Today join Seth and Jay while the tables are turned, and DC Bar Practice Management guru Dan Mills interviews them about the current state and future of law practice!
Hello, hello, and welcome to another edition of maximum growth live. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, CEO of Firm Flex, your Social Media Marketing Agency for lawyers, as well as managing partner Ruane Attorneys, a civil rights and criminal defense firm here in Connecticut. With me, as always, down in the great capital of the United States of America, which has always got stuff going on, is my man, Seth Price over there. Seth is the Founder and Managing Partner of Price Benowitz, your DC, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Wyoming law firm, as well as the president, not the president, the founder of BluShark, I always get it mixed up there. I gotta make sure I got the right title for you because I don’t want to insult our good boy, David Britton. BluShark is an SEO firm for hundreds of law firms around the country, giving them the absolute best in digital marketing. And I want to welcome you to our show today, we’ve got a very special word for you today. But first, I’m gonna throw it over to see how he’s doing this week. Seth, what’s new?
You know, look, I’m excited, we’re going to be able to show our audience a really cool conversation we had for the DC bar three practice 360. But you know, it’s been an unsettling week, you know, I came back from Vegas and San Diego for work. And, you know, all of a sudden, this delta variant taking on a whole other, you know, a whole other thing, I tested, fine somebody in my circle did not. And I’m sitting there, really, you know, we’re pushing people back to work. And now the question is, is everybody fully vaccinated? If they are, what’s the risks? It’s been just very much an existential week of trying to figure out what are you doing to be right, you know, BluShark itself, which has been virtual, you know, pushing to get people back in an office, and you’re like, hey, is this the smartest thing in the world, so…
Yeah, I mean, I guess some people got an email that somebody had, hey, Jay, tested positive post, post the event. In Las Vegas, there’s, there’s people from all over the world coming in there. So, you really don’t know the level of the, you know…
Vegas was, was absurd in reckless, no, no argument. I think the, it was screaming there’s 97% present, company included, non wearing masks. It was, you know, the idea, but I now have in my own personal extended circle, which is not nothing, you know, a half dozen people who have gotten a breakthrough case. Nobody’s gonna die from it, of the vaccinated people. But it’s not, it’s statistically significant, that people are getting these breakthrough cases. Now, again, it’s, you know, we’re now hearing rumblings of an additional Pfizer shot may cure it. You know, I haven’t heard the same from the majority yet, but I’m sure that’s given coming quickly. So, you know, we’re not through the woods, you saw the market take a hit because I think the market understands that there’s an issue there. I am more bullish, but it’s an emotional thing. Like, I felt like, hey, we did it, we got our shots, it’s time to get everybody back to work. If we don’t go back to work, how do we expect the economy to get back? So, it’s, but you know, I submit to talk to you offline, and I’ll bring it up here, you know, we push people to work from home, which is awesome, right? And for the second time, I have had an employee come to me and sort of acknowledge that they’re listening to a podcast, or in this case, an instructional video, while on the clock. And to me, music, of course, you know, that, that’s, you know, working with music in the background, but the idea that you’re doing something, and that’s part of what you don’t have when you’re in the office, you couldn’t get away with this in the office or when somebody did, you saw what was going on, although a lot of people have, have earbuds in. But the idea that somebody is sitting there, in this case, with an LSAT class going on, and then try to explain it, is just background noise, I’m like, let my head start to explode. And that’s what I keep thinking about what are the untold costs of the remote workforce? I think that’s one of it, that people are that comfortable because they would never do that in the office, but at home, that is acceptable business behavior. And again, you know, I, you know, it is something that I, I think that is there’s a lot of stuff going on, we’re about to lose an employee who was perfectly fine while in the office, but has just taken full advantage of being away and again, these were not things I saw early on but a year into COVID, that they created their own new normal, its people would have broken if they were in the office too. So, it’s I can’t totally blame it, but the cracks of working from home have definitely showed.
So, you know, let’s talk about your first issue there. And one of the things that I think would help reframe that is, number one, you have to identify who the person is and how they work and what type of work they’re doing. You know, obviously, for legal professionals, for lawyers that are doing things, you know, sometimes sitting in silence is the way to go because it allows you to think, and, and but if it’s somebody who’s standing at a copier machine, who cares if they’re listening to a podcast, or their things, but for someone who’s in a, in a content creating role, someone who’s writing briefs or researching, I think, you know, it’s questionable. I, you know, it’s funny, I have this debate with my wife all the time, she’ll hate that I bring it up, but she’s like, you know, I did all my high school homework with the TV on in the background. I’m like, I want exact science silence, like, I want no distractions.
It’s not that, it’s not that it is exact silence. And let’s give your wife’s credit there, and maybe a more like the laugh track of what was going on in the background, not ideal. But again, she felt like she ended up at Harvard despite that, it’s like, there’s a cost to it, and if you’re okay with the cost, you know, again, it’s all cost benefit. She was okay with what she was doing. Objectively, that is a distraction, and incrementally, that’s going to hurt your ability. Now, are there some benefits? I’m sure. But would she have been better off with news, non-verbal music where you’re not trying to like, understand the dialogue or hear a commercial? I’m sure. I feel like, for me, I don’t want my employee making that decision. I think that this is like one of those downsides like that old guy yelling from the stupid young kids on the street making Jewish noise, but it’s, you know, something isn’t right when that is considered acceptable, not just so much like, hey, my bad, but in multiple explanations how it’s not that bad. I’m like, no, it’s not what I want, and frankly, in a prior iteration of life, that would have been a fire able offense.
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it’s funny, we had some family down the street from where I grew up, and one day the father came down the stairs in the middle of the night, the oldest was watching TV was watching The Tonight Show, because, it was, I think it was the Johnny Carson Tonight Show, and the father got upset, and basically said, that’s it, we’re getting rid of TV, and got rid of the TV. And all of his kids went to Ivy League schools. I know one of them is a hedge fund guy who went to Harvard, the other one went to another one, I think went to Yale, and no one went to club. I mean, so, they got rid of the TV, and now all the kids are going identical. Now, I think they probably would have made it there with, even with a TV, but in correlation and causation don’t necessarily intertwine. But it’s, but it’s kind of funny, you know, we were talking about the rise of the Delta variant and how it’s going to impact people in the office. You know, for us, we actually had an honest conversation today about maybe, you know, going back more remote again, towards the end of August, if this thing continues to spike because for us, you know, we have a ton of, everybody here is vaccinated, all the adults here are vaccinated, but we have a very large workforce with kids under 12 that have not been vaccinated, and one of the concerns that we have is being carriers back to the kids at home.
You know, and look, I, again, I’m going to say stuff that I probably shouldn’t say publicly, but we have a couple of admins that are not vaccinated. We did a social event the other night it was outdoors, right? So, relatively safe environment. They have young kids at home, I left, and there was a post-party that was all indoors, as unsafe environment that you could be in. So, the people that are most at risk with people at home that are unvaccinated, you know, it kills me that there, have seen this time, and again to the people who have resisted coming back to the office because of COVID, their personal lives, which are not very hard to see one step removed, do not take that same precaution. And so, the craziness is we are bending over backwards, we’re doing things to give them, you know, an accommodation. And my feeling is if somebody genuinely is scared of this and they need to be at home, God bless, but if their personal life reflects a level of risk tolerance, that they’re, that they’re like that, by comparison, a workplace would be nominal and could be even made more nominal with closed office doors. The idea that people are using that as a wedge, wedge issue to be able to work from home when that may not be optimal for the firm. That’s, you know, it’s frustrating.
It’s frustrating. Okay, so I have some stuff I want to talk to you on the back end, but what I want to do right now is tee up for our viewers what we’re going to, we’re going to show in the next segment, and this isn’t something that’s going to be live like our normal shows are but it’s actually a broadcast of something that you and I did for the DC bar. So, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about that?
Sure. Dan Mills is the practice management guru for the DC bar, and every year they do a practice 360 day. And over the years, I’ve presented in different forums, both straight presentations and fireside chats, and this year, we sort of had the tables turned on max growth live, and Dan interviewed you and myself on different issues that were presented to the audience, the entire DC bar was logged in virtually, or those that chose to great conversations, which is neat stuff that we don’t always get to on the show, was just a lot of time to air things out. So, I think the audience will really like it, it was a very, you know, in-depth conversation, covering a whole myriad of the issues that we think about on a daily basis, but rarely have enough time to sort of talk out at length.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, folks. So, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll be playing our interview by Dan Mills of the DC bar. So, stick tight and hang with us. And we’ll see you in a few minutes, and then be prepared to be on the back end. We’re going to wrap things up for you. So, hang tight. We’ll be right back, folks, with more maximum growth live.
Hi, I’m Jay Ruane, one of the founders of Firm Flex, a practicing attorney for over 20 years. Anyone who knows me knows how my firm runs on the systems we create, and it has allowed us to flourish, even in tough times. I spent years and hundreds of 1000s of dollars until I finally figured out a way to engage my audience and drive top-of-mind awareness with social media. And what did I do once I figured it all out? I built a system for it. And now, you can put that system to work for you. You see, we took the hard part, creating the content and finding the images, and made it foolproof. Every day you will have curated social media topics to post designed to make your firm constantly remind your audience about your firm, what you do and how you can help. And the best part, you don’t even need to hire a dedicated social media person to do this for you. In fact, you don’t even need to hire anyone new. We design the system to make it easy for you to delegate to your receptionist, assistant, or paralegal and have them execute solid social media for you in just five minutes a day. It’s like having a content writer, researcher, and graphics designer at a fraction of the price it would cost to hire in-house. Sign up today for the social super system and start building your brand where your clients already are on social media.
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.
In terms of future proofing your practice management, which is how we’ve, how we’ve pitched this program here at practice 360. Today, we’re coming out of the pandemic. What have we learned, you know, how do you see lawyers working smarter as a result of the pandemic? And what more needs to be done?
Well, Jay, you know, ironically, this is sort of Jay’s, Jay’s sweet spot, Jay is Mr. Systems, and I think if we’ve learned anything with ripping the band-aid off, many of us were, you know, brick and mortar law firms pre pandemic, and all of a sudden, on very short notice, we were not. And for many of those listening today, you know, they’re, they’re small and medium-sized firms, you know, they may, they have differing levels of success of going virtual, but I think that what we saw was that if you have your systems in place, hiccups like this, you know, this almost like a fire drill to see hey, how, how agile are you as a law firm. We were really put to the test. And, you know, I know that there were some definite rough points, many practice areas, courts have been closed, certain areas, the velocity of life is down so the cases aren’t there, and so, those are the things that, you know, if there’s ever a future-proofing moment, this has been quite a fire drill to test our ability to do things under the most adverse of circumstances. Jay?
Yeah, the thing that I really think about it is, you know, historically, especially solos and small firms, they really sort of fit into two categories, people who did it the same way and had been doing it the same way, for years or decades, and then they were the outliers, who were the people who are constantly trying and tweaking new things. And I think what we saw was the people who had a tendency to be able to pivot and adapt to circumstances, maybe flourish a little bit more early on during COVID. But I think the extended period of what we’ve had to deal with, has even taken some of the most staid and secure, old types of small law firms and made them realize that being able to move, being able to be nimble, is what really allowed them to sort of dig out from this mess, and I think going forward, the successful small firms and solo operations are going to be ones that are constantly sort of reacting to their environment, and not expecting things to go back because as we sit in practice law here today, in 2021, while there’s some hallmarks of pre of late 2019, practice of law, everything that we’ve done has been tweaked, changed, and modified by COVID and its repercussions. And I think, quite frankly, everyone is now able to say, okay, if this happens, I’m going to be able to move because it’s a lot easier to pivot from movement than it is from staying still.
So, Jay, why don’t you talk a little bit about the role of systems in growing a firm right now? Because systems are so important.
You know, I love systems, it’s, it’s one of the things that, you know, gets me jazzed up about the practice of law, and so many people have come to me over the years and said, you know, well, you know, every case is different, I really can’t systemize my practice, but what I have found in talking to people all across the spectrum, from trusts and estates to family, to real estate, to PI, criminal, bankruptcy, whatever it is that you’re going to do, there are certain things that you do over and over, and over again, and by creating systems that your staff can follow, it really allows you to sort of free up your mind and focus on higher level attorney thinking when you don’t have to think about where do I need to get the supplies from to open my file? Or where do I need to tell somebody to file a notice of appearance? Because you have systems written that your staff can follow, it’s really sort of frees you up to be the lawyer that you want to be. And quite frankly, as many people moved remotely, having, tried and true and in place systems really allowed a staff that doesn’t have somebody at the next step next desk that they can turn to and ask for advice or influence on how to do something, they were able to go to their systems and say, okay, I may be at home, in Virginia, and my co-worker who I’d asked is at home in Maryland, but I can get this done because I have a system to follow. And really, the most successful law practices that I know of are ones that have made a commitment to say, hey, we’re gonna do it one way, this is the way we’re going to do it, everyone’s on board, and we create a repository of systems that anybody can follow. I mean, that’s really the most important thing. If you look at each and every file you have in the office, there are probably 90% of the things that you do are repetitive, right? So, imagine if you can get rid of all of your needs to be involved in those things, and take all of your lawyer brains and focus on that final 10%, the quality of work product you’re going to give to your clients is going to explode, because you’re able to spend your critical thinking time on the things that actually make a difference in a file.
What do you think is the best way for a small firm to get involved in creating really dynamic systems, when they’re, you know, when they’re coming out of a situation where they’re a little bit old school?
Well, I mean, even old school, I mean, I practice law with my father who’s 71, and he loves the systems that we have in the office because for years, everything that they did in his office as a solo was just in his head, and so by committing it to paper, it really allows you to sort of see where you do things, how you do things and the ways to improve upon that. And so, for old school lawyers, sit down, and I actually coached somebody recently who needed to build a system in the office. So, we said, give everybody a legal pad, every day for the next week, just write the title of what it is that you do over the next 40 hours, and you’ll start to see the things that you do repetitively, and then you can start to build systems on the legal bed. This is how I do this, you can sit there and dictate, this is how I do this. You can use text to speech, speech to text software, there’s a million ways to do it, you can start with something as simple as a Word document, or you can get it into the cloud as a Google document, or you can use any one of the services that are out there. But really, the most important thing is find the one that you’re going to actually execute and do it because you can invest tons of money in signing up for all of these cloud services to track your systems, but until you actually document your systems, you’re not actually doing it, you know, just spending money isn’t going to solve your problem, you need to sit down and write it out. And quite frankly, you need to be involved in at the lowest number of systems as the lawyer, it’s really your staff that needs to be attentive to telling you how they do their job because you might find after reviewing all the systems, hey, if I just change these job assignments, we’re going to recapture three hours a week of work at work time that can be spent on something else. And that’s really the most important thing is, knowing what your people do, and if even if it’s just you and one assistant, or if it’s you alone, knowing the steps to do it, it makes it a lot easier to onboard staff. If you can say, by the way, you don’t need to ask me these questions, here’s my book of how to do things in my law firm, when the time comes.
How do you manage systems at your firm, Seth?
A great question, you know, we have, each department has the systems laid out, they’re looked at on a periodic basis, but, you know, I know that the worst part is that, you know, the that, that I’ve discovered has been often the only great time to the only time we end up being forced to look at is when somebody leaves, and that’s not the right way to do it. You know, jay’s talked about having systems auditors, I can’t tell you that we’re that progressive, there are things that I saw during COVID, that I thought the systems were good enough to, for instance, our intake, and I realized that the, there are certain things that the systems may have not adjusted enough, during a vert, you know, during a fully at home environment to, and that it’s a constantly, it’s not a set and forget it, I think is the right the biggest advice I have, not one that I always take, but that the more that you continuously actively work with it as a living, breathing document, and it’s tough like Jay is the king of this stuff, and, and other times you look at it and you, you beg people to make changes along the way, and you look at it, it doesn’t happen. Ideally, it’s part of the culture and DNA, but there’s so many things we want as part of our culture and DNA, from client-centric to being kind to your co-workers, getting the work done to getting refused, all these different things that, you know, it’s tough, and it’s a tough juggling act, but that, when done right, to sit that they pay dividends, and it makes you less, you know. We have held on to employees at times, longer than we should have because quote-unquote institutional knowledge and my hope and desire is that as those systems are built out, that the thumb on the scale towards institutional knowledge goes down. And you know, admittedly, during COVID week held on to a couple of people way longer than we should have with that mantra, and had we really just focused on systems which you are forced to after you sort of finally make a move, that those systems can allow you not to be beholden to somebody who’s either underperforming or toxic to your environment.
Let’s talk a little bit about growth, small firms really struggle with how to grow, and it really seems like there are only so many ways that a small firm can grow. How does that niche mindset help you grow as a small firm?
Sure. You know, this is one of the things that I think a lot of very successful lawyers have sort of adapted, and it’s not limiting to say that you want to have certain niches that you’re going to focus on, right? Because you can have a law firm that has multiple niches within it, but when you say I’m going to attack this as my ideal client, ideal practice area, you can really number one, build systems around that vertical, you know, which is important, because you can even designate people in your office or say, I’m going to spend this much time on these files on, you know, it’s, for me, I started out very simply saying, I’m going to have five things that I’m going to do in my office, and each day of the week is going to be focused on one of them. So, so that my afternoons after I got out of court in the morning, each had a focus, right? And that’s what I was able to do, but I think the niche mindset really allows you to say, okay, if I’m gonna own this area of law in my local area, what can I do to do that? Number one, it allows you to position yourself among your colleagues and say, hey, look, this is something that you can refer me business in because this is something that I’m going to concentrate in, right? Number one. Number two, it allows you to build the system so that you can deliver a better-quality product to the legal consumer, and avoid ethical pitfalls and practice area mishaps because you’ve concentrated on that one area, you know, it’s usually the lawyers who say, well, I’m going to just take this case because it sounds interesting, and it doesn’t necessarily fit their, their practice and how they operate. Those are the ones that get into problems because deadlines get missed, ideas, or areas that you could have planned in, in a civil case may have been overlooked, and that’s what exposes somebody to a problem. So, by saying you’re going to own a particular niche, you can actually do a better quality of service to the client, reduce your risk, increase your revenue, and put yourself in a situation where you have something that is marketable that people know you for, and there’s nothing like being able to be known among your colleagues, because, like we’ve talked about, there’s really three areas that you can generate business from. The first is prior clients, the second is referrals from professionals, and the third is from the internet. So, if you’re going to tackle that market, two of those groups look to you for the thing that you do, right? Which is going to be your area of practice, your niche, lawyers will refer to you and prior clients will continue to refer to you because you did service for them in that area. So, really, creating a niche mindset allows you to really set your practice up for success.
Right, and just follow on that third verdict, the third bucket, you know, from a marketing point of view, you know, there are a lot of people out there that have spent a lot of time and money invested in both digital and offline marketing, and that as you dive deeper into an area, it is easier to optimize for something that everybody isn’t fighting for. There are cases, cases of people in very competitive PI markets across the country where somebody becomes the bicycle lawyer they love, you know, they’re one of those people in their spandex that goes biking all the time, and they are known in the community to actually get national reputations where all of a sudden, not only are they getting their local community, but people are then ending up as the trusted advisor that people come to that you send things out around the country to co-counsel with other lawyers. So, that huge advantages, in a lot of ways, it’s tough because you don’t want to be limited. It’s, you know, we’re all frenetic, like you want to be limited because, you know, that it’s easier to dig deep. There are economies of scale, the, the sort of efficiencies of how you practice go much, much higher, if you’re not dabbling, and you’re not taking whatever comes in the door. That said, you’re limiting the number of things that are there and I think that’s one of those struggles that you sort of alluded to somebody who’s sort of like older school, in one sense, you want to take anything that comes in the door, but it’s not nearly as efficient as if you have a system set up, and it’s hard to have systems for everything, especially if you’re seeing stuff on first impression.
So, let’s talk a little bit more about, about marketing, and then when you have a narrowly focused practice area and marketing, that narrowly focused practice area. Are there advantages? You know, when, when you’re really narrowly focused in terms of how you market.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, like, there are advantages or some disadvantages, but I’d say the biggest advantage is that you’re able to show with, you’re looking at Google, Google is trying to figure out who has the best answer to a particular question that’s searched, and if you are the best answer because that’s all you do, you have two advantages. One, it’s easier to show Google that you are that person. So, if your URL includes the type of specific niche law that you do, that’s a that’s sort of a great sign that did that you’re a great answer for this. The second thing is that if somebody comes to your website, and that’s all you do, there’s a pretty good chance that that’s going to be a good trust symbol to that person, that you’re the best answer to their question that, you know, you’re going to that, you know, people are taking a leap of faith when they find things online, but if that’s all you do, day in and day out, that’s better than the guy who does a bunch of different stuff. I’ll give you the negative side to that, which I just saw the other day, somebody brought me a case where they were trying to do something with a specific type of disability insurance turned out for one specific profession. And the problem that I saw there was it’s great, and it’s awesome and you can really put yourself apart. The flip side is somebody who does all different types of disability rejections, let’s say, has the resources to monetize many different areas. So, they could afford to put money and build authority on a website that would capture all different types of cases, not just that one. Now, theoretically, you could do that and just refer out your piece, but if that’s all you’re really interested in, come back to Jay’s point, you’re signaling to the world, this is all I do. You’re not threatening anybody else’s practice. They’re safe to refer to you because that’s what you do, and so that if you’re willing to put the resources in, and blog, not crappy, regurgitated news, but if you become the thought leader for that niche, you can very often build a reputation not just in your local Geo, but across the country as the person the narrower you go.
So, let me, let me pipe in, on this, because I think it’s something, separate something that’s really sort of interesting. Let me give you a hypothetical. It’s Friday night, it’s 10 o’clock, and your bathroom toilet is clogged, right? You can’t get it unclogged and you’re thinking, I gotta call somebody. So, you call up a website, and you start doing a search. And there’s two different things you find a guy, or a woman who’s got a website that says, I’m a plumber, I handle apartment buildings, condo complexes, residential, I do, you know, new builds, I do everything else. And then the next website, says that says, I fix clogged toilets. At 10 o’clock on a Friday night, who you’re going to call? The guy who says my job, the woman who says My job is to fix your exact problem, and I fix it, you’re going to call that person because you know that they can do the job that you need them to do, right?
Rooter model, if you think about it, and if you, look, if you’ve ever priced it, you love the fact that come out, the numbers that you get are shocking, there’s a dramatic premium to having found anybody else, but they know that they have a captive audience, they’re going to solve your problem. Not that other people can’t, but by sort of identifying that that’s what we do, you can count on us for that they’re able to get a significant premium over much of the market.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, does this mean then that these days, the prospective client is really looking for a specialist, narrowly focused specialist? Lawyer?
Yeah, I mean, look, I can’t say they all are some percentages, you’re not going to lose the people that don’t care, but you’re certainly going to gain the people that do, and you basically, you are carving out a piece of the market and differentiating yourself from somebody who dabbles in it and to me that, that is that’s powerful when you could do it. And again, there are people like I know, for Jay and myself, we may have multiple niches with different lawyers, but we build out something that demonstrates this is what somebody, again, you don’t want to, from a bar ethics point of view, don’t want to specialize, you want to be certified, you don’t want to do any of those third rail words, but you want to show somebody you focus on this area. And that’s what you do. And when you do that, and somebody’s having to determine where to go, it’s half the time when you’re looking for any search, whether it be lawyers, whether it be plumbers, whether it be something where you’re looking for a widget, like through E-commerce, what you’re trying to do is, you know, how do I get away from the directories? How do we get away from a firm that might have a page on this, but doesn’t really know what’s going on? If you could find somebody who has the greatest probability of solving your problem, that’s going to be an advantage for, again, from a marketing point of view, and JJ talks about the non-marketing digital marketing point of views, but there’s an advantage, both in demonstrating to Google as well as that conversion factor, when somebody finally gets to that and says, can this person do what I need?
Yeah, I think honestly, you know, the consumer, the public has been trained to look for professionals that specialize, even though that’s a third real word, because the physicians do that. You don’t go to your dentist for braces, you go to an orthodontist for braces, you know, the, the consumer has been trained to look for someone to solve their exact problem. You don’t go to a podiatrist when you need an oncologist, right? That’s, that’s just the reality of the world. And so, I think lawyers, for the most part, are somewhat, you know, behind the times in allowing the public to sort of see what areas you concentrate in, or whatever it is, but I think, you know, there are signals that you can send through your marketing both online and off, that allow people to understand what area you feel most comfortable in. And you know, quite frankly, if, you know, as a DUI lawyer in my home state, I feel very comfortable. If someone were to come to me and hand me a file and say, can you run with this? I know I can. Somebody hands me a residential real estate closing, I can’t, and I’m not the lawyer for that.
And just to clarify Dan, I think you could have your cake and eat it too, you could have a firm that has a number of different niches. It’s not like, it’s not like you have to say this is my, again, if you’re a solo, it may be harder, but if you have a number of people, it’s not that you can’t have several different areas that you’re in, but the idea is, when you’re forward facing, the person is going to solve your problem. What Jay was alluding to, that’s where somebody doesn’t really want a generalist, they want to know that this is what the person who is going to solve their problem does day in and day out. And the more you can position the practitioner in your practice, whether it be you or somebody else, as that person with that singular focus., to me, that’s a, that’s an advantage when you can do it.
And it appears that’s what you do on your firm Seth. And, you know, talk a little bit about how it’s different in your firm? To market for street crime, versus marketing for estate planning. I mean, you don’t…
We have different things that, we have, we have a website for each with a firm website, but we, we look at if somebody is arrested, they don’t really want to know that the firm, they don’t care that the firm can do their will, they care are you going to get their kid out of jail. And if somebody lost a loved one, they need to stay probated, they don’t care that you do other things. And so, there are things that can be done on a website, when it comes to landing pages and how you structure a website so that if somebody is searching, you land on a page that solves their problem, but that is one of the things. So, two ways to do it. One, if you’re crazy, like myself, you might have different actual properties. That’s not necessarily a best practice. It’s something I’ve done because I’ve been in business for a long time, and I’ve built authority but what for most people out there, despite everything Jay and I just talked about, it’s hard enough to have the resources to optimize and build authority on one domain, to do it for multiple ones is really tough. So, unless you’re running a paid search campaign PPC, where you could easily do a separate, you know, landing page are many websites and have paid search go towards it, for the bike accident lawyer where you’re the only, you only talk about that on a domain. The next best thing is if you have your firm’s site is to silo or create sort of libraries of content for each area of law so that if somebody gets there, they have an entire website within a website on that niche topic and they can dig deep within it., and only if they go back to the homepage, they even see that you do anything else, but that search engine is not going to take you to the homepage for a search. If you do your job right, it’s going to take you to the landing page for that type of law. As if you have your own website within a website, then it comes to design and making sure that the landing page that you’re on doesn’t have, if it’s a criminal landing page, it doesn’t have your trust and estate stuff. Now at the homepage, you can show that you do a number of things with a pulldown menu, etc. But from a search point of view, you really want people landing where their question is answered. So, is, it allows you even if you can’t perfectly niche down exclusively to still offer several different things to the public, and that based on somebody’s arriving on a page that will solve their answer WebWise, give Google that. The downside is, and we mentioned this before, if the, if the main URL the.com. If your site focuses on one type of lights easier to tell that story to Google in a hyper competitive market, you may need that, but as you leave the hyper competitive market, if you have an authoritative brand domain, backslash type of law, that’s the next best thing. And if you treat that landing page for that niche type of law, like it’s its own site, and you build links to it, and you put content on it, and you build out that site within the site, you can accomplish 95% of what you would do as if you had your own separate site.
How do you do that in your firm, Jay? how do you put your focus on digital marketing?
So, I, what I’ve actually built over the years is I’ve actually built standalone sites for, for some of my other lawyers here in the firm, and what we’re actually doing now is we’re actually revamping it and going more to the silo because our firm’s website has actually gained some authority. And so, now as we’re adding stuff, we’re adding it in new practice areas, but one of the things that I think is important to recognize is that a lot of lawyers pay attention to their homepage, and when they’re designing their website, they, they focus on, you know, we have this beautiful homepage but if you look at the statistics for my web traffic, people visiting my homepage are actually like 19 and 20. We have dozens of other pages that people hit before they get to our homepage, at any great scale. And the people that are going to our homepage usually know who we are, and are looking for us specifically because we built a name for it. So, it’s amazing when you start to look at your digital analytics, how often people enter your website through one of your hundreds of pages, like Seth was saying. And so, the way we build our, we focus our marketing areas, a lot of great organic content as people come in, and are calling in and asking questions, we have a document that we share among all of the, all the staff that if it’s a new question that you’ve never heard, added here, and then we go and we create the content to match the queries of the people that are calling in. So, that because if somebody’s asking that question to us, they’re getting on the phone and asking that question to us. There are other people with that question, who just are anxious or don’t necessarily want to call. So, we want to put that information out there so that they can get that answer and see us as the top professionals in that area that can answer their question and solve their problem for them.
Let’s focus a little bit on, we’re sort of backing into it, but, but SEO, search engine optimization, you know, where are we at now in 2021? Does it matter anymore? Especially for the small firm.
I mean, look, I’ve been hearing SEO is dead for a very long time, and are there as paid search creeped into it? Absolutely, but there is no better ROI, if done, you know, if you build it out, and particularly what I love about SEO, is that if you are a solo or small firm sweat equity, can really move the needle, right? Again, if you don’t build any content and build any links, it’s not going to do any good. But if you’re the type of guy who had, that loves to write, loves to make videos, loves to, you know, build, you know, and sort of could foster, foster an environment of getting links, whether it be from press or charity, or involving the community or thought leadership are great content, if you’re able to do those things, that’s SEO. And if you, if you do those things, now, if you’re, if you’re in the middle of a major market, and you want car accidents, is that, is that going to, you’re going to move the needle doing this yourself on the side, probably not, but for most other people watching, you know, if you have a niche, and you’re willing to put the sweat equity in, there’s not much you can’t move the needle with in doing this. And I think Jay has done a great job. He’s, you know, he’s found some random niches that he has liked to play around with, and again, if he took the time to focus on these, it would be a different story, but instead, Jay comes up with ideas. It’s amazing what you could put out to market. If you, if you start finding and fishing where other people are not fishing, again, you want to be a me too, this won’t work as well, but if you’re willing to have some differentiating factor, there’s nobody that I think can’t be, it’s, you know, Steve Hartman, that amazing reporter from CBS, everybody’s got a story was his old mantra. And I really believe that with lawyers, if you if you dig deep enough for most people, and you’re willing to put the sweat equity in, or the hire of an expert in, there’s not much you can’t differentiate from your market and find eyeballs to SEO.
You know, and as lawyers, we have, you know, we have a lot of training and writing long, and detail-oriented briefs, you know, and, you know, that’s one of the things that I think everyone looks at marketing is as this, this magic wand thing that another provider can give to you if you just are willing to spend the money, but, but, you know, so much of what people are looking for from lawyers is that knowledge, you know, there was a time, right? There was a time when lawyers only sold their knowledge that nobody else could get, and because nobody else could get it, lawyers could charge a premium for it. Now, there’s sort of been a shift. Now all the information in the world is out there, and what a lawyer really can do is sell their experience and knowing how to react to something, and they can sell their ability to make it as less painful or, or make it smoother for you as a consumer. And I think the most successful lawyers in their marketing have said, okay, look, I can I can, I’m not going to even try to compete with, you know, the, the Library of Alexandria that is on the internet right now, but what I can do is I can explain to clients how I can facilitate their process through this legal problem that they have, I can make it easier for them, I can make it less painful, I can make it less stressful, and I can put out this content about the areas that I care about, so that I can differentiate myself from the person who says, I hate on X, Y, and Z, and please call me if you need legal services, because the people who want are looking for X, Y, and Z, well, they’ve spent hours researching their problem, hours, weeks. I mean, I know Seth and I can both talk about I’m sure, we, I’m sure everybody on this, on this video right now has had that person who’s come into their office to consult with them, and dropped 500 pages of paper, I’ve printed out everything I could read about this topic. Now I need to hire somebody. So, the information is out there, what we can do as lawyers now is actually utilize that information to get them the results that they want, and that’s sort of a paradigm shift as to what a lawyer does for people now. It used to be we just sold our knowledge. Now what we do is we sell the facilitation of that knowledge better than anybody else.
And within that, is there some element of the lawyer now having to, to almost sell the experience of solving the problem in some way?
I think so. I truly think that, you know, the, it is a review driven world, and, and if a lawyer can make the process palatable. I mean, we’re not, I mean, people who come to, people generally don’t come to a lawyer for happy things, they have a problem they can’t solve, especially for the BSC lawyers. I mean, they’re the lawyers who do corporate work back and forth contracts, that type of thing, but for the people who handle divorce, criminal defense trusts, and estates and probate work, personal injury, I mean, in every one of those categories, you got somebody who’s got a problem they can’t deal with, their family might be falling apart, they may or have a loved one of themselves that are arrested, somebody has died or is anticipating a death in the family, or someone’s been hurt in an accident. Those are all problems that they can’t solve by themselves. And so, if you can make the experience of hiring you and being shepherded through the legal process, easier, less painful, less anxious, those are the clients that will become raving fans and that will turn into them suggesting to others that they should hire us to solve their problem. There is, you know, it used to be that it could be a lawyer, you know, in the 60s 70s 80s could be, okay, give me the money and I’ll tell you what you need to know, just be quiet and let, let me do my job. Now, the consumer, they want to know what’s going on, they want to be placated and they want to be made sure that they’re making the right choices. They’re more actively involved in their defense, or in their representation, really than ever clients were in the past.
That kind of gets us into social media. In a way, when you mentioned reviews, and you mentioned, you know, just a lawyer sort of being out there and being involved in participating and so on. What sort of mistakes do you see lawyers making with social media?
I’m gonna turn this to Jay because Jay, not only is a lawyer, but has a group firm flex, which helps lawyers with what I think is the hardest thing out there, which is organic, social, being genuine online. You know, it’s easy to sort of, you see a lot of people in this world selling pretty dubious, organic social media packages, with like happy secretary’s day and redhead day, and it’s interesting, but it doesn’t make you any money. So, I’m gonna defer to Jay on this one.
Especially because Seth is kind of antisocial, although I think he’s starting to come around, you know, to my way of thinking, but you know, the thing about social media is, is interesting is that effective social media marketing really is the way that most lawyers have gotten business right over the last 100 years. It’s just modifying it for the way that people interact with each other nowadays. And let me give you an example, I mean, the reality is, is that people are going to be attracted to service professionals who they know, who they like and who they trust, and social media is an exceptional platform for that. Unfortunately, too many lawyers literally just make ego posts, and I call it word vomit, where they’re talking about stuff that matters to them. For example, I have seen plenty of personal injury lawyers who like to tout how many, how their latest verdict and how much money they brought down on a case, and that’s great, right? Because that placates the lawyer’s ego and so, they’ll post something on their social media. I settle the case for a million dollars. Well, for most people, the idea of a million dollars is, is nebulous, it’s, it’s so large, it’s, it’s really impossible for someone to wrap their heads around how their life could change with a million dollars. I mean, we have the fantasy of winning the lottery and, you know, quitting your job and living on an island, that type of thing. But for the most part, somebody who gets a million-dollar settlement on a case, that it’s hard to understand how that’s going to impact your life, a lawyer would be much better served telling their clients story saying, look, you know what, we settle this case for our client and now, they were able to hire a home health aid, so that, you know, the spouse could go and visit family members. That’s what that money is good for. Because the person who’s injured, who’s looking for a lawyer isn’t necessarily thinking a million dollars, they’re thinking, how am I going to get through my day with my injuries, right? Same thing with family law. I mean, no one wants to go out there and say, hey, I divorced seven families this week. I mean, that’s not necessarily the kind of thing that people want to read about. And too many lawyers post ego driven stuff, what you can really do is engage people in your local area posts, when you’re going to restaurants, ask for recommendations, you just engage with the platform. It’s like being at a barbecue or a cocktail party, if I went to a cocktail party with you, Dan, and we were standing there in the kitchen, and we were talking about Max baseball, and Seth came in, and we were all having a good time, we’re talking about baseball in the playoffs, where do we think things are gonna go? And then all of a sudden, a fourth person comes walking in and started saying, hey, I sell car insurance, life insurance, home insurance, whatever kind of insurance you need. Alright, see you later and then bounced, we’d look at the three of us and say, who was this joker? We don’t need to talk to the Joker. But if someone were to show up and start talking baseball, and say, hey, did you see that injury in the game last week? Yeah, that you know, that player is going to be out for three weeks. By the way, I sell disability insurance, if you ever need it, I’m happy to talk to you, but let’s get back to the baseball game. The next time you’re thinking you need to, you want to review your insurance, you can say, you know, I met somebody who sells disability insurance, maybe I should look into that and you give that person a call, because it’s natural, it’s part of the conversation and it’s not like a hard sell. And if you go back historically, lawyers got hired, because, you know, in the 40s, and 50s before advertising was around, they weren’t known in the community, they were like they were trusted and they let people know what they did, but they didn’t say, you can hire me, you can hire me, you can hire me, it just, it was the area where people were interacting. Now, people are interacting on social media, on Facebook, and on Instagram, and any of the platforms. That’s the new cocktail party. That’s weird because quite frankly, we’re all pulled in a million directions. I mean, when I was a kid, you know, I played little league, and that was it. Now I have kids, they’re in dance and soccer, and Little League, and after school, and this sort of thing, I’m pulled in a million directions, I don’t have the ability to keep up with all of my friends, one to one, but I can check in on social media and I can talk about the things that we have in common. And so, that’s really what social media is all about, it’s an opportunity for you to network, don’t use it as an opportunity for you to market because people aren’t there to be marketed to, you don’t go to it, you know, no one’s handing out, you know, free samples at your local picnic because it’s just not appropriate. It’s really all about creating relationships, talking about the stuff that other people want to talk about, and gently reinforcing what you do for a living. And that’s going to get you out there so much better than just hammering people with hire me, hire me hire me.
So, in a sense, I think you’re saying, don’t be afraid to be a human being when you’re on social media.
People connect with people, you know, that, that at the end of the day, you’re gonna want to do business with people who you feel comfortable with, especially if you’re coming to them with a problem that gives you anxiety, that could be embarrassing, that could be, you know, life changing, you’re gonna want to go to somebody who you feel comfortable with.
Let’s just say, Jay, one of the things, like a, present company included, that people’s firm social media often crashes and burns is that it’s very hard to make a firm, interesting, some people do a great job with their community service pushes, and there are exceptions to every rule but that takes, that’s not happening on the fly, that’s happening with a social media department, and it’s a person to organize those events. Those are awesome, but for the average person in the way you and I got to know each other, besides like, you know, calling you up and saying hello, was over the years seeing social media posts, not about what’s going on at work, but what’s going on beyond work and knowing the person as a person so that we end up having a cup of coffee. There, There’s a much richer, deeper relationship there and it’s those richer, deeper relationships that over time and are the, the funnels that bring you, you know, that bring you referrals. And, again, if you look at it in a mercenary point of view, it won’t work, you have to actually like it. And if you if you like connecting with people and being engaged, one of the extra benefits is that you’re then thought of in that area. But I think that JJ is right that it’s, you know, it’s creating that human interaction, which will lead to positive pieces, rather than just standing up saying, me, me, me.
Yeah and, and that’s one of the things as somebody who helps other lawyers with social media, I have to talk a lot of lawyers off the ledge, they’re like, well, I just want to do this, I’m like, that’s great, but it’s not going to be effective, and you’re literally throwing money away, it’s better you do nothing, then, then do the negative stuff.
So, we’ve got about 10-15 minutes left here, let me, let me throw you a little bit of an off the wall question and get your reaction to it. Let’s say hypothetically, Atticus Finch comes to you, and says, you know, I’m ready to enter the 21st century, you know, I basically been relying upon my abilities, as a lawyer being known in the community, people see me in the courthouse, people see me read my newspaper on my front porch and the small town. That’s, that’s the extent of my so-called marketing, you know, and I get business, but, but I’m ready to really enter the 21st century. What do I do? Where do I start?
And I would say that one question I always throw back is, do you really want it? And I say that from the point of view of the ethos of digital marketing, if that’s what you’re referring to, when systems are always, you know, yes, that can be done no matter what, get rid of your index cards and get clear or do whatever it is like there’s, there’s always technology improvements, and that, that’s there, but what I say is, it’s actually a threshold question in my opinion because I, jay and I, both get questions from people all the time, you got to be careful what you ask for, I’ll give you like a numeric number. Let’s say some guy is running a practice and he’s generous. He’s grossing $400,000 a year, taking home, you know, let’s say a buck 75 on that, and you say, you know what, I really want to start marketing and I want to invest in digital marketing. And I’m like, Okay, let’s do the math for a second. And first question, I would say, as to this, what do you want to grow, right? We’ve Max growth live, most people watching our show want to grow, but if do you actually want to hire another associate? No, I never want to have another lawyer managers a headache, I don’t want to deal with, okay. So, if we were to, if someone has to work with you and you’re to invest $50,000 in that, and that’s to generate, let’s say, to be conservative with three to one and return on investment, as far as gross revenue, now you need to get the work done. So, you’re gonna have to get some extra admin help, etc., to cover that work, maybe not a lawyer, that may be another 50. So that, in order to generate hypothetically, then it’d be less than this $50,000 of extra income, you would need to work exponentially harder, and do $550,000 worth of gross work per year. And that, that is the juice worth the squeeze. If somebody says, you know what, I’m Atticus, and I’m going to retire at some point but I want two associates and I want to build this up. So, I got my $40,000 gross and I think that with my name and reputation, I could leverage it. And we could invest in this, and I’m gonna have to use Junior associates and ultimately more junior work and they’ll second share my trials. Great, you got a business plan, and then go ahead and invest in it because you can monetize that work at what associate hopefully a second associate. So really, the first question is, do you actually want to grow? Are you just saying that? And then secondly, this is the piece of Jay and I talk a lot about, there’s no easy answer, is intake. How are you going to then take these calls? Which are not the same, If somebody wants Atticus, and they call and he doesn’t call back for two or three days, they’re going to wait, my dad is 85-86 still practicing in New York trust estate, TC or counsel to my firm in DC. And I sent him a criminal case Friday at three o’clock and I said, you know, I just emailed it, was a lead in New York and one of his colleagues would be great for it, and they had a call back Monday at 10am. Oh, they called him, the guy had already had a lawyer, I’m like, yeah, it’s a different ethos. If you’re, if you’re dealing with people, as we’re talking about from reviews from online from all these touches, you have a much shorter window to get back to somebody. And if you are not changing your ways, and you’re not going to have some sort of intake procedure, whether you have a cell phone or an assistant, or something where you meaningfully are going to take a call after hours or on the weekends. You might as well not invest in it because you’re not going to see ROI. So, the question really is, do you, are you, do you really want the things that would be that would lead to growth? A, and B, are you willing to make those systemic changes in your firm, staff wise, and sort of the whole, you know, mentality? If that doesn’t change, then it’s an exercise in futility.
You know, my, my whole point is, I think it comes down to vision. And I think people need to have an honest conversation with themselves about what the vision for their life is going to be like, you know what, Seth runs, what I run is a lot different than what our fathers had for practices, but that’s because our visions were different than theirs. And what you need to do is actually commit to a vision, you know, it’s easy to sit here one day and be like, you know, I want what, what she has, because it seems like she has a lot more money than I have, and I’m looking, you know, and I’m looking at the car she’s driving and the clothes she’s wearing. But that may be, number one, that may not necessarily be true, right? Because some people just invest their money and other things that are right out there in your face, but the reality is, is I may not want everything that she’s done over there to get that and so you have to be honest with yourself about your vision.
So, it seems like you’re really talking about a lawyer developing a more entrepreneurial view of what they’re doing.
Or not. There’s nothing meaning, there’s nothing wrong with not doing it, right? There’s no value judgment, but if somebody says, whatever we did, Jay and I both referred to your question is when somebody says, what should I do? The first question is, should you? Or are you running a perfectly fine lifestyle practice that’s making you good amount of money? You don’t have extra risk, you know, what you’re doing, you have your, your referral network, and you’re, and you’re fine. And so, I think that is, it’s, it’s a, it’s, you know, we, we talk a lot about our show, people do what they like to do, if you like to write your blog, if you’d like to make videos, make videos, whatever it is you like to do, if you have no interest in something entrepreneurial, you know, either you better be partnered up with somebody who does, or you’re gonna have a really hard time because, you know, how many blogs do you look at where somebody says, I’m gonna start a blog, and you see one or two posts, and there’s not another one for the last three years, you know, same thing happens on something as far as doing something entrepreneurially if you’re, if you’re a practitioner, and you just want to like, speak to the clients and work up the cases and go to court, and all these other bells and whistles that are required in order to scale just won’t happen and you’ll be left with that blank blog of, of a law firm.
So, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about some of these misconceptions that lawyers do have about marketing. I mean, you’ve, you’ve hit it, some of them, but, but what I see lawyers often confuse is this notion of marketing with advertising. And they don’t seem to understand that, you know, advertising is essentially a component of marketing.
Absolutely, you know what, let’s, let’s throw back to one of the conversations that Seth had a few moments ago, where he talked about, you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re netting out 175, you’ve got to get to five, fit, your, your revenue has to go from 400 to 550, to generate that $50,000. What if you decided, you know, what, I’m not going to spend money on digital advertising, but I’m going to take $25,000 and I’m going to use that to take a lot of people out to dinner because that’s gonna be my one-on-one attempt to generate referrals through in person networking type of things, you know, that could turn into great reviews, or revenue streams.
I’ll go even stronger than Jay, if somebody comes to me for digital marketing, they do b2b outside of a basic website, right? Maybe spending no more than 1000 a month. My question is, hey, you’re in the b2b space, SEO is not where you should be putting your first dollars, that’s the wrong place. I would say season tickets member of one of the the, the social clubs in DC, you know, a country club, whatever it is that you like, want to get a boat, get a boat, in your job that is not just to have season tickets, you have a full-time job or your admin has a full-time job filling those tickets. You know, not tickets are not easy to fill in the middle of the summer. You got to be thinking careful about what it is and is it desirous. You know, the question is finding something hopefully you like because you’re gonna be going to it a lot. And you know, I just, you know, and it’s there’s nothing better than unadulterated time with people. If you, if you hate golf, that’s not a good thing. But if you love golf, you get, you know, there’s a reason that people who are an insurance, play golf, get four hours with somebody else to get four hours of somebody’s time just to get to, to know them, so they like know and trust you. So, b2b, I think there really is an entire world where digital marketing is not even the first three or four things you need to be doing, and that, you know, if I see a firm, it’s like, yeah, we’re doing all that, we are members of the different dining clubs, and we have our sports tickets, and we’re doing all of them. Now, we want to get even deeper, great, but there’s a time and place for each and knowing what it is. But I really think you’ve got to match it up to what you like, if you don’t like baseball, getting season to the next is going to be really brutal. And so, you figure out what is the thing that makes, that floats your boat that hopefully other people will like, one of my favorite lawyers in town, he’s a lunch guy and he’s built an entire network off of lunches. And one of the things he talked to me about was, you know, you sit there, and dessert comes in, you know, Jay and I have both worked on weight loss over the years. And dessert time comes, the easy thing is that now I gotta get back to work, I don’t really need a dessert, there’s something that happens once your belly is full from the meal, where you actually get to sort of talk about next level thing. So, what I’m getting at is, this isn’t like, yeah, go optimize a website, you gonna make money, figure out what works for your audience, and then dig deep, and make sure that you like it because if you don’t like it, it won’t happen.
Great stuff, guys. I’m out of questions, anything you want to leave our audience with before we wrap things up?
Seth?
No, I’m good. I really appreciate the time, Dan, of love getting to know you and this is a great, you know, day seminar, I hope we’re back in person next year because I think that what you guys have put together adds great value. And part of it is the people you meet, that’s what you’re, you lose through the digital. Hopefully, people are taking advantage of the chats online, you know, asking questions and sort of bonding with people that way, but I think one of the great things about the practice day is you meet people you wouldn’t ordinarily do meet, and that I would say just, you know, nothing happens sitting at home is one of the things, getting out the serendipity of life, and one of the things we’ve lost during COVID, great to see people starting to return to some form of normalcy and that for those people that were counting on referrals, this has been a tough time this person that people have been hit hardest by this because that same interaction isn’t going on. So, thank you for all that you guys are doing at the bar in this great 360 program.
Excellent. Terrific. Well, thanks, Jay and Seth, for your time today.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
Well Seth, I mean, that was great for me, you know, getting to spend some time with you, really sort of thinking about some of the answers to dance questions. You really allowed me to sort of take a step back from my own practice, and think about some of the bigger picture things that when you’re in the weeds, you don’t necessarily get time to think about. What were your takeaways?
No, it was, you know what, it was neat to have the tables churned. I hear a lot from our viewers and listeners about things they get out of our program and I felt like it wasn’t put into the hot seat so much, but it gave us the opportunity to reflect in a way that we don’t always we were sort of doing our back and forth. So, really happy to be included in the program.
Yeah, I was too. Now one of the things that we talked about at the top of the show was the rise of this delta variant, and it brought out something that was posted in one of the online forums recently by Ryan McKean, and I don’t know if you saw it, but I wanted to bring it up here so we can start to talk about it, maybe talk about it next week, a little bit more in depth. But statistically, if you had gone outside of law, you know, there are people who were predicting that Coronavirus was going to happen or some sort of, you know, some sort of virus Armageddon that we’ve been going through. And even when they started with Coronavirus, they were talking about this delta variant that there was going to be a, you know, a variant of the Coronavirus.
There’ll be more than one mutation.
Exactly, exactly. So, I’m wondering what it is that will be the next Coronavirus for the legal industry and for what we do, because something else is going to happen. It may certainly be on a global scale. It may not necessarily, but how can we do things that can, you know, make it easier for us to adapt, to pivot, to overcome, and what are some of the things that are growing firms should look at now, to put themselves in a better position to survive, you know, negative stuff, because quite frankly, you know, last March, we had no idea PPP was going to come down from the government, we, at one point, you and I were talking about how, hey, look, we got to you, we got to conserve money, we got to make sure that we can, you know, identify who we can let go if we have to let go if we have to downsize, because we had a desire to make sure that the firm remained, even if it changed dramatically, to be able to grow back from that base. And so, I’m…
Interesting. We had a number of guests where we had a sort of a prior ratio before Max growth live, and I remember him saying I would never lay anybody off. And, you know, it was, it was interesting because you and I, especially with the criminal bat with criminal caseload, knew that had there not been a Delta had there not been a PPP, we would have been making very different decisions. So, I feel like it was a such a luxury to be able that we tighten our belts, and we continue to we’ve served as a real estate, but I think one of the benefits of this was, you know, we all know that we’re not guaranteed tomorrow, but I think what, what this has shown us is that, you know, and it’s, it’s terrible because you can only as an entrepreneur, go forward and keep running, this was one of those moments where you’re just like, hey, there are these risk factors, and that it’s not going to be rosy. I mean, we hit the stock market keeps going up. It doesn’t you know, every time it goes down, people are like, oh, my God, I can’t believe I, I was so foolish, and there’s this this sort of short-term learning cycle. So, like, in one sense, I hope that we learned how to pivot, keep ourselves lean, etc. But the moment things feel good, you sort of want to take advantage of what’s out there and it is interesting how, you know, if you look a year from now, you know, we may be looking at this very differently in back into growth mode, again, we’re our max growth live, people are trying to grow. It was the one time in life where you’re just wanting to make sure you maintain, and you weren’t, you weren’t worried as much about growth, but you were making sure, as Keith given said, you had, you know, there was, there was gasoline in the engine, you know, that you made it through this, and you still have gas in the tank. So…
I think there’s something that has to be said for our audience to, you know, different firms are at different points in their, in their lifecycle, you know, if you’re a solo, who’s hung a shingle, I know some of the people are, and you’ve got gone from, you know, 100k a year to 200. That’s phenomenal, right? And that’s, and that is, that is great growth, and it was doable in, in COVID, and God bless you, that’s awesome, right? But then there are other firms that are doing a $5 million a year revenue stream, and they’re saying, look, I don’t need to grow anymore, I just need to maintain, and I’m willing to even and I might even, I might even have a 10 or 15% loss in a year, and if I tighten my belt, I can make things work. So, one of the things that I want people to get out of this is that don’t judge yourself by how other people are performing.
That’s true in life in general. And also, I, I’ll leave it with this, because we’re gonna, we’ll continue this conversation on that next time, but, you know, I always said, the numbers you get from other people. I’m always on, you know, non-CPA numbers, I cut every number in half. And if I don’t trust somebody to cut in half again, you can be chasing stuff that as you get to know situations are just either not true or complete fiction and just, you know, you keep doing what you know, is right, and don’t be influenced the other way.
Absolutely, and that’s a great party message for everybody. So, that’s gonna do it for us this week on maximum growth live. Like we told you at the top of the show, he is Seth Price, CEO of BluShark Digital as well as Price Benowitz, your DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Montana law firm. I am Jay Ruane, your CEO of firm flex, social media marketing for lawyers, as well as we’re weighing attorneys up here in the great state of Connecticut. That’s going to do it for us. As always, please follow Seth and his SEO insider, you can follow him on the BluShark Facebook page, and you can always join my group Systemizing your law firm for growth here on Facebook as well, but if you want to catch the podcast, you can do it either on the maximum lawyer podcast or on our own standalone edition. So, thank you all for watching. Thank you all for being with us. We will see you next week on another edition of maximum growth live. Bye for now.
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