Join Seth and Jay as they discuss how to handle a counteroffer above your listed salary range for a new staffer and the upcoming drought of available workers and how it will impact your law firm.
Hello, hello and welcome to the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane. And he is my man Seth Price down there in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. Of course, Seth is all things digital with BluShark Digital, as well as being the managing partner of Price Benowitz. And I myself have a million irons in the fire, so we’re not going to go into all of them. But as always, I like to check in with Seth, how’s your week going this week, Seth?
It’s going well, sort of summer coming to a conclusion, kids coming back from all over, trying to get one last vacay in, but in general, it’s, you know, sort of like the new reality that the summer is coming to a close.
Yeah, you know, it’s right around the corner up here in New England. It felt like a fall day this weekend. It was like high 70s, little cool breeze. It was kind of nice. I was able to clean out my garage, like that’s what I wanted to do this weekend. But I actually found the time and it was good. And I was thinking that I needed to run something by you this week, because it’s something that’s somewhat troubling for us. So we’ve got a paralegal right now that is out on maternity leave, she’s going to be coming back. And what we have found, I think, really, she was kind of overworked before she left. She’s a team player, not necessarily want to say that she was overworked. But having taken her work back and distributed among other people, we think there’s a role for another paralegal on that team, so as to not just crush this person. So a couple of weeks ago, we made the executive decision, we’re going to start recruiting, we put up a job posting, 49 people submitted in the first 20 days, which is always satisfying, because I know a lot of people are struggling to actually find bodies, we’re struggling on the lawyer side, not necessarily an a paralegal side. 49 people came in, we found 10 that we wanted to have first round interviews with… I mean, we had some quality people. You know, one of the things that’s a challenge is that not a lot of people have the criminal defense experience that we’re looking for. So we’re finding people with skills and attributes that we think translate to doing better in our firm, right?
And you want to make sure that the person doesn’t get there and bail because they don’t like it, it’s not just the skill, but that mentality. Right leaning person, they’re probably not going to work well fighting the power, all those different things. The last thing you wanna do is train someone and say that’s not for me.
Exactly. So, set up 10 interviews, we had five that were set up for Friday, five that were set up for today. So this week, we’ve got a bunch going, and of the 10, now, these are people who we’ve spoken to, we’ve done an initial phone interview with, they’ve done well, they’ve expressed interest. Seven of them showed up for their interviews, which means 30% just simply ghosted us. No call, like, we’re concerned, hey, were they in a car accident? Like, why would you go so far as to submit a resume and take a phone call, and do a pre interview, I guess.
Hey, you know, look, to me, that’s not such a bad ratio. In some respects I, look, I equate a lot of things to dating. Right? As you know, we’ve talked about it, my staff gets sick of it. But if you go back to dating, there are times when you just don’t want to go into the explanation as to why it’s not right. It’s the wrong thing to do. It’s not the person you’d want, maybe indicative it’s not that person. But you know, we go back, remember, you know, go back 10 years, and there was a school of thought, not mine, that if you want the right secretary or paralegal, you put an ad, and they have to send something in triplicate and FedEx, all that stuff, right? Not my game. But to me, I wanted the biggest sort of like, funnel and that was my philosophy, right? And then you can choose who you want, as opposed to that one person who does that, who may have other attributes you don’t like, which is they’re willing to go for that. Again, if it’s kismet and it’s lightning in a bottle, great, but that’s, right now, that does not seem to work as well, but looking at what you’re dealing with. So these people, and I look at this a lot is similar to that piece we just talked about. When you’re interviewing and people are deciding whether or not to go there. The first thing you want to do is we’re all going through these third party apps, right, whether it be Indeed, LinkedIn, we use Jazz, it integrates them. And there’s a certain amount of back and forth where people, 30% may be further along in that process. And you know what they say? Like, it’s just, you know what, they’ll figure it out there, they got 10 people, the odds of me getting the job are 10 to 1 at this stage of the game. So you know what, they’ll just move on. It’s a combination back and forth. Assuming your staff is using best practices, they’re texting, they’re not just emailing, you know, look, we’re pretty advanced. And I had, I literally in my morning meeting with our recruiter, today, we have an in house recruiter, and I’m like, you know, I didn’t hear back from this person, we sent them an offer, and they didn’t review it, which is kind of odd, right. And we again, we’re using an E signed document, and it doesn’t usually go to spam. But I’m like, we gotta move away from email into text. Now, this person’s one step more passive. So the fact that three aren’t there, I think is more a set, you know, people how they look at it, like the dance early on, is almost like online dating. And you don’t need to send this, and it’s great that they’ve had interviews back and forth. So it’s not nothing. It’s as if you’re online dating and you’ve had a few phone calls back and forth, and you decide that person’s not it, are you going to really break up with the person after two phone calls back and forth, where you decide you don’t want to date because they’re basically saying, I don’t want to go on a date with you, which is what, let’s say…
I’ve heard that plenty of times in my life.
That’s why it hits home specifically. But basically, they’re doing that handy-work for you. Now, again, we both know from the sales point of view that if you had a recruiter that was hitting people at different times, the person who didn’t want to go on a on a date with you at noon, you know, at seven o’clock when their mom’s yelling at them, they better get out of the house, might be more willing. So it could be that the person is out of the market, either found a job or decided they’re staying where they are. And they made that decision definitively. But a certain amount of it is we’re in a sales mode, how do we continue to engage people during that process? So look, I look at it half full, you got 7 out of 10 people ready to go.
Right? And we’re gonna do the interviews, and it’s gonna work fine. Let me follow up with another thing, get some advice from you. So here’s something that, it’s not happening right now, happened in the recent past, posted a job, put out the salary parameters, let’s say they were $40,000 to $55,000 a year, for a paralegal position. Got a bunch of applicants, ran somebody through it. Got somebody come in, great experience, it looks like it’s going to be a team player, it looks like it’s going to be great. Offer her the top of the level that we’ve advertised, hey, you’ve got it, we want it, 55. That’s where we’re going to put, that’s where we’re going to start you, that type of thing. And then you get a call from them saying, I’d really like 75, which is way… Do you say wow, we like this person. And let’s compromise somewhere along the middle? Or do we say, You know what, this is what we said, we were offering our max, this is where we’re at, you know, we know your job-less right now, because they laid off a whole department. So you know, this is what it is, or do you give them what they’re asking for, which is way outside the binding, we’re talking like…
There are two different things. There’s one, the expectation, right, that’s your target. The second is, what the f, we get this all the time where you have a number in place, and they just come back afterwards with a different number, happens. And the third is, which I think we have to be cognizant of, is the market is moving. I told you during COVID how we had a guy asleep at the wheel in the intake department who’s thankfully not with us. And we have this rockstar in place right now. But we were not adjusting salaries to the fact that was a new normal. And so, you know, the question is, is that delta that they put out there? Is that the new normal? And if you don’t pay it, she’s going somewhere else to get that, he or she? Or is it just somebody taking a shot at it. And if you stay firm, because like anything else, you know, you can always come back with 55 is the top of our range, pause, and find out, well I’m holding an offer at 70 and 75 gets me, then you have a decision to make. So I think you have the combination of the annoyance that they didn’t follow the program, with the thankfulness that you’re not being said no to and you know, you can always come back saying hey, can we do this at 55, they can say no and you can always zoom back up but I think you have that moment and it, you know, all three of those scenarios are there but it is a North moving market. And I, look, the flip side is I’m looking at somebody right now that we played this game with right? We had a range, they came in they asked for more, a smaller version of this and the $3,000 to $8,000 Delta. And we pushed, and I’m seeing performance now. And I’m like, This is not great. We’re getting somebody who’s 25,000 less than we’re paying, in my opinion, based on performance. That said, the new normal probably brings it not that much lower than we’re on that. So maybe $10,000 to $12,000, over where I want to be. But from transaction costs, and recruiters and everything else, there are times we’re a slight delta over, but it kills me. Because in this particular instance, the person came in with great fanfare, and they’ve been fine. They’ve potential to catch up, but they came in and had some bumps in the road. So I think that really, the first is, is it a testing the waters to see what Jay will do? Which is very possible. And the second is, where is Jay willing to go to not emotionally, but and not like, if you lost this person, and you had to get the next in line? Or start from scratch? What does that mean? And what’s that worth to you? And so maybe I’m making this up, I’m throwing out, you want to top 55, they’re asking for 75, you know, at 65, given that a recruiter might be needed to find the next person, this person came, without a recruiter, I mean, all these things are going in, are you going to stretch just to check the box and move on. And that’s what partially look good for employees, it’s allowing people to make an extra buck. At the same time, you know, we’re seeing this about to crest, right, we see, you know, if you’re gonna be left with some people, salaries never go down. And now you have some overpaid people on payroll.
Right. And one of the challenges I have in this position is that, you know, this is a core worker in our firm. And while they look good on paper, they seem to bring in everything, you know, we’ve had other people who’ve come in who’ve looked good on paper, and they haven’t necessarily performed up to what we’re paying them. And then you wind up, and then the other worry I got is, okay, so say our max was 55, we’re willing to go to 60. And they accepted at 60. But they’re asking for 75. Are they going to have one foot out the door the entire time, the minute somebody comes off with 70 they’re out the door? You know.
They’re showing things.
I hate to say that I look forward to the next recession, but as an employer, I kind of, you know, I don’t like being on this side of the equation.
Question. And I know that this is a hot button topic that people aren’t supposed to talk about, what are they making currently is important. I know you’re not allowed to ask it in certain states. And some people will say you shouldn’t ask it even if you can. But to me, exactly for that, you don’t want somebody who’s bitter about taking it, just like, and we talked about this years ago on the show, but it’s worth talking about again, we’ve seen this historically, another thing I’ve seen, right, you’ve seen this too. So somebody comes in, and they’re interviewing for a job, take this job where your max is 55. And they say to you, well, I just left the job that was 90, right? And you’re like, well, maybe I can go to 60. But this person is at 90, but they’re like, No, I can make this work at 60… You’ve had this happen, right? And so you have this odd thing. Now you go and you look at it. And it turns out the person they’d been with for 15 years, it was their sole employee of a guy who was winding down his practice, couldn’t lose them, threw money at them that was way above market, right. And I have always taken the attitude, that’s a very dangerous place to be because you don’t want to be the person, even if they say they want it. And I literally have a hire that just came in for like 30,000 less than a last job, which makes me a little bit nervous, but that you don’t want to be the person reapportioning in their salary. Now if the person has been looking for a while, and they’ve been out for six months, they realize, hey, this is the new normal, then fine, but if the person is bitter that you’re the person delivering the news.
They’re gonna bounce from you as soon as they can.
Potentially. And so all of that is important to be sort of the game theory. But I think a lot of it is, and we see this, and I would say based on your exact situation, I have to have seen it three times in the last nine months. One of the things that I would say for certain there, is that at least two out of three times if you come back saying, you know the job max was 55. Like, oh, yeah, sure. And it’s fine, right. Versus, you know, you might as well ask, versus somebody else saying, you know what, I have three other jobs possible, if you want me, great, and then you have a decision to make. Sometimes we do it sometimes we don’t. But I really don’t like the, there’s a clear number. Or worse, I don’t know if this happened here, where they actually say, That’s my number. You put it in writing and there’s a different number asked for it, which is just, it’s the next step from what you’re talking about. Because I go back to, when we talked about the beginning of this, where 3 out of 10, there’s a dance that goes on at the beginning, people don’t listen, and in a good and bad way, right? It’s a dance and a lot of noise. They’re applying to stuff just like on dating apps, they’re not just looking at Jay when you were single, they’re looking at 10 different people. And then over time, they’re like, You know what, Jay’s, that’s out of Connecticut, I want to be closer to the city, you know, or whatever it is. And, you know, the thought being, that people very often are ignoring the salary, saying, if they like me, then we’ll set a number, that that’s also part of the noise. And going back to the dating, you know, if every person who said they love their family and love to travel really did, you know, we have all these people that are homebodies and can’t get along with their family. And yet it’s all there. So there’s a whole bunch of pretense, I mean, before having my own firm when I was interviewing at corporations in places during the .com bubble, and you’d have these HR recruiter people who literally whose job was to just talk to, it was nonsense what was coming out of their mouth, it wasn’t asked for by the company, they just, partially ego, partially that’s why they had that job. We just talk and make things come out. And you’re sitting there crowdsourcing, what’s real and what’s not. And so the fact that somebody ignored it, not a good sign, but at the same time, you know, I think that basically, one, you’d see, are they really back there just testing you? And second, is there a new normal that you have to be careful of?
Yeah, and it’s really difficult when you’re hiring one of these positions a year to really identify what is the new normal, because like you say, a lot of people, you know, as you’re growing and scaling your firm, a lot of other firms have one person that will be substantially overpaid for what the market is. And you don’t want to be in a position where you’re trying to meet that because, simply doesn’t work at scale.
Well, look, I’ll throw one out there that’s sensitive as well, which, you know, I assume, despite, you know, the sort of ethos of you’re not supposed to do that, that everybody knows what everybody else makes? They don’t. But I assume that.
But I think, younger people are talking about it a lot more than people in our generation.
Correct. There was a don’t ask mentality there. It was like a, you weren’t supposed to do it. And so one of the things, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but we’ve certainly seen this where, so let’s say this lady, this person came back asking for 75. But you had three equivalents back at that 55. Right, with a team lead at, let’s say, 60. And you’re like, if I do this, that’s going to upset the applecart… And so while this person may be great, and you might say, okay, they’re worth the $20,000 delta, if there are four other people that are going to come up, that’s $100,000 delta amongst five, and therefore, there have been times we said no, just for that reason and held firm. And you know, what, there’s a risk somebody might leave for money. But you know, it doesn’t, the last thing you want to do is hurt the existing people with something where you’re being unfair, unkind because somebody’s new.
Right. And, you know, that leads me to another point that I want to talk about, and it was pointed out to my friend of the show, Ryan McKean. Earlier this morning, he sent me a Slack message. And in the Slack message, he talked about the change. It was a CNN story about the lack of the change, and a dramatic decline in the number of people that are attending college now. And the wondering, like, where are these people? Are they part of the gig economy, because they’re not necessarily hitting employment numbers and that type of thing. But there’s like, 4 million fewer people going to college now than it did at the beginning of COVID. 9 million fewer than at the beginning, in like 2015, and that’s going to pose a problem not only for us as employers who need I mean, for you, at BluShark, you need content writers who can string a sentence together, not saying that a high school person couldn’t do that. But generally speaking, in college is where they get a pension and a…
…time on task to make it better? I think it’s, there’s so many factors going on. One, and it’s funny, because a bunch of these big shot business celebrities, Mark Cuban is talking about the cost of college forever, nonsense. Saw what he just did with generic drugs, with their new product, 15% over market, I got to think at some point, there’s got to be a, some sort of low cost college alternative, if you get into a top 20 college, top 50, maybe, god bless, you’re off, right? You go do your thing. You pay your $75,000 a year, you want to take debt, you want to have your parents pay, or whatever it is, great. But for everybody else who’s looking at this place, the idea that you’re going to a no name school and paying these numbers. Look, there’s a college experience of going somewhere, I get it. But what we saw during COVID was people learn online, some people are good with it. My kid was terrible with it, but for those that are good with it, why are you having to pay for an entire institution, if you want to get the knowledge of a professor that could be done at scale? You know, I’ve had this thought, I’m waiting for somebody to steal it. I’m hoping somebody steals it where you would take the top 200 classes, Harvard gives them, Penn gives them, Connecticut College gives them, and take all those free classes, put them out there. And for $2,500 a semester, there’ll be software that monitors you’re watching the classes, and you do a paper that’s graded by some other person. And you could take free content and turn it into a credential degree, if Ruane University charges next to nothing, but just made sure that you check the box, is that any better or worse than these for profit people that have maniacal salespeople? So to me, there’s an entire market. So goes back, sorry, I’ve come full circle back to you. I know I lost you for a second. But the point is, college tuition is the way they are, I think people are smart not to go to a fourth or fifth year college, but figure something out. Because you’re not, just like a fourth or fifth year law school, may with the exception of an entrepreneurial lawyer, never really get you an ROI on your tuition.
Well, and part of the problem is some of those fourth and fifth tier schools are as expensive or even more, you know, to be able to do it. But you know, that’s interesting that you bring it up, I was reading an article, I want to say it was Forbes, but it may have been money before they went all online. I don’t really know. Anyway, it was about how these hedge funds had been making money off of tech companies for the longest for the last 15-20 years. But these tech companies, unless they either get into medicine, which is highly regulated, like Amazon has gotten into Amazon pharmacy and that type of thing.
They just bought this huge multibillion dollar deal to the concierge medical.
TelaDoc?
No, no, no, they just bought another one. Like a Med One or something.
Okay. Oh, yeah, One Med, or something like that? Yeah. Anyway, so what they said was the only other area that tech could get into, and scale dramatically, would be to align themselves with major universities and essentially, take the Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, which are the big four of tech and partner with Harvard, Yale, Stanford.
But why even do that?
Because you have the brand of the education.
No, no, no, I get it. Yes, that is one way to go. But what I’m already seeing, you see the startup MBAs by celebrity entrepreneurs that are putting the stuff out there, because when you see a degree from a school you’ve never heard of, objectively, not being disparaging, just you’ve never heard of the school. And you’ve heard of a lot of schools, like would you go there, or if it was literally from Google, or Gary Vee University, or whatever it was, would you take somebody, and the Gary Vee comment was meant intentionally because he put a video out the other day that I thought he’s looking at this from a different angle, where he talked about the fact that companies should be concerned, because what they’re seeing, and we saw this during COVID, when a baggage handler left an airline making 55, he found some way, not as a garage sales, but he found some widget where he could do four grand a month sitting in his boxers at home, right and didn’t have to sit on a tarmac through heat and cold and this and that, benefits. And so now he has to make six grand a month, is that I’m not saying it’s nothing, but that the number of people that are never hitting the job market, right, who can make a buck where they don’t need to go to college, and they can make 60 grand 50 grand on their own. And if they figure it out for a few years, will have a six figure income one way or another. The fact that they’re never hitting the market, they’re not going to college, again, I’m not, whether it’s going to last, whether there’s going to be issue. But the fact is that, where that number is going is that if you’re going to college and coming out to a job that’s making 40 to 60,000 for the next 10-15 years, and you can do that without incurring $200,000 in debt $300,000 in debt and do something without the limitation, again, those are the people that are never hitting the possibility of being in your funnel to be a paralegal as these years go on.
Right? Because I mean, the way I look at it is, you know, I have a ton of friends who got out of college and went into the enterprise rent-a-car… My partner Teresa did that. And a lot of them went to go work for ADP, selling payroll services, you know, that type of thing.
Or the third of the triumvirate is the Aflac.
Right, exactly. So they do that for two or three years. They’re making you know, anywhere between 40 and 60. And then they use that to springboard into some other corporate position.
It basically trains them and if they happen to be great sales, they’ll stay in sales and if not, they got a great training ground.
Exactly. And I’m just wondering, how does that impact us as law firm owners, we don’t hire at the same scale as Aflac or Enterprise or any of those other companies, so we don’t have the huge footprint and the ability, the institutional ability to be like, Okay, we’re relocating you, you know, I’m not recruiting from people down in South Jersey, let alone Alabama, whereas Enterprise can do that and say, We’re sending you to our Boston area store, and you’re going up there next week. So I’m thinking that it’s something that we have to look at as law firm owners in our area is the changing demographics of our own communities.
Couldn’t agree more, BluShark, right, we have a Fellows Program, it’s up to 15 people, there’s, you know, fall, spring and summer. So there are three different groups, people stay over, that’s where the employees come out of. That is our training ground. It’s worked freaking awesome. The people are awesome. They care. It’s a paid program. You know, and it has become the training ground, where the majority of our hires come out of, very few lateral hires, because you train the way you want them. Very similar to when I was at Cravath, they used to, I think it’s changed, have no laterals, it was just out of their summer program, or right out of law school, you learn the Cravath way. And that’s how you did it. Now here, I think what you’re alluding to, and I think is the case is, we used to think of the interns as free labor. When I first met you, I can get kids from this college, they’ll write this paper, but if it leaves it from this is a free, which is now a lightning rod and liability, and moves to, hey, I need to develop my own talent. Now there’s risk people will leave, but if you have decent culture, and you’re able to maintain that, it is certainly something that should be able to on-ramp you to jobs, but it’s not one for one, if you have one person in your training program, you know, it may take three to get an employee.
Right. And the problem is, for a lot of us as small firms, you don’t have the bandwidth to say, Okay, I’m going to bring five people in as one L’s and work on one L two L.
Let’s get rid of lawyers. We’re still on paralegal staff, right. But the question there is, so it really depends on what your scale is, right? So I was talking, at smaller scale, and some of our listeners are at, you need one person, you can always find a person if you hustle, right, hustle, pay a little bit more whatever it is, but at scale, then you have the issue of where is it coming from? And you know, as you’re talking about the hiring, the criminal paralegal, we see the PI paralegal. I wish, it’s no free lunch. Because if you get an, also, and we’ve talked about this over the years, if you hire too high, like I would never hire a Penn grad to come work at the firm. Not that I’m discriminating. I know they’re not staying….
Well they’re a bunch of jerks. Trust me, I’ve met a couple of them. Seth is a Penn grad, folks.
So I’m just saying that like, you know, for us, our sweet spot, have been American grads, they’re awesome. They know what they’re doing. They want to be in DC, they’re not dabbling from another state. They’re here, they’re happy. And they’ve been an awesome group to work with that are happy to have the job and we’re happy to have them, and finding that sweet spot, rather than, mistakes we’ve made and alluded to this before, if somebody wants to work on the hill or in public policy, let them do that. Because the moment you get them, that’s even worse than that $20,000 delta we started with, if somebody wants that the moment the public policy job lands in their lap, and you can’t even buy them out, because that’s their dream. The key is, like if you can find people that want to do what you’re doing, where this is their track, and you’ve trained and mentored them, the issue is not being one to one. And so now you’re paying excess salary, doing some work for you along the way, you have to manage it. So that whole Fellows Program is not nothing. When I look at the cost of hiring today, and what you’re going through, it’s if you could theoretically have three people throughout the summer working to see, free look for you. So it’s not just the interview, but you get three months, you get work product during that. And you take the strongest one to come on board with some sort of like, what Enterprise does, right, Enterprise is not stupid. They have labor for and they have it, and their execs are the ones that stayed there and loved it.
Yeah, it’s crazy. So okay, so I have a question for you. I’m gonna throw this out to you. You know, we’re ending the summer. The last, you know, the last push the last four months of the year is coming up. Right? What are you going to be doing in the last four months of the year to sort of bring in more business to your firm because I think we’re at a tipping point now. You know, notwithstanding the recent variants, I don’t even know their names anymore. Everybody I know has gotten it and now we’re back in better over that type of thing about, do you have anything that you guys are focusing on at the law firm, to sort of focus your marketing in a particular way. Is there anything that you’re doing?
You know, our marketing has been humming and something that I’ve talked to you about, we’re finally and bringing on a director of marketing. Because I’ve been there, I just need a coordinator, just need a manager, I’ve never ponied up to bring on real talent. And look, I have three buckets of work that I need done, right. One is managing the BluShark relationship. I own it, like I shouldn’t have to manage it. But as you know, that any vendor you work with having somebody that’s ideally not you to help oversee it, and monitor it, you know, this very well, very, very important, and it has to be somebody strong enough to be able to have that back and forth. Second is the basics that we’ve always had, 15% of the market, I shouldn’t be doing newsletters, internal type stuff, some parties, that’s basic fundamental blocking and tackling, great, we can get that, but what I am excited about, so my newest initiative, which is sort of the path not traveled as we push more and more digital and sort of like have that team building growing, and taking as much off the table there as possible, is going back to the relationship piece and trying to have, you know, alumni or happy client VIP groups and working on trying to build that raving fan base. And that’s the piece that I don’t have, and that is my fourth quarter push.
Yeah, we actually have started tagging VIP, you know, people who jumped to give us reviews and that type of thing. So in our MailChimp, which is our email management software, we’re adding the tag of VIP or reviewer as people come in so that we know that if you know we open a new location and people are inclined to give us reviews, we can tap that audience as well.
You know, I remember Mario in the suburbs of Chicago… a friend of the show, you know, he was doing this great networking lunch. I always thought, what would it cost me to do 40-50 people at Maggiano’s. Now, the cost is not the meal, the meal might cost you 1000 bucks, less if you do it in a no name place. But the idea being that it’s the time and effort to sift it. Like anything, just putting butts in seats, even for free stuff. Look, I know you’re a big Yankee fan, you’re in the midst of getting tickets. One of the reasons that I never got Nats tickets is that the pressure to give away baseball tickets now for a subpar team in the middle of the summer. It killed me, you know how much it would kill me to not go. And so you spend your entire day placing seats and now they’re with like, they’re with the in-laws of your staff’s, you know, offspring, it’s credo, and that to me is what kills me. So it goes back, we’re gonna talk about another show, but use of season tickets and other things like that here, you know, I’d love to be able to utilize it, but it’s a full time job just giving away food, just giving away tickets.
It is, but I can tell you that, you know, there’s, I refer to a case that is a you know, maybe a 20 to $30 million case off of tickets that went through like three people. That’s gonna buy me season tickets.
Like it’s not that, you’re being Jay touching a million people. My kids make fun of me, because I’ll talk to random people on the street. And it turns out, they’re like, half a step removed from us. So, you know, that isn’t like, that could have been, it could have been the guy you sat next to at your concert, like, it just happens to be the fact that, it raises that exponentially, but you know, the reason I’m nervous about it is we have a lot of people watching the show. And I’m like, it’s not like, hey, go out, buy season tickets that’s your path to riches. It’s touching more people, if you talk to every Uber driver, if you, you know, leave a nice tip and a business card everywhere. If you have, you know, if you take up a box seat at something, all those things, but it’s a question of not just doing that, but being purposeful and meaningful and being engaged with those people.
You could spend $0 right, I know you hate to do this, hate to hear this, you could spend $0 on digital marketing, and have a flourishing firm, or you can spend everything on digital and do nothing else and have a flourishing firm. My question is are you willing to go all in on whatever it is? So many people don’t go all in, you know, in some respects, you know, they throw money, right? Because they don’t want to have to do the work. And the reality is that, you know, you meet people, you got to follow up with a note card and that’s it. Now you have that marketing director, it may be time for you to get max tickets and have them be in charge of giving them out and that type of thing. So there’s all sorts of things that are going.
Right but you know what, it’s the b2c piece because now you’re just like, now you can be at state fairs. Why are you, if the tickets randomly work, why are you not like touching 1000s of people because that’s that much more. You know, look, I have Caps tickets, I’ll just conclude with this story. And it works. A, cause I like the Caps so if I go, it’s a good thing. But I gotta tell you as, on the connector level, not the one off client level, right? Because that’s serendipity. But you know, are there probably 100 lawyers in town that you know that if you gave them tickets, top of mind, they send you at least a referral to nearly, they may not monetize, but they’re thinking of you. I gotta tell you as I move up the food chain, and as we get older, the odds of that person being free for that night, caring about it, what I’ve tried to do is match up, who cares about what. Because if you remember, somebody’s an Islander fan, that means a lot more when I give them Caps Islanders tickets than do you want tickets tonight? And so that’s another step of institutional knowledge. And I think we have to separate the b2b contacts that take a lot of effort, and the b2c context, which is just throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Right. And that’s part of the work that I was talking about, like, you know, I have a friend, who is a huge Cleveland fan, right? And we would always go to whatever, when I was first starting out 25-26. And I was working in Stanford, and the Yankees were playing at that time the Indians, now the Guardians, you’d be like, Hey, you want to run to a game? So now I say to my Yankees, make sure I got one Guardians game for two seats, and I’m going to ship them off to my friend Mark. And he’s going to love the legend seats. Yeah, he’s gonna love it. And so I know I have that going. And if I just offered him tickets to an Oriole’s game, he’d be like, Yeah, it’ll be fun, but whatever. So it’s, I agree with you, it’s 100% put in the work. And, folks, that’s gonna do it for us this week. It’s been a great show. You know, we talked about all sorts of things. If you have a topic that you want us to discuss, please let us know in the comments, we’re happy to talk about it. Or send us an email, you can catch up with Seth, on LinkedIn, as well as any of the social platforms myself, as well, if you want to keep up with him. You can follow BluShark on all the social platforms, he’s still doing his SEO Insider show, which has got some great contact of course with us, you can always catch us or message us here through the Law Firm Blueprint, we’re happy to see. If you’re listening to the show, or watching the show and you haven’t joined our Facebook group, we’re nearing 2000 members of the group. And we would love to have you as part of the group. All this month, all of August, and part of September we’ll be posting marketing systems that you can use. So there’s some good stuff that’s out there. It’s been posted recently. Be sure to check us out. And of course, catch us live every Thursday 3pm Eastern 12pm Pacific here live on Facebook. Seth, any last words?
You know, I’m just real excited, you got me fired up and got some kickass stuff to go accomplish.
Yeah, absolutely, folks. So that’s it for you. We’re gonna put you to work and follow the Law Firm Blueprint. Bye for now.
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