Join Seth & Jay as they discuss avoiding being the chokepoint, Seth talks social with Dennis Yu, and Jay & Seth chat with Rebecca Sheppard about ERTC
Hello, hello and welcome to the law firm blueprint. I want to your host Jay Ruane that man over there, Seth Price coming to us live from the precious metals offices in Washington DC of course that talks Price Benowitz as well as BluShark Digital where it’s SEO for lawyers all the time. So how’s your week going? This
week, going great. was in Nashville. We’re right now as this is getting ready to go in Atlanta for for Chris should be pretty over the top. Yeah, I
mean, you know, it’s funny, I’m sitting at home, doing my thing, loving my life, being at home, being able to interact with people, but you love being on the road. And so it’s a wonderful thing. So said, we got a lot of stuff to cover in this week’s show. So I’m going to sort of rapid fire a few things run by you, we’ve got some great interviews, we actually have two interviews this week, folks, we’re gonna get hear from Dennis you who was in with set, and they did a one on one last week. So we’re bringing that to you as a recorded segment. And then we’re going to actually also come back and do something about er TC at the end of the show. But first, one of the things that came up in the group in the last week or so, was a question of how do you remove yourself as the choke point in the office? So so I’m going to throw you that question first. Because you’ve been dealing with it, I have my own opinion on it. But how have you been able to get yourself out of being a choke point,
I think there are two pieces to it. The first is labor, right? Having a person that is at the level that can make meaningful decisions, you know, the operations person, whatever you want to call, it has a different term, different name. But an ops person, I think, is the first essential step. Because it’s the point person that does a lot of things that are not law, and not necessarily needed to be done by the owner with the advice and consent of the owner. So that’s first, the second, I think, is a psychological piece. We’ve talked about this a number of times, but like taking the interfaculty mantra, which is you have to get used to mediocrity and not that your ops person is gonna be mediocre, but that the more stuff isn’t part of Your Dominion and control that’s going to break down, if you want things perfect, you’re gonna keep very tight, as you get larger, there are going to be issues. And when those issues happen, there’s gonna be issues with things aren’t done to your satisfaction, you just can’t allow it to go so far that it causes an ethical issue.
Yeah, and the thing for me is that I think a lot of a lot of people in our audience are dealing with this, dealing with this struggle, because it’s sort of like a hierarchy that you’ve got to be able to address. And maybe this is something that we can investigate in in a future show. So I’m gonna put this bee in your bonnet right now. But we often talk about having our office manager, right, and then above that would be a firm administrator, then above that would be your, your COO, your Operating Officer, that type of thing. How do you know when to move from one to the next level? Because that’s something that is an issue for me right now as I’m growing, is that I’ve sort of come to a realization that I need to hire a kick, ass COO, you know, NBA, that type of thing in order to get me because I’ve gotten us to this level, I don’t know, to quote Heartland schellenger. I don’t know what I don’t know, in order to move us to the next level. That’s why I’m engaging with fireproof team. I know you have as well. And I think that that’s what’s necessary to move my business forward. But there’s a lot of people who aren’t at that point yet. So maybe they have a paralegal who also acts as the office manager. But then at some point, you got to go to firm administrator, which is
that I think it’s a continuum. I really do. I think that the, you know, the admin that’s developed can get very far and the ops person with trainings and that I’m going through right now using Bill bigs, you know, trying to take an Operations Director make him COO, and the bigger question I see talked about a lot, it’s a whole nother show is do you promote from within? Or do you bring from outside? I’ve seen parallels both ways. I’ve generally had more luck promoting from within, but at the CLO point, you may not have anybody who can make that jump, in which case, it’s also real money, and it’s a different beast. And are you willing to give up that dominion and control? Because that’s the other question, you know, just like a lawyer may not want to give it up on substance, you know, are you really going to allow that to happen? And the easiest way for that to happen is to not be there. I think that, you know, probably COVID and working remotely is allowed you a little bit less of a grip than when you were always there every day with everybody surrounding you within the physical office.
Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely something you know that that needs to be a consideration as you grow as you scale is when you are going to bring in these people like and this is a conversation that we can have in life. For a marketing director or a firm administrator, I mean, both are critical parts of your team,
I would say I would say that there’s more that can be outsourced on marketing generally, generally, again, take your poison. You could argue things, different ways. But I’ll just have to say as a microcosm, I’ve seen the disasters of bring somebody in from the outside as your core values. I’ve had the disaster of somebody being promoted from within who’s not ready for primetime and was never getting there. And we’ve made a lateral hire, which I never thought I would ever will do. Who’s been amazing the seat in the ops role? And is why I’m investing time move up. And it’s not like either or, it’s figuring out what do you need? What is what type of marketing are you doing? If you’re purely on TV, for example, you may not need as much in house because you’re paying somebody in, they’re getting their 15%, if you’re big enough, in your spend is such like, No, I don’t want to pay that outside, I’m going to have somebody manage everything from within. But I think it’s a building blocks. But for you personally, the number one thing to get you out of that piece is somebody who can take care of, you know, today, we have a lawyer in one of our satellite offices that’s not responding in the way they need to attorneys. And I’m delegating to somebody who’s that interaction going well as if I did it myself, probably not. But I’m also keeping myself clean. So this person doesn’t hate on me, they’re hating on, you know, we just had a disgruntled person, that that left, and the hate was not towards me, it was towards our head of ops. And I was like, You know what, I like that. It’s on the firing line. And that, in fact, I’m the guy who’s trying to negotiate the exit. So it’s, I think it’s, you know, one piece at a time, knowing a that one size doesn’t fit all, I just met somebody who was part of a group where they said, you have to bring in a high level experience love remover. And truth is no, you don’t always need that, you know, if you want like for you, if you’re not looking to build and grow, and you want to maintain, hypothetically, within reason, you’re gonna need new office, but the same J playbook? Could you get away with an ops person rather than a COO? Do you need that MBA, that’d be nice. But you or do you want, somebody’s just going to execute on your game plan, it depends on where you are, and how much you want to move forward, versus how much you want to execute on what’s already inside your mind.
But and these are conversations early on in the processes, they’re starting to scale, because, you know, you need to have an A vision going forward. And I think if you don’t have that vision going forward, you’re you’re gonna sort of be hamstrung, you may not necessarily make the decisions at the right time. And then you’re playing catch up. And I gotta tell you, I got it, I gotta, I gotta give you credit. Well, for people don’t want to give you credit. But on Friday, Thursday, and Friday, I actually sat down and listen to a whole host of calls on our reception and intake team. And we got rid of four people. Because after treat after training, after spending time with them, we invested six months of time, money. And, you know, we ran them through some very simple sort of tasks. And I said, I’m not in a point now where I can trust these people in this job anymore. And we’re about to hit our into our busy season. And so literally, I had a meeting with my core group. And my core group found a solution, a temporary solution that they could live with, by taking some people off of other tasks. But I got to tell you, folks, if you’re not listening to hearing take, you know, and you’re doing it regularly, I like at this point, I, I now have it in my calendar to listen again in three months.
I know that in three months, you need to have a member of your team that’s listening to the model on a weekly basis, and then pulling take three calls from each person and have those listen to weekly and then they can pull those out and flag the worst of the best for you. But no, not quarterly. Absolutely not.
Yeah, I mean, that’s and that’s one of the things is I’m understaffed and being able to do that stuff I need to hire, you know,
more like I got somebody it’s unvetted, but I gotta I got a potential cost effective look for you out there that that might work. But no, let’s say that
that goes back to my leading. I’m the choke point right now in solving problems. But
if there was somebody else do they look, you’re you’re answering your own question. It’s like, it’s having that extra layer because you’re not doing it and by by you by taking quarterly on recorded calls. Absolutely not. I mean, there’s just look, especially if you just found four wrong. Have you tested the others?
Well, that the other ones are not going to not look far right. But as you say
that but they’re still coaching and development, like how many people do you have undertaken theory before you ever before? We had 12, we’re down to eight, right? But at 12 Like hire one more person whose sole job is to listen to calls and bring you the best. I mean, like you don’t know, when stuff is breaking look, I’ll give you some that we’re struggling with. Now, I want to punt to the next call. But we’d love to get people’s feet to the next show, when we get people’s feedback. You know, we noticed the actual on phone time, for a number of our people in the it was actually an injury division was not as high as we would have intuitively thought. And what’s crazy is I went up people like Gary backwards, there’s no data out there, how many minutes a day, assuming you’re busy, and you’re not waiting for the phone to ring? Should the average person be online. Now, they may be answering chats or emails, but some of the phone calls are a substantial portion of what you’re getting. What would you think intuitively? In an eight or nine hour day? Should somebody actually be speaking to somebody on the phone? If you added up the minutes, like work steps, six and a half hours? And we were seeing a number less than that? And the question is, is it? Is it bad on us? Or is that normal? And again, there are certain things that like, again, it’s not like immediately, like, Oh, my God, the sky is falling? I don’t mind I really, you know, during COVID, we went from 1213, domestic to 20, including a substantial number overseas or Latin America. And the piece that in a way, I don’t care in that I know we’re slightly inefficient. But by using overseas labor and allows it, it’s more stable, people aren’t getting burnt out. But what is that number in 667? Maybe unrealistically high, based on what I’m seeing. But is there what is that number? And, you know, look, we don’t have class one call center stuff where the moment somebody hangs up the next person answers, right? It’s not as it’s not as tiny. At the same time. The question is you build and build a build. And at some point, look, the good news is you can get rid of four, hopefully, and still not lose a step. You’ll hopefully be okay.
But we’re actively hiring now. You know, and that’s
how long before they’re actually in play. If you if you have eight people for the foreseeable future, it sucks. Will it be somebody there in two, three weeks? Maybe, but the better answer is it’s a month,
right? Yeah, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. Okay. So what we’re gonna do right now is we’re actually gonna throw to an interview that Seth was able to do with Dennis you. And so Seth, why don’t you tee it up for everybody? So that they know what’s coming? Yeah. So
Dennis is a really interesting guy. I’ve known about him for years, he’s, you know, a longtime SEO guy goes back with me. You know, I think late 90s, doing all sorts of stuff was inside of Yahoo. had all sorts of credentials, and elite, he’s done a lot of speaking, talking and putting together products, I think this is why you’re gonna like it, where he’s talking about, you know, paid social how to leverage it, his mantra is $1 day, take what you have and boost and, you know, fascinating stuff. And, you know, worked with some of the biggest names in the industry figuring out how do you get people into your video? How do you a B test things along those lines? You know, a fascinating guy whose mind is just, it’s just awesome to watch them in action. So I think people really liked this interview, originally broadcast on the SEO insider, but I thought it was special enough for our audience here.
Awesome. All right, folks. We’ll be right back. Hang tight. We’re gonna cut right away into the sense interview with Dennis you. Stay calm. We’ll be right back.
Welcome, everyone to the SEO Insider. We are thrilled to have NSU from blitz metrics with us today. Welcome, Dennis. Pleasure to see against that, you know, look, you have been everywhere of late, but like, I know that I I’ve known you for years in the digital space. I go back to the late 90s. In the first.com bubble in New York. You are with some of the juggernauts in the space. Tell me like what what is your journey been?
I am not your ordinary search engine engineer, or SEO or marketing person. I’m not a marketing person. I’m a search engine engineer. And I built the analytics at Yahoo. 20, some years ago, and my job was to protect the analytics and also protect search engine from all these people that are trying to manipulate our search results. So this is before the days of massive cuts and these sorts of public representatives because search engines weren’t really a thing until Google basically popularized it in like 2005 2006. So I was going around the conference circuit 20 Some years ago, speaking as Yahoo at these different conferences before it was I mean, technically, I think Bruce Clay invented the term SEO. He’s a good buddy of mine. But we were calling it web mastering if you remember, it wasn’t wasn’t SEO, it was building websites. And before websites, it was bulletin boards. And before bulletin boards, it was freaking and I was doing freaking 30 plus years ago, so and
a lot of it was figuring out I remember back in the day, it was there were so many different search engines, and figuring out what was going to survive. You had no idea.
Yeah. And then we saw Alta Vista and dogpile and even Digital Equipment got into the game and back then were using Mozilla, this is before they’re even web browsers. Right? I did most of my email using pine on the Unix system. Why? 35 years ago, I was doing that anyway, I don’t want to tell you how old so I get it. So I’m a search engine engineer, okay. And I’ve seen all these other marketing people come into the space, trying to tell everyone how search engines work, and all this black box, Voodoo nonsense. And set all I want to do, especially for attorneys who spend a lot of money, I have no idea what’s actually going on. I just want to turn the light on in this dark room. And if if all the vendors screen at all, if all the SEO people look at each other, or you know, they look ugly, is it my fault that they’re ugly that I turned the light on?
No, I don’t think at all. I mean, look, as a as a player who’s bridges, both the legal space and the digital space. That’s part of the reason I started an agency, I felt that there was so much fairy dust and silver bullets in this and that, that fundamentals, you know, rather than tricking the algorithm, giving the algorithm what it wants high quality content, authoritative links, you know, if you’re if you’re willing to play ball and figure out what they want, rather than how can I sort of pretend to give them what they want long term and a year a lot better off?
Yeah, it’s amazing. Talk to me the thing that you’ve been spending a lot of time with that we are we are having a lot of fun with here at Blue shark and price Beto. It’s is video social. If you go back, historically, social has been one of those things that for law firms, that was a poo pooed. But there was a lot of people selling widgets that were utter nonsense, you know, three to $5,000 a month to have happy red hair day or, you know, take your kid to Work Day posts that got limited visibility, no engagement, it just seemed nonsense. And I always wanted people to hold back their resources and say put that in paid search, put that into organic, rather than the sort of fake stuff. Now, if you have your own channel, or you really love social and you go all in, you can do a lot of things in a lot of different verticals. But everything has changed over the last months and year with tick tock Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, you know, part of it is a feeding frenzy at some point that will close the the, the the unlimited world that we are in and monetize like many other things. But talk to me a little bit about where we are right now. And where you see us going when it comes to the power of video social.
So the traditional people that do paid search organic search to go to PubCon, another conference that you and I speak at, they still unbelievably view it as a text driven world. As in you hire article writers to write content around different topics, distribute that on your blog, distribute internal link juice, blog posts, buying links, creating signals, because you’re distributing through Google News sites and doing Google stalking, I get that that’s a hands off client hands off via a text driven model, which still kind of works. And you know, a lot of SEO firms will say I’ll create 50 articles per month and put them on do
you want to be in search results currently? That that’s
that’s the game. It still works. But that’s not really where everything’s headed and
where it’s headed. But there’s two things you’re always doing right?
Let me let me tell you where this shift. Here’s the big shift, because there’s there’s a lot of technical details that you and I as insiders can, you know, geek out about. It’s now a video first game. Even Google has said it’s a video first game, what does that mean? It means it’s not a text first game, it means you as an attorney, or the intake errs, or the receptionist, or the clients or whatever are making vertical cell phone style videos as your primary source of content. That content gets transcribed and turned into blog posts, not text first where let’s write about all the different things you can say about motorcycle accidents in city name and auto generate those web pages which are terrible, as you know, right? I mean, how many different ways can you talk about motor vehicle accidents and truck driving accident? Oh, it’s been the it’s been the bane of our existence in that the law garbage content, and you know it and you know, it’s low quality and you could talk about how it fools the algorithm and you can stuff the keyword still and by triangular links to link wandering networks and all that. That’s all BS. What matters is telling real stories of real customers, how you take care of them. What you’d like to do in the morning, showing yourself as a human not because you’re singing and dancing on Tik Tok, but because
I get it like I’m invested heavily in it. But I also see that we are also at an intersection, right things are changing your watch time or where you’re going. There’s also current cases and where are they coming from. Let me ask you this because there’s
more web traffic than Google does. Understood. But young adults under 30, do more searches on Tik Tok than they do on Google.
Understood. But when they’re looking for a lawyer, they go to tick tock or they go to Google. And that’s, you know, that wasn’t my point. I’m not
looking for a lawyer. They’ve already decided based on who they know, they don’t care where you pass the bar, or how many cases you have, or that you’re tough. And you know your derelicts, you have a hammer, they don’t care about that. They care about can they relate to you? And that’s where social media comes in. It’s not something you hire an agency to do. Because it’s a video first thing where you have to make cell phone videos has nothing to do with your hair, or wearing a nice suit with all the books in the background and the degrees that’s the
thing with social media, but that look, look at all the different areas of law right? My world right? Your PII you have criminal you trust and safety of family, immigration. I get and you’re like, you’re an evangelist, you’re telling me where we’re going to and I get that, and that’s where things are now, but they are they look percentage are. But people are still looking when they need a search. You know, look, I’m I’m one of the unique, middle aged people that loves tick tock, it’s so freakin addicting, it finds your areas of interest, and it digs deep. And I sort of study and I see what other people are doing. And I see that there are people doing cool, informative videos out there. But we are it’s at its infancy, you know, for the moments. And again, you’re saying this is changing quickly. People. Google is still not indexing it that way. We’ve seen it. Do you remember a couple of years ago, we had where Google said, Hey, we want you to we’re going to push video really hard. And they put like, you could basically stack the search results with nonsense videos by spamming titles and putting them in those get your
YouTube shorts and all that for sure. Right. I was the product manager of YouTube shorts. We were in Austin actually filming together at Digital Marketer. And she said that they created $100 million creative fund to be able to make incentives for people that are making videos in short form fun ways. Because Google’s always tried to do a social network. We won’t list all the different ones they’ve tried over the last 15 years. I was
so disappointed. I loved the I thought the technology was better than Facebook’s I love the way it could chat, video chat, all of that. And you know, it just turned out of people like you and me sitting in there waiting for it to pop and it never happened.
Right? Because it’s people that are too technical making things for engineers like me to
talk to me like that. This is a real thing that attorneys struggle with, which is Yeah, okay. They’re not you. They don’t have a massive following. They don’t want to do the me to stuff which I think is that we don’t sell anybody on that. They can have somebody follow them around a video camera and do stuff.
But you don’t have to have a D Roc. No, no, no, no. Obviously with it with an iPhone,
they know. I’ve learned that lesson, right? I had a guy with a video camera follow me around, did nothing compared to a 23 year old Ringway. Yeah,
my wins every time. I’ve done two, I’ve hired these kids. He’s 22 year old kids, and they use our techniques. And I’ll tell you, it’s not a secret. And they’ll make a bunch of what Tiktok calls Lo Fi, like not professionally edited sorts of videos that outperform when a professional camera crew who’s one, like, fully agree with you more $50,000 Professional thinking they’re bringing RED cameras, all the intimidating equipment you can imagine. And the kids that out of the you know, University of Louisville and Dr. Karen freebooks program, for example, a bunch of my kids come from there or other schools where they’re implementing our program. They’re making short form little videos. And they do it for local business owners. They do it for restaurants, or whatever it is. There’s a bunch of schools that use our stuff to start student agencies so that these kids can Get Real course credit instead of just reading a book and writing an essay, which is ridiculous. And these kids are beating all these professional agencies. These are kids with almost no experience and it’s not because they inherently understand social media. Oh, if they’re a 20 Somethings, they understand Tik Tok. There’s natively like they were born with a iPad and their hand. No, that’s that’s the thing that old people like us like to say about these kids. Here’s what they’re doing. They don’t suffer from this thing called rambling Old Man Syndrome. That’s the number one thing you’re smiling. That’s the number one thing that kills professional services in social media. You know, rambling Old Man Syndrome is and why that’s so bad. No, you and I suffer from it greatly. What is the number one thing on tick tock? You follow all the experts. What’s the number one thing that drives your watch time and virality usually, the hook the first two seconds of the video If you don’t get to the point, if you’re not interesting in the first two seconds, doesn’t matter. I’ll give you a proof point. So I was at TNC last week, and I ran into the video editor of Alex Hermoza. Who’s the number one trending Entrepreneur on the internet right now. He also is the video editor for Grant Cardone, there’s a lot of people that pretend that they’re the video editor for Grant Cardone or Alex or mosaic. This is the actual guy and Ryan McGann He’s awesome. I filmed a two hour interview with him while I was there, and he here’s what he does. And by the way, don’t think like just because it’s for Alex or Mosier Grant Cardone, I can’t be like that, because I’m not Grant Cardone. No, no, no, no, this technique, listen to this. They’ll film a primary video about a topic long form. Like, here’s what to do when the police stop you. Right? Or here’s what what you do when you get in a car accident, or some kind of Eric some something sharing expertise, which attorneys are normally pretty good about. And then they film five hooks, what are those? Those are introductions, here’s one thing you need to know, when the cops pull you over three things the insurance companies don’t want you to know, or whatever it is, these these are a hook is the video is that what you say in that video, direct to face. And it’s the same thing is like a subject line in an email copy, or the title in a webpage. And how important is that for like a blog post a title, it’s half of it, right? It’s more important than the content itself. So it is the equivalent of like, open rate or click through rate, view through rate on video is all based on that hook the first two seconds, so they’ll film five of them after filming that explanatory content. And then they’ll film three calls to action, you know, contact me and I’ll help you out. I’m the hammer and we fight for your justice. Or, you know, I’ve created a free guide for you Come check out what you know, download, you know, whatever it is, or, you know, agents standing by we’re here to help you one called does it all, whatever it is like some kind of call to action, you know the selling part. So main body, five books, three calls to action, combine them all. Now you have 15 pieces of content, right? And guess what this, so I knew already knew about that, because that’s what we’ve been doing. And it works really well. For even like nobodies you don’t have to have blue checkmarks and millions of followers or whatever. What he did, and he logged into the TIC tock for Alex servos. And he showed me we’re looking at the stats, I’m one of the few people that I can say this because I looked at the stats, you know that? Wow. And he’ll post all 15 At once set all 15 versions that wants. Yeah, but I thought you’re only supposed to post like once per day, because it’s going to wear out the algorithm and people are gonna get tired of seeing you or whatever it is. No, you just post them all at once. And he showed me something that he posted just two hours ago. And he had all these different versions, and one of them did way better. And we looked at these different ones. And they all look about the same. We played a few of them, they look about the same to me. But we looked a little more carefully. He said, when there’s a difference you can all if you look carefully, you’ll always be able to find that difference. It could be that that the one that outperformed, we cut out that initial breath in the beginning. And it’s like you have to cut out all the dead air. That’s why there’s all these jump cuts, right? Or it’s just the way you said something that the intonation or as the background music or the way you turn the camera just for a moment or the expression that you made that micro expression or it there’s always some reason. And I’ve talked to the top tick talkers and folks and Instagram reels and whatever they all confirm the same thing. It is that the slightest little thing in the first two seconds, because if you don’t, here’s the obvious thing, if I lost you on that or whatever.
No, that isn’t really what you’re basically saying, we’re going from a B testing, to A to G testing. In
the first two seconds, you’re testing all kinds of stuff in the first few seconds. The big caption you have is a text over the top, right, which is the subject line headline, whatever it is. And so everyone is testing those first two seconds, if they’re not with you, if they skip past you scroll past you, in the first two seconds, it doesn’t matter how good your call to action is, doesn’t matter how good your advice is, doesn’t matter how funny you are, that first two seconds. And the reason why 99.9% of small businesses, especially law firms, and people dispensing financial advice, especially doctors, people who are really well educated suffer from this more than anybody else. So doctors and lawyers, and I have a lot of doctors and lawyers dispense. And I see this and it just hurts me when I see this. They have rambling old man syndrome because they can’t get to the point. They use all these medical terms and legal terms. And they you know, these disclaimers or whatever just freaking get right to the point. My friend Sally got an A or my friend Sally, her wife, her husband was killed by a truck. And when she told me this, you know, or whatever, like that’s a good hook. Right? It’s like, oh, okay, well, what happened? You know, I got a $10 million verdict from my friend Jerry. But you know what I really admire about Jerry. Well, what do you really admire about Jerry? All right, the hook the first two seconds, these loggers can’t freakin do the hook.
Why do you think I did the video guy and I have a 23 year old with a ring light because they tell me what to do i if i My instinct is wrong. I know that. And that’s why, you know, again people and part of it is think about it. So the average lawyer syndrome person or doctor person isn’t spending their time on tick tock, after you spend a little bit of time on there. Yeah, intuitively you get it because you’re making those micro decisions as to whether you’re flicking. Yeah. Are you making
those? When you’re scrolling set? How long? How much patience do you have in deciding whether you want to watch the rest of that video?
You know, to me, what I find amazing about tick tock is that they have figured me out so freaking well, that I spend more time because most of the time, it’s giving me compelling content. I’m sure if I could think back to when I first got on. I was flicking but he said, Oh, he likes to show Hamilton. So if we were assigned to see 10 He likes tennis, you know, he likes baseball, whatever it is, yeah. They, you know, magic tricks? If they once they see you, I mean, so I find that? Yes. But as it as that algorithm, it gets better. I am not a great example of it. But I know exactly what you’re saying. And again, everything you’re saying is crystallizing, because I’m living it. I’m watching my team do this. And that’s why, you know, humbly when they say, Hey, do it this way. I’m like, sure. Because I know that my instinct may be able to get somebody talking to a certain Google algorithm in one place, but that the way that people are, and it’s not like you’re saying that it’s not just age, it’s not like they’re, but it is sort of how they were raised in that they don’t have all of these other this baggage with them. That would, because I tried to get some of my interviews like this, that Oh, I did these cool interviews, Dennis, I’m just gonna turn this into a tick tock. And it doesn’t work nearly as well as if we created a separate video where we’re doing that we you know, again, somebody’s going to hook of what you’re going to be saying next. That’s true,
because this whole thing like how long are podcasts? Like 45 minutes or something like that? That is a movie. Now, what do you need to do to get people to watch the movie? Have the movie trailer, right? Any major movie you name it? To get people to watch? There’s the movie trailer? So Seth, what’s in the movie trailer? And I think that
as as the light bulbs going off, for me, it’s something you wouldn’t believe what DENNIS You said here, something like that, which would get you know, which would which would get somebody in
grab the highlights, right? I saw the Top Gun. You know, Tom Cruise came out with the Top Gun. I’m like, Okay, this is he’s too old now. But it was amazing. I went to the theater with my mom. And we both loved it. And but the thing is, we the reason why we watched Top Gun was because we saw so many reviews, and friends that said I just saw Top Gun and it was amazing. And we saw the trailer. And you know, when you watch the trailer, it sort of gives away hopefully they don’t like give away too much. But they show like the explosions and the main thief. Well, the messy
crab now going off script here. But do you I know for myself, if a trailer gives every single way. I’m done because that means they didn’t have enough good stuff to get me in.
And that’s because you’re super intelligent. So these lot like lawyers like you that are super intelligent. I don’t mean it like a bad way. Like you guys are so smart. That you don’t realize the average consumers that you’re like eight steps ahead. The here ability that your verbal skills, you’re like, Oh, you overthink things. Like no argument. You are You are right. You’re right. Yeah, use people like you. But remember, we’re talking about people who get in car accidents, or they’re looking to buy a new house. They’re you just over assuming you’re like you’re not making oral arguments in front of some judge. Well, of course not. And it’s getting your way to smart. Social media, right? It was the same thing. We
figure with emails, like what’s gonna get something open, you have an email, but what you’re saying is, what is your array line? You know, that like that the array line of your video is today’s in today’s currency? Yeah. That’s awesome. So I know, we’re very fortunate that we’re going to see you at blue shark in the coming days. I can’t wait for you to be able to
Yeah, until weeks flying from Pakistan, to Dubai all the way to defeat to come see you. And
that’s I’m honored and touched. And it sounds like we will be either sharing the stage or crossing pads in Austin for PubCon. What are you doing between between DC blue shark and Austin PubCon.
We are training up millions of virtual assistants, and Philippines and Pakistan and Kosovo. In the US. We call these third world countries, but they’re all learning how to repurpose content. They’re taking the hundreds of videos Mostly short little 15 Second stories of the best selling book buy right now and social media on Amazon, by the way, literally google it and see, or go to Amazon and see what we’re training up these VAs to take those videos transcribed and articles, chop them up into tiktoks, and Instagram reels and tweets and facebook stories and all that repurpose. That’s called repurposing, and then turning in the ads and using what I have been famous for in the last 15 years called $1 a day strategy, taking your content and paying, paying for Facebook and Google and LinkedIn and Tik Tok and Snapchat and Twitter and whatever, to show your content to people in your city. And that’s how
you have alignment now. I get it, because that’s the home run. And that’s been
I’m not trying to get there organically or virally. I’m not counting on trying to be viral. I’m just I’m trying to generate business
to drive to the idea of testing and organically see what works. And then
yeah, so the dollar day strategy is about boosting a post meaning it started out organic, they didn’t start out as an ad, right. And so if I put something out there organically, just like I just told you with Alex or Mozi, 15 posts, all posts at the same time, one does the best, I’m gonna put money on that one. And I might make, you know, 10 other videos about different sorts of things. And I might think I know which one is the best and wrong every time. But the one that performs the best is the one I’m going to put more money on and I’m gonna allow it to run for $1 a day forever or $10 a day forever. Because it’s the same algorithm behind a boosted post as it is that governs the newsfeed this is true on Instagram, Facebook, tick tock pretty much any we’re
seeing a boosted post with a geographic radius. Yeah. And that I think that’s one of those things that I know early on way back, you know, somebody 10 years ago, somebody’s like, you know, we’re gonna do a Facebook, we’re gonna do a giveaway of a camera, like a flip camera. And that was all the rage if you remember that. And I was all excited. I paid for both the camera and I paid somebody somebody to do this thing. And I always people signing up and knew they were all excited, but nobody was in my market. You know, the idea is if you’re not checking your common sense of the door, you still have a goal. And you know, this is an as you’re saying, Get rid of the popularity contests
irrelevant. Fine, you give away a flip cam. Who is that going to attract it? I mean, I learned that was a flip cam. Yeah. Okay, great. But
let me ask you one final thing, which I curious your thoughts on? So old people like me, we do these cool podcasts? I have to one a law firm growth law firm blueprint, I got this VSEO insider, what is your best advice? Because a lot of middle aged lawyers like myself have podcasts or other other YouTube content that’s not, you know, is not Tiktok? Friendly? What is the best way? It sounds like you’re working on a team to do this? Can you take your, you know, middle aged long form content and make it compelling? Or does it need to be shorter
you can. You can, the thing is, remember, we have to distinguish between the movie and the movie trailer. So we put all this effort into the podcast, which is the movie, this whole conversation we’ve had. But then most podcasters are guilty of this except for the people that know what they’re doing. They will then at the end of their podcast, record a bunch of hooks with the guest, because it’s fresh in their minds. Now maybe initially, in the planning, get an idea of what we were going to talk about on the SEO Insider PodCast with me. But we actually went in another direction and covered some other topics. So that the best time to record your hooks is at the end. If you’re writing an article, for example, I’ve written 1000s of articles, you write your introduction at the end. And then you put that at the front, you don’t write you don’t start by writing the introduction, right? Everyone knows, every author knows, you’ve write the beginning at the end, right? So if you have long form content, whether it’s zoom, or in person or whatever, it doesn’t mean it can’t be used for Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube or whatever. Here’s the biggest mistake they make is they don’t repurpose the content, meaning push it to other channels. So you might take this and put it to YouTube. But why wouldn’t you transcribe it using a tool like D script into a blog post and submit that as a press release to Google News syndicated sites? Why wouldn’t you take highlights and put them on tick tock? Why wouldn’t you link between related blog posts? We’re talking about people that we know, why wouldn’t we there’s so many different ways to repurpose the content. And so most people, they don’t have a video team or virtual assistants to chop things up
and do that. Problems. No, that’s awesome.
You made the content which is great. That’s That’s step one of four. So just because you make the content you that’s, you’re barely even there. You write a book, just because you finished writing the book, you’re only one of four steps. The second one is you have to edit that content, not you because we don’t have time for that we have people at three bucks an hour that do that all day long. Then you repurpose it meaning you post it once it’s been edited, then you post on all the different channels you make the content once you don’t don’t have to make content just for YouTube or Tik Tok, or Facebook or whatever. Because it’s the same algorithm across every channel. I can go on to that if you want to geek out, I’ll explain why it’s the same algorithm between, you know, Amazon and Spotify and what they’re all the same algorithm. Okay, based on what users are doing. This is the third is to repurpose, and the fourth one is to boost to put money against it, targeting just people in your city, if you’re a local practice, and most people do the first step, and they miss the other three, and they wonder why they don’t have success. And they say, Well, I don’t have millions of followers. I can’t go viral. I’m not singing dancing well enough. Or I need to have some young girl who’s attractive dance in my video. No, that’s wrong, wrong wrong. It’s because you’re missing the other three steps. Excuse me,
plus you. So in our waning minutes, let us have you do three or four hooks, what are the hooks gonna be when we take this, we chop it up and we put it out there into the into the video algorithm.
I’ll give you a few examples. And video editor. You can obviously this is not a continuous interview. So chop this up as you see fit. Lawyers, Seth and I talk about the biggest mistakes you guys are making with SEO and social media comm tune in now. See stuff like that? Take too. You know what the number one thing is that kills really smart lawyers on social media. It’s called the rambling Old Man Syndrome. And Seth price. And I talked about exactly why that’s hurting your social media in ways that you don’t know. Come join us now. And the final one. You want to know what an original search engineer has to say about social media. Seth and I cover exactly what goes on, I think it’s going to find that See, that’s why you got to take multiple cuts. Because I didn’t say that, right? He started with the hook, which is the first two seconds, then I’m giving a little bit of knowledge, but I’m falling. I’m gonna let this all air I want people to see the creative process. I love this. This is this is this is what we do. And and I like I’ve been coaching Jake Paul, on how to do this. And this guy just got billions of views. But even he is a student of the game in this particular way. So yeah, you guys are seeing right now. What it’s like when most of the time you see the finished product, whatever you’re seeing on social media, is whatever the winner is, but you don’t see all the basically air balls that we’re putting out there. Right. You saw me throw an air ball just a minute ago. That’s how it is nobody? Absolutely.
So worst question of the people out there. If you are a student of this understanding that lawyers are not them. Who do you like them to be the most famous with them? Who do you think is doing this really well right now that you would look recommend people emulate?
Oh, well, only it was a friend of mine. And I coach him but a lot of people like I don’t want to be like only a one. I look at people like Ethan Ostroff, who is doing more he’s not as charismatic. He’s just giving advice. Hey, do you use Roundup at or you know, do? Are you a user of Roundup? And do you have this kind of cancer? Contact me I might be able to help you. Do you live in this particular town with this coal mine? And did you drink the water and get some kind of disease contact me I might be able to give you some justice, right? We see if we can help. Just simple things like that straight to the point. Not this rambling on and on and on thing like literally, can you say something in just a few seconds. That’s what this exercise is about. That’s what these young adults are all about. They don’t want to hear you go on and on and on. You need to use simple words. Keep it simple. Anybody outside
of legal
that you think are Justin Martin is a real estate agent. He sold 500 homes last year in Denver. He’s the number one agent, I believe in Denver. And what does he do? He’s highlighting his family life. They live on a lake, and they go jet skiing at night. And they do marshmallows or s’mores by the fire. But he’s also making stuff like, hey, check out this house. It’s going from $1.2 million. And let me tell you why I think this is a good deal. Or check out this other house. It’s got three bedrooms, and it’s in this part of town. And it’s an upcoming part of town because just across the street to building a whole foods. So he’s, you know, now is actually the right time to buy a house because interest rates are going up. And while you’re always waiting, here’s why I’m not worried about the housing market is going down. It’s because this this and this. And did you know the Fed just increased interest rates, it’s from this percent to this percent? Well, let me tell you what that means about how that affects inventory. Are you looking at buying and selling your house at the same time and you’re worried that if you sell your house you won’t you’ll be caught in between and not have a house to move into? Here’s five things you need to do to not get caught in that situation. This is what he’s doing and he’s got 78 It’s on his team. And they’re all making short little videos like this all selfie style videos, not professionally edited. And that’s driving them tons of leads. And they’re selling tons of houses because of this, oh, another one, go to YouTube and go look for living in Dallas. And these guys buy and sell houses in Dallas, they’re another real estate agent full disclosure, they’re also a client. And they’re talking about, hey, you know, Flower Mound is the number number six fastest growing community in the United States. And the reason why is because let’s let’s do a little tour of Flower Mound. So here’s the this part of Flower Mound, and here’s the park. And here’s where this new shopping mall is going. And, oh, you know, the Dallas Cowboys, their practice facility is up here in this particular town and check this out. And they’re literally just giving tours all around Dallas, what it’s like to live in Dallas, and they’re generating. I mean, they are they are getting millions of views and all that. But their goal is not to be YouTube famous. Their goal is and when people are looking to move from Los Angeles, because they’re tight, you know, they’re leaving California because they don’t like all the whatever, I’m not political, okay? These people are leaving California for various reasons. And they’re going to other places, because, you know, they don’t want to pay taxes and all that. And these guys, their videos show up. They’re just killing it. Now I audit their channel, and are they celebrities? And are they like good on video? I mean, I guess they’re okay. I don’t think they’re any better than you or me. These are just normal people. And there’s making content. They’re not super charismatic, or super attractive, or when they’re just making content, but they’re making content in the way that we’re talking about. That’s the difference. Okay, this is this don’t have to be beautiful. You don’t have to play the guitar. Okay.
Well, I appreciate you. This has been awesome, enlightening. I hope our audience got as much out of it as I did, because I just thought it was, it was great. I can’t wait to see you in person. And just keep keep keep it going. The energy and the excitement here is infectious. And the lessons learned are certainly valuable. And so thank you so much for your time.
Well, thank you. Thank you, Stephen. What I’d love to see you do is maybe right now record a couple of hooks to talk about why should an attorney spend their valuable time listening to the conversation we just had?
Tuning to our video, and here, Dennis you give you what’s next in video. Don’t love that first take. Keep going. Yeah, exactly. Not
even the words that you say. It’s like how you say it? Because if I was, if I was just looking at this, I’m thinking, all right, I have lots of things like I would love to get more sleep. I’d love to spend more time with my family. I’d love to go exercise. Why would I want to spend this amount of time with Seth and Dennis? You thought he is that really convinced me this is worth my time? Right? You thought ABX testing was cool. Imagine if you could test 15 videos at once tune in to find out.
These are the these are the you know, these are the pieces. Now the purposing your content, if you’re not doing it, you’re missing out.
Yeah. You want to see how the pros doing it? How the pros are doing it and how you’re not. Seth and I are going to save you a ton of headache by showing you exactly what to do. Got it? Well, yeah, see.
Thank you so much. We’ll be back on the SEO insider real soon.
Yeah, we’ll do one a personal C in two weeks. Absolutely.
Alright, so that was some great stuff from Dennis. And you know, the thing that’s interesting about it is that some of the stuff that we were talking about, you know, a couple of years ago with with firm flex, and with our social supersystem is find the stuff that people engage with, and then put small dollars behind it. You know, you don’t any people come to me, they’re like, Oh, you’re gonna have to invest 5000 $10,000 You could do some of this stuff relatively inexpensively, because you’re doing it on a micro level but getting massive engagement.
Now he’s just absolutely look, fundamentals are fundamentals, they work I just I liked the way he articulates it in a way I hope it was useful for you I know the audience to get a lot out of it.
Awesome. Now, what I’d like to do now is I actually got a phenomenal news from my from my team in that our one of our ER TC ERC credits are was filed September 28. And we’re expecting to get $50,000 back from from the IRS on an amended 940 return. And that’s just for one quarter of 2020. We have the other ones that are getting ready to go out. And I know you guys are doing the same thing. And so I think there’s opportunity here and if you didn’t catch it the first time we ran it. I want to rerun our interview with Rebecca Shepard, all about ERC and how much it could matter to lawyers and people who are even just starting out their firm with one or two people because there’s money that’s on the table that can make significant investments in a firm administrator and an operations person in your marketing or whatever and if you miss this opportunity Once it’s gone, it’s going to be gone forever, right?
No, absolutely. So it’s in there’s nuance to it. Again, it was supposed to be either or PPC or this PPP. And then your mind is, but very, very excited. I think that and there’s nuance. I would encourage you, I know you went through one of your your providers to sit down and get a consultation with somebody to see, is there more than what? What I saw what went into deciding where to draw the line? It was fascinating.
Awesome. All right, folks, hang tight. We’ll be right back with the interview with Rebecca Shepherd.
Welcome back. We’re thrilled to have Rebecca here. Rebecca. Last time, we sat down and spoke, we were all focused on PPP, people have a lot of time on their hands, right? We’re sitting home with a world’s coming to an end, what do we do and the government was was putting out their Olive Branch. We thought that two rounds of PPP. For those of us in the audience, Diana, that would have been enough, but yet there is more tell us what tell us about this tax, credit, play? And what do people need to know about it? We’ll have links in the in the forums here for people to be able to sort of get help but tell us what do people need to know about this?
Absolutely. So ERC or the employee retention credit was actually available in the Cares Act, which gave us PPP, but at the time, you couldn’t use the two programs together, and PPP was much more beneficial. You’re getting you know, one point is 15,000 on an employee that went up to 20. And the ERC for 2020 was only five grands and employee. And if you couldn’t use them together, it didn’t make sense to spend any time on it. So we all focus on PvP, and we’d a big but everyone was focusing on PvP, and then they started changing the guidance and changing the rules. And our boat got smaller and smaller as people were trying to like figure out the different things. And then in December of 20, December 27, Congress realized we were still in a pandemic, and that businesses are still hurting. And so the rules changed. And they said, Okay, you can use ERC, and PPP together, you just can’t use the same dollar twice. And we’re also going to expand the credit. So at first, they expanded it to an extra 14,000. And they added an extra 28,000. And they came back down to 21,000, through different series of legislation. But essentially, you can use it to up for up to $26,000 per employee if you’re eligible for all periods, which is amazing. And it really allowed us to focus on this program and get clients employee retention credit. Now, originally, people were just looking at your revenue, did your revenue go down, and CPAs are like, if your revenue didn’t go down, and you’re not eligible, you’re not going to be able to get this program. And that’s kind of when we were in this like big boat, and they weren’t really paying attention to the different rules that they were coming through. And it’s incorrect. So there’s two ways to qualify two ways to become an eligible employer. One is if you had significant gross revenue decline, for 2020, you need 50%, decline, quarter over quarter. And then for 2021, when they expanded the credit, they also made it easier to become an eligible employer and made the decline in revenue 20%. So if your revenue went down 20%, for quarter one of 2021, you’re actually going to be eligible for quarter one and automatically order two, which is just pretty awesome. It’s a small decline. Now this decline had nothing to do with COVID, you could have closed an office, a partner laughed, you, you know, who knows, I find that those three locations their business in January of 20, which made them eligible for all quarters because all of their revenue went down by by the requisite amount because of that location change. It’s not tied to a COVID program at all. Now, if you don’t qualify in gross revenue, and we tell you to do that, first, you qualify and gross revenue, you don’t need to do the second piece of analysis, you don’t qualify on gross revenue. So your revenue went up or didn’t go down by the amount you needed, you can still qualify based on a restriction or a partial restriction of operations. Now, the way the easiest way to think about that is think about your restaurant, you know, the government said your essential, your open, stay open, serve the people in your community. But you can’t actually open your dining room, you can’t actually have people come in and sit down and eat the way they did in 2019. So in essence, what the government did is restrict the way you’re you operate your business. So whether or not you did well and carry out or not. The government came in and said you can’t open your dining room, your dining room represented more than a nominal portion of your revenue or hours worked in 2019. You’re going to be eligible through that period of restriction. Now, the way this works for law firms is similar and that there are some law firms like tax lawyers, I can still do my job while I’m home. It’s an Not a big deal. It’s, uh, you know, working remotely is a comparable medium to using my office. But there are a lot of people who litigate and go into court and have jury trials and all these different things. And the government put in a limit on the ability to do that they put a restriction for most people, you could not have trials, you certainly couldn’t have jury trials during this period of time. And if that revenue represents more than a nominal portion of your revenue, or hours worked in 2019, you can be eligible for the employee retention credit. And this is huge, it really does change the game for lawyers, because a lot of lawyers, maybe their estate and trust practice did really well, but their litigation practice didn’t, or maybe the litigation practice actually did fine, because they have two years worth of stuff in the pipeline. And they’re actually getting paid on work that was done a year and a half ago, because of settlements or whatever. But they actually weren’t able to generate new revenue because they weren’t able to file the lawsuits and go into court. And so now the revenues doing worse in 2022, which isn’t the rule, right for the revenue reduction. And so these people are going to be eligible throughout the period of court restriction. And it’s something that CPAs are really missing the mark.
Right. And one of the things I found complicated, I almost look like a credit cards, Bill, you think you’re fine, and you show it to somebody, and they’re like, Oh, my God, they’re all these junk fees that have built up over time, meaning you don’t know what you don’t know. But for me, it’s the part that gets complicated. The reason why turn this order professionals was, you’re not eligible, as you said, for the PPP portion, right? Because those people that got money for that God bless. And at the far end, there’s a point where it tails off where you’re not eligible at the far end, because the courts are now reopened, and you no longer have those obstacles. But it’s figuring out what is that middle ground A and then how to maximize it, because there’s some stuff that’s really obvious courts closed, there’s other stuff that may be less so and again, you know, things that I know that you guys have frosted have worked on. But you know, if Jay gets his business through certain networking activities, and those are shut down because of government regulations, potentially there. So my point is, it’s there’s stuff that’s finite, that I know is pretty obvious, but there seems to be a lot of areas that is gray. And obviously no one wants to be in the place where the IRS is coming back and really coming after them. At the same time. It’s making sure that because you get one bite at this, and what is it a three year period that we’re dealing with to deal with it.
So far, the returns to it’s due by April 15 of 2024, the way Carrolltown
understood, but for me, every time you make a change, you’re going back and read and modify an old return. I don’t love that. So if you can minimize that, by getting it right up front, it means less look back, which to me is valuable, because every piece that reduces risk of doing something out on standard deviation. So I guess, you know, talk to me a little bit about some of the ways that you’ve seen. So as I said, some are pretty obvious courts are closed, can’t do your business. But I know that you guys have been successful in finding a whole bunch of different ways that people have been affected by COVID. That might not be immediately intuitive.
So like, some of our our clients are nonprofit organizations, and they might have a big gala. And maybe their big gala was set for like April of 20. And so they weren’t able to gather and get their revenue that way. Or, you know, a doctor’s office or a dentist’s office where they were required to have six foot social distancing and certain sanitation procedures. Well, that’s, you know, that’s fine. You’re like, Okay, well, that’s not a capacity restriction, you just have to wash things every, you know, 15 minutes or half an hour or whatever. But because of the way the practice operates, that actually limited the amount of patients they’re able to see per day, which represented more than a nominal portion of their income or their hours worked. So there are a lot of things that you want to look at and see whether or not that is something that that you’d be eligible. And I’ll say this one I like, there’s a lot of people doing this, right, like people are popping up overnight, China trying to maximize money and who knows, we’ll still be there in two years or not. But he or overclaiming a lot. People are counting things all the way through the restriction periods if you’re not eligible or not. There’s rules about aggregation, owner wages and all these different things. And they’re not backing that stuff out. They’re not backing out the PPP wages. And there’s going to be a time where in two years, there’s going to be an issue and whether or not this company is going to be there for you and whether they’re going to say like okay, this is how we calculated this for you. You might you might have a real challenge. So I would definitely, you’re going to say and you want to do the ERC and you’re going through like a payroll provider or an accountant. Make sure they’re giving you a work paper Are that showing exactly what the ERC wages are the PPP wages are the ffcra wages. I mean, there’s so many programs, making sure you’re not counting dollars twice. And then, you know, we provide a legal opinion letter that says like, we think you’re eligible through this period, we’re going to explain it and then put the orders with it. You want something of that scale, whether it’s like a full legal opinion letter or not, you need something that’s going to show why you are eligible if, you know if, if you’re using restrictions to get there,
well, okay, I appreciate it. It is mind blowing, because you want to be aggressive, right? It’s there. But at the same time, you want to know, and because the last thing you want to do is get a clawback years from now, where you’re just like, Oh, my God, I don’t have this cash was spent. So Rebecca awesome. We’ll let people know how to get in touch. But more importantly, once we get comments, Jay, from the audience, let’s have Rebecca back on to sort of get more finite with some, you know, people in blue states, I think, have many more opportunities, generally, meaning we saw so many restrictions, DC was so overly regulated about what we could and couldn’t do well into COVID. That I think that people, you know, looking for those different places, stuff that I saw outside of law for people that use trade shows, in order to do their business, that those things were shut down many things that many different restrictions that are there, that may not be intuitive, but at the same time, not going crazy and making sure that this is something within the standard deviation.
Yeah, absolutely. I’d be happy to.
Thanks so much, Rebecca.
thank you so much. Right back. Obviously set, you know, I think this is valuable content. That’s why we wanted to bring it back into the show, because I think it’s something that people need to hear about. And it’s all about getting the right advice at the right time. What are your takeaways?
No, it’s i It is an unbelievable, not very much talked about thing during PPP people were desperate, they were home now we’re sort of, you know, spinning and making money and things are, you know, rocking and rolling. So you don’t think about it as much. But if it’s sitting there and you’re eligible for it, silly not to have feel free to reach out if you have questions. I’m happy to sort of talk you through my perspective. You know, it’s it’s a, you know, it’s a continuum like everything else. And I think that the key is to make sure that you get what you’re entitled to, but not pushing it beyond the limit because the last thing you want is an audit.
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely want to stay that Okay, so last question I have for you set before we get our way another issue that came up in the in the group this week was what is the best way to find an attorney nowadays? Are you finding
this this should not be a throwing let’s make this the kickoff. I mean, there’s obviously depends there’s so much and it’s so hard and like your positions I’ve had out there for two three years and not find the right guy and then some guy randomly stumbles in so let’s let’s let’s give
our you view. Are you a firm believer in the always be recruiting?
Yes, I have a recruiter. I have deputy overseas deputies below them. My attitude is the moment you start using outside recruiters, which I didn’t I sort of held off for years now feel like it’s part of the mix. The moment you’re using them not to have your own recruiting to compete against the outside recruiters is just giving money to the recruiter again, one position who cares if you’re in growth.
So let’s take a step back and this is something I think we can do in like five minutes. Okay, this this is I’m a solo I need to hire somebody to support me. Do I? I Do I Do I
pay? It’s not five minutes. Jay it’s everything. It’s look our last hire from a lawyer last but one of the last hires was somebody I met I got out of bed early went to a breakfast at GW which was like a dating breakfast of networking. Like they forgot to to the students slept in they’ve read to tell people to come so they’re like six students. I meet one woman It was like a wasted day. She came for coffee Three years later, she ended up working for us. People are it is it is every which way it’s going to the Bar Association event where you’re at the booth. And you’re like, hey, here’s a referral cat refer? Do you need a job? Like I mean, again, it’s it’s basically a hardcore networking, as well as LinkedIn as well as indeed, as well as getting everything to your it is it is a constant. If you again, one person doesn’t feel that way, but getting the right person to partner with you. And this is why it’s a longer conversation. This is what we want to want to sort of kick off so we’ll start this other way to get people right. Do you get a law clerk during school? Do you get somebody right out of school? Do you hire somebody with a year of experience? It’s a baby version of what we taught or a different version what we talked about before, when was right immediately or laterals, but we’re struggling ourselves internally, because you go too early. There’s turnover. They don’t know what they want to do yet. You get right out of law school, they may have asked the good people may already be taken like my dating life, and then definitely waited a while and found somebody and then finally, you have the Do you have the lateral where maybe they’re bad habits and what’s there but at least they know they want to do what you want to do. Are they saying it to get the job?
Right? That’s a lot there. So you packed it all in you made it work. Alright, well
let’s let’s get serious. Let’s let’s let’s kick off with that next week and give it some air. Okay,
I love this. I love the idea that okay, that’s fantastic, folks, that’s gonna do it for us this week here on the law firm blueprint thank you for spending, spending your time with us. Of course, if you want to take this on the go, you can find this show and all of our past shows, anywhere podcasts are available by searching up the law firm blueprint and please remember to give us a five star review. Of course, we’re live here every week, Thursday 3pm, Eastern 12pm. Pacific. If there’s something that you want to hear in the show, please let us know in the show notes down below, make a comment. And we will make sure to address those topics, talking about choke points that came from the group talking about hiring that came from the group. Folks, we want to engage with you. So please engage with us. If you have any questions, please reach out to either Seth or myself via DM. We’re always available on all the major platforms. Seth, any parting words?
No excited for a great weekend. Can’t wait to get back at it next week.
Awesome, folks. We’ll see you next week. Bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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