In this episode Seth Price and Jay Ruane speak with Ben Glass of Great Legal Marketing about the principles of marketing.Ben started his solo practice in 1995, focusing on personal injury, medical malpractice, and ERISA disability insurance law.He has been featured in or quoted by The Washington Post, Washington Post Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, ABC News Online, Wall Street Journal, and “The Next Big Thing” Radio Show. Mr. Glass has also been interviewed on television, including the stations ABC, NBC, and Fox.
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Welcome to the podcast edition of Maximum Growth Live. The number one program for lawyers who want to grow their practices. Each week, our hosts Seth Price and Jay Ruane tackled the fundamental questions about how to grow the profit and profitability of your law firm to watch the program live. Submit your questions and hear the latest episode tune in every Thursday at 3 PM. Eastern on Facebook for our live show. Maximum Growth Live is a production of Maximum Lawyer Media.
Hello, hello and welcome to another edition of Maximum Growth Live. It is our Thursday show and my name is Jay Ruane. I am the CEO of FirmFlex social media marketing for lawyers, as well as managing partner of Ruane Attorneys, a civil rights and criminal defense firm in Connecticut. And joining me now live from Key West or Tallahassee or Tampa Bay, actually, Tampa Bay down there near the so you stayed down there.
I was just thinking, Jay, if somebody calls the last-minute ticket, I’m three hours away. So you know, then again, you know, I’m really looking forward to watching this one at home.
Yeah, I am too, by the way that Seth Price, Seth Price, is the CEO of Price Benowitz, a law firm in Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and hasn’t yet opened an office in Florida, although he seems to be all smiles while he’s in Florida. So that’s certainly something that could be happening you never know. As well as BluShark digital, your SEO law for law firms. And Seth, how’s your week going this week? You survived the snowstorm?
Survived the snowstorm, you know, dropped to about 60 here and so I had to put the fleece on but other than that, it’s it’s it’s been good, It’s been-the idea of working outside everyday during the middle of the winter has been just one of those life moments that I just really really cherish.
Well, who knows maybe maybe you should get a place in the Bahamas and we can start doing remotes from down there. I’ll gladly join you down at the Price Benowitz Bahamas branch.
The dream is Aruba, I don’t think there’s a lot a lot to be done down there. But I that’s that’s the goal.
I might get some work as a criminal lawyer, if you’re in Joran van der Sloot is still it’s still around, you never know, you never know. But, Seth, we have a great show today. And I don’t want to take too long getting to it. We have Ben Glass tell us a little bit about Ben Glass. For those who don’t know who he is.
Ben Glass is one of the early players in the digital space and the law firm management development space. I mean, Ben will have to-Ben has done a lot of different things, a published author multiple times. And he is one of the guys early I visited one of his early seminars where they were talking about all the different things that could be used in law firm growth, number of our big fans of the show and past guests who have gone have worked with him over the years. So excited to have him here to sort of talk about his thoughts on on where things are today. And what what he’s excited about. Looking forward.
You know, he is he is I guess I mean, in some respect, he coaches young lawyers, solo small firms, even older lawyers who want to focus more on business and make sure that their function, their their law firm is functioning well, like a business. So I’m curious to see what sort of lessons he can give our audience. But that leads me to another thing, we have another set of guests that are going to be coming up soon to talk a little bit about coaching, and tell us who those people are.
Well, that’s that’s our two good buddies, Jim, Jim and Tyson who have a coaching division, opening up and really excited to have him on the show. Because, you know, they they have been both in their own ways, you know, very forward thinking and have, you know, with the guild opened, you know, opened the eyes of many lawyers as they grow and scale their firms. So that should be a great episode coming up where we learn more about what they have rolling out.
Yeah, I’m really excited about that. And, you know, for me personally, having the ability to access someone like Jim hacking, who’s built an immigration practice from some from nothing up to being a national player in the in the immigration space is really impressive. Because I had one of my attorneys come to me, towards the end of last year, say, you know, as a first generation immigrant to this country, it’s important for me to get back, I’m thinking I want to transition into that space. And I quickly sent a message to Jim, and he said, I think we could work together. Let’s talk about it, you know, after we get through the first quarter, and so I’m excited because it’s this is a skill set that I need, and to have it so readily available in the community that I’m in is kind of awesome.
Yeah. And similarly, Tyson, who’s you know, in a competitive space in the injury space has done a great job, sort of figuring out how to be very mean and laser focused and as you know, he’s leveraged offshore labor. He’s He’s done a lot of things that have made him a true success story in scaling and focused on profitability. So I’m excited to see what these guys put together.
Yeah, you know, I, I’m lucky enough to have their cell phone numbers and we text issues all the time. So, you know, I know that they can share a lot with a lot of people and get you on that growth pattern and path that you’re looking for. But why don’t we take a quick break right now, bring in our sponsors and then when we come back, we’ll be able to welcome Ben Glass in and we could talk a little bit about his perspective on growing your law firm sound good?
Sounds great.
Awesome, folks, we’ll be right back with the Max Growth interview of Ben Glass.
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We’re here with Ben Glass, founder of Great Legal Marketing and Ben Glass Law. Welcome to the show, Ben.
Hey, guys, thanks for having me on. So awesome.
You know, you’ve been influential with a lot of a lot of lawyers and building up law firms. Talk to us a little bit about what how you’ve seen sort of the business practice of law evolve over the last, you know, 10 years or more.
Certainly, in the last 10 years, I think more and more lawyers are the tune to sort of Oh, my gosh, I do actually have to have business skills and run a business side of this. And there’s a lot of folks good folks in the space who are coaching lawyers about this. And I think it’s vital, because to me, it’s a vacuum that the traditional Bar Bar Association’s they totally leave out of the equation. And then they wonder why lawyers are so unhappy. And so more and more left, that gets stolen, small firm lawyers in particular, are getting business coaching advice, spending money, spending time learning this, and the ones who get it, or in my view, are able to deliver higher quality legal services, because everybody’s happier when the money flows. And you have great people working for you.
You know, one of the themes we’ve seen over the last few weeks on the show is we’ve had people come on talking about the business side of law and coaching etc, has been speaking something you speak to yourself talking about what is your what is your why what drives you to be able to figure out how to create a practice around that you speak to that a little bit?
Yeah, so you know, I’m of the view that you have this, it’s irrefutable, you have a one way journey through life, you don’t know when you’re going to be born, who you’re gonna be born to where you’re gonna be where you have no control over that. And you have very little control over when the end is there. And so in that space in the middle, our job is to create a life that’s, that’s great for us. When that works. It’s great for our families in great for whatever clients, customers, whatever the business is. And so and I think that that’s again, that’s left out of the whole law school curriculum equation, right? You go to law school to work 80 hours a week, just put clients at the top of the list to self sacrifice have miserable families. Well, that’s the code but we asked who made that rule? Like why is that have to be the rule? So So I am all about helping lawyers figure out what would make you most happy What makes your family happy? Right? Okay, if you can identify that I can help you figure out how to engineer a practice. Now, while you’re sometimes that it’s interesting, they have a hard time articulating that, because it’s never, they’ve never been given permission to think, oh, I can build something for myself. Right. And it sounds weird. It doesn’t sound weird to the three of us, right? But but I’ve talked to so many lawyers, and they go, Oh, really, but even lawyers and maybe 5060 years old, we’ve been reinvigorated their interest in and love for running a business and having a fun practice.
You know, one of the things we ask people, because I think you’re gonna learn a lot from mistakes, and you see inside more law firms than almost anybody else out there. What are some of the mistakes as far as tactical mistakes you may see lawyers make that are sort of like you see it over and over again, you wish you could sort of like jump up and down and say, Hey, stop, this.
Lawyer will say to me, Oh, I’m not getting leads from my website. I need a new webmaster, I need a new company, like, what’s a good company to go to? And I’ll say, Well, what, who do you want to see walking through your door as a client? What practice area? I don’t know how big you want to be? I don’t know. Okay, your problem is not your webmaster. Right? Your problem is you haven’t clearly identified who you want to work with. Again, I’m giving you permission to make that decision. This and so that’s where it all starts. The second thing that was is, is spending no time thinking about and understanding the principles of marketing, I was telling Jay, before we went live, I said, I can walk down the aisles of Home Depot, there’s a lot of cool stuff on the shelves. I don’t know how to use any of it, I have no interest in anything at Home Depot, I’m sure it’s really good. So if I walked down and just started to buy what’s on sale, or what’s the biggest or what’s got five stars, but I don’t really have a plan to what to do with it, then I’m wasting my money, and I might hurt myself. And so that that’s what lawyers do, you don’t know where they want to go. And then I need them to quiet their brains a little bit. And just think, here’s some principle, like the principles of marketing haven’t changed in in 100 years, they haven’t, right? We’re trying to, it’s the same principles we use as trial lawyers do, by the way, which is persuading someone else to come to an emotional decision and backing up with with some form of rationality, the tools have absolutely changed. Too many lawyers want to skip to Shiny Object tool. I don’t want to learn, I don’t want to read any classic books on marketing or psychology, right? I want to skip that part that gets you in trouble. That’s how lawyers get hurt.
Well, that’s exactly something that Jay and I go back and forth a lot on this show. Because shiny objects are everywhere, especially in our space. Like, you know, it’s like you might you could literally like, you know, you could name off the top of your head 10 fads that have come in and out very quickly. At the same time, you know, there’s, there’s a fun point of getting ahead of the curve. I’ve always personally taken the attitude, hey, I dug deeper into digital, I’m gonna dig while I may pivot and see something else of interest. You know, I’m staying the course with limited distractions, you know, not wanting to miss other things, but understanding that, like, if it’s that good, I’ll figure it out a quarter later, once everybody else is there. How do you sort of coach or advise people to stay away from the shiny, shiny object syndrome, so that they’re not, you know, sort of frenetic in their approach?
So the question is, Hey, you want to sell me something? Right? How are we going to measure success? If I put $1 out into this thing? How many dollars? Is it going to bring back? And how will we know that that’s bringing back the dollar? Now not everything can be perfectly measured? Because, you know, people who hire lawyers have done sort of multichannel, right they’ve, they’ve seen and heard of, but but as best we can, we want to measure that because if I’ve got option A, that brings me back to dollars, option B, that brings you back $1 and a half. Well, that’s going to help inform my decision as to where to go next. Now, Seth, you’re you’re big in the digital marketing, but you wouldn’t be as good as you are. If you didn’t understand, like, fundamental marketing. First, again, digital is just a way to get the message out. So that’s, that’s what you’ve been very, very good at, understand the principle. Now apply digital. And now we keep Yes, you keep your eyes open, like what is the cool thing on digital next month, but you know how to test it. Right? You know, if I’m going to send $1 out there, you know how to measure the return. Right? And you know, how to talk to a vendor that says enforce a vendor. Like, how are we going to do this? Don’t just sell me something. I give you my credit card. They love that right? And we’re never going to ask how much money it brought back.
Jay, Jay, I want you to jump in next, but my question here is, that’s also a frustrating area, because I first got exposed to over a decade ago attending a Great Legal Marketing event. And there were many things there that while you could attempt to get an ROI from a direct ROI, whether it’s a book or a piece of a newsletter, or what have you, a lot of it is that mixing pot that comes together we, John Morgan, at the other end of the small firm pyramid at the large firm, you know, always talk to me like he never had a tracking number. He’s like, I got one number A case has come from all over. Now, there are areas to track presumably, right if it’s trackable, but as you talk about, and this has evolved a lot over the last decade, it’s no longer you know, a linear situation that people have multiple touchpoints. Before that phone call or form comes in. How do you struggle with that, because there are legitimate forms of marketing, where it’s harder to get the ROI measured. At the same time. It’s also a crutch used by marketers who may not have the goods that are using that to hide the fact that they really don’t have the ability to get an ROI.
Yeah, so I would argue that the big the 800 pound gorilla that says, I don’t, you know, one number, I would argue that they would actually be better if they, if they thought more about this. And I would argue that there’s there’s a space between, I don’t even know enough to ask that question and to try to pursue the answer. And I’m so big, I don’t need to, right. And so my point to lawyers is, just because we get inundated, like, I get 10 emails today, from people wanting to sell me the latest blackbox thing, most of which I’ve seen a decade ago, right? And I want lawyers to at least force that conversation. And to be think about this, right? So we say, Hey, do a newsletter and newsletters are hard to hard to track like, do I get cases from it. But there’s a whole marketing principle about building a community of people who know you like and trust you who might not even know like, what type of law you do sounds or what I do at UJ, like, but they like they know us as interesting people. And they know that requested, send me any case, send me your friends, I’ll make sure they get in the right place. And that’s sort of Abraham Lincoln, position of lawyers in society, which we let we lawyers let that get away from us. And I’m trying to help grab that back.
So I got a question for you, Ben. You know, I go to a lot of these legal conferences, and I talked to a lot of lawyers. And when you’re at a conference that deals with marketing, or business operations, and that type of thing, inevitably, I run into other lawyers, and they’ll say, you know, I, you know, I want to give up law, I just love doing the marketing. And they you know, they love that. And then you try to engage them in a conversation about drip campaigns, or tactical SEO and digital marketing. And they really have no understanding of anything, their idea of marketing is sitting across the table from a vendor and being sold something, if you were to be talking to somebody who wants to grow their firm, you know, how much value is it to actually truly digging deep and diving deep, and getting to understand these things that you’re going to talk about in growing your firm, versus having sort of a very shallow understanding of a lot of things.
So I think there’s high value because I don’t have unlimited money, right. And most of the guys and gals I talked to in the world don’t have unlimited money. Some words seem to have unlimited money. And so they can they literally can produce it, I think if you get into the mass tort area, so my friends in our area, they literally just start throwing money up against the wall. And they have a lot of it, and they’re taking big bets that I would not ever take, right. So so. So I talked to what I would say is most lawyers like mom paw, running a law practice, whether it’s a sole practice, typically up to maybe 10. Lawyers, I think the biggest groups that sort of associated with us maybe have 50, 50, live human bodies under roof, right? That’s my sweet spot for who reads my books and follows us. And I think every single one of those firms and lawyer leaders would do better if they want to build a place where they just want to be the marketer. And by the way, there’s a great argument for that clients are better served if you can have the money to hire lawyers who are better than I am, right, like it’s better served, I’ll just go get more clients. That’s, that’s, that’s most lawyers, you know, in America. And I think, again, the you know, the ones who get frustrated are the ones who say they want the problem solved yesterday, right? They let it go on for a long time will lead flow is down. And now they’re just an easy mark, for the clever marketer who says, we’ve got the proprietary method for getting you on the first page of Google blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like we’ve never heard that story before. And it’s actually nothing to it. It’s actually work right Somebody has to do the work. If like we were talking CrossFit, before we went live, you have to show up at the gym and do something, you can get people to come do the tasks. But you have to be in charge of this whole flow of where do I want to go? And it’s because we’re talking to law firm owners, it’s your money. I mean, you’re taking the risk of all this whole big deal, right? You’re just better off understanding how to measure. Yes, not everything can be perfectly measured. But but you’re better off there. Unless you’re unlimited money.
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, you know, here at FirmFlex, we have a do it yourself plan for under $100 a month. And inevitably, we get cancellations every month, and people who signed up gone four or five months, and their cancellation reasons, I just haven’t been doing it. And, and you’re never gonna build yourself on social. If you’re not putting in the time on social. It doesn’t just happen. But you mentioned, you mentioned something there that there are people that read your books, there are some people are in an audience that don’t know about you as an author, and you have a new book out. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Yeah, so I’ve written this is my third book into the legal space. It’s called Play left fullback. Let’s say get the camera here. Yeah, it’s available on Amazon. I’m happy to send it to anyone who’s listening to this, send me an email, ben@benglasswall.com. And this book is not tactical, I’ve written two prior books that are tactical, the issue with tactical books is by the time you get it published. Like there is new shiny object out there. Right. So this is a philosophy book, this, this book is The is my answer to the bars, lawyer happiness, or the lawyer unhappiness Report, which says, Oh my gosh, we’re shocked, like lawyers are sad and depressed, and they don’t like the field. And I’m like, Why are you shocked? You must not hang out with any lawyers, right? Because many of them are, they don’t like the work they do. And my view and the book is about, build a practice that supports your view of things that will stick. Right? You will have a great place where people come to work, you pay taxes, they love coming to the office on Monday, your family will be happy. And when you get those things, you’re happy team is happy. I guarantee you clients have concerns. Those are the r1 Marlins claims to be Well, sir, we all want that. That happens better. I’ve got a plus people attracted to come work here who are great at customer service. Curious, we’re all you know, forever learners. And not just it’s a fun place to be now. It I didn’t wake up one morning and think this is what I wanted and had it by Thursday. Right? It does take work, what I’ve been able to do. And again, a lot of other thought leaders now in the space is kind of accelerate that for the lawyer who wants to learn how to do this better. There now materials out there that will help them 20 years ago, when I started this journey, there weren’t I mean, I looked there weren’t.
Yeah, so I gotta follow up to that, if you don’t mind. Yeah, go ahead. One of the things that I think is challenging for a lot of lawyers, is that when they came out of law school, they sort of approach law as okay, this is what I’m going to do now until I die. And so they, you know, their first job becomes their practice area. And for the most part, statistically, whatever a lawyer gets as their first job becomes what they do for the rest of their life. So the job satisfaction may never had been there. Can you talk a little bit about how to use good entrepreneurial skill set to be able to modify your vision over time, like, for example, my vision at 25, which is a lot different than my vision now at 49. But my business can pivot to be able to support that. But if you don’t have those skills, you’re never going to be able to do that. Right.
Yeah, so I think that’s a lot of who you’re hanging out with. So in law school, I was really interested in really good at tax. And I liked this litigation side, it just so happened in my first clerkship, was with Bill arts in Arlington, and Seth probably knows bill, like, wow, this is really cool. You can try cases and you know, make money. And so that’s how I became a traveler. But even in that path, you know, for many, many years, I did medical malpractice cases, it just got harder and bigger to do and very conservative Virginia. And so now, you know, I pivoted that part of my life to doing these ERISA disability cases. I’ve got my son heads up the personal injury side, and we’re really happy. We’re good at two things. And that’s all we did. Right. And so but, but where did that come from? That came when I first started going Jay to nonlawyer. Entrepreneur events, right? I’m hanging out with men and women for bigger, better faster than I was and we’re actually we’re thinking at a very different level and I’m still in groups. I was In a, I was in a mastermind meeting last week, I’m the only lawyer and these guys and gals are running multiple multimillion dollar businesses, right? And not all just digital internet stuff, like all different kinds. And it’s just a different place to be. And so when you hang out with people who were thinking about what you said, Jay is like, okay, how can I how can I pivot? Where’s the opportunity? When you always ask me? What do I like doing? What do I like doing? What am I good at? What will the market penny for? And be like accepting of that? proud of the fact that your attitude? Or whatever gifts you like, that’s just cool. If you stay inside the lawyer box, there’s no one out there. Very few people saying Hey, Jay got permission to set you want to go? Start this new practice area or, you know, grow to be Jay was telling me 100 lawyers like, okay. That’s great. And, and you you don’t get that by hanging out at pure lawyer traditional conference, because nobody’s talking. They’re talking about depositions. Depositions are important, but they’re never going to get you to that entrepreneurial. Happiness, I think, anyway, that’s my experience. And a lot of the guys and gals that have run around with this has been the thing they get out of the lawyer conferences and into the colleges, where there’s true entrepreneurial minds across businesses. And then International, actually, so no..
I’ll follow up on that. So I assume you’ve talked a lot and I’ve been to events with Dan Kennedy has been a big influence on your practice and on Great Legal Marketing, for sure. Talk to us a little bit about the things that you’ve gathered from that, that, you know that that would be applicable to the the the lawyer out there who’s trying to figure out how to build and grow a practice.
So I always go back to philosophy. So the first thing is, you have the right to build your own life no matter what. So there’s no specified ladder of success. Or if there is you don’t have to go up that ladder, like somebody else created that. For whatever reason, you don’t have to do that. So that’s number one. Number two is, especially for the solo and small firm lawyer, this concept of building a tribe 1000 People know you like you tell your story. And the story doesn’t have to be Oh, Seth is a lawyer. And he does this or that or chase. Especially story is that you are you two are interesting people, right? And in my case, they know me crossfitter, dad to nine, work with charities, soccer referee, right. Those are universities that I’m deeply embedded in people who know before and they know I’m a lawyer, and most of them probably don’t know, like what I do, but they know to give me a call. So the concept I got from Dan Kennedy, which is nurturing this tribe, he would call it her herd, and being an interesting person and give yourself permission to say, It’s okay, my wife says to me, sometimes you think the whole world revolves around you, I go, Well, you know, it ought to right, because there’s some things that I’m really good at. And I can I can move the needle with, right? And, and warriors are like, they want it. They’re not shy sometimes when, when they, when it comes to, oh, I’m the best, we have the biggest verdicts. But they’re they are shy in saying, You know what, I’m a good mentor. I’m a good leader. I’m a good coach, you know, of sports or whatever. There’s shy about talking about that stuff. For some reason. I don’t know why. And yet, those are the connections that the community can make with you. The other thing is, I think one of the things that we do pretty well here at the class was just making these relationships with other community small business owners. Right. You know, I have training center here, pre COVID. You know, we brought people in monthly, like Business Roundtable, like calm, I’ll feed you, I just want to hear your ideas. What are you working on what books you read what podcast you’re listening to? Right? I think there’s an opportunity there for lawyer to do that. But so many of them are just it’s work, work, work, work, work case, case, case, case case. Okay? If that’s what you’re choosing to do. That’s, that’s my point, right. But if you’re miserable, we have some ideas for you. And that’s what play left.
You know, it’s funny, because over the years, you talk a lot about soccer refereeing. And as my kids came through youth soccer, I would reflect upon those things and hear seeing things from the you know, we were in the Bethesda soccer mode for a while and seeing parents go crazy with the refs. I was always it gave me that extra perspective to bite my lip no matter what. So I thank you for that. But following up and dovetailing to what you just talked about, which is bringing those unique values and and things that you bring to the table. One of the things I’ve seen as a success of some of the people you’ve worked with over the years, whether the Breyers or Chuck point and others, that they have been able to scale in some meaningful way that way of increasing their herd locally, by as you mentioned before showing say hey, I’m that Abraham Lincoln Lawyer that can do anything you want. I’ll get it out and get a referral, that credit but sort of get that juice into the community, from other lawyers etc. Talk a little bit about that, because I think that’s something that you you’ve done a particularly good job with over the years of, it’s one thing to say you’re gonna do it, but finding systems today love, how do you find systems to scale that in a meaningful way?
So, I mean, those are two of you pick two great examples. So Chuck boink is in Toledo, Ohio, and Chuck has been the Master, the Master of communities, Small Biz partnerships, but it starts simple stuff, like, Hey, I’m gonna write about you in the newsletter, we’re gonna celebrate Toledo. There was a time many years ago when there was some article out in the press about Toledo being on the bottom 10 cities to live in, in the country. And Chuck developed this whole scheme of like, Bs, like, we’re great. Let me tell you. So what he did was, let me tell your story. Let me help the flower shop, you know, the car dealership, let me help do that. And even like to the mayor, and so let me help, even though he’s sued the mayor a lot for police brutality cases. It’s so funny, like he had a partnership with with the government because he was promoting, right. And so the principle would be, what can I do for you? Right? How can I promote you? We lawyers with good digital space newsletters that sources we have, like, we have media? What what Mark and Alexis Brier, one of the things they do and they’re like one of the ones that are 50 people under roof fabulous practice, is they lease a lot of digital billboard space out in the Phoenix area. Right? So what are their billboards? It was not all about, hey, the husband, wife, legal team, if you’re hurt, give us a call. It’s like, Hey, Seth price Athlete of the month at the high school congratulation, right? You don’t even ask permission? And nobody complains, right? Because they’re putting your face on the Billboard, saying superstar. And so they’re always looking for who in the community? Can they hold up during when COVID started, they went out to the local restaurants and said, Hey, will sponsor 50% off, just let us stand there. And you know, and give out coupons or you know, flyers and stuff. And people would come to support the restaurant. And the biggest problem they had with that was they caused a rush the over the overwhelmed at restaurants. Again, early and COVID weren’t used to doing cook and bring out to the driveway, right? And they would have these they would create these traffic jams, because they said to themselves, What can I do for you first? So that’s not a philosophy unique to lawyers. But and it’s it’s something that it’s a key question. As a life philosophy, it’s a key question to ask people, it makes you interesting and makes you good. And I think when you do good things, it does, it does come back, right. It just, it just does.
You know, it just struck me and Jay I’ll flip back to you for final questions, But you know, one of the things that like as a marketer, now, I sort of get that, right. It’s all if you give more like the show we’re doing right? If you give more things come back, it’s a it’s a great cycle. As a lawyer, you’re a problem solver, you’re trained to sort of solve the problems when they come in, you’re sort of reactive, rather than figuring out what can be done, you’re sort of like, when somebody comes with a problem, okay, I’ll solve it. And that sort of that I think have just crystallized in my mind sort of that that synapse that jump that sort of like, if there’s a way to get lawyers to see it from the business side, which it gets what we’re talking about, but from as a marketer, you’re always like, you know, they say the cocktail party and social media don’t be the guy shouting in the corner of the room. But it’s how do you make it a true conversation? It just isn’t in the DNA of many shops, and the people we’ve talked about there have done a good job as anybody else.
You’re right, lawyer see issues, and the rest of us see opportunities. And it’s interesting, because in our DNA, like one of the questions we ask, we do a lot of long term disability work. And it also we use, you know, personal injury work. And so we always are talking to our clients about like, if you didn’t have this case, what is the use would you be making about your life, if you didn’t have this insurance policy? What would you be thinking about your life and so that’s a way that our work marketing really flows over to our work. And that bond between us and our clients. It’s stronger, because we’re never just talking about the legal side. Now, back to your point, though, issues and opportunities. The key is if you want to get better at this, is get into a group of like minded and hopefully people who are where you are like the slowest one, you want to be the slowest one in the group, if they’ll let you in. Because you will definitely get pushed and raised up by guys and gals who do who think like we do on this call bigger, better and faster than you do. It’s who you hang out with. It’s what I tell high schoolers, like your choice of friends, is probably the most significant predictor of your life success. It’s no different for the three of us. It’s no different for people who are watching watching this, who you have out with his a he’s a really, really Jim Rohn. Like you’re the average of the five people..(Inaudible) critical thing.
Okay, so I have my final question for you before Seth wraps it up here. And that is, you know, you you had the wonderful experience of being sort of like a Johnny Appleseed providing this information out to all of these lawyers and law firms over the years and, and having had all these touch points with people who, okay, let’s take a step back and see the people who have who’ve come to you that you’ve worked with, or whatever, and have been successful, what usually is the first thing that they get solved, that gets them on a path to success? You know, because it can seem overwhelming for people in our audience. And any lawyer who’s saying, you know, I’ve got a 60 hour a week job focusing on the legal issues of my clients. And now I gotta create this side hustle of being a business, focused lawyer, entrepreneur, what do I need to work on first, because hiring and systems and marketing and advertising, and HR, all these things? Are all things I’m going to have to tackle. But what’s the great greatest thing that person can get much success with by solving that problem? Or attacking that problem? First?
That is a really good question, Jay. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before. I do think it is for me and for for many of the folks that we’ve coached, it’s content creation, right? It’s what can I create that will help you, Seth, solve your legal problem, right? Because if if you’re successful, and so one of the books we wrote is, you know, how to settle your case without a crack without an attorney. Right? The small cases and stuff. But but it’s a mindset shift, oh, I have all this information. I have to keep secret? Well, no, let’s teach the world how to solve their legal problems. Hey, by the way, let’s reduce that, that gap between people who need lawyers and, and you know, the access to access to lawyer services gap. And that’s a mindset shift. And then, because most lawyers, they just want to talk about themselves, right? I did this, I got all this experience, I have all these verdicts, I, I, I write. And if they can shift and start to write and communicate, and they don’t have to be the one that actually writes it. But to have the idea that I’m going to help you. I’m opening up my book, by the way, in Great Legal Marketing, forever. I’ve opened up my book, I’ve lawyers in Northern Virginia, come in, I’ll show you everything I’ve ever done in marketing, I will, I will try to explain it to you. Most won’t do the work. Because it seems overwhelming, as you said, right. But if you just start with I mean, just look at all your websites. Oh my gosh, it’s all about me. Just, it’s all about me. shift it to information. Interesting, right? Well, you’re in the right place. But this is why, you know, the companies like you know, Abba Nolo and stuff, like why do they get so much traffic? Because they like their library, huge libraries? That’s where I would start. Obviously, it’s a big, it’s a big question. And congrats. That’s a really, really great question, actually. But I think that’s where you start. And then and then the second one is like just getting your arms around your list and being in communication, either digitally or do newsletters and stuff with that 1000 people who know you, the business owner, the lawyers who are your referral sources, to clients and past clients, the people in your places of worship in your gyms. It’s not hard, but you don’t have to go and have every billboard and every TV ad, we’re not the inherent gorilla. By and large, we’re not I want that. Or arm fence around a tribe of people who go Ben Glass, Ben Glass was that call him he’s, he’s trustworthy. Just give him a call. He’ll he’ll set you straight. I love that.
That’s awesome. No, no, I was gonna say no content, I get it. And I think what you’re getting at we talk a lot about here is we think of ourselves as plumbers, that when there’s an emergency who’s going to solve your problem, if you can show that in a digital format, or whatever format you choose that that’s that’s going to get it. Let me ask you sort of the corollary to that, because one of the time is precious, you have so much time, what are some of the myths that you’ve seen perpetrated that, you know, because as Jay said, hey, where do you start? But what are some of the things that you in your experience wouldn’t be a bad thing to skip based on even though they’re thought of in the ethos as being important thing for lawyers to be doing early on?
That’s another good question. First, I think that there’s a place for everything, almost every thing I see come across my email, there’s probably a place for it. I think what we want to do is we want to build a pyramid that’s built on a solid foundation of, of again, building up this tribe of people who know me with with interesting content and stuff. So I think the mistake is it’s not so much, what do we skip? It’s just lawyers want to leap? Let me just give you an example. Video. So you can go video I could do, I can create a video right now, or I can pay someone 50k and make a video. So many warriors, without foundation, think that a 50k video is going to solve all their problems, it won’t. Because if you don’t have the infrastructure underneath it to win, you know, when people go, Wow, that video is really cool, I’m gonna call you but you don’t, you don’t have scripted folks answering the phone, you don’t have forms on the website, then you have picked something that might be good and useful. And it’s an excellent product, but it’s not right for you now, because you don’t have the foundation to support it. And so I think what we’re really good at what I’m really good at is talking to lawyers and saying, Tell me where you are, like, what do you understand? What’s your practice? Okay, I think you should take your next hour or your next dollar and go here. And because we don’t we just sell coaching. I don’t sell websites or you know, pay per click advertising or videos. You know, we have this unbiased view of I will help you like pick the next thing you may get to the $50,000 video. Right, great. But that’s fine icing on a really great cake. Most people still need to get the basic ingredients of their cake together.
Yeah, that’s been great. Thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been awesome. He’ll Jake, can we get the link? We’ll put that in the comments.
If they just want to send me an email to Ben@BenGlassLaw.com. I’ll be happy to send the book
I’ll make sure it’s down below in the notes.
That’d be very good. Alright guys, we get back up to when I when I relocate back up north we’ll have to finally get get together associate distance hopefully not sooner than later.
You’re recording this. You’re warm and we’re cold.
I’m freezing. I’m freezing. Tell you that much up here in New England. It’s cold. Thanks, man. Thanks so much for being with us. All right, we’ll be right back with more Maximum Growth live.
Hey, it’s Becca here. I’m sure you’ve heard Jim and Tyson mentioned the guild on the podcast. And in the Facebook group. The Guild is this perfect mix of a community group coaching and a mastermind guild members get so many benefits, including weekly live events and discounts to all Maximum Lawyer events. Head over to maximumlawyer.com forward slash the guild to check out all the benefits and watch a few testimonials from current members. So head to maximumlawyer.com and click on the guild page to join us. Now let’s get back to the episode.
Well, Seth, I mean, I gotta tell you, the last month of people speaking with us has really opened my eyes, Ben had some really good stuff there, especially about vision, especially about sort of defining it. And one of the things that I think all of our guests should do all of our all of our viewers should do is take a bit of advice from our guests and actually put pen to paper and write out commit to what you’re actually looking for. And make that something that is concrete in your mind, you could talk about it in your head a lot. But by actually committing pen to paper, you’re writing out the things that matter to you and how you want to build your career. And that’s what you should be doing in building your law firm, don’t you think?
Yeah, absolutely. And I, the piece that resonated for me was we’re talking about people and how you can you know, in the business world, I’m used to sort of reaching out and the show giving back should of doing things for people and good stuff will come back to you. I think that that what he talked about, and doing this within the client world, that it doesn’t stop there. And I’m when I’m thinking about internally is how I can get my staff to figure out what makes somebody tick. And it doesn’t have to be major doesn’t have to be a billboard in the middle of town. But a reminder, you know, a congratulations for a graduation, something that sort of keeps it personal. And if there is something that somebody needs, if they do have a small business, having a section on your website, where you can list their their business and give a director they’re going to it’s going to they’re gonna be rolling in money because of it. No, but what can you do something I always say to people, when they call me up for networking calls, look at my LinkedIn, you know, two thirds of its nonsense, but a third of it are real contacts. And if there’s anybody out there that I can push you and make that introduction, always happy to do so. And I think that if we think of our clients in that same way it will pay dividends, you’ll have a closer better relationship with them.
Yeah, and I mean, it’s not just clients, you know, it’s just the people who maybe share the office next to you or, you know, you go for their bagels, I was talking to our friend Ryan McKean. One of the things that I’m very very bullish on right now is YouTube pre roll ads. You know, those six second bumpers that you can’t skip through? And I said to him, hey, you know, you can throw yourself out there. Hi, I’m Ryan. McKean I’m a Connecticut trial lawyer. If you get hurt an accent, I can help you. And I get my bagels at this place, they are great. Come on down and have the owner of the bagel shop there. Like you don’t have to necessarily be shamelessly self promoting yourself.
The Jersey Boys have done a great job at that, you watch their videos. It’s a qui-look, it’s tougher during COVID Absolutely. But I really I feel that the more you engage in, make it cool. I talked about social. I mean, that is the that is the, you know, the ultimate in social is when you make it a true conversation because then it’s your herd joining somebody else’s herd. And it’s not about you. It’s about building something bigger. Awesome.
One last thing before we go, I told you I’m in the process of hiring and I have to tell you, I had somebody come in for an interview. And when we asked them how they go through their day, they said you know I try to follow systems in my in my day I set up a system how my day is gonna progress. I attacked my cases, through systems and I like my my little antenna went upset and I was loving it. So I think we’re well on the way to finding somebody. I don’t know if they maybe watch the show and hurt my love for systems.
But if they did, if they were smart enough to do that, God bless so either way it’s a win.
Absolutely.
Excited in the in the coming weeks to have Jim and Tyson coming up. That thanks to Ben for sharing his wisdom with us today.
Yeah, great show, folks, thank you so much for being with us. Always. You can find us here on Maximum Growth live either live on our Facebook page. You can watch any of our shows from history. Go back. All the videos are there on our Facebook page. We are also syndicated on the maximum lawyer podcast as well as our own standalone podcast. You can catch our Tuesday shows exclusively on the Maximum Growth live podcast available on all of the podcasting platforms Amazon, Spotify, Google podcasts, Apple podcasts, I’m running out of breath. But Seth, thank you so much for being with us. We will see everybody next Tuesday for another edition of Maximum Growth lot. Bye for now.
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