Jay Ruane  00:00

Jay. Hello. Hello. Welcome to this edition of the law firm blueprint. I’m one of your hosts. Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is my man. Seth, price. Seth, you’ve been traveling. I’ve been bouncing around. How have you been?

Seth Price  00:18

 doing? Well, really, had a great time with the Fisher mastermind in Portugal, and went traveling with the Umanskys and fishers to the Azores and Madeira. So just a wonderful couple days 

Jay Ruane  00:29

Well, that’s fantastic, and I want to know more about it. I’ve been home. I haven’t really, you know, I haven’t traveled yet that that’s coming. We’re doing the St Thomas, St Martin cruise coming up in 10 days or so, but I’ve been, I’ve been going out with my kids. I took my boys to go see Wu Tang Clan, which was amazing. I took my daughters to go see Zach Brian. They chose which shows they wanted to see. I had enough tickets for everybody to go to all the shows. But, you know, it was interesting to me. There’s a topic I want to talk about today, because I think it sort of matters to us as service based business owners, law firm business owners. So that Wu Tang Clan, it’s in the Newark crowd is definitely, you know, my age, people wide, you know, demographic. You know, there’s some young people there, but really it’s people above 40. I think I would say a third of the way into the show. Lauren Hill comes out now. She’s a North Jersey girl. She’s back. She gets to do two songs, her most popular songs. Getting a chance to see Lauryn Hill live is just amazing. And obviously she’s got a connection to the band since they were on Staten Island. She was in North Jersey. They came out at the same time. Then, like 10-15, minutes later, Mary J Blige comes out, and Mary J Blige, if you’re Mary J has a duet like method, 

Seth Price  01:55

arguably, either of those people would sell more tickets than Wu tan by themselves. 

Jay Ruane  01:59

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, if you put on a Lauren Hill show in the greater New York area, I mean, she could sell out three nights at the garden in five minutes, you know, just because there’s such a desperation to see her. So I thought it was interesting, because and then, okay, so that was last, last Thursday night. Then the following night, after driving back from Jersey to Connecticut, I got back in my car, and I took my wife and my daughters and one of my sons to go see Zach Brian at MetLife, which was also a great show. A totally different audience, much younger, much, much younger, which makes sense, but it’s interesting, he didn’t have a special day. I know Springsteen showed up one of the nights, not our night, but what he did was he has a duet that’s a very popular song. He actually picked a young woman out of the pit in front of the stage, called her up on stage, and she sang the female part of the duet, and she crushed it unbelievably. So. In fact, afterwards, he remarked, hey, I did a lot better than I expected. Turns out, this young woman is from Point Pleasant. Her name was Ivy. If you Google Ivy, Zach Brian, you’ll see a bunch of YouTube videos of her. But a bunch of young people in our section were like, we go to school with her. We know her. She’s got an amazing voice. I can’t believe it’s her. The place was going crazy, but I just thought of it in terms of a little something extra, right? Like, I’m there to see Wu Tang giving me Lauren Hill blows my mind. A little something extra works for the crowd that they have. Zach Brian pulls somebody up. Lots of excitement, a lot of electricity. That’s something unexpected. But I tell you, you know, all you know, 70,000 people under 30 that were there thinking I could be that girl for the next show. And I’m just wondering, as law firm owners, what can we do that’s a little something extra, other than sending the client a Yeti cup with our logo on it, because that’s not, that’s not nothing. 

Seth Price  04:07

No, look. I mean each of these things again. First of all, there’s the budget. It’s one on one. It’s not like you say, Hey, we’re gonna send something to the entire crowd. But you know, as you say that, you know, we’re starting to do more and more. I’m gonna pivot. But you taking this like, as one on one, pretty hard. You know, a modest gift is about the budget and what you’re gonna do, like, Could you come in as Jay Ruane, the managing partner, the name of the firm, to say hello and shake hands and glad hands? Yeah, that would be sort of one of those moments, right? But at scale, you know, we’re starting to leverage. There’s some technology through Salesforce, and every platform has its own thing where we’re going to be able to do the direct marketing from it, like more advanced drip campaigns that target different things. But you know, over the years, we’ve had some we’ve used some of our cameos. We had George Wayne. Right on when we watch the show, and when we did some transition. And the idea is, wouldn’t it be cool if we could, because there, if it’s going to everybody, and on things like cameo, you can pay for a commercial use for a modest amount more. Wouldn’t it be cool if you did some of those shout outs from people that might be popular to the crowd. You know, we’re very we’re often just like, hey, here’s here’s lawyer, reminding you we’re there if you need something. But how cool would it be if it was some sort of local personality or national personality? 

Jay Ruane  05:34

You know, it’s interesting, like Johnny Damon is in a cameo. And for us, if you’re a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan in Connecticut. You can, you know, he played for both teams, right? But, like, that’s something. I could do that, but I, you know, it’s one of these things where it’s like, you want to be able to level up and do something a little extra special. Because once you get and I’m pretty proud of where we’re at, our customer service is top notch. You know, people remark about that when they leave reviews. And I just think that, you know, taking it to that next little level, like it’s the unreasonable hospitality idea, you know, like they didn’t bring in sand and, you know, umbrellas for every single person in the restaurant, but they did different things for enough people that there was just this ongoing buzz, right?

Seth Price  06:23

There was. But I also, you know, think about it, if you’re charging 50 grand for a DUI, you now have the budget and labor for it. I mean, as much as I love that book and it’s awesome and it’s inspiring, I think that it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because at scale, while you want to have those things, to do those more than as a one off, like, if you’re going to pick three clients and do something great, that’s awesome, right? I love it. But the fact is that unless there’s a buzz, unless you’re using the viral moment for more, it’s, it is almost, in a way, it is a little bit disingenuous. I would argue, if you’re, if you’re a, you know, a fast casual restaurant, you can still do things. You can bring a family of cookie you can, you know, you can smile. You can, you can do different pieces of engagement as people come through, but there’s less budget. You know, you’re most of the world sits where I would like to think we’re better than a fast casual but we’re certainly not in the top 50 restaurant budget with a $500 average bill that’s giving you that bandwidth. And I think the piece that was mentioned in the book, but I don’t think focused on enough, is unless there’s a system to allow for bandwidth to do those things, something else could break if you take those steps in order to do those things. 

Jay Ruane  07:48

Well, that you know that’s really interesting, that you bring up systems and bandwidth, because I came up with a pretty ingenious social media marketing idea, like I almost wish yourself. No, I showed it to a half a dozen. I went into the studio, I cut the video and the concept, and I and I sent it to a few people, and they’re like, holy shit, dude, this could be big. Like, this could really, this could really be good. And I’m just, I’m thinking to myself, Yes, J of the year 2020, or 19 or 20,010 would be like, let’s do it. We’re doing it. And I would start it up. It would get half assed. There’d be no system in place to execute it. And for the first time, I said to my team, hey, I think you guys all like this. And the reaction was amazing. I’m like, I think we need to hire somebody just to execute this project, because I am a Quick Start guy. 

Seth Price  08:51

I lose interest quickly, 10, quick start, right? 

Jay Ruane  08:53

And, and, you know, it’s funny, because I was at a conference yesterday, and I was on the train ride home. I’m sending a Slack message to my marketing person, saying, You need to get this thing done in the next 48 hours. Like, and she’s like, I have a full day the next two days. I’m like, well, find some time to do it, you know. But, but, but. So I’m actually at a point now where I think, with some self reflection, I’ve finally said, Okay, you gotta put the brakes on, and you gotta set up the systems in place up front and hire to execute otherwise you will have a great idea that puts, putters and falls apart. And that’s one of the problems we have, I think, because we’re so concerned about our day to day operations and the systems we need for the day to day operations, when we go to do something new, innovative, distinct, it may not be able to be executed by your existing people. Because they’re in their zone, right? I mean, and then, 

Seth Price  10:04

and there’s a second, there’s several pieces. One, they genuinely don’t have bandwidth. Seven, you know, whenever you pull something, it’s damn it can be damaging. I think. Third, there’s something you and I have heard, we do a whole podcast on this, when you have something and somebody says, Well, that was what I was hired for. And again, it’s a whole different direction, where it’s the buy in to do it. There are times when you get buy in, but there’s other jobs, like, I got a full play of stuff. Now you’re giving me this, and that’s why, when you and I go to conferences, it’s always important, and I’ve gotten much, much better over time by feeding it through EOS so that we’re prioritizing it, rather than just saying, I need this right away, right?

Jay Ruane  10:43

Because everything for me is, I need it now, right? I need it now. And that’s not a way to run.

Seth Price  10:50

And with that, you know, we’ve added bandwidth. We finally have a marketing person in place who’s sort of carrying the torch beyond myself, right, you know, and we added a social media person, we just upgraded the social media person, really wonderful young woman. But with that comes issues we talk about systems and process. They you know, these are the things that I sort of see and I struggle with, which is just like when I buy stuff myself, I shop around. It took several iterations to get the firm to actually follow best practices. When it’s scaled. If it’s me, it’s great. If it’s somebody right under me, it’s great. But when that’s that next person, unless there’s a rule that says you must use this service, or these are the approved places, which takes time to put in place. You end up with expenses. You end up with a a lunch for seven people that had a $400 chicken wing bill. 

I mean, stuff like this blows your mind. And then the newest iteration that I’m struggling with is time where we have an amazing social media person who wants to do a video with all of our interns. Well, not only did they get the summer interns, which I was shocked that we have like seven, but we have some law clerks, they didn’t differentiate the fact that these were people who were doing substantive work. And in the DMV, this would be like somebody in Manhattan pulling people from the Connecticut office, Jersey Office, they called it for 11am to do filming. That’s essentially shooting the day. And this is a piece that we don’t talk about, that post COVID before, you’d be like, Okay, we’ll do it from nine to 1010, 30. And then people go about their they could go back to wherever they were. But the idea that we now, the idea of commuting, is, well, we don’t simply be at rush hour. 

So all of a sudden, literally, this hour and a half shoot probably extracted a day’s work from anybody, not at the mothership, where they could just go back to work. And that was just like figuring out money. And you know, what is the best way to buy things? Figuring out the person doing it was like, I want to get the people there. I’ll have time to set up. But there’s no thought that, okay, what was the true cost of what will be a very nice social media post with our summer interns? And is the juice worth the squeeze? 

Jay Ruane  13:14

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a challenge for us as law firm owners, is just recognizing that there’s a cost to everything. It may be dollars out the door, it may be bandwidth, it may be time, it may be attention, but there is a cost. And there are multiple costs for everything that you encounter and everything that you want to try to do, and you really need to sort of prioritize and think through it. And I think you know, for you and me, 1015, 20 years ago, it was, I like it. Let’s do it. And part of the way that we have gotten to where we are is this bias towards action. But you know, taking a, you know, a 15 foot speed boat is a lot easier to turn than a battleship, which is what we’ve built. Now, 

Seth Price  14:06

I’ll give you a BluShark example. We’ve had great success in placing clients in the AI results. I don’t know if it’s making them any money, but they love it. We even have a product now that we sell for it, but we have an entire team link building. Some of that overlaps with the techniques to get in the AI results, but some of it doesn’t. Some of it’s not link building. It mentions, which is a different skill set than link building, and all of a sudden, you know, boom, there’s a new skill set needed. And what I have found is that while you could go from within, but if everybody is flat out and doing something over and over again, which is awesome, because that’s what scales the business, when something new like this enters the vernacular into the market, it’s recognizing that and bringing talent in. It that’s fully focused on it, especially when you’re at scale, rather than pretending that your link builder is going to be able to now, short term, sure, and we’ve had that success. But if you want to, if this is the new normal, and you want to be there consistently, the AI algorithm is going to change, right? And figuring that out isn’t a set it and forget it, and making sure that as it changes, because just like early link building or early content when the things were changing, that was the Wild West. What’s fascinating about the AI side that blows me. We could do another that blows my mind to do it is the fact that we are now without rules. Google had rules for us, right? 

All of a sudden there are no rules. And this is the piece that I find fascinating. I have a bunch of people who are ingrained, do no harm, build fast, but don’t destroy. And now, since there’s not a AI penalty. It’s just what hits the algorithm or what doesn’t. It’s actually interesting that I see a struggle with our really talented link builders to adapt, and I need to. I’ve been using a different team, almost because those guys are focused on one thing, and that what is going to work now is almost like what you and I went through in the early days of link building, where, like, hey, let’s try this and see what happens. Whereas right now, you don’t really want to, like, our guys are great. Don’t put links in spammy territory. He could move the needle, but we were playing the long game, and don’t want to see anything, whereas here, you know, you can, if you’re willing to be aggressive, right now, you can see some pretty cool results with AI. 

Jay Ruane  16:47

And that, I think, you know, leads me to my next question, because, you know, most firms have a single website that they are promoting that is their face. Most people don’t have 2,3,4 websites because they put all their time and attention inside as they should, based on today’s out, right, right?

Seth Price  17:07

But that’s based on Google’s algorithm and Google’s market dominance, right? How can you do no harm for Google search, but also take chances on the same website for AI, is it? Is it saying, Look, I’m gonna do content that is standardized content. I’m gonna build my links, but I’ll also try to get more mentions.

Seth Price  17:39

 That’s the difference, which is, you know, we talked about a linkless world. Google’s been pushing for it for years. I think what’s, what I’m alluding to, is it will be off site, but not link building. It’s going to be, how do I know Jay is great? They’re not going to take that necessarily from the mothership website. 

Jay Ruane  18:01

It’s going to be how right they’re looking for reviews. 

Seth Price  18:03

You know beyond, you know beyond just reviews. But they’re, it’s, yeah. 

Jay Ruane  18:08

So this week, or in the last 10 days, Google now announced pretty publicly that they’re going to index Instagram, which they had not been doing before. Obviously, I think that is some of the Hey. Let’s look for the mention the social proof. 

Jay Ruane  18:26

The social proof so that they can help, their search responses, but also their AI product, Gemini, right? You know? 

Seth Price  18:38

And then we also have to worry about, given that it’s a meta product, let’s see how long that lasts. 

Jay Ruane  18:42

Well, yeah, I mean, it could get shut down pretty quickly, but then, remember, Chrome has such massive dominance in the browser industry. What’s going to happen with some of these AI products, like perplexity, putting out their own browser? Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of lot of lag time in full adoption. But, you know, Chrome got up there pretty quickly. You know, Internet Explorer beat out Netscape. You know, there is a 

Seth Price  19:11

Google has some chops to fight that off. I mean, that Gemini doesn’t suck. And right? You’re used to that you’re getting people off that platform is going to take a bunch Yes, I, you know, the question is, Jay plays around with new stuff. Will he, you know, look, I knew Facebook made it, but my mother in law got on, right? The question is, will my mother in law be moving off Chrome to perplexity, right? 

Jay Ruane  19:34

Yeah, that was interesting. My mother needed a biography for a like, a brochure that was going out at a dinner she was getting an award at, and she was like, I don’t want to have to write this. I’m like, we don’t need to write it, you know. Give me your resume. Give me your CV. You know, because she was a teacher, she’s done a bunch of things, I uploaded the CV and I put a. Little bit of, like, where she was born and grew up and where she, you know, that type of thing. Or family and us and Claude wrote me out a one page bio that was out of the park. I mean, it was just phenomenal, based on everything that we had no hallucinations because we use the right prompt. And my mother is now, like, blown away by AI. She’s like, I could have used this for so many years. This is amazing. I’m like, Yeah, it really is, hey. So like, 

Jay Ruane  20:25

I want to, I want to close. I got a cool thing to share that I’m loving my new favorite thing, my meta glasses.

Jay Ruane  20:35

You know, my nephew got them. Tell me about that. 

Seth Price  20:38

So basically, and again, I’m new to it. I took it to Portugal. Buddy, Jeff Phillips was using them when I was out in in Salt Lake, and really enjoyed them. Hey, meta, take a photo. I took the photo. It allows you I do conference calls from it. I was at a pool bar full on, blasting music. Speaking to somebody, they could not that I heard them perfectly. They heard me perfectly. No music there earlier. It has translations in a number of languages. I think that’s going to blow out. But the piece that you know, so photos, videos, you could use this or using Hey, meta prompt, all of that works. It now has this is now and again. I’m sure Google will have its own set of glasses, as will, you know, Amazon and everybody else. But the piece that is, you know, the fact that meta can then give you information whether what you’re looking at translations of what you’re looking at. It is remarkable to the point where, if this becomes a device that people are comfortable with, another threat to Google.

Jay Ruane  21:53

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that’s, you know, I think we’re coming to a point where microprocessors are small enough cellular modems are small enough that they’re going to be able to input this stuff into things like glasses. Obviously, the watch, the Apple Watch, was one of the first things to have an internal GPS and cellular device. But I think we’re starting now. I don’t necessarily need my refrigerator to be web enabled right now, I don’t necessarily see the use case, but I can understand that some people like having all of their inventory known by their refrigerator. 

Seth Price  22:11

You’re not the regular person at the supermarket. So, right? So the person who is would love to look at their phone, you know? So I’ll conclude with this the flip side, and we’ve seen this already with our phones or watches. In Portugal, somebody asked me about a restaurant, CRM marketing platform, not my space. The next day, the Facebook ad started.

Jay Ruane  22:54

Really? 

Seth Price  22:55

Yes, so this is like, no search for it. There was a discussion. And the next day

Jay Ruane  23:02

You’re seeing ads for it.

Seth Price  23:03

I’m seeing ads for it based on a conversation with glasses on scary

Jay Ruane  23:09

So you can see through the glasses. Is there anything on the glasses? Are they just ignore 

Seth Price  23:13

Other products out there that teleprompters for, like the TED talk?

Jay Ruane  23:17

Yeah, the guy was, I was thinking about getting the ones that has the subtitles right because Yeah. 

Seth Price  23:21

So there’s lots, lots of cool stuff coming. This is just $300 Oakleys are slightly more you can get them clear. But the point is, it’s here, and at the $300 price point, just like when the iPad came out, and it’s a fun but meaning it became ubiquitous, I think that if I’m to future predict what’s going on, that some form of this will be the new normal, and that assume that as people hack how you can’t tell whether it’s being recorded, so light right now. But if you know that the world of having a conversation that is not being recorded is very limited at this point. 

Jay Ruane  24:00

You know, it’s interesting to me, and I’ll leave it with this, as a criminal defense lawyer, the ability to clone someone’s voice is somewhat frightening in terms of situations where a complaining witness could fabricate off of videos or recorded audio a defendant’s voice and leave a voicemail for them that violates a court order. And there’s really, I mean, you know, you’re playing it on your phone. Look, they left me a voicemail. They tried to call me, right? 

Seth Price  24:34

The only good thing is, you still have to prove it. Can’t, you know it was, there’s still, like, yes, scary. Like, all this stuff, the political stuff that you know, what you can make people say, the fact that I’m fluent in Spanish in my commercials, now beyond scary. But I think, like everything else, the courts, hopefully, will not jump to conclusions. They’re going to have to take a pause. And I think we all do. I can tell you when I see something in the news. I immediately, you know, take a moment to say, yes, that’s salacious, but let’s wait to see if it’s true. 

Jay Ruane  25:05

Let me ask you this with the ability for voice cloning, I can remember for years we were getting that. Hey, can you buy me some credit cards? I’m Adam, still getting them right. So we instituted in our office a code word that if you know Jay or Emily or somebody was asking for something, there was a code word that we would use so that if you’re like, Yeah, I think we need to now put that a code word for if someone, if you get a voicemail from someone and it sounds like they’re asking you to do something, and you’re not 100% right? You should make sure that they drop the code word for it. 

Seth Price  25:48

I know my dad’s law firm, not you know different division, I think, got hit with one of those real estate scams with the checks, and that’s why you have to, like nothing by email anymore. Oh, some law firm got hacked. I got their email. I knew it was a hack, but I sent something back, because usually, like on Facebook, if you go back to the person like, Oh yeah, that wasn’t me, the hacker was still in and replied, Oh, it’s safe to open the attachment. I didn’t do, but scary stuff. So yes, I think that we’re that as the bad guys are ramping stuff up. You know, I assume everybody listening to this is doing the two factor authentication, if you’re not getting yourself on it. But even that, it’s getting and I watch the big boys, what are they doing? What levels are they requiring? And look maybe for the next trip. We’ll just make a list of stuff for the next show. My IT guy is bringing me stuff, like one password stuff, and each one, I mean, I’m already in the cloud with two, two factor authentication, but he’s like, yeah, for another $20,000 a year. Great thing. We’re at scale. It’s a lot less if you’re not at scale, you know, we can now have another layer of security. And it’s, you know, just like you’re like, F Me, in one sense, I don’t want the big break in, but you keep getting these $20,000 or for me, $20,000 bills that, you know.

Jay Ruane  27:05

 It’s a lot of money, it adds up. Yeah, and it hampers your ability to spend money on other things, like other marketing, or more teamwork, you know that that type of thing. So it’s one of those things that, or just pure profit, you’re not being able to take it off, 

Seth Price  27:15

either that or we got to figure out how to leverage AI, you know, to be able to bring costs down. But, you know, it’s like it gives it to take us away. You know, you might be made to save some time there, but like, if you’re having to double down on security, in a way, again, it just makes this stuff particularly scary. 

Jay Ruane  27:37

Yeah, well, boy, this was a roller coaster of topic, Seth, this is what happens 

Seth Price  27:42

From Wu Tang, to glasses, to cybersecurity. 

Jay Ruane  27:47

So, okay, cool. So this is interesting. I’m gonna look at those Meta glasses. I don’t like the idea of spending $300 to get a pair, yeah, but I have prescription lenses. Can I put the prescription in the other step? But yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. Alright, cool. So let me check that out, folks. That’s going to do it for us this week on a law firm blueprint. Of course, you can check us out wherever you want to go by taking us on the road with our law firm blueprint podcast. Of course, if you’re listening, be sure to give us five stars when you do so. Of course, you can also check us out live every Thursday, 3pm Eastern 12th civic live on LinkedIn and live in our Facebook group, the law firm blueprint. Please join. If you are listening, we’d love to have you that’s going to do it for me. I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth. Price. That’s all for the law firm blueprint. Bye for now you.