Jay Ruane  0:00  

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 is down in the DC area, but I was down in the DC area last week.

 

Seth Price  0:19  

You were!

 

Jay Ruane  0:19  

Substance coming in and working with Charley Mann and his group there, which was a fantastic, fantastic two day event. You know, I’m really, I’m blown away by what he put on, but I got to spend some time with you. We had dinner. We probably should have recorded live together in a room, but you know in this, in this argument that we’re going to have today, I don’t know. Maybe we don’t need to be in the same room. I might go wind up, start choking you or something,

 

Seth Price  0:48  

He did great. I think Charley.

 

Jay Ruane  0:50  

How are you doing?

 

Seth Price  0:51  

 I’m doing great. I thought Charley put together a really well curated. He’s just, he’s always thinking about how to move the needle for his people and very thoughtful. There are a lot of different options you have from coaching. But really enjoyed his perspective of mixing, sort of traditional mastermind with coaching all mixed together. And he’s really, I know, you know. I feel like Charley, you know, who had been with one of the other large organizations that were out there, sort of had what I had when I was at big law, which was when I did this myself. I’m going to do it my way. And you could sort of see the joy that he has where he now gets to, you know, if he wants to do it, he does it. And, you know, for those of you with partners out there, sometimes limited, it’s kind of cool when somebody is like, oh, you know what? I’ve seen it done this way. I’m going to do it that way.

 

Jay Ruane  1:38  

Yeah, I gotta tell you, it was just, it was, it was fantastic, and I was excited to be a part of it, and I look forward to being invited back, and I made some new friends, which is always a good thing, and it was good. But then, you know, trying to get out of there, I got to the airport. I got there early. Everything was great, but my flight got delayed, and it’s going to be and then they shut down the airport. They shut down.

 

Seth Price  2:01  

For the smell.

 

Jay Ruane  2:02  

I got there for them, yeah. I was literally on the plane on the runway, about to take off, and the pilot comes on and says they’re doing a ground stoppage. We’re going to wait and see here. And then next thing you know, an hour later, they’re pulling us back in to get off the plane and hang out there for a couple hours. So I didn’t get home, and so I went home.

 

Seth Price  2:23  

And so, you know, I’m gonna go with the first world issue, which is, you know, we always think about short flights. Should you upgrade? Right? And like you, very often, it’s not worth it’s only an hour and 10 minute flight. But how often does the hour 10 minute flight end up being four hours? Yeah, and that was a great example.

 

Jay Ruane  2:38  

which is why I upgraded. I was in first class. But, I mean, I don’t fly. I hate to sound like, you know, oh, yo, I don’t fly anything but first class. But if I’m traveling alone, I’m going first class because I want those amenities. I want to get off first, that’s just how I roll. But you know me, I’m not afraid to spend money.

 

Seth Price  2:58  

Exactly. It was very nice of you to treat me to an epic dinner at Joe Stone Crab.

 

Jay Ruane  3:04  

Yeah, I definitely want to go back there. That place was great. You know, it’s just it was a great time, but I got some productivity done. And I know we have a topic to talk about, but I want to tell you something. I’ve been working all weekend on an AI tool that I think is going to blow your mind, and I’m about 90% done. I’m hoping to be done by the end of this week, if I can find the time in between NCAA basketball games, because that’s obviously a priority for me this week.

 

Seth Price  3:32  

Well, with Penn heading to the dance.

 

Jay Ruane  3:34  

yeah, big deal. Yeah. Where are they going to dance?

 

Seth Price  3:39  

Oh, yeah, we’re headed to South Carolina to play Illinois in the first round. Not, not any like, like, at least they couldn’t give us, give us Illinois. At least they could do and put us in Philly.

 

Jay Ruane  3:49  

Right, exactly. I got you to find out and go to the game.

 

Seth Price  3:53  

I thought about getting an office down there, you know, as opposed to last time we made it was, Kansas, in Kansas. I mean, that was ridiculous.

 

Jay Ruane  3:59  

That was ridiculous. That was ridiculous. Yeah, fly down and go to the game. Why not? It’s one of the fun things you can do.

 

Seth Price  4:06  

 I’ve done it over the years. I’ve seen them almost every time they’ve made the tournament, which is few and far between.

 

Jay Ruane  4:12  

You know, if I were to go and watch UConn play the tournament, I’d have to, you know, plan to take this week off every year because, yeah,

 

Seth Price  4:18  

The good news is, you know, I don’t have a lot of tickets to buy. The first 64 usually is a little bit less than the Final Four. 

 

Jay Ruane  4:19  

Yes, absolutely.

 

Seth Price  4:19  

in South Carolina, no less.

 

Jay Ruane  4:24  

But I want to talk about something that we talked about at Charley Mann’s operation, and it was the version, basically the fight between analog and digital.

 

Seth Price  4:41  

You did a presentation.

 

Jay Ruane  4:42  

 I did a presentation about analog marketing. I’m going to do it for the Lunch Hour Legal Marketing summit this summer. I’ve got a couple other events where I’m going to come. I’m going to do that, and it’s become a passion of mine, just because, you know, I see a lot of people running towards digital and I don’t know if that’s the right move for them. I think you know, for the type of practice that they have, for the market that they have, there is low hanging fruit in offline marketing that I think a lot of lawyers are just, are just. I don’t want to say being lazy, but they’re being lazy, Seth. Writing a check and saying, you worry about it, Mr. Digital Marketer, and I think that that’s wrong, and I think that you should be approaching analog marketing much more seriously as a lawyer in today’s market. 

 

Seth Price  5:30  

Well, look, I think that building your personal brand is a big fan of the right things you’ve done and the success you’ve had is not always within criminal very often it’s been some very lucrative pi cases, civil rights cases that have come out of it. But what I would argue is, if you want to build a scalable business, the analog, while great and maybe a piece of community marketing, as you get larger, great. but scalable, adding lawyers, building from half a million to 3 million, it is very, very tough, I would argue, in criminal one of the hardest, almost impossible, to do it that way.

 

Jay Ruane  6:08  

My position is relationships are remote that digital can’t pass.

 

Seth Price  6:16  

I don’t disagree, but how much like a criminal again. if we’re looking solely at a criminal and not the one off cases that you’re pulling from, you know, to pi right? Looking solely a criminal, I challenge you to look at your numbers, and while it’s great, and I know, you know, in this presentation about going to a different barber each week for the month, because they’re great referral sources. You talked about a lot of really positive things. You know, the fact that you have your sponsoring teams, not even your kids teams, and you’re going, you think, three teams in an afternoon, like, that’s nice. It’s like, and if you get to the point where you can hire a person to do it, great if you love it, and that makes you happy, which I know it does for you, okay. but the ROI on that time, three hours, getting in the car, going out, seeing three teams coming back, where you hand out some ice cream. They like you. That’s awesome. You know, I am. I’m cynical. I mean, I have a lot of likes, I’m a part of a large synagogue with 1500 people. A third of those people know what I do. I go to the meaning, you know, you can’t know everybody. I went to an event last night, a business networking event, with four or 500 people. I probably knew 20% of the people there by name, not everybody. But I’m just saying, like, I’m as well networked as anybody. And while I get stuff, I mean, with a 50 lawyer firm, I certainly can’t have them eat. You know, it is something that I struggle with. There’s a great local networking group that’s about as good as it comes in the sense that it breaks out lawyers and other professionals. You meet by zoom or in person monthly. And then there are get-togethers by affinity groups, and it’s great, but I would tell you that one of the people that I admire in the group, who leverages it as well as anybody, has like, a $1.2 million practice with two other employees, or two other attorneys. I mean, it’s like a two, $300,000 thing. Look at what you’ve built. I know that you like the analog. You love the bridge, the moat, but I gotta tell you, it’s the fact that you have that digital footprint that’s allowed you to live the life that you have. Otherwise you’d be back to being a local, you know, yokel guy, it’s good. I don’t do this. It’s not bad, but it’s not and you like it. But is it scalable? So if you don’t like it, it’s very hard to do what you do. You have a superpower. You’re Jay Ruane. You can walk in and talk to anybody. I know you think you’re an introvert, but like when I see you, you’re, you’re the life of the party, and you’re an incredible, you know, force of nature in person. Anybody who’s met you knows that. But is that going to get you DUI cases that moment of need? I was on a podcast a minute ago, before we got on here, a guy who sells, who’s producing podcasts for DUI lawyers. And I’m like, How many people know they’re going to be a duo and watch a deal, if you take the clips and you happen to index them, and you get to know somebody, so somebody gets to know Jay Ruane what I would challenge you is, could you take your superpower through the power of social and get known to a larger group? Because you do have a dynamic presence, and if you do it strategically, you put a booth at a lawyer, you know, a statewide deal. 

 

Jay Ruane  9:23  

Think about doing that again this year. 

 

Seth Price  9:25  

But to me, I get that, you know, you’re willing to go into the uncomfortable zone, put yourself out there. I get it. That’s a ton of eyeballs that are relevant. But BNI is a great organization, but if you’re a DUI lawyer, right? So the fact that these people at the tee ball game know you. if you want to be the connector in town, maybe, but I would think it’s the last place you want to be, personally, and as much as you. The barber is great. And get to your case here, if you really went back and I challenge you, said, four barbers one year. How many are monetized? Not leads, but monetizable cases, came from those four, four haircuts a month, 20, you know, theoretically, 48 haircuts. You know that you’re going, you’re getting a car going, and being kind, it’s an hour, right? Yeah, right. Being kind, it’s an hour. So 48 hours a year. How many I would argue, whether you’re producing something with social skills that’s going to go out there, whether it’s you working on the next AI hack. How is that? What money is coming in from that? That said we, those of you who know you, knew that something that was a box, what DUI lawyer has a box in an arena pulls in one of the greatest cases in the state’s history. Get it so History is written by the victor, but from a DUI ROI point of view, I don’t get it.

 

Jay Ruane  10:45  

Okay. I mean, look, the reality is, I think it goes back. And this is the conversation that I need to have with a 30 year old Seth Price, not a 55 year old Seth price, you’re 55 right? 56 good. Okay, I’m 53 I don’t get what people think of me. If you had this conversation at 30 and you said, I’m not looking to scale big. I want to be comfortable. I want to be home. 

 

Seth Price  11:18  

Well, I was never that guy, so I can’t tell you. 

 

Jay Ruane  11:19  

No, I know, but, that’s I think, a part of the conversation, whether it’s analog or digital or a combination of both. If you want to scale, if you want to be eight figures, nine figures,

 

Seth Price  11:34  

let’s just say you don’t make your the whole point of this is not to make yourself essential. Everything you’re doing is making yourself essential. That’s what I don’t get.

 

Jay Ruane  11:43  

I’m making myself part of the marketing team. How many lawyers do you know who say I don’t want to be in the practice anymore? I want to do marketing. Everybody. Don’t know SEO, AEO. They know nothing about it, but they want to be involved in marketing because they think that’s the fun of going out to dinners and stuff. That’s what I’m saying. If that’s what you want to do, network with people, get to know them, meet them. 

 

Seth Price  12:05  

Don’t get there. It doesn’t do it. You’re not replacing what’s there. It’s just not like the meaning, if you, if you look, if somebody said you either, you either do it through expertise, right? Like Mark Lanier, good, top guy in the country, like he did it through expertise, right? And got so good.

 

Jay Ruane  12:23  

My name in my state, I was the guy for DUI cases, taking seminars, going.

 

Seth Price  12:28  

You also picked a good geography. Yeah, right. History is written by you planting a flag where it was older. You know, DUI lawyers. You happen to hit the right place, right time. Other people in your state that we know did it in the, you know, domestic violence space, right? They’re different. They have a protected market in some respects. So you have all the, you know, if you get the right place, I get it, there’s a brand you leverage both situations. I just talked about how to father a business. You dance with what you have. Not that either of you used it exactly for what you’re doing.

 

Jay Ruane  13:00  

Now, neither one of us used it exactly.

 

Seth Price  13:02  

No, but you had a running start. In some respects, you had a firm. It was there. There was revenue, although yours got cut off, he actually probably got cut off. So but to me, I get it. We do what we like. I found when I know for myself I love. I wish, in some respects, if I had done a B to B business, I would have loved the fact that I could have gone to networking events and part of BluShark for me. And you referenced this at the thing that I could use my B2B skills to bring a tribe together to work, and the fact that I get to spend time with buddies like Umansky, McCready and people like that, that happened to be quite great. But the idea that you are going to be in a B2C environment, and that’s why, if you go back to the old Stephen Fairleigh world, or a lot of the people who put things out there and teach you. You know, I see it with some of the other coaching programs that are online coaching programs. When you see people putting that out there. What they’re saying is, look what I’m doing in the B2B space to get clients. You can do that too, and it’s not exact. 

 

Jay Ruane  14:08  

No, I agree with you on that. 

 

Seth Price  14:09  

And even, like I see this, I’ve been to many of the major coaching programs out there that are not based out of law firms, but are, hey, this is how we built our business. You do it. And there are elements that are there. You see fundamentals, like, I’ve taken slack and bonus lead from those guys, and it’s cool, but there is an element that the B to C space needs some form of media. And again, you can do it a lot of different ways. And if you say, Hey, I’m going to have a half million, then a million dollar firm, I want to get myself a 2 million. And I’m good, could you do it through, through the network. I see a lot of guys dying on the vine, especially civil litigators, that don’t have a specific need. Civil Litigation should be everybody needs you, but networking your way to that. 

 

Jay Ruane  14:51  

And one of the problems with civil litigation is getting the people who can actually afford to do it. I mean, there’s a million people who want to sue somebody. I. Uh, you know, not, you know, not getting rid of the personal injury. You know, you’ll get a million phone calls. I want to sue this person, but it’s not monetizable, because neither party has any money, especially the one who wants to be the plaintiff and wants to hire you.

 

Seth Price  15:14  

My dad did it. He never had the internet. He did it. He was sort of an outside general counsel of trusted estates, and morphed into trusted estates with age. But, you know, he was on the bar committees and network and good work, and he built himself a perfectly great practice. But it never would. It will never, you know, as a partner within, or even essentially a unit within a firm, it’s very hard to break seven figures.

 

Jay Ruane  15:39  

Yeah, but there are a lot of lawyers out there who don’t want to break seven fingers. And that’s, that’s what I see. I mean, present company excluded, getting rid of, you know, you know Guy and Conrad and Jason and you and the people who I have respect in the SEO field, who will actually say, wait a minute, let’s, let’s talk about what your plans are, where you want to be. Because I remember years ago, you know, talking to you about that, talking to Dave Brenton about it, and being like, well, what’s your goal? Where do you want to be? That type of thing as part of that initial conversation, right? And I know these other people are doing that. You know, but the reality is not everybody wants to do it, but I see people that I have respect for, as good lawyers call me up and they say, Hey, I’m paying $3,500 a month. I get three 750 word page blogs a month for $3,500 Am I getting ripped off? And I’m like, well, there’s better be a good blog.

 

Seth Price  16:37  

Like if it’s just that, yeah, but like, is it part and like, this is the dirty secret.

 

Jay Ruane  16:41  

It’s not a part of a strategy. It’s just, hey, we’ll build you a website, and we’ll give you and and we’ll give you three blog posts a month for $3,500 and we run it as long as we go. That’s not legal SEO, necessarily, right? They’re not, they’re not well respected legal SEO. They’re not. They’re just selling a product.

 

Seth Price  17:05  

Look, I love your talk. I took notes. I’m going to create an Ask me, lawyer, anything in my Facebook thing, I have a list of stuff. Jay Ruane is a genius. Take nothing other than that from this. That said, I think that if you look at this, and I get the moat and I look, I am using a lot of offline marketing for my PI firm, doing things like the backpack giveaway that Mike Morris talks about. talking about other things in the market that will build your brand. Community involvement is good. We’re trying to figure out how to leverage reviews in a community. All these things are amazing. There’s nothing wrong with any of those that said the idea that you’re doing it yourself is almost counterintuitive to the business. You know, we had Chad Dudley on and hopefully have Tim from VISTA on shortly, just so the people who think they’re going to sell at some point to private equity can get a plan as to how to get there. And what I would argue is what you’re talking about is the antithesis there. Again, no, if somebody likes it, they want to do it, you can certainly. you will make money if you followed everything you said, no doubt my mind. are you going to make more money if you don’t go down that path? You do it limit. You have a limited piece, and you do it strategically. But you say, I’m going to take the three best ideas and leverage those and, better yet, hire somebody to execute them and leverage it. So instead of going and speaking to eight parents on a T ball field, it sounds great until you’re, you know, in the middle of, like, the early summer, sweating your, you know what, off and, like, these people don’t really care who you are, and the kids are screaming and eating your ice cream. Like, great, but what is the mat? If you look at ROI for time, what is that and how do you leverage that best? And look, the dirty secret is, in a perfect world, we’d all hire somebody for $65,000 give or take for your market. Who is going to execute on what you talked about? Right? It’s not better in that nobody’s better.

 

Jay Ruane  18:58  

Those people are unicorns, by the way.

 

Seth Price  19:01  

To try to find the problem is, you get them, they leave. It’s like a situation. I remember they had a person, the first person left after a year. The next person stayed for 12 years. History is written by the victor, great. But if you got to start somewhere. Maybe it’s the rule of threes. If you don’t hire a few, you don’t know what you need, but the idea, or maybe it’s a hybrid of the two, where they’re executing things, but you parachute in to make the Hello. But as you know, you know, I travel a bunch, and I get it, I like it. But if you’re doing those things, like I went to this thing Sunday night, I missed family dinner Sunday night for a larger it was social, but a large social, business networking type event. To me, what’s the difference if I’m in Scottsdale or whether I’m at home? If you’re not home, you’re not home. I would love the opportunity to figure out how to do this without myself, because then it’s a business, otherwise.

 

Jay Ruane  19:54  

I get that. I get that. I mean, look, the reality is, is that I. Think what people need to do is have an honest conversation with themselves about what they actually want out of their practice, and they’re out of their life and and too many people, I think, in our community, in the legal entrepreneur community, they, you know, they discover systems, they discover marketing, and they read a book or two, and next thing you know, they’re like, I’m going to scale. I’m going to scale infinitely, and that type of thing. And that’s not necessarily the right thing, but people get really, really, they get fixated on this idea of scale. And I think scale is great if that’s the firm that you want to have. But you and I both know lawyers who are like, Yeah, I’ve gotten to the place where I’m getting 1000 new intakes a year. And they turn around and they say, Boy, I really like to take my 10 Best cases and throw this whole thing away.

 

Seth Price  20:21  

But that’s all the roller coaster we all live, you know, it’s, you know, look, look, this is just be a topic for an arc, which would be, you know, there, there’s profitability as a solo, yeah, and then the moment you start adding teams people, there’s probably a significant period of time before profitability comes back. Like you start investing in things, you start adding assistance. And, you know, my law partner gave in and I had to have an intervention with a buddy of ours out of state who’s a big firm lawyer. And he’s always been going to be a white collar lawyer, like a few months ago, then he wanted to be a labor plaintiff’s labor lawyer. Because it’s so easy to get contingency face cases. I’m like, I don’t know what market you’re in, other than California. That’s true.

 

Jay Ruane  21:39  

I don’t think there’s any easy way to get plaintiffs contingency cases. I’m sorry.

 

Seth Price  21:45  

understood, and so we were trying and like, I like, to me, if somebody’s doing it, frankly, as I see the market right now, family is probably, if I’m somebody coming out of school, what’s the fastest way to make a buck where you control your own destiny? I think that I see more opportunities there. More people are getting divorced. It’s a harder thing to get talented so that if you’re great at it, you’ll control your own destiny. And we literally have to sit down with this guy and say, Look, you’re this is, you know, he’s like, I’m gonna get an associate. Like, how can you get an associate? No, work, right? Like, you know, it’s like, so the fundamentals of building need, you know, all of these different business elements that you sort of alluded to a moment ago. When you start reading some books on this, you start getting and the good news is people now have resources.

 

Jay Ruane  22:29  

There was nothing. There was nothing when we started. I mean, it was 

 

Seth Price  22:35  

and so I think, what do you want? Yes, understanding that as you scale their profitability issues, because you and you don’t control the people, and I’ve talked very publicly about the fact that as you scale more, you have mid level management issues. Each of these things, it’s a you know, and those pieces, the law becomes further away. And that’s why I think the idea that private equity is coming in when these guys know how to run businesses by numbers in should be scary to people, because so many people, and I see this inside of BluShark, are so bad at running their business and run it with emotion that are that are like, you know, completely topsy turvy from what they say, what they want, that somebody who’s running it off a dashboard is going to crush them.

 

Jay Ruane  23:19  

I agree with that. I think, I think the next decade is going to be and, I mean, here’s the other thing. And I’m curious about your opinion about this. You know, private equity coming into law at this point. You know, we are starting to see, like two thirds of the boomer class has retired, but lawyers tend to work longer than most other professions, and so I see still a significant number of 75-80 year old lawyers still showing up for work every day. My dad’s 90, still showing up. My dad’s 90. My father’s 76. He’s still showing up for work every day, you know, because it’s not a physical job, and it’s relationships, and it’s thinking, and he can still do that sitting at his desk. I wonder how that class of lawyer is going to be protected from private equity, or if they’re going to be eviscerated. And then, if that’s the case, if there is a reckoning, will the relationships be the moat that allows them to work out their

 

Seth Price  24:29  

It’s desperation mode, like but, you know, if you I look at my dad, right? He built, he built your moat. He paid his dues, he did his conferences, he did it, all that stuff, you know, sort of, and I get it, but that isn’t like to me when you’re in a room of one to $3 million lawyers trying to get to two to 5 million like this is interesting, and it can add cases. And I love it. And interpersonal. Personal at the highest end is great, but what is the value of your widget? And that’s what I sort of like, you know, if the value of the widget is a $5,000 DUI, you know, I you know, is that even worth your time going there and I scream, I would say to you, if you’re the cost of an LSA in your market is low enough that you could blow it out. Your job is to get as many fn LSAS as possible to figure out how to answer your phones quicker, figure out how to get more reviews, open an office, do all the things because, you know, if you got another 1000 LSA calls, I mean, it’s a large number, let’s take a look for every 100 LSA calls. You could get more at the rate you’re paying and the price that you’re converting to.

 

Jay Ruane  25:46  

I mean that I would do nothing else, right?

 

Seth Price  25:49  

And that’s my point. My goal for Jay is another 100 LSA calls, right. However, you have to do it. How many hours of Jay time would it take to get there, compared to 100 hours in haircuts and baseball fields, etc. if we took 50 hours of Jay time, how many more LSA calls would you get? And how many referrals that are actually monetizable? Because those LSA calls, maybe three to one, right? So are your referrals, because not all your referrals monetize, right? Some don’t have any money. Some turn out that, you know, whatever the case is, slam dunk, you can’t do it. Whatever it is. You know, the idea that you’re going to get your avatar case, which is an avatar again, you’ll get it. You’ll make money, don’t get me wrong. And you’re Jay, and like everybody else, is not Jay. So if they follow that playbook, this is the piece. How many podcasts, if we go out there, if we scraped, you know, through the podcast directory, how many people have podcasts with five or less, podcasts that are sitting there, dormant, where they started, didn’t finish it?

 

Jay Ruane  26:53  

1000s, right? But they’re not doing the stuff that they love. What I’m saying is, hey, look, analog marketing could be the way for you to create a moat, to engage with your community, get cases in and not have that spend of digital but I would need the size of the intake team, because your phone won’t be blowing up, necessarily, but you can get good cases that you can what I guess, I guess at the end of the day is, I think all Every lawyer before they start a law firm needs therapy, man, you got to figure out what you actually want. Well, because I know, I know a shit ton of lawyers who just hang a shingle and they are okay this week, it’s scale. Next week, it’s niche. The third week it’s something else.

 

Seth Price  27:32  

But I have a thing for you. I have a new rule. I’m stealing Bill Morris things, hopefully don’t sue me. Before you listen to Jay’s speech, you need to take a personality test and know, is this even possible? Because if you’re in a quadrant that that’s not possible, those people shouldn’t be allowed to listen to Jay because it’s going to hurt and that, you know, and look if you’re in the quadrant where it’s worked, it’s you’re going to like it, you’re going to do it. It may not be in your best interest monetarily, but at least you’re doing something that is a shot, and you’re not going to be the five podcast guy or the five, you know, ice creams for a little league team. You need to at least know that this is in otherwise. Look, I saw on the opposite I saw, I saw as we were listening to Charley’s speech the other day, I stayed for the one of his things where he talked about creating using AI in four different ways to create amazing landing pages for your webinars. Yeah. I mean, what he is doing is remarkable. My attitude is, who could I pay to do that? I am not going to sit there and hook that stuff up. I’m going to pay the guy who does that because it’s a better use of their time. I want the guy who’s tinkered at it for like, the last three months to come in and pay X amount of money and make that happen. And I think that that’s one of those things that we have to be careful of, that even if we like doing something, we have to be careful. Is it the thing we should be doing? And I’ll challenge you on this, and you and I have probably thought that, like I’m good at building and scaling. I get pushback from my team that the level, the pace that I’m at, is dizzying for staff. Let your management deal with it. Pull out, only speak to your management. I still think I’m 25 years old. Apparently, the 25 year olds don’t think this anymore, and that when I appear, speak or breathe, it’s not the dynamic I think I’m putting out there. So even though I would love to be able to be the team leader, rah, rah, it is not the best use of my time and will not get me the results that I want. I need to find out who, you know, the who, not how, who can be doing that?

 

Jay Ruane  29:39  

Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with you on you know, if you’re not that person, you shouldn’t be doing it. And it’s the same thing, I guarantee you, you have run into dozens, if not hundreds, of lawyers who want to sit down and talk with you about SEO, but they conflate the term between organic placement and generic placement, like they don’t. I know the lingo, but they’re trying to sound smart. And it’s like, you know what, if you want to talk about this stuff, spend a little time. You’re smart. You gotta, you gotta, JD like to do a little blog reading and get to know the things that you’re talking about. But you know, at the end of the day, lawyers are lazy, and that’s probably why they, you know, defer towards digital, because they could write a check and not have to think.

 

Seth Price  30:22  

I don’t think it’s lazy. I think it works. I mean, it doesn’t work. And like everything else, you know, it works.

 

Seth Price  30:29  

Depends what your resources are, what your resources are, if you’re starting square one in LA with no digital presence, it’s going to be an uphill battle. Yeah.

 

Jay Ruane  30:38  

So what would you do? So say I want to hang a shingle in Atlanta for PI wouldn’t you want me to build a moat and relationships? And like

 

Seth Price  30:49  

I think that that’s one way to go. The other is, and I did this with Kate Perry, and back in the day you built you put you. He wants an office in Atlanta. God bless. We are going to go to Western Georgia, and we’re going to own Western Georgia, but the case is monetized the same way. And for three and we were able to get for $3,000 a month, he was able to be, literally number one for Western Georgia. Now you got to know, again, he’s now a mediator. You have to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. But my point is, the answer is, you leverage. What’s there? There are times, you know, like if you said, hey, I want to buy real estate, and New York is saturated. Go west, young man, you went, you went to Chicago. Chicago is too expensive. You go to Denver. Denver’s too expensive. That’s how you got to LA so it’s where you can go and find it? Or you say, You know what? I’m going to find a way to get myself there. I’m going to pay my dues. I’ll do the relationship things long enough to get really to get there and then, and then I’m going to figure it out. There’s no one way.

 

Jay Ruane  31:51  

But my message is, don’t stop doing digital, but pay attention to analog, because with everybody zigging towards digital, and that becoming a, you know, a very red ocean look towards analog for your blue ocean opportunities. 

 

Seth Price  32:10  

And what I’m saying is, I think it is harder than we think, in that people aren’t even out that much anymore. Where do you go? Like, it’s one of those. It is. Whereas, if you’re like, Hey, I’m going to own the, you know, the trial, you know, I’m going to do the lawyer associations and be known as, I’m going to say I’m the DUI guy there, brilliant. And you’ve done it. God bless. And then other stuff comes because they trust you for everything. But to sort of say that the average criminal lawyer trusted, it is a really big slog to get your cases straight that way.

 

Jay Ruane  32:46  

If you’re gonna go analog, you have to be remarkable about something. 

 

Seth Price  32:50  

And if you’re remarkable, I’d rather you be on a webinar or a dinner meeting with 15 to 100 people than I would and your job is to figure out how to get butts and seats to show your amazingness and build that. Then do the one on one. One on ones are great. I did it. I built it, but it’s also a very long game. And as you start out, this is the part that I’m going to land the plane with. And hopefully we can come back for another episode with a different angle on this. But when we started, this is one of those things that’s, you know, you and I have a little bit of gray hair, a lot of gray hair. And our friends are now at the point where they’re now owning firms and partners at larger firms, etc. When you start out, you’re growing together. And it’s I always thought, I’m just going to find the old guys, which I guess I am now, and they’re going to refer to me and in general, with rare exceptions, we refer to people of our peer group as we get older. Get Lucky once in a while, but it’s a long game, and those early years are tough that way. So you’re building a moat. I love it. I love the fact, but that mode is not going to sustain a growing firm. It’s a smaller piece of it. And I’ll take a Richard Harris who did relationship marketing at scale? But he was in a ripe market for it. Everybody comes to Vegas and gets injured. He loves it. He’s part of it. He put a trade show floor circuit together where it goes to the national things, where I’m your Vegas guy. I get that at scale. He has a warehouse to do his gifting. But on a smaller scale, it’s just not going to be that interesting.

 

Jay Ruane  34:20  

All right. Well, there you have it, folks. It’s a little analog versus digital. Where should you be? And I wonder where you land on this, this question that’s before you. So if you do have an opinion, please let us know in the comments down below, either in our law firm blueprint, Facebook group or live on LinkedIn. Please. We’ll be monitoring the comments and making sure that you do it. Of course, that’s going to do it for us this week here on the law firm blueprint if you want to take us along, you can take us wherever you get your podcast by subscribing to the law firm blueprint podcast. Be sure to give us a five star review, and you can just live on LinkedIn and live in our Facebook group. 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, every. Thursday. That’s gonna do it for me. J B, Wayne, he is Seth, price. I am Mr. Analog. He is Mr. Digital. Well, you know, if we thought maybe a couple years ago, maybe that would have been a good, a good name for this, but I like the law firm blueprint. It’s got some stickiness. So that’s gonna do for me. Seth, anything else? No, that’s it all. Right, fantastic. Thanks for being with us, folks. Bye for now, bye.