of the company, I just wanted to be the guy behind the scenes that just did the marketing. And I started talking to her and she was telling me like what they charge to lawyers and what they do for them. And I was like, wow, this is really bad. I can't believe you guys actually charged for this. And she had this moral epiphany at that point where she's like, yeah, I got to get out of here and she. So we had a conversation but we didn't actually formalize anything.
Speaker 1:And then the next day she called me and she's like, yeah, I just made a $10,000 sale to a lawyer and I know he's not going to get anything for this $10,000.
Speaker 1:I got to get out of here. So basically, what happened was she gave, she ended up giving this guy a refund and left law info and our whole thesis was what, if we created a marketing company that actually did a good job for our clients and that's how I got into marketing is because she I'm sorry, that's how I got into legal, because she's I know a bunch of lawyers I could get us and we actually didn't intend to start with lawyers, but it was like I one lawyer turned into two lawyers, turned into four lawyers, turned into eight lawyers, turned into 16. As before, you know, we got 50 lawyers that we're doing marketing for. I guess we're a law firm marketing agency and that's really how I got into it. But I wasn't the face in front of the camera for many years. We started this company in 2012 and I didn't actually film my first video until 2018. So for six years, I was just the guy behind the scenes doing the actual work and she was the person going out and getting us clients.
Speaker 2:So that obviously is probably surprising to most people who have seen my ads and seen my video and all that type of stuff. What changed for you in 2018 or so Because you're very good at it and it strikes me you're probably not really good at it. Was it something that changed or what?
Speaker 1:No, okay. So the way we used to grow is so many other marketing agencies out there is. We would just basically spam people and be like, hey, there's something wrong with your website, we can probably fix that. And I was on the phone with somebody. It worked OK. And I was on the phone with somebody and they were saying like I know you're probably about as good as everybody else because you send the same emails that everybody else does, so what's your price? And that kind of resonated with me. I was like you know what, if I want to be different, I've got to do something different. I can't be doing the same thing that all these people are doing, because then there's nothing to differentiate me. So I started seeing this is when Gary Vaynerchuk was coming up and Russell Brunson and like a lot of these guys that were creating videos. So I was like why not, I'll try creating videos.
Speaker 1:And it's actually a funny story, because I bought a camera, so I do what a lot of people did. I a camera, so I do what a lot of people did. I had all these big plans, right, and I bought a camera, and I bought lights and I bought all this stuff right, and the camera sat on my desk and, like day one, I was like, okay, I'm going to film, I'm going to do this, and then after lunch, I'm going to film a video. And then lunch came and I was like, eh, I'm not having a good hair day, I'm not, I'll do it tomorrow. But the problem is, nobody ever does it tomorrow, right, manana never comes. So my camera sat on my desk for six months before I filmed a single video. And then one day I decided you know what this is stupid? I'm filming a video and it took me eight hours to film a three minute video.
Speaker 2:How long after that was it before you actually posted it anywhere?
Speaker 1:I don't even know. No, actually that video went up. It was a terrible video, but my philosophy is done, is better than perfect, and it's just about. And now, like you said, I seem to be natural. I'm really not. I'm actually. This is the after of probably 3000 videos that I filmed.
Speaker 1:At this point and it's funny because I always people say that to me, sometimes Like yeah, but you're so good on camera, I'm like no, no, no, don't compare your before to my after, because if you would have saw my before, I was the guy on my 600 pound life where it's, holy crap, this is bad. But it was just sheer determination that I just kept going, and it's very difficult to do something over and over and over and over and over again and then not get better at it. I still don't think I'm that great. I think I've just done it so many times that I'm getting. I'm just comfortable, and I'm comfortable making mistakes and because I say, and I'm just I stumble over my words all the time, but at some point it's I'm doing a better job than the person that isn't actually filming anything, so that's the only thing that matters. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Pause on that for a minute, because I think that is that problem that you identified, which is, I want to do the thing, but then you buy the camera and it sits there for six months.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you shoot the video over and over for eight hours, like you've described, why most lawyers don't do any YouTube videos or any social media marketing. And so if you were talking to a lawyer who wants to put out a video for the very first time, what would you tell them about? I don't know, maybe, how to start coming up with the ideas or how to approach the first shoot, because the other thing that lawyers can do is build out these beautiful processes and systems, and all of that is like mental masturbation, so that you never actually have to start executing. So how do you ship the first one?
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'll tell you exactly what I tell my clients. So the first part of it is mental right, and I always say that like, if you want to, so if you want to do what, or if you want to, if you want to do what the one, if you want to have what the 1% have, right, then you can't do what the 99% do, you've got to do what the 1% do, and then you can't do what the 99% do, you've got to do what the 1% do, and then you can have what the 1% have. So there's a statistic that I heard recently where it's like when somebody, when, any times, a group of people, say they're gonna do something whether it's film videos or do TikTok videos or write blog posts or whatever it is that they say they're gonna do, 99% of people that say they're going to do something never get to the third version of the thing. So somebody says I'm going to film a pod, I'm going to start a podcast right, yeah 99% of people will never make it to episode three, right?
Speaker 1:99% of people that say I'm going to start doing TikTok videos, 99% of them will never get to the third variation, to the third video. Then you have the 1% that make it to the third variation, to the third video. Then you have the 1% that make it to the third variation, to the third version of the thing. Right? 99% of those people will never make it to the 21st version, so they'll never. 99% will never make it to the 21st podcast episode. They'll never film 21 videos. They'll never write 21 blog posts, right? So what that means is that if you have a hundred lawyers in a market that say we're going to start doing TikTok videos, only one of them will get to episode 21,. Right. If they do a podcast, only one of them will get to episode 21,. Right. So I look at that and I look at my life in 21. So whenever I want to do something, I just think, okay, if I want to be in the top 1%, it's actually a number. I just need to get to number 21. And now I'm already. Just by getting to number 21, I'm in the top 1%. So then let's do another 21. Now I'm in like the top 1% of the top 1%, right, and then you just keep going. So I feel like with that it's actually more attainable, because now you actually have a number that you're chasing and it's actually okay. Now this is like a tangible thing. The second thing is done is better than perfect, right? So the easiest and the best way to film videos is this guy right here, this iPhone, the camera that we all have in our pockets, even if you have an Android, is so much better than what you even need, because the reality is that I've got, like, right now, I've got a light up there and I've got a DSLR camera and I've got this microphone and everything, but I have this permanently set up. If I didn't have this permanently set up, I wouldn't get videos done, because I need to be able to just click two buttons and have this thing ready to go. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. Otherwise, I'll just use this, because once you start adding in all the, you add in a fancy camera. Now we need to have fancy audio, and then we need to have better lighting, and then we need to have editing, and then God forbid there's a green screen, like. It's like all of these things when the reality is that the minimum viable product is.
Speaker 1:You just need to prove that you can help people by actually helping them, and the way to do that is you pull out your phone and you talk to the camera and you help them solve a problem Right now. I think the next question you ask is how do you figure out what to actually talk about? And that's actually really easy because you have to think. People hire lawyers for one reason it's because they have a problem Right, and everybody that comes into a law firm, they have lots and lots of problems. They've got really big problems and then they got small problems right.
Speaker 1:And my thesis of my entire career, really since I started doing this, marketing and creating videos and helping people is that if you help people solve enough small problems, they will eventually hire you for the big problem right. So what I do, and what I tell my clients to do, is think about your ideal clients, think about your dream clients, right. What are the small problems that they're experiencing right now? What are all the small things that they have to deal with? So, for example, let's say you do DUI right. Well, the big problem is I got a DUI, right, but what are some of the smaller problems? How am I supposed to get to work? How am I supposed to pick my kids up? I've got a DMV hearing coming up in the next week and I don't know how to prepare for that. You know what I mean All of these little small problems. And then after the case, they're like okay, we got this thing done, but how do I handle car insurance now that I've been arrested for DUI and all of these other problems?
Speaker 1:And when you really think, creating content that actually helps people and provides them with small solutions, but it doesn't solve the big problem. But what that's doing is, that's proving you can help them by actually helping them. It's also making them know and trust you, because they're watching your videos and they get to know your voice and hear your mannerisms and all that type of stuff. And when it comes time to hire an attorney, at that point you're already the one that's helped them solve all these small problems.
Speaker 1:So why would they call anybody else? They're like I've never had anybody binge watch 25 of my videos and then call somebody else to do their marketing. They know me, they like me, they trust me. I'm at least going to get a stab at it. And I tell lawyers the same thing. It's like because lawyers are a commodity Nobody. When somebody goes to Google and they search personal injury lawyer, they search DUI lawyer or family law attorney or whatever it is. If they knew who the attorney was, they would search by name, right Like they would search for your actual name. They wouldn't search for your practice there, but then they. But they don't know who you're talking, who you are. So if you can actually do something to make yourself stand out from the pack, to differentiate yourself, then they're going to hire you, or at least they're going to contact you first and then give you a chance to talk to them and hopefully get them to sign up as a client.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's so many things in what you just said. A couple of things strike me for where to start, and one of which is not only are you solving all of the little problems, but you're also identifying a number of problems that they didn't even know that they had. So the DUI is perfect, right, you might not know that their license is going to get suspended if they're convicted of it, and so you're highlighting that and you're setting yourself up. Okay, I also have the solution to that problem.
Speaker 2:But the other thing that you said which stands out to me, andy, is is the idea that if somebody is searching for you as a commodity, it's really important that you do everything else absolutely correctly, especially with what I do as a personal injury lawyer. If I have somebody who's searching for me as a personal injury lawyer in Fairfax and that's the search term and we don't immediately get back to them or we don't answer the phone on the first and a half ring, your chances of signing that client are really low, because they've just gone on to the next person on Google low because they've just gone on to the next person on Google. But creating this. It's almost like an invisible funnel where somebody has watched 25 of your thing, even if they didn't know you to begin with. They will wait around for the opportunity to talk to you and you have a much larger margin of error when you get that opportunity than you do if somebody is just clicking for you because you're the number one ranking person on Google, right?
Speaker 1:Somebody is just clicking for you because you're the number one ranking person on Google, right? Yeah, it's. Somebody described it as basically order of fulfillment, when you actually do this, and it's funny because you never know how these videos are actually going to are going to help you. So, like, we have a client who creates and it's not just video, it can be video, it can be blog, it can be anything it's just helping people solve problems. Right, we have he's not a client anymore, but it's an attorney I still talk to all the time and he filmed a bunch of videos and he still films lots and lots of videos. Like, he films probably two or three videos a week and one of the videos that he filmed was this video that was about what happens if you are hit by a somebody who's driving for, like a gig economy. I think it was like DoorDash, uber, uber, eats, lyft, things like that.
Speaker 1:So this video, like many lawyers' videos, it got maybe 100 views. It didn't get a ton of views, right, like, we're not creating Mr Beast videos here, but what happened was somebody came into his office and he was the I think it was the third attorney that they had interviewed and they left without actually hiring him. So they met him, so they had already interviewed two other attorneys. They interviewed him and it was a wrongful death case involving a door dash driver. So after the after they left, he sent them an email and this is something I teach. It's called, by the way, marketing and basically what it is. It's where you follow up with somebody, but you don't use the word follow up, because you want to follow up so that when somebody leaves your office, just touch base with them again. But what I like doing is I don't like saying, hey, just following up for me, I like actually providing them additional value.
Speaker 1:So what he did is he took one of these videos that he had that was on this very specific topic that actually applied to them, and he said, hey, thanks for coming in Again, I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. Here's a video that I recorded that will probably give you some additional information and help you when you're making your decision of what you should do, moving forward. And it was a video that literally just talked about all the different options that you have if you're injured by somebody who is driving for DoorDash or one of the gig economy, and it was just a helpful video. And they called him back and they hired him after watching the video. And they hired him after watching the video.
Speaker 1:So you never know and it's a million dollar case, by the way so you never know when the right person is going to see that video. That's going to turn into a seven figure payday for you. So even though that video only got 100 views, I'm sure people would take 100 views in a seven figure case all day long, over seven figures worth of views and making $100 on a million views and only making a hundred dollars on, like, the ads, the ad revenue or whatever you know.
Speaker 2:And the important thing about what you said there is that he showed up differently than everybody else, right? Every other lawyer that person met with either wasn't doing any follow-up at all or was calling to follow up on the retainer, right? Hey, I'm just calling to check and see if you reviewed it, see if you're ready to sign. They weren't providing additional value. And so in our industry it's really not that hard to go above and beyond for people that are that are still shopping and we don't. It's shocking to me how quickly people make decisions, hiring decisions on cases, and the larger the case, the longer it takes usually. Yeah, but I've been hired on a 12 minute phone call for a six, six-figure case and I'm good, but I expect to have to sell a little bit harder than that for that size of a decision, but you never know what's going to move the needle for people. And so having these multiple touch points and being able really to extend the consultation by sending the video afterwards, I think that's brilliant.
Speaker 2:The other thing you said back there that struck me is the is the idea that, like video marketing, it's really not for everybody, and so if the idea of sitting down and shooting 21 videos before you even get moderately not bad at this, like if that terrifies. You. Then go write blogs or go produce content in some other medium. Not everybody has to get good at that. And if you don't actually enjoy doing the thing, you're never going to produce 21 and you're not going to produce a hundred of the thing. And so how do you think about, how do you think about lawyers overcoming that? Do you coach people around that hesitation or do you just say maybe there's a different medium we ought to be pursuing?
Speaker 1:I think that it just it's do what you're actually going to, what you're actually more likely to get done. For me personally I actually am a pretty good writer the problem is that I can write a blog post and it'll take me days to write a blog post where, if I get on camera, I can film a video now in 10 minutes and be done and it's a long form video. So for me it's just a matter of efficiency. But if you're the type of person that writes better than the new blog posts, if you're the type of person that is better at interviewing people, then do a podcast where you're interviewing people. There's so many different things that you can do. I think the key is just find, like, what you enjoy doing and what you can actually do and just do that and just can just commit to it because something is better than that. There's blogs out there that do very well because they're written and they're continually updated and things like that. And then there's also YouTube channels that do very well. You can look at guys like like Legal Eagle and stuff that, where they've got millions of views and they're reaching a wide audience and they're crushing it. So it really comes down to figuring out first of all, most importantly, not even what do you enjoy the most, what will you actually get done? Because if you love writing but you don't have the time to write or you're not actually going to be able to write, then it's probably not the best thing for you to do.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I didn't like video. I've gotten used to video. I like the convenience of video because I can film a video, I can talk for a couple minutes and then I just send it off to my video team and then they handle it. Now, when I started out, I didn't have a video team and some people don't have virtual assistants and stuff like that. But the funny part is that you can learn how to do all this stuff with a couple of YouTube videos how to hire virtual assistants. I've got probably 20 videos just on how to hire virtual assistants and how to use virtual assistants in your workflows and everything. So it's like anything can be learned on YouTube in probably about 20 hours. The problem is most people take forever to start that first hour of learning and then never actually get it done. But yeah, it's really like figuring out what are you actually more likely to be able to execute? I think that's the number one thing that you have to think about.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of efficiency, what is your order of priority in thinking about, like in a personal injury practice, the single event kind of practice, the next piece of content Is it YouTube? Is it TikTok? Is it Instagram? Is it TikTok? Is it Instagram? Is it? I don't know what else is out there. Vine is no longer out there. How do you rank the social media channels? And I know that you need to be creating at least somewhat different content for each of them, but, like, how do you go about thinking about that?
Speaker 1:I think it's find what you're comfortable with. I don't necessarily, so what's funny is that for me, it's a quality over quantity type of thing, and this is what a lot of lawyers are going to see also. Unless you can actually create the content that's really interesting to people Like lawyers, I think, have the potential to reach a lot more people than I do, because I'm really only talking to lawyers, right?
Speaker 1:So most of my videos only get a couple hundred views. But the truth is that those couple hundred views are my ideal audience. They're lawyers that are looking to grow their law firm. So I'd rather have 500 lawyers that are looking to grow their law firm and watch my video than getting a video that gets 3 million views.
Speaker 1:but it's not the right audience Because the 3 million makes me feel great, but at the end of the day it doesn't really do anything or doesn't accomplish my goals. So what I like doing is I like taking. I start with a long form video and then I have my video team actually break it up and take those long form videos and turn them into the shorts. So I do multipurpose. There's also a tool I think it's called Opus that you can yeah, I just discovered Opus Go ahead.
Speaker 1:So you can upload a long form video and then it uses AI to actually create short form videos for you. It adds the captions, it does all that stuff. Now, not every video is perfect, so you'll upload it and you'll get. It'll kick out like 20 videos and you probably have five or six that you can use but, that's a good way. You can do it if you don't want to use video editor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, opus is scary Good, so I was using videoai to do exactly that. Right, you feed it a long form video, it chops it up into seven shorts form videos with those dynamic captioning the bottom. And then somebody showed me Opus. And it not only does that, but it also grades the clip on like virality, the hook, newsworthiness, right, if you're talking about something that's actually going on in the news, and then it explains why some clips are better than others. So that's an incredible and it's $9 a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's pretty. It's crazy how cheap it is.
Speaker 2:It is. This is an unpopular opinion or not, but it is a bad time to be a low or no skill American between VAs and AI.
Speaker 1:AI. So AI, I think, is coming for people who are not good at their job, because I think that there's a lot. So, for example, we just as much as I want AI to be a copywriter. For me, it just isn't it just as good as it is. It's not. It doesn't have the creative I don't know what it doesn't have that that it factor. So it's good for very simple tasks. If I need to write email to somebody about this thing, it's great for it. But if I need to do some creative writing or I need to write a video script or something like that, like AI doesn't get it done. It does not do a good job for that stuff. So that's what I'm saying If you're a good copywriter, if you're good at this, ai is not going to replace you Now.
Speaker 1:In five years, we could probably have this conversation again and it'll probably be there. I've been saying for a long time lawyers are not going to, they're not going to be put out of business by AI. Lawyers are going to be put out of business by other lawyers that are using AI to supercharge themselves, because that is what AI is good for it allows you to supercharge yourself. It allows you to get 10 times more done in a short amount of period because you don't have to do the mundane tasks. And what's cool is that I call it the 85% rule. Ai will get you about 85% of the way there, but you can never just ship it without actually reading, so it'll give you about 85%, yeah, right%.
Speaker 2:Or else you'll get sanctioned by a New York federal court, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I use it for ideation. My greatest use case for AI is I have two-thirds of a thought and I put it in a chat, gpt, and I say finish this thought for me and give me three ways to wrap this up. But you're exactly right, if you were running a good practice with good processes and you can augment that with AI, maybe reduce a little bit of your overhead and then free yourself up to focus on really the largest levers in your firm to pull and then do all of the things that AI can't do, like all of the great client touches and all of that important stuff and managing your referral network that AI is not capable of doing yet, maybe. Yeah, then that really is what's going to rocket some lawyers past the ones who aren't putting in the work on this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but again, I don't know AI. I'm so torn on AI because it's so exciting, with what you can do, but then I do wonder if it's actually going to cause us to. Here's the scenario that I see happening. There's things like air AI. Now that is basically voice AI. So I've seen these demos where you can actually have a sales team that will reach out to people, and it's all AI based.
Speaker 1:So what's going to happen next is and I guarantee you this is going to happen within the next probably 12 months is companies are going gonna start switching to AI customer service. So you know how you love talking to those computers with press one for this. So what's gonna start happening is you're gonna have to start having more advanced things like that, but what's gonna happen is that the level of service is actually gonna go down because, as great as AI is, it still isn't a person. It's like 75, 80% of person but you're still gonna have those issues and it's gonna cause frustration. So I think that what's gonna end up happening, if I had to guess, is that it's gonna end up being a situation where a lot of companies are gonna go to this and then one of your unique selling propositions is gonna be that we're actually a real company that's not using AI, that you're not gonna have to talk to AI.
Speaker 1:So I think that it'll be like a situation where, like real people, like content written by people and stuff like that is going to be like a selling point at some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. So, speaking of rocketing past people, let's talk law firm Growth Accelerator, all right, and the SMB team event that you guys have coming up in early June.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we invented this model over the last probably two years because we worked with thousands of law firms and what we do is we have a coaching and a done for you marketing division, and the reason that we did that is because we started as just done for you marketing. Right, we started doing websites, seo, and we started realizing that what's happening is a lot of clients were getting leads, but they weren't handling the leads properly. So they were getting leads and then they were letting their calls go to voicemail or they were not good at capturing the contact information or they weren't having people show up for consultations and they weren't doing follow-ups and all that type of stuff. So, out of necessity, I actually read the book Extreme Ownership, which actually we saw Jocko together in Orlando last year but I got frustrated because what was happening was we were getting leads for clients and we see the leads coming through, but they weren't handling their intake properly and, at the end of the day, we were the ones that got fired. It's like you can complain about it or you can solve the problem, and that's what I got from extreme ownership is that complaining does nothing. Complaining feels really good, but then at the end of the day, I still got fired and my clients were still unhappy.
Speaker 1:So what we decided is that, ok, we're going to take a proactive approach to fixing the problem, and the number one problem is that lawyers don't learn how to run a business in law school. They don't understand, they're not taught. How do you properly answer the phone? How do you properly conduct a consultation? How do you like? What are the three things that you can do to make sure that, when the consultation gets booked, the person actually shows up? And then, when they show up, what are the how do you conduct a consultation that is more likely to get the person to actually hire you, rather than you just blabbing on about your credentials and how you're a super lawyer and all this stuff? And so we started going down that rabbit hole, and that basically led us to creating an entire coaching division to our company that is has done really well, like it's. It's really teaching lawyers how to run a business, because a lot of times lawyers start a law firm and what happens is they start a law firm because they believe what's called the entrepreneurial myth and this is something that Michael Gerber talks about in the E-Myth and that is because you're a good lawyer, do you think that's going to make you a good law firm owner? And it's completely. They're two completely different skill sets.
Speaker 1:So, as we've been helping lawyers grow their law firms and make more money and change their lives and their clients' lives and everything, we've really identified that lawyers really only have four categories of problems, right, when it comes to actually growing the business. Now, I don't handle how to be a better lawyer. That's not my thing. What I talk about is how to have a better law firm, how to get better leads, how to do better intake, and what we realized is that there's really only four categories of problems. The first one is lead generation inconsistency. They don't have a consistent form of leads, right, they don't have a consistent way to generate leads, and leads are the foundation of a law firm, because leads to a law firm are like gasoline to a car, right, if you don't have any gas, you're not going to go very far and if you don't have any leads, your law firm is not going to grow.
Speaker 1:So lead generation is the first level of the law firm growth acceleration model. You have to have consistent lead generation. But then the second thing is you have to have a flawless intake system, because all the leads in the world are useless if you can't turn them into clients. So once you have leads and then you have a flawless intake system, the third step is necessary because you're going to start getting lots of cases. When you start getting lots of cases and clients, you're going to end up working 90 hours a week. So you need the third thing, which is a self-managing team of rockstar employees, and that's a team that runs your law firm the way that you want it run, handles your cases the way that you want them handled. But they're rockstar employees, right, because, like you want to hire a players, like when people don't hire a players and they hire B and C players, that's when they run into these issues where they're frustrated and they feel like they can't trust anyone on their team. It's because you're not hiring the right people. You've got to hire a players, right, and there's a whole strategy to that. Once you've got your leads, you've got your intake and then you've got your team running everything for you.
Speaker 1:The fourth part is profits, because so many lawyers we see they get all this in place, but then their revenue goes up, but then their expenses go right along with their revenue. So they're not making any more money, even though technically, they're making more revenue but not making more profit. And profit is super important because if you don't have a profit, you can't invest more to grow your law firm, you can't hire the best people, you can't change your family's life, you can't donate to charities, you can't do anything if you don't make a profit right? So what we really focus on at the Law Firm Growth Acceleration Bootcamp is we focus on how do you generate leads, how do you turn them into clients, how do you hire a team to do all the work and how do you manage that team and hold them accountable. And then how do you actually make a profit so that you can finally get some free time and all that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:So that's what we actually teach at the Law Firm Growth Acceleration Bootcamp, and we've done a bunch of these and they're always the success stories that come from that we hear from lawyers after going through this and like implementing are just like remarkable. It's insane. We actually had Ben speak at the event I think two events ago ago, but they're awesome and do you want me to do? Should we have the link in the show notes, or do you want me to mention?
Speaker 2:the link or yeah, yeah, so you'll send me a link, we'll drop it in the show notes. Perfect, people can go check it out. It seems to me, as I listen to you go through those four steps, like there's really there's two places where lawyers get hung up. Once you figure out the marketing piece. It's not's intake, but it's also managing the people that are doing intake, because lawyers are really good at telling our clients that they're wrong, or really good at telling judges why they're wrong, or insurance justice. We suck at managing staff right. So it's having a system for going back and listening to the intake calls and coaching your people and in a way that doesn't make them quit. That's the other thing that I heard from from a lawyer just last week is, every time we ask people to come to the office or every time we manage them just a little bit, they quit and they go do something else. Probably it's because you suck as a leader. Probably it's not them.
Speaker 2:And if all you're attracting is the people that don't want to be managed and don't want to do a good job, the answer is you. And then you said self-managing team, and I'm back to the answer is you. You have to be somebody that actually attracts those A players in the first place, because they're not on Indeed right. You're not going to job sites and just tripping over A players who don't have jobs and are looking for somebody to work for no. First you have to become the kind of person that A players want to be around. You have to become the kind of person that a players want to be around, and that really is the mindset shift that I think you were talking about a little bit at the profit, like you must spend so much time coaching on that mindset shift of becoming who you need to become to attract great clients, attract great staff and surround yourself with a players.
Speaker 1:Here's okay. So this is the analogy that I always get. When tom brady left the patriots, he went to the dolphins and he interviewed them. And then he went to the bucks and he interviewed them. He went to the broncos and basically interviewed with every single one of them, but the thing is that they weren't interviewing him. He was interviewing them because he's the A player, right? Do I want to win a Super Bowl with you guys or do I want a Super Bowl with you guys or do I want a Super Bowl with you guys? And we all know what happened. He won a Super Bowl with the Bucs.
Speaker 1:So A players are the same way. They're not on Indeed, like you said, because as soon as an A player is available on the market, they get snatched up like that. We had a person on our team who was incredible at his job, absolute A player, but he was a core value. We had an issue with core value, so we had to let him go, unfortunately, and he had a job within two hours, right, like it wasn't like it wasn't like. He was on Indeed sending out resumes and all that type of stuff. People know who the A players are and he was hired within two hours of somebody else and he's probably doing a great job for him.
Speaker 1:So what you have to think about is you have to think about what kind of environment can you create that's gonna attract A players? And the question I always ask lawyers to think about is what is gonna motivate somebody to dedicate 40 hours of their life every single week to building your dream, because that's what you're asking somebody to do. You're asking somebody to dedicate 40 hours of their life 40 hours they're never going to get back to dedicating to building your dream right. So there better be a good reason that they're going to come over there. So what we teach is actually something called a vivid vision, which is from the book Vivid Vision by Cameron Harreld. Cameron Harreld was actually our coach and really helped us get to the next level in our business. But one of the things that we do is and one of the reasons that we were able to get to where we are now is because of the fact that we have this thing called a vivid vision, is because of the fact that we have this thing called a vivid vision, and a vivid vision is literally a document where you make up what is your business going to look like three years from now and how much revenue are we going to generate? How many employees are we going to have? What are our offices going to look like? What types of cases are we going to get? What types of clients will we have? Like literally everything, even down to what is the office physically going to look like, and and what's interesting about that is that when you do that, then you can actually future pace and figure out where you're going and, like a lot of times, like for us we are.
Speaker 1:Our goal is to double the revenue of 10,000 law firms. Right, that's our goal, because we understand that by doing that, we are going to help potentially, millions of people. Because we're going to help the owners of the law firms. We're going to help them have a better life. All the employees are going to have a better life because they're going to work for a bigger firm and they're going to be able to make more money. The clients are going to be able to be served better, at a higher level, because the law firms are running properly, so they're going to get better results. So we can confidently say when somebody comes in listen, if you work for us, you're going to be part of changing potentially millions of lives, and that's why you should come work for us and we're a fast pace, we're exciting, you have autonomy, like all those types of things, and that's the other thing you have to think about. A players want autonomy. They want to be able to dictate how they do their job and really, if they're an A player, they should be able to dictate how they do their job, because A players are. It's like you might have to pay them 25% more, but you're going to get five times as much productivity from an A player than you would for a B and C player. And they also want to work with other A players, right? So if you have a team full of like B and C players, that's something that needs to be addressed.
Speaker 1:I talked to so many lawyers and they talk about family vibes Like, yeah, we're a family, we're a family, we're a family. Honestly, family vibes is like the worst possible thing you could have at a law firm, because families tolerate mediocrity, families tolerate drama, they tolerate excuses, they tolerate all. And at our company, yeah, we all get along really well and we have a ton of fun together and we all have each other's backs, but we don't say we're a family. We say we're a high performance team and we're going to win the Super Bowl. We're a high performance championship team and we're a family. We say we're a high performance team and we're going to win the Super Bowl. We're a high performance championship team and we're going to win the Super Bowl. And you imagine some of these guys like Bill Belichick or like Nick Saban or like John Harbaugh or any of these, like coaches that are high performance coaches. Do you think that they tolerate drama? Do they tolerate people that are just and they're just having a bad month? We'll just give them some slack.
Speaker 1:'s not how it works if he ever says somebody's having a bad month, we're gonna give him slack exactly because they're a high performance team that's going to win the super bowl and a players want to be there. A players want to be around other a players they don't want to be dragging everybody. Did you ever see the documentary the last dance? The michael jordan documentary is so good, but how many times, how many stories are there through that documentary of michael Michael Jordan just going in there and just reaming everyone in the locker room because they're not up to his standard? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Now, hopefully, your A players have a little bit more tact. You know what I mean. But it shows you the best of the best. They want to be around other people that are going to support them at that level. So that's something else you have to think about. To support them at that level. So that's something else you have to think about is like, how are A players going to fit into our team and how can we start making that transition so that A players are the center of our team and not going to be frustrated by these other people? There's a lot of stuff that you have to think about, but once you make that transition, it makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2:I've done Vivid Vision and you can go back. Listeners can go back on this podcast and find mine from 2022. If you scroll deep enough. I'm curious whether that's an exercise that you take new law firm or new member law firms through with SMB that's part of your onboarding?
Speaker 1:Yeah, when they come into our coaching program, that's the first thing we'd have them do. Is we have them do their Vivid Vision and it's funny because, like vivid vision, core values these are all things that a couple of years ago, I would have rolled my eyes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say you sound like Bill, you sound a lot like Bill, and I'm wondering what have you has rubbed off on him.
Speaker 1:It's funny is that the reason Bill and I partnered was because of the fact that he has a lot of this. I'm a very creative person and I'm very. I'm not a goal setter, I'm not that type of stuff and the reason that that Bill and I work so well together is because we're both very, we're both quick start personalities, we're both very entrepreneurial. But he is really the one that has the vision, that has the goals, that has all the spreadsheets and all that stuff, and I'm the person that's really good at figuring out okay, how are we gonna let's create these things that are gonna get more attention for us and everything.
Speaker 1:But as I've been going through and doing this whole process, I'm realizing more and more how important the vivid vision is, how important setting goals is, how important all this stuff is, because if you look at where we were three years ago so Bill and I, our companies were basically the same size and we merged and we are actually I'll tell you this we're going to do 10 times the revenue this year that my company did in 2021 and that Bill's company did in 2021.
Speaker 1:So it's been like, it's just been like, and it's all been because of the vivid vision, because of the goal setting, because hiring A players like all this stuff that we preach, is what we actually do and that's cool, is that for our clients? That's like why our clients love it, because they're getting, they're getting there, they're along for the ride, because basically we're saying, look, this isn't theory, this is like literally what we did to take our company from here to here, and it's proven that this works. Yeah, it's been a huge impact, and not only that, but it has a huge impact on our clients as well.
Speaker 2:Awesome, hey. So, as we bring this to a close, who is SMB for and who are you guys not for?
Speaker 1:So we are for entrepreneurial attorneys that try to create an environment for lawyers that will give them more profit, better results for their clients. But, most importantly, they get more free time for themselves, because I think the thing with law firms and there's so many lawyers out there that they build law firms and then they have a law firm that owns them rather than a law firm that they own they can't go on vacation, like it's funny. The number one thing, my favorite compliment that I get from so many clients is I was finally able to take a real vacation, right, because so many times we go on vacation and oh, we got a fire, I got to put out or got to get up from dinner and handle this intake call or whatever. So we teach lawyers to actually grow businesses that run without. Like the definition of a business is a commercial profit, commercial profitable enterprise that runs without you, and a lot of times lawyers don't know if they're profitable or not to the end of the year, and it certainly doesn't run without them.
Speaker 2:So that's what we help lawyers do, is we help?
Speaker 1:what did you say?
Speaker 2:It's just a highly paid job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it's a job where you go from being a lawyer at a law firm, or maybe you work for the state attorney's office or whatever and you go from having a boss to you, go to having every single client is now your boss and you're just reactive. And a lot of lawyers don't like their law firms and they don't like their lives and they don't like being lawyers and it's because they're burnt out, because they just feel like they can't get away. So the secret is in all of this planning and especially like the goal setting, because when you know, when you do the vivid vision and you know what your goal is in three years, then you can break that down into three annual plans. So let's say you want to say I want to make $4 million three years from now.
Speaker 1:To do that, then we know that you have to be at $2 million by the end of year two and you have to be at $1 million by the end of year one. And if we're at say whatever here, we know that to get to a million dollars by the end of year one in Q1, we have to do this. In Q2, we have to do this. In Q3, we have to do this. So it makes it like stepping stones rather than this big, unattainable goal, and like the vivid vision is all part of that, hiring is all part of that, and when you realize that putting all these things together it's actually not that hard if you just take it one step at a time. And that's what we teach lawyers how to do is basically how to build an actual business that they own, that they can sell one day, rather than a law firm that owns them.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So if that is interesting to you, if you want to change your life and build a business and a law firm that actually operates as a business, makes you some profit, gives you back some time, lets you take vacation without having to worry about clients, without having to worry about your staff and managing them, then check out SMB Team, check out the Law Firm Growth Accelerator no-transcript.