In this week’s live episode Seth & Jay talk with John Fisher, lawyer, author, and founder of The Mastermind Experience about his new book “The Law Firm Of Your Dreams”
Also they talk with Nalini about the value of directory solicitations we all get by mail.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Thursday, August 28. edition of maximum growth lives. I am one of your hosts, Jay Ruane. With me, down in DC, Seth Price. Seth, how’re you doing this week?
Doing well, doing well. I was in New York City this, this weekend, and I saw how rough it is. It was, it was, it was tough. And I come back with a renewed sort of vigor to, to put things in place to make sure that we are bulletproofing ourselves going forward.
Excellent. Well, as everybody who’s watching knows, we are a member of the maximum lawyer media family, and if you want to get any information, you can join maximum lawyer at maximumlawyer.com. We’re sponsored, of course, by Seth’s firm, BluShark, and my firm, Firm Flex, and we have got a jam-packed show for you this week. Okay, so, today we have two great guests on the show. First of all, we’re going to have Nalini Prasad, she’s going to be talking about directories and digital marketing, and quite frankly, developing leads by way of directories, and I think that’s an important topic for all of our listeners. And then, of course, we also have our good friend, John Fisher, who’s going to be with us talking about his new book and referral marketing, because that tends to be his real strength with his growth of the mastermind experience. Seth, let me ask you one question though before we really start, how are you growing your firm this week?
You know, two things. One, we have a pretty substantial intake team, or we call a client management team, rounding that out, a little nerve-racking because revenue is not back exactly where it was, but I’m building a bigger stronger team than ever. And secondly, going back to finding new, you know, labor, new lawyers that we can put into our firm that can help us grow. We, we curl back a little bit during the pandemic, looked at the things that weren’t profitable and tried to remove those. I want to go back to planting some more seeds because I feel right now, we are, we’re ready, and that we almost can see, we can see where we’re going to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s time to sort of start getting ourselves ready for that moment.
I love that, I love that analogy. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. We don’t know how long the tunnel is going to be, but there is a light, we can see it, and let’s move forward, but I think the first thing we need to do is let’s bring in the lady. Let’s take a few moments, and get some sponsors, I’ll get Nalini up on the call, and then we can talk a little bit about directories developing leads from them. That’s an important part of anybody’s marketing plan. So, let’s get that set up first, what do you say, Seth?
Sounds great.
All right, give us a second. Hear from our sponsors and we’ll be right back with Nalini.
In this world today, if you want to grow your business, you want to grow your firm, you want to take on more cases, and make a bigger impact, you have to have a digital blueprint. Statistically, throughout the time that we’ve been working with BluShark Digital, our law firm, the Atlanta divorce law group grew over 14,100%. They truly understand where we’re headed, and how we want to get there. I have a team in BluShark Digital that I feel like has my back.
And we’re back with our good friend Nalini, and this is a question I think I have for both of you today because I showed up at my office today, I haven’t been here in a couple of weeks, and this is what I see, right? It’s, it’s a ton of mail and it’s a ton of mail from people asking me to send them $299, $499, $999 to get a link in their America’s top, you know, people who have live Facebook shows and, you know, Shelton Connecticut’s number five, this, and it’s like every week I’m getting a different, a different solicitation. They all seem to want, you know, a couple of 100 bucks for a plaque and a link in their online list, and I’ve never heard of these organizations, but it tells me I’m one of the top 100 lawyers in my neighborhood, which is amazing because I only know of one other lawyer in my neighborhood, but Seth, is there any value to these letters? And what I can do with it? Because I know I’m not the only lawyer getting it.
Right. Great question, and first, I would say what I have done as sort of my, to get me through the day, I opened them up and put them in a frame, so instead of paying the $600 to get the plaque, I get… Seriously, and I literally do that and give them to my law partner, Dave, who gets annoyed, but there are, let’s put in three categories, right? The first is a sort of, like from the point of view of you’re a brand-new lawyer, or you have lawyers working for you and you need something on their wall, and the plaque is less than $200. It cost you 200 hours to get a good plaque, God bless, even though it’s nonsense, half the time, you know, that’s something that could check a box. Let’s put that aside. The second question is, and I think you were alluding to this, is there any SEO value? That’s returned to the lady, how do we, how can somebody tell if a given organization, whether or not it’s a prestigious award or not, whether being included in the directory means anything? What does somebody have to do, Nalini?
Yeah, absolutely, and we get this a lot, a lot of people get the same questions, and the emails you’re getting, and they say, hey, should I do this? Or should I not? Like, what is it worth? And so, I think we’re gonna talk about, you know, the actual things that are worth much more when you’re getting them placed as like for lead gen, but for these particular best lawyers in the world, we look at the website that you get actually listed in the directory for, right? Because it says, you get this added bonus. And we look at what the technology of that website looks like. Does it have real lawyers listed? Is it just that everyone gets to be listed? What’s its domain authority of it? What’s the trust factor? What’s the actual value of that link juice? And at the end of the day, if it is ridiculous and spammy, you don’t want anything to do with it, right? If it does look pretty good, and it actually looks like maybe it’s not everyone in the world that’s getting the award, and there is some good technical value to it, then we say, hey, that, that might be interesting, let’s explore it further.
Right. So, the, you know, and with these, there are ones you’re not going to get letters from, Nalini, that have real value, right? HG historically has been one, better in the old days but still a value Justia power directory you can get in, you know, so that outside of just the letter piece, there are directories some paid some not that, you know, generally people want to be in. Can you explain the difference between sort of the link juice effect and the Google Local, the nap effect?
Yeah, absolutely. So, for a lot of these, like you mentioned, HG is excellent. So, they have so much domain authority on their website and a lot of, you know, about just the two, let’s use Jesse as the example. Actually, I just talked to somebody who said, whenever you look up anything for a divorce lawyer in Miami, you’re gonna want 100% C just to rank number one, right? And so, to be able to put yourself on that website, be associated with that website, whether it’s a paid ad to keep you at the top, that’s getting you visibility, right? That’s, that’s the organic, but on top of that, just being listed to get the lead gen, there’s the ability of this citation that says just mentioned, and that’s having your name, your address, and phone number associated with these powerhouse websites that are going to match your Google My Business exactly. When you have your name, address and phone number match exactly, Google is able to attribute the juice from these powerful mega house sites to your Google My Business, which gives you that extra juice that makes you seem like the person that consumers are engaging with a good answer to be in that local three pack. So, there is that value for the local side by just having the name, address and phone number match exactly.
Just to clarify, generally, that’s not the pack of letters you got, Jay, those are generally well-domain authority, there may or may not be any value, that’s where you would do the test to see if there’s something there, but as a once a year fee, those could potentially be, let’s say something is $300 on a monthly basis. That’s not that much, If it’s a viable link from something that has some domain authority as other lawyers on it, you could spend your money in a worse way plus you might get a plaque for the wall when it starts getting to $1,000, that’s where it could get really dicey because you could use that money for other legitimate link building purposes.
Yeah, I just did a quick check, I mean, it’d be about three grand if I answered every single one of these, and I’m thinking that money could be better spent elsewhere, especially for a younger lawyer who’s starting to grow.
Generally, so, and the ones Nalini spoke of right, you know, in the beginning, those are the ones that we say look at first before those, but everybody wants to, you know, everybody wants to check out what they got in their hands. You can go to, you can go to AOH refs, you can check out what’s going on and look at it if you want to do the homework yourself to see if is there some possible good and what you got. The third and final component of this, which dovetails, right? Is there a link juice? The set, the final piece, is it possible you might actually get clients? Again, less likely with your stack of letters, but there are top 100 directories and others that have some legitimate value. We had Keith Givens on a few weeks ago, that is one that has elevated itself and now has, you know, there’s a great networking component, a conference behind it, there are some accouterments with it, but in general, when you’re looking at a fine law, a lawyers.com, or a Super Lawyers, you now have a lot of money, not paid annually but paid monthly. Nalini, what are some of the ways that lawyers can sort of figure out, are they actually getting cases from being in those directories? Or do they just feel good about it because it is coming up in the searches, but they’re not actually receiving any of the benefits from the people being high up in the directory on that Miami search?
Yeah, absolutely. So, within your website, you can have these tracking numbers, right? You can also put these tracking numbers on these specific directory listings and so you’re able to see which ones actually came from find law, which ones came from Super Lawyers. It’s another extra easy way to look at data and say, this is where this came from without you having to go through your CRM, and figure out where it came from, you can have dedicated landing pages if you wanted to get really intense into it, but I would, I would kind of say not to do that because if you get one bite at the apple to put your website and to get a backlink on your specific directory listing or on this listing, you don’t want to put it to a landing page, you want to put it to your homepage or your, your DUI page or your car accident page, right? But yeah, the tracking numbers are gonna go very far and these tracking numbers are not going to confuse Google since they have added that additional phone number field in your name, address, and phone number on the back end of Google My Business, they understand that people are tracking in this way now.
That’s a big takeaway, make sure you have both your main number and your tracking number on your profile. Otherwise, you can confuse Google. So, it’s not just throwing up a new number to track it, it’s to make sure that Google knows that that number is associated with you.
And as a final question, Nalini, what about using call rail from those directories to help people? How could you use call rail to help add another layer of trackability to figure out if is there ROI?
Yeah, absolutely. So, call rail is a very robust program that will have those tracking numbers for you. It’s going to be dynamic, it’s going to actually tell you, you know, what time, when did this come in, what page did that person land on or go on your site on, how interested were they, right? How much time did they spend on your site… A lot of that tied in with your analytics can give you so many more data points to understand what kind of valuable traffic is coming from that listing, not just how many people picked up the phone from the listing and called you and said, hey, I want to hire you, right? So, a lot of different variables can be added in there. The one thing though that I do want to ask Seth about, because I hear it all the time is, well, Super Lawyers, you know, we get all these crazy terrible ones that are $200 a year to buy, but Super lawyers tend to be one of the ones that are actually revered and people do appreciate it. It’s highly regarded. How do you feel generally about Super lawyers? You touched on it very for like a second or…
Yeah, no, it’s, look, like many of these, it has some really great rankings in the search engine results, is not inexpensive. I, myself, have used it and have seen ROI, it seems that it is where generally I find that it’s lawyers from out of the market looking for people to refer to. I have found, we happen to have a great Super lawyers rep, which I can’t say much for good for Thomson Reuters, but Super Dave is amazing, If anybody wants to be in touch with him, I’m happy to push you to him. He’s generally pushed me to three-year contracts, which sounds crazy, and has a lot of risks but the pricing comes down enough that I can justify it and get ROI whereas, generally, the inflated price of the one-year contracts are so high that it’s very hard to see an ROI. That said, you know, when things stop for instance, at Geno’s when criminals stopped, they were not particularly great about saying, hey, we know our traffic dropped, here’s some money back, you know, we’re, Salesforce was great about that. Thomson Reuters was not so, you know, long-term contracts are not great, but the only way that I found it to work is to get the price low enough in specific niches that you can convert.
That’s great advice. And then the one thing that Seth said there was, was, you know, the third item was how do we get consumers out of this? Or how do we get clients to convert with this? And I think a lot of you out there listening right now will say well, I don’t care, I’ll pay the 200 and I’ll go up to $900. I’ll get three of them and I’ll put them on my website because then to consumers, they’re like, well, this person’s amazing, they’ve got all these different awards, right? And the one thing that I caution there is, yes, it can look good. Yes, you can mark that up on your about me page. Google can learn you have these awards, but you want to be careful with how they sound, right? Because a lot of your consumers may say, oh, well, he’s got 10 awards, that’s a lot, that’s crazy. Let me look something up on this guy. And if they then see crazy articles about fake that award is or how easy it is to get the award, if they’re really looking into it, and it just, it hurts you more than it helps you, right? So, being careful on that side of things too from the consumer side.
Well, here’s my response. Get these letters, and they’re going in the garbage for me. I mean, seriously, I’ve got plenty of stuff on my walls, I don’t need to be, you know, the best top 100 lawyers in my building. So, I don’t think there’s much value in it. For me, I think I can take that money and put it elsewhere to get something out of it.
But Jay, before we get-go, move on to John, I would argue that for a junior lawyer, for an associate who looks like they’re 12 years old, the idea that you’re giving them something, hopefully, don’t pick the garbage ones, but the idea that you put a few plaques on there, it’s nice for the clients, I think it makes the attorney feel good, that a few $100 spent strategically is not a bad way to go.
Oh, absolutely, and I agree with you. I will absolutely nominate my associates for the top 40 under 40 from National Trial Lawyers, it’s a legit organization. We’ve spoken there, we’ve attended there, there are heavy hitters in that organization to be considered part of that crowd? Absolutely. It is something I think of value, but, you know, the, you know, best, you know, green shoot-wearing lawyers of 06606 don’t really provide much value. And if you dig deeper, certainly that’s going to be a problem for prospective clients, especially on some big money cases where they’re doing a lot of due diligence, I would suspect. So, Nalini, thanks that helped me really sort of make this decision. Seth, great way to frame it there. What I’d like to do now is take a quick moment, a quick break. I’ve got John ready to come in, so we’ll take a quick word from our sponsors, and then when we get back, we’ll have John Fisher, talking about his new book and a bunch of other things. So, we look forward to that. Thank you, Nalini. Thank you for being with us and we’ll see you again soon. All right, thank you, folks. We’ll be right back.
Welcome, John. John Fisher, a man in this circle that needs no introduction. The lawyer, the mastermind leader, and the author of his second book, the law firm of your dreams. Welcome, John, to the podcast.
Hey, hey, thanks. Thanks.
John, I mean, the most generous lawyer I know, by far the most generous lawyer right now.
You know, we talk a lot about law firm growth and different techniques used, and it is unbelievable to have watched you and gotten to know you over the last several years. And how you through giving is, lack of a better term, whether it’s building a mastermind that you help subsidize or writing books to give people direction. You’ve created a tribe and a following that has created a referral network that appears to be unparalleled. Talk to us a little bit, was this with a plan? Was this accidental? You know, everybody who’s heard you speak knows of how you left the firm to start your own practice, but where did this idea of building raving fans to John Fisher come in?
Well, Seth, I have to correct one thing you said, I didn’t necessarily leave a firm. I was fired. So, I was fired from a firm that I loved where I worked for 14 years. It was a nationally prominent, catastrophic injury law firm, and I was doing exactly what I love, which is trying cases. I love to be in a courtroom, I love interacting with clients. And, Jay, he once said to me that when you’re cross-examining police officers on a DUI case, that is when like, your blood is flowing and you’re just feeling the moment, I feel exactly the same way. You and I are so much alike in that sense. I love the courtroom, I love the practice of law. I wouldn’t give up anything forward but in June of 2010 I was left with no choice, I was fired. And fortunately for me, about, with this firm that had about 25 employees, about half of the clients were, were mine. So, I took them with me, and the firm basically got gutted at that point. And, what I had learned relatively early in my career, and the epiphany was that my clients are not catastrophic injury victims, but lawyers who can refer me a steady stream of cases, one after the next. And so, the mindset revolution for me was thinking of lawyers as clients as opposed to injury victims, because if you have one catastrophic injury case from one client, that client not going to come back to you with another case, and their family members not going to have another case, so that’s, that’s a dead well, it’s dried up. But if you have a relationship with a prominent influential lawyer who can send you case after case, there’s about, and Jay, you brought this point really home to me, was our firm has 408 referral partners, but that’s kind of misleading because of those 408, how many really send us to work on a steady basis? There are about four law firms that are just a steady flow of work and the other 404, you know, we might get one referral every two or three years from some of the firms so it’s focusing on your bread and butter, cultivating that and so all of the stuff that we’ve done… I was away last week on vacation, and one of my family members said to me, did you finally figure out how to make money on the mastermind experience? And I said, no, we lose money every time. When we were in Chicago, we lost about 30 grand on that one mastermind, I’m like, that’s the best use of money I’ve ever done because I’m around people like you, people who are smarter, brighter, doing things bigger than I am, and I’m just soaking in the wisdom of people. And to me, if you and I, if you go to a seminar, you’re going to drop about five grand anyway, on, you know, the registration fee and all this other stuff. If we do a mastermind, and I dropped five or 10 grand on it, big deal. That’s the same thing as a seminar. But what I’m getting is not just the wisdom, but we’re getting referrals, Jay referred a criminal case in Connecticut a few months ago, and all of the lawyers in our mastermind, which is about roughly 200 lawyers, we do cross-refer cases to each other, but more importantly, we help each other constantly build, because the biggest problem I see with plaintiffs’ lawyers is that we try to hoard all the knowledge to ourselves instead of giving it away, and that takes us to the book, I just, when I first came up with the power of a system, I told my partners I was a non-equity partner at a firm, but they treated me really well there, I mean, I had no reason to leave. And basically, they just said to me, you know, what are you going to do to market, I said, look, I’m going to write every policy and system that we’ve got, and just give it all away in a book, and they started laughing hysterically at me like that is the dumbest thing that they’d ever heard. But I have to tell you if no one else is doing it, that’s more reason why you should. And so, the book is now in three law schools, and it is, I’m trying to get it into every law school in the state of New York. But what this is, this is sort of the entry point to all national and regional and statewide, speaking engagements, people I don’t even know are contacting me about, because of this book. They don’t know me, and they’re saying, can you speak to our group? As like, well, what on earth do I know about title insurance or real estate law? They said we don’t care. We just want you to speak to our group. So, this opens up so many doors, and it has, oh, it is expanded our mastermind. People come to our mastermind, and they’ll say, why did you come? And they’ll say because I wanted to meet the person who wrote the power of a system. That is, that, that is a really cool thing. And what I can share with both of you is, there is not an original idea in my head. These books are basically the collective wisdom that has been shared with me by other people that… I have done one thing unique, I documented all of it, I put it on paper, and I shared it with the world. And that is something if you look at the great people throughout American history, or, you know, Charles Darwin or the Wright brothers were these really, truly original ideas that…
They were not and I’ll tell you, the Wright Brothers stole an idea from Gustav Whitehead. Here in Bridgeport, Connecticut actually had the very first plane, and I’m gonna make that stand right now. North Carolina, Kitty Hawk is not where the first plane flew. It was here in Bridgeport, Connecticut. So, I just want to make that point.
Well, and that was the point, which was Charles Darwin did not create the theory of evolution. There was someone before him who came up with the idea, but they didn’t, they kept it to themselves, and they hoarded the information. And just like the Wright Brothers, were not the ones who created flight, someone else did. But, unless you take your knowledge and put it out there and give it to the world, then, you’re not accomplishing anything. So, if I’ve done one thing right, that’s it. I’ve taken the knowledge and idea that I’ve gotten from incredible people like both of you, and I put it on paper and I’ve shared it with everyone. You know, we were at a seminar, I do these local seminars for County Bar Association’s, and we’re eating dinner afterward and my wife said to me, do you don’t really share everything that you know with these people? It’s like, Of course, I do, because number one, I do believe in the abundance mindset sharing is a wonderful thing. It helps grow our profession. And number two, how many of these lawyers are actually going to do any of the things that we talked about? Maybe one of that…
It was what, for me, whether it’s the intake, or whether it’s BluShark and talking about SEO, I, people say you’re crazy, why would you talk about everything you do? but, A, the odds are nobodies actually do it. If they do, great, let that person do it. The idea is, you know, you’ve given away information, the last two books, and one of the things I love about the books, and when you see this book, it’s a heavy book. And one of the things that I think, not only is the substance good, but what I was really intrigued with is, you were one of the first people that pivoted from the pamphlet book that was written sort of as, you know, to get an email address as a lead funnel, and instead said, you know what? This can be done in a way that it has not just good information, but it feels like something of substance, and that seems to be a jump that most lawyers haven’t made.
Seth, I have to tell you something. I totally abhor the whole idea that you have to write a book. I am not sold on that concept at all. If you have it in your heart and soul, and Jay, I just got off the phone with Asia earlier, and she wrote a book called Unpacked, I just bought it. And I said, Asia, if this isn’t your passion, if you’re, if this isn’t your heart and soul to do it, then give that gift to the world because you owe it to them. My, one of my favorite authors is Seth Godin. And I heard him speak in DC about two years ago, and he came up to me, and we talked and he said, you know what? When I started writing a blog post, I didn’t have an audience of anyone, but I felt in my heart and soul, I had to share my message with the world, and so, I just kept writing. And then I developed one follower, two followers, and now it’s in the millions. He’s one of the biggest influencers in the world because he realized the value of sharing his message, even if it’s with one person. And I feel like all these people writing these mini guides, and you hear it on the marketing circles, you’ve got to have a book, that is total BS, because these books are garbage. And, but if you’re writing, if you’ve got in your heart and soul, and you write the definitive book about DUI, and Jay, I can tell you there’s a lawyer in Albany, New York, who wrote the definitive, in New York, it’s called driving while intoxicated, the definitive book. Now, it’s in every law school in New York State, the guy gives interviews everywhere, seminars. In other words, he knows how to use it, and I think that same thing with our book. When I first printed came out with the manuscript for the power of a system, my book publisher said, you’ve got way too much content, that’s enough for three books. I said, screw it, put it all in there, we want to jam-pack as much information as we can give in this book. And this book, the law firm of your dreams, it’s over 500 pages. I said, screw it, put it all in there, give everything away. And so, what I did was, with the law firm of your dreams, I put in my best content for jury selection, trial skills, expert witnesses, negotiating your best settlement in mediation, nuts to bolts, everything that I do. And, some might say to me, wait a minute, what if a defense attorney gets a hold of this stuff? They could, you know, they know all your systems, you’re giving them way too much credit, nobody’s going to do that. They’re not going to read my book, these guys. I’m not, even if they do, more power to them. In my last case, a defense attorney said to me, he tried to screw with me after the settlement, he tried to introduce confidentiality, and I said, you, dude, you’ve read my book, you know that I will not agree to confidential settlements, and I never have. And it goes, John, I know that but you’re the only attorney who has ever done this with. You know what? I don’t care. I think that we live for a bigger purpose, and that bigger purpose, at least for what, I do is not served by having confidential settlements, and I want the world to know, and if you are any of your audience asks me about any case I’ve ever handled, I’ll share every detail with you because I’ve never agreed to a confidential settlement. And Jay, that is the power of living with a purpose, and the core values which you see to the, my shoulder behind me, those are purpose values and mission. We live by that stuff every day. But I think, Seth, getting back to your point, If somebody loves to write and they’re, they’re really hardcore, passionate about it, write the definitive book, don’t write these little guides. I can’t stand them, in my opinion, they go right in the garbage can.
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting that you bring that up. In doing what you love, in order to grow your practice, there’s something that Seth and I have talked about on prior shows. And it brings up an important part for me, and I think this is something that our audience needs to hear, what you need to do is find out, number one, what you love and what you’re good at executing and focus on that. And I’m gonna give you some examples, America Online, grew exponentially because the person in charge of their growth had a background in direct mail. That’s why we all got all of those CDs and direct mail, group on, its growth, people had a background in email marketing, and so a group by way of an email list. Whatever growth metric and tool you’re gonna use, can be successful, if you actually apply yourself to it, and really kind of go all in, right? And that’s one of the great things about your mastermind experience. And I want to sort of talk a little bit about something that you said earlier, you said that you’ve lost money on, on some of the mastermind experience events, but I bet you, over time, it really wasn’t, it was maybe losing money in the short term, but it was more like an investment in the long-term thing because you’ve wound up with one or two cases out of it. You’ve wanted to take in some relationships, obviously, that have helped your business function better. You know, nobody on this, watching this now would say, well, you know, I spent $5,000, to develop my branding package and my logo for my firm and my colors, and I wasted that money. No, you don’t, because it’s an unnecessary cost of doing business and investing in yourself, investing in the things that you feel passionate about doing are going to be great. Now, I personally, you know, it took a long time for me to get to a point where I was comfortable doing videos, right? I’m there now, but for the first 10 years of my practice, I would buy the equipment, and I would tell myself I was going to do it, but I just didn’t feel comfortable, and so, I never was able to accomplish it. I was better at writing the content. Now, I’m sort of transitioning. So, really, that’s the message I want to take to people find what you’re good at and what you like doing and double down, triple down, quadruple down on that. And it’s going to provide so many better returns than anything. Seth, what do you think?
I was gonna set through a, look, I couldn’t agree more. I proselytize all the time, do what you love, and it’ll happen, if you don’t love it, it’s not going to happen. But I want to ask them, both John and Jay, which is, you know, net networking, because that’s essentially what you’ve done here, whether it be the mastermind, or whether it be the book and speaking, you’ve done that. And Jay, you’ve been at the epicenter of like the DUI world, you can’t think of Connecticut DUI without you. My question is, for both of you, when you go into this, do you think about the targeting for the networking? Or do you just go out there, and, you know, the book, people all over the country may be seeing it, they may never have a case to refer to you, Jay, you know, you know, the idea is, was going and networking and building a sort of a brand within the DUI world, something that was intentional, because, for a lot of people starting out who are listening to this, they have different niches. And, you know, some people might say the one-on-one is going to be an eye, and for me like, was, when I started with criminal defense, I found it very tough, because the odds of getting a case out of it were so limited for the amount of time you’d have to put in, you know, versus their real estate agent, or maybe their trust and estates person where everybody is a potential client. I want to get your thoughts on not just networking, but do you put some thought into where and how you’re going to put those limited resources.
Well, I mean, I can answer, absolutely, are, when I go to an event, I am targeting certain people at the event. And so, for example, the little bit of background is if I do an event, so let’s say I’m putting on a focus group for other trial attorneys to show them how to do a focus group. I’m going to people like the head of New York’s biggest personal injury law firm, inviting him specifically, and I’m trying to get him and when I go to a seminar, I’m setting up lunch dates with people who are prominent, who I want to get to know better, network with them. So, so, definitely, there’s an art of networking, and it’s not random. Although I will say whenever I go to a lawyer’s dinner, I’m always trying to meet new people and find out things that I don’t know about them, but yeah, absolutely, it’s targeted. And what I would suggest is identifying the 20 people in your market that you want to get to know as a referral source the most, and then not asking them for referrals, because that’s total BS. Doing something of value for them, giving them value, doing a focus group, and that’s what we did with, in New York, is we said let’s do a focus group with, with the biggest PI firm in the state of New York. Let’s show the value and they said, well, what on earth would we learn from you in focus groups? I said, you know, you never know, we do things differently, and then we did it, they came back, and they raved about it which led to a meal and it led to a steady flow of referrals. And thanks to someone like you, like that was, that, that relationship basically had died a couple of years ago, and, and Seth, because of my relationship and friendship with you, you resurrected that, and now we’re getting referrals again and so, I’m grateful for that. So, if you save lots of money in a mastermind, there’s no loss of money. This is an absolute win for us. For me, personally, just because I know people like both of you.
Jay, want to get your thoughts on that, on the same, same topic, because we all have limited time, and how you go about deciding what is worthy of your time, networking-wise, and what’s not.
You know, I agree that we have limited time. But, you know, in reality, I have found, you know, being the Johnny Appleseed, and just giving away your knowledge is something that, you know, will provide dividends for years and years and years to come. You know, we have a colleague in the DUI space, Seth, Justin McShane, and Justin is perhaps one of the most generous people I know when it comes to just getting on the phone, talking you through a problem is an encyclopedic knowledge of, of just testing procedures and that type of thing, is a real help. And so, I followed his sort of advice, when he said, you know, just, just help people, and if you help people, you’ll get those referrals. And so, that’s the way I sort of approached it. I was the guy, you know, in the DUI community, and obviously, in other legal communities, I was always the person who people would look to for business advice and help on developing their practice, because I knew, okay, I was never going to be the person who was able to try as many cases as other people. I mean, I’ve got 30-something DUI trials under my belt. I know colleagues in Arkansas who try 30 cases in a year, right? And I’ve been doing it for 20 years because their system is different than ours. And it takes a lot for me to get a trial here, wear them, they can do it in three hours in an afternoon, you know, it’s just, it’s just a different process. So, I was never going to be the person who can talk about cross-examination, even though I love doing it in as much detail as somebody who’s doing it every day of the week. So, I said, you know what, I can be the person who can help with their business and marketing, and that became my thing. After hours at the seminar sitting around having some drinks, people would talk to me and I’d offer him some suggestions. And that’s really how I built a name, and became, oh, you got to talk to Jay, he’s in Connecticut, and he can help you with x, and I would just give it all away, because, you know, they’re not competitors, for the most part, and even if they are competitor, I mean, one of my biggest competitors, I helped him start his DUI practice, because there are clients out there for all of us, and, you know, at some point, you know, I believe in the good karma thing, you know, good things come to people who help other people. You know, I was educated by the Jesuits, I’m a man for others. That’s the way, that’s the way I like to approach life.
You know, John, your transition from working for somebody else to working for yourself? And Jay, you have a lot of people working under you. What am I… One of the questions I get a lot is for somebody who is still working for a firm, you know, for your, the people working at your firm, Jay, how do you balance between producing the work product, which is why you have people at your firm, Jay, and when you, John, when you were there, your primary focus was trying those cases, and taking the time to get the emotional energy to get out there, how do you balance that for somebody who is on the other side right now?
Well, for me, there really is no balance, so that is, that is an issue that I’ve had is that I live in a very unusual life like we all do, right? So, I don’t have regular hours, my hours are a bit very unorthodox, including weekends, and there could be a month or longer than that, that I’m away from my family. It’s just the nature of the beast. And what we, what we just tried to do is keep moving forward. I just created an audio book for my first book, The Power of a system, and, you know, it took a couple of months to get that done, but now we’re moving on to the next thing. And, and what I would say is that there’s no easy solution to anything. And for anyone watching this who’s struggling or has anxiety, we all have that, I have that every single day. And you know, I used to think, Jay and Seth, that when I started my firm, they said it will take five years to become established, and I was like screw that. I’m going to be established in less than a year. No, they were right, it took a full five years, and even then, you think oh, now it’s going to be easy. It’s not, it’s hard, and running a firm is not easy. And I think one of the most valuable things I’ve learned from our mastermind is for somebody running their own law firm. That’s not the answer for everybody. Not everyone wants the struggle, the anxiety and the stress. And so, it might not be right for, but for me, and for others like me, there’s no other way to live. And the biggest regret I have in my career is that I didn’t go out on my own 10 years earlier than I did.
You know, I can speak to that too, when it comes to associates, you know, I see a lot of lawyers and a lot of forums talk about how do I get my associates to generate business, and I think there’s sort of a disconnect there with the mindset, because as an entrepreneurial lawyer, as someone who’s hung a shingle and done it, whether in John’s instance, where you’ve been fired, where it’s in my instance, where I quit a job and hung a shingle, what, you know, that type of thing, I think what you got to realize is that we are a different breed of people in that we are go-getters, and a lot of people are go-getters, it may be in their personal life where they, they love to play guitar and that’s really their passion, and they practice law as a means to an end to get them to be able to play in a local bar band two nights a week. So, you have to recognize that not all associates are ever going to have the same sort of passion for growing the business. Now, what I’ve done with my Associates is identify the things that they are passionate about, and try to use that as a tool to build their brand name, build their profile so that they do get referrals by way of that. For example, I have, I have a lawyer, Dan, who you’ve met, John, in my office, who, who is really passionate about, you know, making sure lawyers know enough to be able to do their job. So, we’ve created a podcast for him about case law, and he’s getting that out there, his voice is being heard, and people love that podcast. It has nothing to do with marketing himself, but guess what, by default, he’s now establishing himself,as a name, and so those referrals will come as a result of that. And so, I’m sort of, you know, that the head coach, you know, developing plays to take advantage of the skill set of my best players.
So, John, you know, when somebody looks at you right now, you look like this marketing Maven, you now have a successful practice, you have the mastermind experience; now plaintiff’s elite, and you have two of these books. It looks like everything’s smooth sailing. One of the things I love to ask during this podcast is, what are some of the missteps? When somebody else is out there thinking, hey, I may create some sort of online organization or maybe write a book. What are the things you wish you knew now that if you had known then, knew then that, you know, now that would have gotten you where you are faster? One would have been, hey, 10 years earlier. But putting that aside, you know, you know, there has been a lot of sort of ups and downs in the mastermind over the years, what are the takeaways you have from that?
Well, I’d give three pieces of advice to a younger me. And number one, become a specialist. And so, I just do medical malpractice, but my specialty is birth injury, and because I specialize in birth injury, I get cases from outside of New York, in fact, I’m actively practicing in Alabama now. And so, specialize in something, find something that you are hardcore passionate about and willing to die for. If you are willing to die for something, you will succeed no matter what, it is the key. And so, I mean, you have to burn your boat, and just say, hey, I’m all in on my business. If you, when you ran in, went all in, Seth, on your business, you said, hey, I’ve got no Plan B here, if this doesn’t work, I’m screwed. I mean, that’s the same for all of us, we’re screwed if our business doesn’t work out. But the real you got, when you’re all in and you’re totally committed, and you specialize in a niche, that’s so essential. The other thing I would say is a delegate, delegate, delegate, and what I mean by that is write down the five things that you hate doing and then delegate them, find the five things you love doing and focus your time on those things that are within your unique ability that you’re passionate about. Ideal, very few of us spend time doing the things that we love, and we’re passionate about, but if we can take that from 5% and make it more like 80 to 90%, then we’re in the zone. And the final message that I would have here is that you need to become an expert in marketing, immerse yourself in business development because in that firm that I worked for it, we’d have partners meetings with about eight lawyers, and we’d go around the table and they would say, how many trials do you have? One, this guy’s got two, this guy’s got three. I’ve got 11, and I need help because my plate is full. And that’s because I’ve immersed myself in marketing and I, and they’re better attorneys than I am, they’re more highly skilled than I am, but I’ve got the cases, and the winner is the person with the cases. It’s not the highest talented lawyer, it’s the one who has made them the best marketer. We had a firm, where I, just before we got fired, we had firm-wide partners meeting, we took a whole day, and half of the day was dedicated to marketing, and this was going back more than 10 years, and the senior partners at my firm’s that now we want, we’re going to begin the second half of today by focusing on marketing, we want everyone to look at what John Fisher is doing and just copying him. I mean, because what I was doing was, I would speak immersing myself in knowledge and wisdom in marketing online and offline. And what I found is, Seth, if somebody comes to me, I don’t even know if Yellow Pages still exist, but if somebody came to me and said, I’ve got a five to one return on my yellow page investment, I’m like, well, then why wouldn’t you keep doing it? Everything is determined by the return on investment. I don’t care what it is, if you’ve got a little ad, in the Bridgeport newspaper, and you’re getting a two-to-one return on investment, by all means, keep doing it. And so the key is, number one, you need to, you need to become an expert in marketing, you need to delegate everything, and you need to have a niche practice. Those are the three things that I tell myself.
Jay, you got a final question for John?
I do. You know, John, one of the things that I’m sure has been a challenge during this whole Coronavirus period is the threat of an imminent trial has disappeared, for the most part for a lot of people I know, depending on parts of the country, some small trials are happening, but with medical malpractice, from my experience and my understanding, is that the cases really are difficult to resolve until you’re in, you’re getting ready for that trial. Did any point in time during that first, you know four months of this, did you say hey, you know what, I need to expand my niche because I may not get a trial in medical malpractice, and, how did you then turn around and say, no, wait, I own this, I’m going to double down on this area. Because I see a lot of lawyers, you know, now that we’re six months in or five and a half months in saying I just have to grab whatever business is out there and sort of make it work, but like you and me, we’ve sort of said, hey, double down on our niche and really own it, and not try to just add extraneous practice areas. So, I think there’s a message and a lesson for some people in our audience about not trying to get desperate and adding some more. So, tell me about how your mental process was back in March, April when you knew things were going to be changing for you.
Well, well, I can tell you, when I asked people I said, we know how’s it going during the pandemic, and they’ll say, oh, everything’s great. And then you hear from everybody, everything’s great, I’m like, man, there’s just so much BS going on, come on, not everything’s great. And we were set up to have a banner year before the pandemic, but that, this totally screwed up everything, and without trials, we have no income. And so, that’s the way it’s different than a personal injury attorney does car wrecks and slip and falls, they, they just have cash coming, we don’t. Without a trial date, I’ve got no income. And about a month ago, just totally out of the blue, I was, so it wasn’t three or four months ago, was relatively recent, I was just out of my mind with worry. And then just out of the blue, a judge called me and said the defense has got 3 million, will you settle this case? And I said, okay, that’s the number, you know, we’re good. And that was a collective $5 million settlement. But we, you know, without that, frankly, I don’t know when there’s going to be another trial date, and I don’t know when my firm will have our next dollar, but because we have very low overhead, our expenses are low, my office is the third floor of a bank building. We paid $1,400 a month in rent. Welcome to upstate New York, right? It is very inexpensive, but all the New Yorkers are moving here, and the real estate values are going crazy, but the reality is, I was just like everyone, I was just out of my mind with worry, and we were good financially through the end of the year, I mean, we’re profitable back in March, and for the entire year, but at the end of the year, if we didn’t have a trial date in the year 2021, Jay, we are totally screwed. I mean, not really because I’ve got savings, but still, I don’t really want to dip into my savings to support the firm, I want the firm to function by itself. And so, you know, I think, you know, out of the blue a settlement really helped, but I’m still, I’m fretting and I am paranoid, I don’t sleep at night, I mean, you know, that’s just who I am and my wife gets pissed because I’m up at like five o’clock every morning and I’m ready to go and she’s, she’s sleeping in but that’s just the way that I’ve operated and I’ve always been that way. But, I have to say, Jay, to this day, I am paranoid and I worry about things, but, but, but, fortunately, things have, if you put your head down, focus on what you do well, and just keep cranking every day, things just magically seem to work out.
Yeah, the harder you work, the luckier you get, for sure. And I think the other thing too is that you have to recognize is that you know, all of us who are in this community, really, we work and you want to work, and you want to keep working, and there’s going to come times when, like, like Seth has said, at the beginning of a lot of our shows, it’s an emotional roller coaster. And I think that’s certainly something that, you know, it’s important for some of our newer members, our new listeners, to hear it from you, John, from me, from Seth, that yes, we are stressed that, you know, we may have the, you know, some, some skills, and so, you know, some reflexes that we can rely on during this time, but it is not unusual, if you are going through a stressful period, to feel this way, and know that your mental attitude is what’s going to have to carry you through the day, you know, you lean on those muscle memories, that skill set that you’ve developed, to be able to say, okay, I just put my head down, I keep working, I’m gonna get through this, and that’s, I think is important for all of us to do. Seth?
No, I just want to say to John, thank you so much for everything you’ve done, the mastermind experience has been a seminal thing for my career, and you’ve been a friend and mentor in building Price Benowitz and BluShark. And, you know, for those of you that haven’t gotten it yet, the law firm of your dreams, the book, it is really a great in-depth, granular, sort of like how to for many different areas, a lot of people will read it from cover to cover, but, you know, if you don’t have time to read 500 pages, get the areas that you’re sort of struggling with the most and dive into those sections because it’ll have nothing else to inspire you and give you some thoughts as to where to turn.
Well, and one thing I can say is, Seth, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me. I mean, I get regular calls from Seth, just checking in, to see how I’m doing, and that means so much to me. And our internet process, our website has really taken on a totally different development since we started with BluShark about two years ago, because I feel like now I have a strategic partner who’s looking out for us, not someone who’s expecting me to do everything. So, it has been a great relationship, and, you know, I couldn’t be more grateful for that. And, and, Jay, for everything you’ve done for our mastermind, I’m very grateful for that as well.
And I’m happy to do it for you, John because you’re just such a generous person. I feel like I could, I could work for the next 100 years, and not give back what you’ve already given me. So, thank you so much.
Appreciate that.
Very good. Well, John, we can’t wait to see what happens next, but the second book is gonna be a hard one to top. But I can’t wait for a mastermind in DC in September, tell people who are listening to a little bit about the mastermind experience so that they can hopefully join the fun.
Yeah, well, the mastermind experience is something that we’re basically, you bring your biggest challenge facing your law firm, you throw it out to a small group of lawyers, usually, it’s about seven or eight in a room, and then you get customized solutions, brainstorming, collaboration, sharing. But the biggest value comes when you hear the problems of the other members, and then you realize you’re not alone, that everyone’s got your problems, that you’ve got people who are stealing from your business, that you’ve got paralegals who aren’t showing up when they’re supposed to, and you’re like, you know what, I’m not alone. And then the value of the mastermind comes the day after the mastermind, when you have daily ongoing sharing on a private Facebook group with people sharing their problems. How do I fix this? How do I do this? And there’s nothing more powerful than a mastermind, and, that is a concept that we got from Napoleon Hill when he wrote Think and Grow Rich that the wealthiest most successful businessman about 100 years ago, joined forces with other businessmen collaborated and shared and so instead of just having the knowledge in their brain, they had the knowledge of a mastermind and that is a very powerful thing.
We’ll leave it with that. Thank you so much for joining us and can’t wait to reconnect hopefully in person soon.
Sounds good. Thanks, John.
Well, Seth, so just another great time hanging out with John Fisher. I know you and I both have spent a lot of time with him through the mastermind experience and it is just a pleasure to spend some time with him, don’t you think?
You know, it’s a unique person in the sense that he took something in both instances, whether it be the books, where he was like, hey, I can take the pamphlet and make it better, or the mastermind, and look, their plenty of great masterminds out there. Most are not inexpensive. He was the first person who said, you know what? I’m doing this for me, I’m gonna make this a loss leader. And I feel like, it’s so rare, I’ve been part of masterminds that are free, and they may go for a little bit, but then they fall apart because there’s not like an economic incentive. But the fact that he has found a way to sort of barely cashflow this, but keep it organic and fresh, and not a huge buy-in, allowing for a community to grow, that is just, you know, special and very thankful for.
Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s really sort of, you know, both of us are involved in the mastermind experience and work part of that Facebook group. And, and it’s really amazing how many people will jump up and jump in and help you solve a problem and that’s, this is something that I think our listeners can take from not only from being on a national level like John has done with his mastermind experience, but this is something that you could do locally, you could tap people and understand that it’s an investment, it’s not something that you’re going to make money on but look for other lawyers, look for other business people and create something like this, and just, it’s got to be something that you’re gonna love, right? Seth, this is what I’m talking about, unless you’re gonna find that you like doing it, it’s going to fail. I think John loves the interaction, so invests his energy in it. But if you’re, if you’re, if it’s not something that you love, don’t do it, don’t try to do it, don’t mimic or, you know, get into it and do it, and do it yourself. You might find another way to make those types of connections.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ll throw it out this way. A lot of people come to me, the b2b space, lawyers that are business lawyers, bit meeting lawyers that deal, with companies rather than people. And when they come to me with my BluShark hat on, they say should I do SEO? I’m like, probably not. The first reaction is no. Go get season tickets, not great advice right now. And the other thought is something I have seen replicated is starting a Breakfast Club, bringing in the people you want as clients as speakers, and filling the room with other community people. It is, it takes that, it takes effort to put it together, but once you put something like that together, it is the gift that keeps on giving, and I think that’s what John has found.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, so that’s gonna wrap it up for us. Great stuff from the leaning at the top of the show. Even better stuff for John in the middle of the show. I’m sorry, that my talking is at the end of the show, because of course, it’s going to be a bit of a disappointment. But I want to remind our people out there, there are a couple of things. Number one, if you want to listen to this on a podcast form, you can find our podcast, the maximum growth live podcast available on all the podcasting platforms. We are, of course, a member of maximum lawyer media, you can join maximum lawyer in the Facebook group, we have our own Facebook page, and we’d love you to follow our Facebook page, I’ll put a link down below in the comments so that you have it, we’ve got some great stuff that we’re working on in the next couple of weeks. One of the things I do want to talk about and tease a little bit for you is that in the next couple of weeks, Seth and I are going to do a show, with no guests, and it’s going to be our top 10 growth hacks for the next year, and I think it’s certainly something that you guys should be on the lookout for. So, with that, I’m gonna leave it. Seth, what do you got over there? You got anything for us this week?
You know, I was gonna say just, just keep on plowing, you know, I was up in New York this week, I saw how tough it is up there and that, understand that wherever you are, you know, there are people that have it worse and that you should just continue to sort of like, look forward. We’re gonna get out of this at some point, and that if you start planning for that and making those investments in, whether it be labor or whether it be a strategy, or whether it be networking, all those things that you can sort of do during this time so that when we come out of this, you’re running not starting flat-footed. To me, that’s what this time should be for.
Yeah, I think, you know, I think if we look back in 2025, the firms that are going to be truly successful are the ones who took this six 9, 12-month period to get their systems in place, to get their content in place, to get their relationships in place and have a plan going forward. I think that’s, you know, this is, this is an interesting time, because you’re not starting out your firm from scratch, and this is something that I want to talk about earlier, but I kind of forgot about it. You know, we’re all sort of waiting to them sort of let us loose on the world, and it’s the people who worked now, they’re the ones that are going to be successful for a long time. It’s like, you don’t want a trial in a courtroom, you win it in the prep. Well, your firm is going to be successful by what you’re doing right now. So, think about it. Cut off of this conversation here today and sit down and think about the things that you going to accomplish in the next 90 days that are going to really set your business going forward in the next decades. So, with that, we will leave you, I am Jay Ruane, he is Seth Price, and we are maximum growth live. Thank you for being with us, and we look forward to seeing you next Thursday, 3 pm Eastern, on another edition of maximum growth live. Bye, for now, folks. Take it easy.
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