BluShark Digital 0:00
Welcome to the conference connection. Your go-to place to get the scoop on what conferences are coming up that you need to know about. Here are your hosts. Paul Faust, president of RingBoost, and Seth Price, founder of BluShark Digital and managing partner of Price Benowitz.
Paul Faust 0:17
What’s up, everybody? Paul Faust, here from Ringboost.com, always with my co-host, Seth Price from Price Benowitz and BluShark, with another edition of Conference Connection, and we don’t have one guest today. We got two industry leaders, dear friends, putting on their own conference. Want to have them on to tell you what’s going on. But Seth, I will let you take it away.
Seth Price 0:17
First look. We got Gyi and Conrad. And as normal, Paul. Paul makes a quick appearance, then takes off. But Conrad, who I think I’ve known for just about as long as anybody in this space, and his wingman Gyi, sounds like you got a very exciting thing coming up. Want to hear what’s going on?
Gyi Tsakalakis 0:54
Conrad, tell the people what we’re doing.
Conrad Saam 0:57
We just totally blew that. It’s we got a great setup from Seth, and then he and I were being passively aggressively polite, letting either of us enter the introduction. So, you know.
Gyi Tsakalakis 1:09
Well, it wasn’t that great. I was called your wingman.
Conrad Saam 1:12
By the way, why are we joining you in your bedroom? I’ve done so many recordings. I’ve never been in a bedroom with you before, Gyi.
Gyi Tsakalakis 1:19
This is late, it’s late. This is my Labor Day weekend bedroom, another in-laws. Going out in the water and stuff. So that’s what you do. Okay, if
Seth Price 1:28
You need the excuse, this, this, this recording will go on for the next 12 hours. If you can’t spend time with the in-laws and you must be in the bedroom by yourself, just use that as an excuse.
Gyi Tsakalakis 1:38
I put it on my calendar until Tuesday, so it’s blocked out the next three days.
Paul Faust 1:42
All right, guys.
Seth Price 1:44
Tell us about what, what is the legendary marketing conference going to be all about?
Conrad Saam 1:48
So Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Summit, September 22 to 24 in Las Vegas. We, the four of us, have probably been to, I bet if you added up 1000 Legal Marketing conferences. And they’re very similar, and I’m part of the problem, he’s less of the problem because he has more.
Seth Price 1:53
He’s more than the rest of us.
Conrad Saam 2:13
But you know.
Gyi Tsakalakis 2:16
Thanks!
Conrad Saam 2:16
They’re similar. The content is similar. The speakers are similar. The audience is similar. What has really fundamentally changed over the last five years is the extent to which these are pay to pitch sponsorships. And by the way, I do it, Seth, I know you do it. Gyi is better than both of us, so he doesn’t do it.
Gyi Tsakalakis 2:36
I’m not. I have no problem with it, as long as the conference organizers..
Seth Price 2:42
Higher bar than us.
Conrad Saam 2:43
He’s a higher bar. That’s fine. We can all accept that, but you end up with the same people telling the same stuff to the same audience. And we wanted to kind of disintermediate that, and so we changed the audience a little bit. What we’re really looking for at the Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Summit is specifically designed for in-house marketers. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re not going to let lawyers show up, but you really have to have that leadership in house marketing function for this conference to be even mildly valuable for you. And the other thing that we’ve done is we’ve completely wiped the slate on speakers. So with with the exception of me and Gyi, I believe there are two, only two speakers that I recognize from the speaking circuit out of 22 overall. So we’re really bringing new people to light. We’ve got CMOS, we’ve got law firm owners, and we are bringing up stuff that is fundamentally different, because we have a new speaker set.
Seth Price 3:46
That’s awesome. And look, I think that that’s one of those untapped areas, the CMO space is become like when we started, the CMO didn’t exist. And now, and like, CMO is probably an overused term. It’s probably the director of marketing. We’re keeping the terms legit and real and that now the fractional cmo has become a thing. But the idea that
Conrad Saam 4:07
Doesn’t fractional CMO just mean I’m unemployed right now?
Seth Price 4:10
It could or it means that you, nobody can really afford you on your own, and they need, you need to spread out over a number of clients, which
Gyi Tsakalakis 4:17
It’s called consultants.
Seth Price 4:18
Yeah, we talk about having a COO or CFO. and real world, those are 250, $300,000 salaries. Most of the audience is not going to pay that. And they, frankly, shouldn’t, and they should get their director and then have somebody. But the idea that we coach have a place for these people to call their own, and that where everybody knows their name is freaking awesome, because I think it’s one of the biggest challenges we face as an agency, and I face in house, which is, you know, there’s an owner of the firm, and there’s somebody who’s got to be able to direct the marketing efforts, especially working with outside agencies. And it’s, it’s very often an area that doesn’t have as much education as the law firm owners. There’s certain groups out there. That literally only allow the owners to come to and the fact that you found a place where, I think is awesome.
Gyi Tsakalakis 5:07
Yeah, thanks. And, you know, for me, it just kind of dovetailing what Conrad said, you know, curating the speakers, like we just had our speaker prep call the other day, and seeing everybody’s face all in one place on the Zoom. Like I had a moment where I was like, Man, this is I’m so grateful that these people are contributing. Because, again, to your point, Seth, like, these are the people that are in the firms actually doing the doing. And, you know, as agency folks, like, you know, we talk a lot to the law firm owners and the lawyers or managing partners and that kind of stuff. But you know, really, like, there’s so much education with so many of them, where these folks are the people who are. They know what it takes to hold vendors accountable and do vendor management. They know how to the intersection of local marketing, event marketing, community marketing with digital, and like we’re just seeing so much value in that aspect of marketing law firms so super exciting and super pumped.
Paul Faust 6:04
Well, yeah, it’s also great that the forum owners aren’t going to conferences and then going back and having to try and relay third level information.
Conrad Saam 6:13
We know what he’s saying. Go ahead, directly there.
Seth Price 6:16
I speak to people I mean as much pushing they don’t have talent to translate information, because for two reasons. One, they learn it and then let it be filtered through me. But the second is, it’s almost parenting. And I’m sure Conrad can agree with this on both levels, both personally and professionally, which is, if you tell your kids and or an employee what to do, it may or may not happen, maybe about a 30% chance, but if it’s their idea, it’s going to be about an 80% chance of happening. And the idea that you are then educating and motivating the people that you want to have execute these things and opening their eyes to what’s possible, rather than you coming, filtering, bringing back, I think, is tremendous
Conrad Saam 6:59
You’re a better parent than I am, Seth. I think that this is further complicated by what I will call the typical path to marketing leadership within a law firm. It has very stereotypically gone from like I used to be the person who was under, you know, 35 years old. So they gave me the digital stuff to do, and then I have grown up in that path, and my only exposure has been what I’ve done at this firm. And that’s a really, really hard and lonely place to be. And so it’s, it’s the very rare firm that will go out and get an off-industry, CMO, who has really years of experience under her belt to nail it. And so part of what we want to do with this conference, I want to take, I want to accelerate the careers of those people who are coming up through the ranks by exposure to a bunch of different stuff, because you’re not getting it working at Smith Jones and Murphy by yourself, you’re just not right.
Seth Price 8:00
I think, sure, go ahead, Gyi.
Gyi Tsakalakis 8:01
Well, I was gonna say the other thing that I think about in this with the conference thing in general is is like, yes, you go to learn, but we know this from having done the over 1000 conferences between us, it’s the relationships that you make, and so being able to connect with people who are dealing with the same issues that you can bounce ideas off to keep those conversations going even beyond the conference. Because, let’s face it, speakers get up there, they have 45 minutes to an hour to try to teach you something. You might pick something up. You might get a couple nuggets from that you can take back. But it’s the relationships and meeting these people that are dealing with the same issues that you’re dealing with across the country that you can follow up with, that you can ask questions of, like, hey, what software are using? Hey, what partners do you like? Hey, how are you handling intake? How are you solving this intake problem? That’s the stuff that I think is the real point to go to the conference, because you can watch YouTube videos of how to like, do intake, right? It’s totally different when you’ve got a relationship with someone that you trust. So you can have these conversations throughout the year,
Seth Price 8:58
Right. And in a lot of firms, the marketing department is isolated. So you have ownership, you have a firm, and then you have somebody who may be themselves, may have a small, modest team, but the idea that they are on that island, and finding the just like we found each other a gazillion years ago, when lawyers didn’t go to these conferences, and there was, there was no intersection, having, having that community, I think, is tremendous. So before we wrap up, Conrad Gyi, remind us where and when it is, and who do you want to see there?
Conrad Saam 9:27
September 22 and 24 in Las Vegas. If you are an in-house marketing person, you should go pitch, and if you want to get Gyi, or me on the phone with your managing partner to get a green light to spend that money. Do so, right? We’re happy, happy to make that happen. If you’re an in-house marketer who’s looking to elevate your firm, you should come. If you are a law firm owner who wants to elevate your marketing, because a lot of that sits on your shoulders, you should come. In fact, if you have both of those things, you guys should both come and sit at separate tables. You can sign up at lunchhourlegalmarketing.com would love to have you
Seth Price 10:05
Gyi, you get the last word,
Gyi Tsakalakis 10:07
Yeah, I would just echo, if anybody who is either you’re, you’re looking to get into the career as an in-house marketer, you’re an existing in house marketer, or your law firm owner that’s trying to make the jump to, I need to find a CMO, and you want to talk to CMOS about the types of skills that they want, the talent getting. You know candidates like this is the conference for you.
Seth Price 10:28
Well, thank you, gentlemen. On behalf of Paul and myself, we very much. Thank you for your time, and wish you well in the inaugural event.
Gyi Tsakalakis 10:29
Can’t wait to see you, Seth. I’m sure I’ll see you at an upcoming conference. Love the conference connection. Great ideas.
BluShark Digital 10:42
Thank you for tuning in to the conference connection. Make sure to hit subscribe if you haven’t already, and we will see you for our next episode.
