In this episode, Seth and Jay talk with Chris Ragehbi who launched his private practice within the last week and 5 things he can do now to focus on growth.
Hey everybody. Jay Ruane here with Seth Price, my friend, for the June 11th edition of Maximum Growth Live. Seth, how are you doing this week?
Doing great. Everything is just, it’s a beautiful day and enjoying the outdoors.
Absolutely, absolutely. So, we have something really special for us today. We actually reached out on the web, in our Facebook groups, and we actually found a young lawyer who is within the first week of his private practice, leaving the firm that he was with and hanging a shingle. And so, what we’re going to do today is actually bring Chris on as a live caller, put him in the hot seat, talking about some of the things that you can do as a new lawyer to really sort of establish yourself, and I think it’s going to eat up a lot of time today, so I don’t want to waste any time. I want to get him right on the call. Is that cool with you?
Let’s do it.
All right.
Absolutely. Let’s do it.
All right, fantastic. So, let’s bring Chris on the call right now. And we’re gonna see how we can help him grow his firm. Alright, so we’re gonna welcome now Chris Ragehbi to the call. Hey Chris, how are you doing today?
Doing well, gentlemen. How are you?
Fantastic, fantastic. So, we saw your posts come up in the Max Law forums, right? On the, in the Facebook group, where you said that you were launching your firm. How many days into your private practice are you?
Three.
That’s awesome, it’s fewer than 100 hours. God, I remember those days. And you know, it’s kind of interesting with everything that’s going on right now in the world, a lot of us are sort of reliving a relaunch of our practices, so you couldn’t find a better time. Just to give you a little bit of a good vibe, I launched my practice 10 days before September 11, so, you know, and I was able to build it to seven figure firm over time. So, just because you start off in adversity doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to always be like this. So, let’s talk about some of your questions about growth and where you want to go. We’re wide open, so what questions do you have for us? And how can we help you grow your firm?
Yeah, tons of questions I’ve really tried to narrow down to allow for some time for elaboration and so on, but a lot of them really come down to marketing and digital marketing specifically since that’s obviously sort of the way the world is operating today. As far as like, how much is too much content to post if there is such a thing?
Let’s take a step back. Which practice areas are you looking to attack? Do you have any that you have now? Do you have ones that you want to get to eventually? What’s your plan?
So, my plan has been to basically work criminal defense work, and that’s really the practice area I wanted to focus on. This morning, actually, I had an interesting call from a client of my former firm who kind of wants me to continue doing some of their debt collection work. In my background, actually, I’ve been a debt collector since 2005. That’s kind of kind of my jam, to be honest with you. And I’ve taken some panel cases from the public defender’s office over the past couple of years, and is really kind of enjoyed the criminal defense work. And that’s kind of where I want to focus my efforts.
Well, I’d say from a digital point of view, I applaud it. Not only did I and Jay, both start our firms with that, I think it is probably the area most ripe for digital marketing, in the sense that if you were to line up the B2C areas, and generally we talk about the business to consumer areas as being most ripe for digital marketing, and the B2B areas as the ones you should go take people to lunch and get season tickets to games if people would do that. But, you know, criminal defense has the least number of people on TV compared to PI, and at the same time, has the most number of people that don’t want to talk to anybody else, where they want to do their own research, which is why it’s great. So, you know, just like Jay launched during a downturn in the economy and, to me, it’s a long term play, like you’re not going to, you know, at least organically, put up a website and have, you know, revenue flying in the door day one, but I think it’s being realistic about what you’re doing and timeframe is really important. So, yes, content there. SEO comes down to two fundamentals, content and links. It takes a well coded site beneath it, so that if you got your site finally, but understand that Google generally keep sites in a sandbox for a period of months before you get any meaningful love, and it may take a full year before it gives you the opportunity to be in play with competition, even if you’re doing things right. So, I applaud the idea, I don’t think you can do too much content at this point, this isn’t a legacy site with bad blogs. If you’re writing great high-quality content, there is no better use of your time, I would do it in a strategic manner where you hit the main geo location and crime keywords that you want, but that if you do it in a logical, methodical manner, creating silos of information, that the content itself is an amazing use of time when you have more time than money, which won’t always be the case. And so, thinking about strategically and mapping out a content plan of what you want to accomplish and then executing it, I think is awesome. What I would stay away from is something that Jay and I have seen over the years, marketing companies and other people do, which are what I call regurgitated news blogs, where you rewrite a story from the news and put it on your site. It doesn’t do you that much good. The one exception is if there’s a case you’re trying to get and you write a detailed blog, trying to get the family to see it. Great. But that’s a that’s an exception and takes real pinpoint accuracy. Most of the time, those blogs become the bad content that way down the site, so that 500 words plus pages of content, and for your money landing pages up to 2500 words, building that is an amazing use of time, particularly early in the firm.
So, one of the things I have a question for you, Chris, is, you know, it’s interesting when you’re in Facebook groups or when you’re talking about it, you know, people say, what kind of law do you practice? You practice criminal law, right? But criminal is so wide. Is there an area of criminal that you particularly like that you can sort of start to focus even now on the content that you’re creating?
Yeah, I would say so. DWIs mostly, I think they’re pretty interesting. But, you know, with things like Uber and whatnot, like on the rise, it seems like those cases might be dropping. Alternatively, you know, expungements are apparently a good source of revenue. Post-conviction relief might be interesting from a, you know, philosophical academic standpoint, but I’m not really sure that’s something I want to focus marketing efforts on.
Seth, he’s a young Jay Ruane.
Yeah, exactly.
He’s me 20 years ago.
I bet Jay going to DUI marketing conferences years ago. And everything you’re saying, 10 years ago people were concerned that DUIs were going to go away, and I definitely think Uber has affected the market, it is not the same. Jay, you may want to talk, there are two major national organizations that are amalgamations of DUI lawyers where there’s amazing training and CLE opportunities and sort of networking, Jay himself, you know, you can’t go to one of those mentioned Connecticut and not have Jay Ruane is the next breath out of anybody’s voice. So, there are dues that can be paid within those organizations, networking wise, but I feel like marketing wise, most of that takes place outside of these organizations. Those organizations have been amazing for networking and CLE, but if you want the phone to ring that’s on your own.
Yeah, no, in fact, most of the organizations, the two main organizations, the National College for DUI Defense and the DUI Defense Lawyers Association, really don’t focus on marketing DUI. DLA is actually adding that to some of their seminars, but National DUI College doesn’t have any marketing events, really the strength of those organizations is the training. You know, the, the skilled practitioners who are trying cases every week, that are there teaching you tips and tricks, is phenomenal. So, you know, I certainly, you know, encouraging you to join one if not both of those organizations, because I think they, they both provide opportunities. The networking though, is great, because when you meet people at the seminars, you know, it, especially with DUIs, business people travel, right? Business people travel, entertain and get a DUI, so you might have somebody from Colorado, and you met a lawyer, who reaches out to a lawyer there because they got a DUI in your neck of the woods. So, that’s one of the great things about being part of these professional organizations. But if you are going to focus on DUI, I’d make a recommendation to you now that perhaps your content should really be focused on the drug related DUI. We’re starting to see across the country marijuana legalization, or at least decriminalization, a lot more use of that. There’s a lot of training programs you can do just on the drug aspects of drug driving, not necessarily DUI, and I think there’s going to be a lot of federal funds going into that in the next decade or so as you see more legalization and liberalization of attitudes towards it, and as a result, I think that’s a growing area in the DUI niche, right? The DUI, DWI niche, whatever you want to call it. So, I think if you’re going to start writing content, that would be a great place to really separate you from all the other DUI, OUI, DWI lawyers in your community, because they’ve written everything about the field sobriety tests and alcohol, and you’re going to have the site that’s focused them on the future, not on the past. So, that would be a recommendation for you.
Absolutely. And look, this is almost a walk down memory lane for both of us. Two thoughts that came to mind, because Jay talked about, one is, you know, that the marketing that you do has changed over the years. So many of the people who have done this as a legacy practice had been in certain silos. Let me try to be more precise. So, when I started, I had a different criminal law site and a separate DUI site, and I marketed them separately. We’ve had previous, you know, webinars and zooms where we’ve talked about one site versus two sites, you have limited resources, you’re just getting started out. If you want to do criminal and DUI, you’re really stuck with the one site concept, and frankly, even with resources, I eventually morphed the DUI pages and sites into a criminal site, so it’d be domain.com/DUI, so that it’s one off the homepage. So, the negative to that is you’re competing with somebody who only does DUI, but I feel like the economics are such right now that it would be, as a new lawyer to go in and only do DUI, probably not a prudent move, and the diversification is important, and you don’t lose much. If you’re a criminal defense lawyer and you do DUI, again, you pound what you got, so if you only do DUI, you tell everybody that, and that’s great. If you don’t, you say, you primarily do it. I don’t think you’re losing much, but it’s going back to the original piece about content, having a homepage that can incorporate criminal and DUI but signaling to Google, that the top of the silo for DUI, treating that as if it’s an entirely separate website and that there’s a silo of information, meaning the DUI, the page on DUI then has pages on, you know, on drug, on alcohol and other pieces, on first time, second time, third time, that you’re creating a site within a site. And that as you’re doing the content, we talked about in the first part of this call was that you would be thinking in those terms, here’s my criminal piece and here I have a separate section, it’s entirely on DUI and focusing and building that out as if it’s not just I have a page on DUI, but I have an entire library of information about DUI.
And Chris, one of the things I want to talk to you a little bit about is, is how you can give a positive first impression on the web, because I think this is something that a lot of lawyers miss and, and really, it comes down to investing a little bit of money. And I know when you’re first starting out, money is tight, right? But you may be able to tap your social network and find somebody who’s got a skill set that can help you here, or you can, you know, you could find ways to do it, but invest now in some quality pictures of yourself, because I go through and get contacted by lawyers every week, and they say, you know, my website’s not really performing, and then, I look at their website, and there’s no picture of them anywhere on the website, and certainly not on their homepage. At the end of the day, people like people and they want to connect with people and having an investment in quality pictures, and what we do is we actually use a wedding photographer, you know, because the wedding photographer is using the frame and telling a story in pictures because they’ve got an eye for it, and spend a little money on pictures now and it will provide you with such dividends. So, we get a wedding photographer on a Tuesday, when they got nothing else going on, and they will come out and we can get, usually get them at a discount, and we tell a story with our pictures. So, invest in those pictures, get them on your homepage, get them on your social profiles so that they all match, because at the end of the day, if a person is going to pick up the phone, they don’t know what you look like, they’re scared to call you, but if you look approachable with a smile on your face, and they get on the phone with you, you know, Seth and I’ve talked about this for years. I don’t really care what the client looks like, but the client really cares what I look like, and what my people look like, because they have to trust us, right? And really, the thing about having those quality images is that nowadays with the way the world works, the quality images, people come to expect the design aesthetic, the look of a polished brand. So, you know, brands give people solace, you know, when you have something that looks complete, like Apple products do or Target’s branding does, you know, those are the types of things that people feel comfort in, because it’s, you know, they went so far as to, as to make everything look right. So that’s something that I certainly would recommend that you do, invest now, it’s June, get some pictures done by the end of the month.
It’s really not that expensive. If it’s just you, it’s a shot for a buck, buck 50, and you’re done. I recommend, which is a little controversial, doing one on a green screen, so that you can play with different backgrounds over time. You know, making great things, you got a beard, so you don’t look like a kid, which is important, right? We always want a lot of women who come to our firm that look like they’re 17 years old, and they’re 27. And making sure that you have that look, because somebody’s about to put their life in your hands, they don’t want to put it to their kid brother, they want to put it to somebody who looks like they’re there, get the suit, right. Hair makeup, if necessary, but making sure that you get that great photo that can convert, couldn’t agree more. and we’ve never talked about it, but we’ve done the same thing, we have a wedding, Bar Mitzvah photo guy. We actually just send the new hires before they even start, they swing by the studio on a Tuesday morning, get their shot done, and as you grow, I think that’s really important to continue to add those photos in high quality to the site.
Yeah, and I would go so far as to stage a couple of photos, because you may be able to use them and other things down the line, so you could be outside of a courthouse, get three of your buddies to come and be standing with their backs to the camera and you on the other side, and so the cameras taking a picture of you, they don’t see the faces of your friends, but they’re there and you take them out to lunch afterwards. And then you have those type of photos you can use on some of your social profiles and…
I’ll take it one step even back, with a green screen you could put yourself anywhere you want, just get some standing and sitting shots like that, you know, meaning it’s just get it done, but making sure that it’s not a throwaway. I just did a call for BluShark this morning for my cousin’s firm in California, and the two principals in it have like, ridiculously awful photos in it. They’re both normal, attractive looking people, but it’s like, and these are established FU players in their respective spot spaces, and it just looks like they’re jokers based on what we’re seeing there. So, I’d show much would rather have somebody with that amazing presentation, it doesn’t, it really doesn’t cost very much, right?
Okay, so we’ve talked about your image, right? Which is something that you want to, you want to polish off, we talked about the kind of content that you want to start putting out there, and obviously, you know, you’re going to find the niche that you want to get into. Let’s set, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, establishing your brand, I guess online, in some of the legal directories, because I think that’s certainly something that might be able to help Chris, let’s talk about that. And that, that’s something like his Avvo profile, you know, let’s talk about that.
We’re gonna bring Nalini on in a moment to talk about this, and it just dovetails perfectly into this, which is, directories are how I started. I literally sat when I was you, first days of the firm, and like, typed in legal directory and found every single one to put us in. The worlds evolves, there are now routes and services that you can use, that will pre-populate the, the sort of nebulous directories that may or may not have value, but are sort of needed for your Google My Business and 3-pack map placement, but they’re the ones that are sort of more essential. Remind me, what market you’re in?
St. Louis, Missouri.
Right. So, in St. Louis, it’s a medium competitive market, right? It’s not Miami, New York, but it’s still, it’s not like you’re the first guy who’s thought about doing criminal DUI there, and so, what I would say is making sure at very least, you’re looking at the basic fundamental directories, many of which are free, Avvo, you’re already in it, whether you’re there or not, but claiming the profile and then going through and making sure that you get yourself to attend. And we can talk further about it later, but it is essentially done by an algorithm where the things that you pull down give you points, if you’re at a top 20 Law School, for example, and I’m giving you what was there, it’s been blocked by Internet brands, there may be tweaks but it’s amazing how much is still there, that if you’re in a law school that they like, it gave you point something, if you spoke somewhere, and what I have seen is that if you are the chair or president of something, it gives you points, but if you are just a member, it doesn’t. So, you fill out the bio as much as you can as a junior lawyer, but the one gift that is there, that I love pushing people to, is that you can improve the score not by getting consumers to review you but by getting other lawyers, was part of their genius marketing plan back in the day. And so, what they did to get people to engage in Avvo, which again, was sold from a private company into Internet brands, which is a behemoth lead gen, which doesn’t care about anything but rate making money from selling leads, but it’s still an important place, getting 15 lawyers to endorse you on there. Yet, it’s easy, because you can endorse them back that was their game, getting yourself up to a 10, very doable and important. And then looking at what are the other directories that make sense, just DIA for example, free, it’s a little bit of a hoop to jump through, you got to send in your, your Barcard, you have to send them a copy to they make you make your hustle free. hg.org is sort of a basic, fundamental, SEO friendly website that lists lawyers, you’re not gonna get any cases from it, but it’s one of those places that really moves the needle as far as SEO and has historically. So, looking at what are the basic places you need, there are things you probably know about, but are you taking advantage of like Yelp, Foursquare was popular, not as much, but these things do two things. They give you a NAP; name, address and phone number, which helps with a Google My Business, but it also gives you a link and that link it’s like a free, very, very powerful link that comes back to your site, so it’s validation. And so, we talked about content links, where the other piece of the directory is what I sat and spent my time on, but the great thing about the directories, and again, there are third parties that can fill you into sort of the nebulous out there directories, but for the really important ones there may be a small fee, or there may be a requirement to jump through hoops. But getting those in place, give you both a better shot at the local as well as further link juice or authority that will help you as you bring that together to create an SEO environment.
Great. That’s great stuff, Seth. So, the last part of the thing, so we’ve talked image, we’ve talked content, we’ve talked directory, I want to talk a little bit briefly about pay per click, especially in this space, because as Seth will tell you and I will tell you, other than mesothelioma, DUI pay per click is some of the most aggressive and expensive pay per click out there compared to many other practice areas. And so, as a early person competing in this space with budget being a concern, it may be something that you need to consider, but it’s also a very fast way to lose money if you’re not able to convert the people that are clicking on your ads. I mean, I started with pay per click back in 2001, and I was paying, you know, 10 cents, 7 cents a click, those, some of those same clicks now are $175 for just the click, right? And that can really eat up your budget very quickly. So, I’m going to make a recommendation to you, I think Pay Per Click because of the nature of DUI cases, because people don’t like talking to their friends that they got one, because they are up in the middle of the night after when they can’t sleep looking for information, and because there’s usually a very short time window from arrest to court date, when they have to make a purchase decision. Pay Per Click can be a way to start getting the phone ringing for you. But I’m going to make a suggestion, I don’t know what Seth’s position on this, so I’m gonna throw it to him after this, is that I want you to not focus in St. Louis, on your pay per click, because I think that’s going to be much more expensive. I think you should take some of the towns in the surrounding suburbs and focus your attention in those areas. So instead of maybe, you know, St. Louis, I guess you know, Columbia might be an area where you could, you know, target DUI, people looking for DUI attorney, because I think the problem is, is that the people with the deeper pockets in St. Louis are going to have bid up those, that stuff, and if you can get pay per click in the surrounding areas, you’re going to find that person who lives in the suburbs who went home, got it and is now doing the research and you’re going to show for them, and it may put you in a position where you can get somebody at a $17 or $15 Click rather than the high, the high cost click. Seth, what’s your thought about something like that?
You know, it’s a mixed bag. So, obviously it’s a lot more expensive. Google’s gotten such that the ROI is not amazing from it, they know how to squeeze that down, you know, it’s an auction so as, you know, so the ROI is not nearly as much. At the same time, presumably you answer your own phone right now, right? Anything that comes in particular from pay per click, so your conversion will be higher. Jay, I see it as a mixed bag, it’s going to the outlying areas, you know that I love that strategy for organic, no question about it. My only problem with it in a non-pandemic time we’re going to meet with people in person is that I have a theory that every 10 miles you leave from your office, concentric circles going out, you have a lesser chance of signing somebody, partially psychological. If somebody is in downtown St. Louis, and it’s, money’s on the bubble, you’d like, I’ll meet you at Starbucks, we’ll get this done or come to my office, or I’ll drive over to you. When you’re first starting out, you’re scrappy. The problem with going too far outside of that area is that you’re like, you know what? It’s not enough, it’s not worth my while on a risk, because you don’t know if you’re gonna sign them to go and meet somebody, we can’t get them into our office, you have to sign him by phone where the percentage of likelihood of signing goes down. So, Jay, I think it comes down to what is the cost in one versus the other. So, it’s not that St. Louis is bad, but if St. Louis is three times more expensive, yeah, I do that, but if it turns out that St. Louis is only $5 more per click, but your likelihood of signing somebody in downtown where you live and work is better than I feel like you got to balance that and test it, you could test with relatively little money. One of the benefits that is not proven, but I can see over and over again as the case is that with a new website, that the Pay Per Click traffic actually gets you out of the sandbox quicker and get you on your way.
I agree 100%, Seth, with that, and I’ve seen it with websites that I’ve put up in secondary practice areas that are nowhere, I had a little money to pay per click and boom.
Right. And so, it’s, are they tied together? No, but it’s the traffic coming through as a symbol of trust, and that people come and see it and see what’s going on. So, I feel like I hate to spend somebody else’s money but dabbling with it, because, again, if you’re answering the phone yourself, and you’re presumably not the most expensive guy in the market, and you’re hungry and you can sell those, you’ll have a better chance of monetizing as you get larger, and other people are answering your phones, and there may be a breakdown there and you’re not the cheapest guy in the market. It’s harder and harder to get ROI from pay per click, in my estimation for higher end criminal, you know, it’s feast or famine, you get some big, big cases, but you lose a lot, because many of the people clicking at the top who aren’t doing their research further down aren’t the most rational player that don’t have cash. So, I think when you start it actually can be more advantageous than later on in your career.
Awesome. So, I think that really gives us four good points, right? The four good points that you can focus on, image content, directories, and a strategy for early pay per click. And obviously, you can set your budget where it is, you know, when I started doing some stuff, I actually tied myself, I mean, that’s not the right word to use, given the religious context of it, that I’m, I’m doing it to make money. But every fee I brought in, I segmented a certain percentage of that fee to go back into marketing my practice, because I wanted to make sure that I had funds to keep the hamster wheel moving. So, Chris, any other questions that you might have? You know, give us one last question we can tap you with before we run out of time. Is there something else that’s burning that you need some help with?
Yes, absolutely. So, been working on my website, and one of the things I’ve been doing with, you know, researching my competition and reading attorney bios and whatnot, a lot of them sell on their experience either as a former prosecutor, I’ve been doing criminal defense for X number of years now. I, on the other hand, have been doing debt collections and criminal defenses in the practice area for me, but I feel like my competitive advantage could just be that, you know, Seth you said to use the word scrappy, and that probably best describes me more than any one single word. Would it be wise to sort of lean my bio towards it or not?
I think, I think you dance with what you got, I literally just went through this for my firm, right? We have a large number, several dozen lawyers, and, you know, when I started, we wanted to hide the number of years of practice we had because it wasn’t better than the bigger players. So, I think you dance with what you got, you know, if you go to a great school, you want to feature it. If you went to somewhere that’s not ideal, like that’s not going to sell or give you any sort of competitive advantage. So, I think that you create something creative, there are a lot of different schools of thoughts, you know, say what’s relevant to them, not brag about yourself. And in this case, I think you talk about the tenacity and why you’re doing and why you’re passionate about it more than the number of years, because you’re not going to win a beauty contest on how many years you’ve been doing it, but you can do it based on the fact that, you know, when it’s just you, you’re getting me, there’s nobody else, it’s me. You’re not going to get some other administrative person handling your stuff, I’ve got you, and I’m not going to dump you on a junior associate, you know, I am in a fight and as hard as I can for you, and if you can make turn the bio into almost a sales piece on you, forgetting about the things that you’re not going to win, you know, them comparing one bio to another, I think that that’s the way to go, and your junior, one thing I would just a piece of advice I’d say is, if you are going to put number of years of practice, don’t put it as a numeric year, because you forget about it, and like 5, 7, 8 years later, you look at it and you’ve undersold yourself for all those years. So, understand that anything in a bio is going to sit, it shouldn’t, it should be updated, but it will. And so, leaving things that won’t age badly, but at the same time understanding that you don’t want to brag about something that really isn’t that special and is going to get undercut by your competition.
So, Chris, let me ask you a question. How long have you been practicing criminal law?
About two years.
Okay, so you’re working towards your 10th year in practice of criminal law, aren’t you?
Yeah, eight years ago.
I mean, that’s honestly, in my first year of practice, that’s how I would sell myself to people. They say, oh, you know, I had this crazy gray hair back then, which you don’t have, but, you know, they would say, how long have you been doing this? I say, I’m working towards my 10th year, and they say, oh, wow, that’s, that’s really impressive, you know, just to you. It’s how I shaved the facts that my clients benefit in front of a jury as well, you know, and I think that’s certainly something that one of the things I would recommend that you do. And bios is something that I think a lot of people need to sort of understand, bio…
We could do a whole show on bio.
And maybe we should, but bios aren’t necessarily for you to brag about where you went to school and that type of thing. It’s to enable the people and go back to my original statement before people connect with people, right? So, go on my website, look at the bio for me, look at the bio for my partner, Dan Lage, where we talk about, where I talk about feeling like I was an outcast and I didn’t fit in, and I only really fit in when I finally became a criminal defense lawyer. That’s where I found my people, right? For my, for my partner, Dan, he talks about how, you know, he was homeless, and he was a high school dropout and it wasn’t until he had his son, that he starts to say, hey, you know what? I need to get my stuff together. And so, I’ve always been an underdog and I fight for the underdog, read our bios, because I can’t tell you ever since we took away from let me tell you how great I am and made it about why I do what I do and who I am as a person, more people that come into our office and said, I read your bio man, I knew you were the lawyer for me. So take it from that perspective and think about that. So, I would encourage you to go on my website and take a look at, at my bio, my partner Dan’s bio, because I think it helps you sell your story. Seth, you got something to add there?
No, I think that that’s great stuff. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll circle back to that in the near future, but again, but I would say that it’s the least like, that the least important but get it and move on. Get a decent bio, and you have so much to accomplish, don’t fret over that. That’s not going to make or break you. And because you go too creative, somebody’s not going to like that, you go to braggadocious somebody may like that, you just, you don’t know, but I feel like something clean, that solid you can revisit it once you have some more confidence as time goes on.
Awesome. All right, Chris, thank you so much for being with us today. I love being this hotseat. What I’d like to do is make an offer to you now, I want to talk to you again six months from today. I want to get you back on the show. In six months, we can see where you’re at, where you’ve grown, where it stumbling points you’ve had, and then we can make a plan for your second year of practice and really sort of knock it out. So, would you come back on the show in six months?
Absolutely, man. Absolutely.
Alright, so we’re gonna say goodbye to you. Thank you so much for being with us. We went long today, Seth, this is good, I like helping people. So, I have no problem going longer when we can help out a great guy like Chris here. And if you know anybody who needs a criminal defense lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri, Chris is your guy. So, make sure that you make sure that you give him a call, send him those referrals. He’s happy to take them and he’ll do a great job for, for your clients.
Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate it.
Thanks. Take it easy. Bye, bye now.
Thank you.
Wow, Seth, that was just phenomenal. I think, you know, Chris has got a lot of good takeaways from, from our quick conversation. Went a lot longer than I expected, but that’s the kind of thing that you can get into once you start talking about these things. It’s sort of, it’s like a ball rolling downhill picks up speed, and it was some great stuff. So, what I’d like to do now is add Nalini to the call, because we did talk about bringing Nalini. I think we’re going to run out of time, but let’s, add Nalini in and we can talk just briefly to her about, about directories. Hey Nalini, how are you doing today?
Hey, guys, how’s it going? No, that was an amazing episode so far, and I’ve seen how much time you guys have put into creating this and that’s really what it’s about, is being able to give back to folks who are just opening their doors. So, I’m glad you guys had that conversation, and I’m hoping that other people will see all the value that they can get by, you know, kind of chiming in and being featured as well in future episodes. So, for me, I was just going to talk a little bit about directories, I think what we can do is make it a bigger feature on next week, because it is a big topic that we want to cover. A lot of different aspects come with directories, right? There’s the paid directories, there’s the organic directories, where you can just list yourself for a link, and just have people find you. And then there’s the stuff that’s in between. Seth talk to you guys about those find law type directories where, they’re good for link juice, but they’re also kind of just for lead gen. Do they work? Do they not work? I hear that question all the time and, and so they know you can speak a lot to that. And you guys talked about it a little bit with Avvo, but if you want to talk a little bit more specifically about some items that you’ve seen at Price Benowitz?
Well, I was gonna say, look, we’re going to do an entire segment next week on directories and do a deep dive. But the question that came up today, we talked about Avvo specifically, and I know you’ve put together some collateral material on that, maybe explain what that is, make that available, and then we’ll come back next week for the deeper dive.
Perfect. So, Avvo is one of those that it will hit number one in a lot of organic searches, they have a lot of juice on their site. So, a lot of people will trust the profile that you guys can create, and it has that little star rating, right? And so, everyone can get to an 8 usually, and then you’re kind of stuck, and you’re like how are these other people at 10. So, we’ve created a directory…
Yeah, I was stuck at the 8 for the longest time.
If they make it very easy, it’s an algorithm to get to eight, right? To these, these A, B plus C and up there, but there’s these smaller items that you can add on, that will give you those extra point, point 2, point 8 that add up to get you that extra two points to get you to attend, we’ve created just a quick one pager with the items. An example of one is if you have a speaking engagement, right? You can put that you’ve spoken at National Trial Lawyers or whatever it may be, and if it is one that is recognized in a drop-down menu by Avvo, then they will give you those points. So, things like that, It’s really cool, check it out, and we’ll talk much more detail next week.
So, that’s something for next week or do you have that now that people can get access to?
I can send that out now. Yeah, in the chat. People will be able to click on it and it’ll take you to where you can download it right from our site.
Okay, so that was our very quick version of the chum, or the nuggets or whatever, we still need a name, so everybody, tell us down below what you think the name should be for Nalini segment. But we are running way over time already, and I don’t want to just monopolize everything. So, I think we’re going to cut it short now. I’m going to say goodbye for me. Thank you so much for being with us. Be sure to tune in next week, Thursday at 3pm, Eastern, for another edition of Maximum Growth Live. Seth, you have any parting words for everybody?
No, just this is great. I love the feature where we can help somebody out abroad. It was a walk down memory lane, you and I sitting in a house out in the suburbs of Atlanta trying to put this all together and it just a lot of a lot of positive flashbacks.
Yeah, great stuff. Nalini, any final words from you?
No, I think this is a really cool episode and I hope to see more comments from people and some direction of where you guys want us to be taking these shows. And for me anymore one pagers that you may want to try and help.
Yeah, and if you’re also interested in being on the hot seat and getting some feedback, make sure down below, you give us your name and we could reach out to you and maybe get you on a future episode. But I’m looking forward to seeing where Chris is going to be in six months. So, if we could talk to him the beginning of December, It’ll be really, really interesting to see how his practice has grown. So, I’m looking forward to it was that we’re going to end here today. I want to thank you all for being with us on another edition of Maximum Growth Live. I’m Jay Ruane, for Seth Price, Nalini Prasad, thank you so much for being with us. Goodbye and we’ll see you next week.
Thank you, guys.
Bye.
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