Hello, hello, and welcome to this edition of the law firm blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Bruce Ruane. And I run the criminal mastermind, a law firm in Connecticut, a social media marketing agency, a family of four kids, and I’m exhausted all the time. So that’s me. I feel like I’m standing up in a 12-step meeting. Seth that my man over there, Seth Price. He’s a BluShark Digital SEO for lawyers Managing Partner Price Benowitz. He’s got three kids. He’s tired all the time. But he travels more than I do. So, he’s got an excuse for that. I was actually just making plans for my trip out to Las Vegas for a drug defense seminar that I haven’t been to in years. So, I’m not gonna…
You’re not going to be in Vegas for the dy ncdd thing coming up?
Yeah.
Oh, very cool. I think you’re gonna have somebody out there. Awesome.
Oh, man, we get it. I can email the guy here. Who’s next to each other?
Oh, go, do it. No, no, no, no, I’m just like they, you know, anyway, that you never get enough Jay Ruane. In my opinion. It’s been stalking this guy for 15 years; we finally got a podcast.
I’m not just trying to get you to learn to text me rather than call me because you call me all the time, and I never get to pick out.
Occupational hazard. Yeah, both of us have made a hell of a lot of money with the phone. It’s maybe annoying, but it works.
I agree. I agree. So, how’s your week on this week? What’s, what’s…
Tired like you, but we’ve been kidlets. So, we’re living our best lives, finished a backyard project. So now we have a really nice outdoor space to hang out with. So that’s, that’s nice. And I’m excited, I’m talking about getting on a plane, I’m gonna do a quick round trip to check out the tilma AI, mastermind Shindig, whatever we want to call it, when they’re basically doing two days, I’m gonna go for a day of it for like intensive AI training. And, you know, I’ve been sort of a lot of the shiny objects. I didn’t go all in on the metaverse and other things. I know this stuff makes you money, I don’t want to go crazy. Because at the end of the day, when your clients, we need to do their work, we need to turn it around. But we both know that with rising labor costs with rising everything costs, that if we can find a way to be more efficient, and deliver a high-quality product for less that in the end, that’s going to be really important. So, want to make sure that I you know, it’s easier the marketing company because all the Gen Zers buy into it. But you know, I have a, I taskforce of BluShark meets weekly, their Beta testing everything. And I look at the law firm, and there’s a Slack channel that has yet to meet in person, or, or even on Zoom. So, I’m like, you know what, lock them in a room for a few days. You don’t need you know; I don’t I love giving cat artists and money. So, I have no problem doing it. But it’s one of those things, why do we go to conferences, it’s get whatever you need to do to get out of the office? Because it can’t you know, with the distractions of the office, a big picture project is just so hard to push forward.
Yeah, you know, I’ve actually taken to, you know, the people who are followers of the show and of the podcast, have heard about my ups and downs over the last like three months as we lost some long-term lawyers here at the office and sort of restructured, and we’re coming out and like I predicted, we’re coming out of that, on the back end, we had a firm wide event last Friday, that would awesome. New lawyers that are joining us got to come even before they started, so they got indoctrinated into our culture early on, we’re already planning something for September. And things are really working, and I’ve got to control my schedule, I got one or two headaches, I still got to mess up. But you know, one of the things that I really enjoy is that, you know, I’ve been able to take some of the things that I build time to get them integrated, get a little more active in my business than I was six months ago. And I’m three months from, from being morose. And I’m thinking I’m gonna do something. So, one of the things I actually did, which I used to do when I was single, and I don’t do so much anymore, as I used to read a lot of business magazines, and try to you know, knock out a business book or something every week. And so, what I decided to do was, you know, there’s a there’s a hotel that’s got a Starbucks in it, you know, half a mile away from my office. And I’m just going to go there on Friday mornings, and I’m going to be able to do some reading, get a drink, relax in their in their lobby area, rather than coming to the office because the minute I come to the office, I’m getting pings How about this, how about that. But I’m going to set up a time and time every week to sort of focus on the things to grow and I’m kind of looking forward to that. And I look at my account and I got space in it now that I didn’t have a month ago or six weeks ago so I’m bad. I’m bad.
I’ll throw I don’t think you have it out where you are but in the city or Cities, there are these industrial cities, which is like the Wii works to point out, and post COVID It is so cheap, you have free breakfast, free lunch, free coffee, like it’s unbelievable what’s there, and I could easily see people getting a couple 100 Our membership, just to be able to get that a long time, you won’t know anybody there, you’d be socials you want. But it’s the idea. I got two topics for us today that I was gonna throw out. I’ll do it are sort of the first is your thoughts on parties’ slash events for the firm. We historically have had three big events beginning of summer, end of summer and a holiday party. And in the past, I’ve had sort of amazing roof decks in downtown DC and the location was special enough that we got people we lost access to that we went to some bars with their roof decks, it wasn’t the same. But this is what I’ve looked around. And those parties haven’t been as special as laid in the city. And when we did one of my blog partners houses because of I forget why it got a huge bump from referral sources that we invite. Whereas in the city, and I get you’re in the suburbs, but in the city, what I’m thinking is that as the demographics change, nobody that you want to do business with is in the city on a Friday, which means you have to bring people in to go to your event, rather than if you have a suburban location, the people you want. And so, I’m starting to think that I wish I could do it all under one roof. But having a happy hour at the beginning of the end of the summer, maybe not as glamorous for staff, and then hosting your own event. Staff can come, lawyers can come but doing something strategic, maybe a weeknight, so it’s not a ragger. But getting the bodies that you need to remind you of who you are, on a night using your suburban residents, for example, to get a different demographic that is going to go to a more of a bash, particularly as we get older.
Well, I think, you know, you and I’ve been at this game for a while. And so, you know, what worked for us 20 years ago, doesn’t work now. And I think if you are a younger lawyer, or you know, or you’re trying to do something like this, you got to sort of identify who your people are, right? So, my people generally speaking are 40- to 55-year-old people with kids. Getting them out is tough. Right now, I have lawyers that work for me that are 28-year-old, single, and they can put together their contacts, other young lawyers, and they can get them out on a Friday night for a happy hour. But the reality is price. Benowitz is an older firm than it was 20 years ago. And what I have found is that we needed to get away for the older people. For the old folks like me, we needed to even get away from Thursday night. Because by Thursday, people are exhausted, and they don’t even want. So, we’re finding that our best attended events are now on Tuesdays. For people that are older now we’re still doing the young people stuff. We actually started something that was a while ago. We stopped it a year ago, but it’s coming back. Our lawyers in one of our regional offices do a thing called Whiskey Fridays where they get a new bottle. And everybody tries out the new bottle and they invite their friends over. And everyone has one drink. It’s so it’s one bottle, right? It’s one bottle of whiskey. And however, you know, we got nice rocks, classic producer with their logo on it and stuff. And so there they said that come September, they want to bring back whiskey Fridays, and they just tell people about it. It’s a younger crew. And there’s 30.
Is it the middle-aged version of kick the keg?
Yeah, it is. That’s exactly what it is. So, you know, and one of the biggest headaches that I have, or the biggest pain points I have is I love the idea of doing firmwide events, but 50% of my firm lives in foreign countries. And it is not
You know, agreed. And that’s why it annoys me. The noise is too strong of a term but I’m tired of it. It felt like a Friday, but it’s not. And so, what is the idea of we do them on Fridays because we don’t want hungover people the next day at the office. But that Friday again, as you’re saying that the people that I want beyond the young people who can who are using it as a springboard to go out it’s too much of a dichotomy whereas I used to be able to get everybody happy at one event. And I really especially not the age is one thing right but setting set and secondly, the wet crazy weather patterns we would have but most importantly, I feel that the even the fact that we’re not in office and yeah, you’re We have people all over the country and all over the world, that that it’s those people are managing people that are not there, right. And so, they are not there. Fridays are designed very differently, then you work till the end of the day, and you were there ready to do something. Now I’ve worked from home, I’ve done my week. And I think not that people always didn’t cut out early on Fridays. But when they are, even if you are going to be like, oh, I’ll go have a drink and then come to this. They’re not even in the region anymore.
So, one of the things that we’re considering we haven’t put this into play, but this actually came up in one of our leadership meetings is having a whole day event. And here’s what we’re going to do, it’s actually going to be divided into three things. So, we’re going to have breakfast, and a speaker that we think will entice some of the older people that are our referral network. So, they’re going to come in and they’re going to be able to come from nine to noon, then we’ll have an afternoon event, probably a wellness thing for people who are on a Friday who are like I want to bust out but I want to leave at five o’clock. So, we’ll do something in the afternoon. And then we’re going to do a Friday happy hour for the younger crew. And it’s going to take a little more work. But I think if we can do it over the course of a day, we’ll do it at either a hotel or casino that’s nearby us. And it’s going to be worked for my people to put it together.
I get tired thing about to me; I would like I love each of them. But they’re each independent things, give them their own day, right. And you know, you’re not going to nobody’s hanging out till noon you do less is more, you got 830 to 1030 send them on their way you got your afternoon event. And if you don’t do it otherwise, gotta shut down the office, imagine what pain that does versus three to our events, who cares? You know, you’re creating, you’re creating meaning I love the vision, right? That’s…
The purpose of it is to have, we’re going to have to bring in support staff to help us for that event. To end we’re gonna want to do it right. So, we were thinking that maybe one day event in three segments would be the way to go. Maybe we just do individual segments. But my experience has been, if we do it in as three individual segments, we’ll get one, maybe two done. But if we plan for everybody who will be working that day, but they’re working that event, so like my younger lawyers will attend the breakfast to get introduced to some of the older referral sources so that they get face time with people that are going to be referring cases that are going to get pushed down the line, then, you know, like that’s kind of the thought.
I’ll give you ever again, this is going to come off a little bit harsh, and we’re not putting it out there forever. But there are some people you want at those events. And there’s some people, they don’t want to be there. And frankly, you don’t want them there. And so, the idea like we’re all in everybody’s there, like the idea that you’re sort of give like not only do you want to hand select, but I think you’re doing people a favor. Again, we’ve stuff we’ve talked about. And we can always talk about, again, because it’s it keeps coming up the anxiety levels of people where I’m like, What’s the big deal? I one of the reasons that I’m thinking I have to do separate events is that I got pushback from the plaintiff’s team. To me, I would bring clients to each event. I always say, God forbid, 30 clients, former clients wanted to come and hang out and have a drink, right? And they’re like, Oh, that’s too stressful for our staff. I’m just like, to me, that’s the ideal. Now, again, I’m a social person, you’re you know, you’re less so. But the I don’t mind. I’m an introvert. Right? But my guess is if you had former clients that were thrilled with you, that would be a fun thing to have around that you could put you could put up with that. And so, I was just torn because I have all these different, we talked about the two rights we have, we want to keep our staff happy, want to keep our referral sources happy. But we also have prior clients that I’d love to make it a raving fan and have VIP groups and do things. And just like you were saying, like I want to do all those different events, it makes you dizzy, because then you’re almost become an events person. You got to do clients and client events, you got to do an event for happy clients, you got to do an event for referral sources. You know, you got four kids, what do you mix that in with people?
Well, that’s why I was planning on doing it for one day. You know, get, you know, psych myself up to be like, I gotta get through this one day. And I can do different things. But those are those. Those are the types of things that we’re looking at because we want it we want to sort of push the relationships I’m reading right now. Unreasonable hospitality by Wilga. Dara will was the head of 11 Madison Park when it got its Michelin stars. And, you know, I It’s funny, I got it because I was watching the bear on Hulu. And my favorite episode season two, Episode Seven. We’ll have to get there. Richie. Richie goes to be stylish at a at a high end their version of 11 Madison Park, and he’s reading the book and I was like, What book is he reading? I’m gonna read it. And you know, it’s one of these things where I grabbed the book and I’m like, Man, I would love him to come speak to my, to my office and then I reach out and it’s $20,000 was from become speak. And I actually am saying maybe I need to invest $20,000 into that, you know, because I think he would be mind-blowing to my, to my team. But that’s a lot to commit to. But it would be huge. I mean, maybe if we do a crowd sourcing it and we bring him in, and he could speak to the blueprint or something like that, and we’ll, we’ll do a special event.
You gotta wait till you’re selling something and then we’ll get them in. Yeah. Or have another COVID where we got all the a plus guests. Exactly. Speaking of that, I’ll conclude with this one. So, I got a future guest. We used to bring on people on their way up. You know, we always talk about can’t really remember what those fundamental building blocks are. We get a lot of people we’ve had early on on hot seats. We’re just pure solos. Yep. So the guy. There’s a guy who’s on my calendar today. I know he is, but I was like, thrilled guy comes in as a BluShark client. He’s a local tax controversy lawyer, right? John Pontius. Great guy, right? He came into me like a deer in the headlights like a couple of years ago, wanted some help with digital. And he was like a solo. He had split off from another friend’s firm. And he was, you know, said, look, I want to do tax controversy. Help me with local search. And this guy to his credit went from two $300,000. Gross to, you know, right now trending over 1.2 for the year. I am crazy stuff. Got a couple, you know, a couple and why I think you’d be a great guest. We haven’t had guests in a while it’s time to try to get one back. One of the things that was so interesting is it reminds me of all the things that we talk about academically that he’s literally living through. He has an associate all the stuff he brought somebody in for 30,000. That’s all he could afford delta and tax prep time. He then said, okay, I know the guy is now an associate. He’s 60. Well, he’s now pretty good. He’s got to be nice, then he’s got to be in the hundreds, because and all the stuff that I talked about what percentages, he’s sort of doing on gut figuring out how do I keep this person so they don’t leave, he’s had people leave, he’s had people stay, but so proud of him to have a couple of associates to be breaking seven figures to be doing all these things, multi office strategy. And I’m just like, this guy’s neck is one of those numbers where you’re like, why? Why did I scale? Like, imagine if you could do that with limited headache. You know, and so my point is, you scale because it’s the only sustainable way to do it, I get it. But it’s just so cool to see a guy go from deer in the headlights, and I hope I’m not being too, too like confident and building and taking names and moving forward. So, let’s get him on the show.
I love the idea of that. I love the idea of that. I mean, the reality is, is that we all we all have our own journey, but we can learn from each other. And I think that’s one of the most important things is that you can identify the things that are working for other people and tweak them to work better for you. I mean, I can remember, you know, I go back and I listened to some of the earlier episodes that we did. And yeah, we did have a lot of a lot of guests. And I think we’ll probably have some guests. Actually, this is another good point to talk about with guests. You know, you and I are co-authors of the upcoming Tiger tactics two, which is now in the editing phase. And I reread my chapter sections. And with everything I went through, you know, for the last four months, I’m wondering, should I think I need to update this book already? And I can because it hasn’t been printed yet. But it’s close. But I’d love to get to
You’re bizarre so you can do whatever you want. It’s good fun. Okay, well…
I’m doing all the legwork, you know, for 13 authors, I’m the one who’s I’m calling all the plays and getting it done. But what I really think would be cool would be to bring in each of our co-authors. So, talk a little bit about their journey from, you know, being in the business to be on the business to being a CEO.
You know, yeah, I’m gonna go one better pedal to discuss these themes, grouping people to sort of figure out what are those different? You know, because the book very quickly, you know, you see commonalities that pop out. And like, I think that when there’s safety in numbers, it’s always pulled here one thing, but I think one of the powerful things about this book and the series that you’ve created, is that when you it’s one thing to hear one person pontificate on something, but when multiple people that have broken through are using similar techniques and similar stages, I think it gives some solace that we are not chasing a shiny object, but rather these other things, the fundamental built building blocks, which are so hard to get given in the industry of shiny object that we live in.
Well, you know, I’m the first one to talk about shiny, you know, shiny objects, because, you know, I’m a fast start person with no follow through, right. So, like, I have an idea, and I will, I won’t stick with it after a while and it’s one of the things that I think if you’re going to be building a law firm that’s going to sustain you for a while. There’s a couple of things that are important about One, it’s important for you to have a true vision and articulate that vision because so I was the first one to do it, you know, I had an idea of a vision, but I hadn’t actually said it out loud or committed to it. And that’s a problem. Because unless you commit to say it out loud, it’s never gonna happen. And then you have to look for the sources of information. You know, you sit in through, you know, the fireproof weekend, like, I’m not appealing PII Lord, I’m never going to be a PII lawyer, I couldn’t imagine getting into that space, because it’s that doesn’t fit my personality. It doesn’t fit how I like to be. And I’m thinking, there’s some great stuff that they have that I should implement into my criminal practice, you know, and I can tweak it to make it work. And so hopefully, people who are listening to this are saying, hey, I like that idea. I want to go with it. Today, I just have a session for my criminal mastermind. And we talked, you know, for two hours, about email newsletters and how we were able to save countless jobs in our office by pushing emails out during COVID. And generating income from our existing email list that we you know, if we didn’t have that we would have been screwed. So, it’s important to take what other people are doing and work like, I can see you, Mansky. He’s got a great email newsletter. And I know, like John Fisher has a paper-based newsletter that he loves, and it works for him. But you know, there’s, you gotta find what works for you and roll with it.
Absolutely. So, I am so excited. I think it’s time to be brought back some guests will get Pontius in one, let’s get the, let’s get the faculty or the authorship for Tiger tactics two and, you know, kick off. You know, I feel like the end of summer you know, it’s like New Year’s is one thing. But like, September to me post Labor Day is a bit of I’ll conclude with this. I remember way back when I was trying to get jobs, I was convinced that there was almost like, maybe out of a 2000-hour work year, that there was like 350 hours of work. When you went beginning it was you started the year, you got some people but then it was spring break and nobody was around. Within a few months. It was summer, you lost all of summer, then maybe it’s September, October, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the rest of the year, you’re done. So, you had like five months of work. And then there was always like you called in the morning old school people in the office at it out there yet they get in around 1030 1030. Lunch, they cut out about noon, they’re back lay back from lunch to 30. And by four they were gone. So, it was like out five months a year with like four hours a day of actual production when you were the guy trying to get a hold of somebody to get a job. So, I feel like if anything, I hope that we can gear people up, because the transition and again and you’re in the south kids are back in school doesn’t have that same ethos. But in the Northeast Mid Atlantic, we are dealing with the idea that the whole world changes, like the moment that weather changes, you know, and it’s no longer school that it’s like it just changes everybody’s mindset. And those are the grind months. Not that we have any grinders left in the Gen Z economy.
Well, that’s another topic for another day. I mean, it’s uh, you know, it’s funny, I saw a picture. I’ll take us a little long, just to make this point. So, I saw a picture of Jon Hamm, and he was holding a sign walking the picket line. Oh, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk about quickly. What do you think about trying to recruit out of work actors and writers to work on intake for you?
I, I again, you send me, I don’t see the vision but you see stuff I’m just thinking there why I want to do a job I don’t want a part time piece. I want somebody that’s there that staying it’s a catch. It’s a shiny object. I’m like, get people to at some point, the strike is over, they’re gone. And you don’t want people that are sort of like there for something else. Again, if it was magical, they could sign people or people could like…
Well, one of the things that always blew my mind when I went to LA was that the the cour help at a fast-food joint, like could speak and could be of greater service because they were working that job until they got their big break. Most of them didn’t get their big break. But I’m thinking, “Why can’t I tap into that cohort?” And they all know each other and, you know, like…
I think it is situational. I happen to have a woman who assists me in a rich social media even better over the years and she’s waiting for her big break and every once in a while she can’t do a project because she just got called for an audition or got a gig. hasn’t made it big but gets our commercials from time to time. Fine. It’s look I don’t want to SMERSH an entire world but it is a flaky ego driven, you know, and that to me, I need somebody to sit there and answer the phones. God bless, Jay, let me know how it goes, I don’t…
I’m not saying I’m gonna do it. I just there was an idea that I had an idea about how they’re all struggling and I got some friends who are writers.
I, like, coming up with something that makes sense. If you said, hey, I got a videographer out of work, who’s going to make these videos? Find the competitive advantage. Answering your phones? Don’t buy it.
Well, I gotta tell you, one of the greatest things that we’ve done recently, is we’ve put on every quarter, we have a media day, that is blocked out on the calendar for all the lawyers, and we get them in front of the camera in front of the video camera, and we just crush each one of them gets a media day a quarter. And it means that, you know, one Monday a quarter, they’ve got to commit to being in studio. And man, my video guy is just cranking content now it’s been really good. So if you’re solo, take one day, every quarter and make it your media day. Do pictures…
A step further. It doesn’t have to be a day, it could be a 2, 3, 4 hour block as long as it’s efficient and you have it set up in the gym.
See I’d say make it a whole day and counter as the day and you made.
I, look, I guess I just saying that like you know we’re talking to a lot of people where they’re wearing a lot of hats a day sounds insane. I would argue again, different mindset I’d rather see a monthly two-hour block that a quarterly six or eight-hour block meaning there’s you can only do so much now if your prep you have a team there prep you have it great, but I find there’s diminishing returns as that goes on myself. Now you’ve all had different talents. So, if you’re going through it, great. I’m far from it. Should I be pontificating on the success of the seven figure that out at all. But let’s get this wrapped up and get let’s plan to get the tiger tactic people on as soon as we can.
Absolutely. We’re gonna have a lot more guests coming for you, folks. As always, you can stay together with us every week by tuning in live 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific and the law firm, law firm blueprint Facebook group. That’s a mouthful, and you can take us on the go wherever you want to go by subscribing to the podcast. On your podcast player of choice. Be sure to give us five stars if you are downloading and be sure to subscribe. So, you get new episodes the minute they drop. That’s going to do it for me, Jay Ruane. He is Seth Price. Thank you so much for being with us here on the law firm blueprint, bye for now.
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