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The Chicago YouTube Accelerator is coming up and it's about actually getting it done. We've got our friends Jeff Hampton and Ryan Weber joining us to lead it because they're doing the thing. Ryan's biggest client, who happens to be his wife, is known as the real estate lawyer on YouTube and has over 95,000 subscribers. And Jeff's law firm, Channel Hampton Law, is sitting close to 600,000 subscribers. These aren't people guessing at YouTube. They're in it and they're laying out exactly what's working and, and how you can apply it to your firm. You'll dial in your niche, map out your content, script and film your first video, and build the backend so it actually turns into a system. We're in the last month before this event. If you want YouTube figured out this year, this is the place. Grab your ticket to the Chicago YouTube Accelerator at Maxflot events.com.
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This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix. Welcome back to Maximiller Live. I'm Tyson Mutrix and today I'm talking about building a community. And so over the weekend I went to a birthday party. One of my really good friends, he is. He owns a gym. It's a gym where I go to. It's a really interesting setup. So you don't go just and lift weights on your own or hit the treadmill on your own. None of that. It's. You go in with a trainer. So you can only go into the gym if you've got the personal trainer with you. Like there is no other option. Okay. They've got some group classes on weekends and during some of the evenings. But otherwise it's, it is you and your trainer. Okay, We're. It's a really interesting setup. It's. It's worked really, really well. He also. It's also interesting. It's very rare compared to most gyms. Is like they're all W2 employees too. All the trainers are W2 employees as opposed to like contractors. A lot of gyms use like independent contractors. And I only bring that up because I, I think that may be part of the recipe here with the community because the birthday party was one. It was his business partner, so he and a, A friend. So my, my buddy Scott and, and his friend Nathan, they started this gym together years ago and it's really successful. How. How. It's interesting how successful they've been and they. So it's. It's Nathan's. It's his birthday party and I'm, I'm there and I'm I'm kind of expecting something a little smaller, kind of quaint, you know, just a few people, not a, not a huge number of people. But I, I start seeing, you know, the, the trainers that, that work at the gym. I start to see actual clients that I see while I'm at the gym. And I'm thinking, like, oh, this is really interesting. And I was at my jiu jitsu tournament in December and there were clients there because one of the guys, one of the trainers was also competing. This is big guys, like six, five. And like, he's probably 250, big guy. And some of the clients were there to watch him compete, which is really interesting if you think about it, right? How to have. You paid for something, so you paid somebody and then you go and watch the person you're paying do something that they're, that they're interested in, like watch them do their hobby. Like, how often do you actually do. That's, that's not a common thing. That. And it wasn't just one person that went to watch. It was a few people and one, one of my trainers. I've got two different trainers while I'm there, which is nice. It's actually, I. If you have that option, I highly recommend it because you have different styles. So. But that's another topic for another day. I don't want to digress on that topic, but one of my trainers, Jay, he's got a. He's, he's getting into bodybuilding, so he's got his first competition, and not this Friday, but next Friday. And I guarantee there will be a lot of people in Kansas City to watch him for his, for his competition, both co workers, owners and, and clients. And I, I've actually considered going to Kansas City myself to go watch him. I don't think I'm going to. But I, I've at least considered it. It's. It's an interesting, It's a really interesting thing. And they've, they've really built this culture that is, it's so interesting. And I really got me thinking, like, okay, as law firm owners, how can we build this culture? We've, we've. I, I'd say we've built a really good culture in the association and a maximum lawyer that. But that different. I think that that is a little different. Not. I mean, I'm not saying different as, as you can't take some of the things from Maximilian, apply it to your firms, because you absolutely can. But I'm, I'm specifically talking about, like, our firms, like how can we build a community around our firms where you get the same sort of. Of experience where you've got these people that are wanting to come to your hobbies. Like, think about that. Like, that is a really interesting thing. And they do. They do some of these things. Excuse me. They do some of these things. Like where they give out, like, every quarter they give out a gift. Where. So every single quarter you get a gift and you. It's usually a shirt or like a. Actually, I have a shaker bottle that I'm holding up for those of you that are just listening. I got a shaker bottle for them. It's evolved personal training. Give a shout out to my butt. My buddy Scotty. But they do things like that. But otherwise it's not. There's nothing super special about what they do other than they just deliver. It's. It's one of those things where they really do deliver, that whenever there's appointment, people show up. And there are times where people get sick. Like, I've had a trainer get sick, but guess what? They have someone lined up to go. So it's. I. I've had one time. One time in. I, I think it's. I've been going four years now. One. One time in four years where they've. They've had to cancel and it was like they were. The person was sick and they didn't have a backup. But I've had. I've had someone sick a few times and they usually have someone there. They have all these contingencies sort of thought out. And I, Scott and I, when we first met, we. He. He was introduced to me by another buddy of mine, actually, Jim Hacking. And I have another buddy, another Jim in St. Louis. And so the other Jim introduced me to Scott and we really kind of started talking about business stuff. And it's. It's kind of cool, kicking things back and forth because there's a lot of things that I. That I'll think about. Hey, what do you think about this? Like, oh, we, you know, we've tried that. That's something we were. That's something we're already doing. And they really have thought about the business side of things very, very well from, like, the moment you walk into. And it's. It's. It feels very much like a concierge service almost, where they have, like, they have espresso there if you want espresso. They have. They have like the sauna and they've got the Penth chair, they've got the Normatec boots. If you've ever heard of these things. If you're into working out and all that, they have all these different things that it's because they do take this approach where they look at every aspect. Aspect of your life. Right. So I'll meet with Scott and body fat percentage is up or body fat percentage is down. How do you, like, what are you doing? That's different. And so we, we go through all those different things. Okay, what about diet? What about lifestyle? What are you doing at home? What about sleep? All these things. How are your relationships like? They do have a really interesting approach to things. They're looking at all aspects of it. And, and I don't know, I think there's parts of it, like little bitty elements about like, you know, the, the swag and all that. That is effective. I think it's somewhat effective. But it really has got me thinking a lot about, like, is it just execution? I mean, if you were just freaking badass at your job and you're solid at your job, is that enough to build that community? I don't think it is. Just a little teaser of my thoughts. I don't think it is. I think you've got to do more. You've got to do a. A good job of demonstrating the value and where that is part of what they do though, right? So it's not just that they are good at their job. They demonstrate value because we have this meeting where we go through and they do the way the, the weighing and the measuring and all that go through the body fat percentage. And I can see my results. How good of a job are you at your firm in showing them the value, the things that you have done for them? Personal injury? I think that is something, if I'm being brutally honest, that's something we have struggled a bit at in showing because we can talk a lot. We can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about all the things that we're doing. One of the, I think one of the obstacles that we have, we have to get over as an industry is there's a lot of distrust of lawyers. And so sometimes, you know, getting medical records can be a real big pain. And so one of the tricks that, that I use if we're having a client where it's like we're having issues getting records or there's something where, like, we're following up, we're not getting the, you know, a response from the insurance adjuster, from the other attorney. I'll just send them copies of the things that we're doing. Saying, listen, these are things we've done. I've even gotten the client on the phone. I said, I just want you to sit, put them. I want you to put the button on, hit the mute button. I don't want you to say a thing. And you're gonna listen to this conversation. And I've done that too, before, where. Because demonstrating value, and sometimes what we're doing, if you. If you're not actually delivering a work product to them, right, you don't have the deliverable. It can be hard to just to actually show them value without just having to tell them, right? If I'm making phone call, if I'm calling and calling and calling, just. Or not, usually not me. If one of our attorneys or one of our case managers is calling the other side because we're not getting a response, how do you show that to them? And sometimes you have to get a little creative. And so sometimes what we'll do is I'll say, draft an email to the other attorney or to the adjuster and document all of the things that you've done and everything you've done to try to get in touch with them and then send a copy of that to the client. Sometimes that's good enough, but sometimes you have to demonstrate that to them. And right now, I'm talking about a situation where it's got to the point where the client's getting a little upset because things are taking a while. But if you do that throughout the case, you don't have to wait for them to get upset. So I think a lot of it, a lot of it, this part where you're building the community and taking care of the client, a big part of it is just communicating to them what's going on with the file and doing a really good job of that as you're doing it, because I know that all of you, you're doing a lot of things on the back end that the client never sees. And so if they don't see it and if they don't hear about it, and sometimes hearing about is not even enough, but if they don't see it for sure, they're gonna just think that you're not doing anything. And so that is one aspect of building the community. There is a lot of other things too, but that is a big part of it, is if they don't trust you in the work that you're doing, it kind of just starts with. With that. It really does. You've got to deliver on your promise to them the moment that they sign that contract with you, they're. They're. They're agreeing to part of the promise, and that's usually them agreeing to pay you. Okay. The moment that they've done that, the moment they've signed that, you have a promise to them that you have to keep on your end. And I think maybe some. Some of you might think, oh, I'm doing. I'm doing a good job. I'm doing a great job. You probably are. You're probably doing. You're probably all fantastic attorneys, and you're amazing at what you do. But showing it to the clients, you have to show it to them. So you have to get that trust from them. You don't. This isn't like in the movies where, oh, you have my trust until you break it. No, you got to earn that trust. And if they've given you that trust by signing that contract, you have to maintain that trust, and you do that by demonstrating it. Okay. It's very good. Something else I thought about when it comes to the gym is just so they're not selling, like, access to gym equipment. And they're not just. They're not just selling a gym. They're not just selling a workout. A big part of, like, what they're selling is belonging, right? They do these events where they'll go and like, those go rocking. I, I'm a firm believer that rucking is terrible for your back. As someone that's done real ruck marches, I. I just refuse to do those. But I know that there's a lot of people that say that they're great and all that kind. So they do those things. That's not the point of this. But they'll do, like, other hikes and all that. They'll. They'll say, hey, you want to go do some hot yoga? And I'll do some things like that. So they're really. I mean, they're selling belonging, which is interesting and it's. But it's weird just because, like, I don't feel like they sold belonging. That's not. I guess I, I joined because I wanted to get healthier. But then also, like, Scott's a friend of mine, and I kind of want to support his business too, at the same time. So I guess in a way it is. I. I guess I want to support someone in my community. Right. And so there. I think there's a lot of people that are in our communities that want to do the same thing with our firms. They just got to know what we do. But you have. That means you have to be a part of the community, too. That's a big part of our. Our core. One of our core values. It's about being leaders in the communities that we serve. And so that's why, you know, we take part in things. Like there is a. I've been asked to be on several boards. I've chosen to not be on most of them. There is one that I'm actually going to be joining. I'm not officially, so I'm not going to say what it is yet, but I've got. I've got to be officially accepted. But that's one of the things where, you know, team for the community. We're. We've been, you know, in the past highly involved in, you know, Cub Scouts and then also coaching. I'm currently coaching. And so like, you know, help helping out with the school and all the kind of doing. Doing multiple things. We think it's a really, really important part of it. But you have to be out there. You can't just be a hermit in your house and not do these things. If I think part of building a community is also being part of the community, that's. That's a big part of it too. So I guess my point when it comes out, talking about this is like, a lot of times what we focus on too much is focusing on pricing or this is the services, These are the features, these are the outcomes. Those are. Those are the things. That's what we, what we focus on. But I think that the strongest firms, they really compete on identity. Right? Like, who do you identify with? I think that's a really important part of this. And in building a community, you attract the people that want to be around you and that are most like. Most like you is what you. What you attract. And to be. To be really honest, I've had. I have a really big problem sharing. I've done a better job over the last year or two sharing my personal life, my stories, as opposed to in the past where I really did struggle with that part of things. I didn't really like to talk about my personal life. I wanted sort of there to be a dividing line. I kind of put up these walls around it, and you have to. You have to kind of tear down those walls and be more willing to be. To share a little bit, because I think that's what people want to know and that's how they connect with you as well. That's. That's the way that they connect with you. Okay. So another thing I have preached in the past about Law firms that just, they, they do this, me, me, me, advertising, they advertise about their success. And I'm, I'm vehemently against that. It is everything they teach you when it comes to marketing is, remember, just as a reminder, I've got a degree in marketing. Everything they teach you, it's about what does the client need? Put the client's needs first. Now I'm talking about from a marketing standpoint, not from a business standpoint. So I'm not saying the whole customer's always right. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about from a marketing standpoint, what is, what's the client's needs? What, what do they want? Right? What, whenever. Think about yourself. If you go to buy something from your perspective, with the customer's perspective, what, what are you, like, what are you looking for? What kind of results are you looking for? And see, a lot of times you see law firms, like, they'll advertise, oh, I had this massive settlement things. And there's really no shared experience in that. We think about like the. Okay, so you, because I guess. Let me back up just a second. Make sure I'm very clear about this. We've, we've had our very successful cases. And we don't, we do not. The, the, the, the most we do is we put something in Missouri Lawyers Weekly. It's for other attorneys so that we can get referrals. That's what we do. Other than that, we don't put things like that on Facebook. We just don't, we, we don't put them on LinkedIn. So we have those successes. So I think some people say, well, you just don't have those results. Well, that's not true. That's not true at all. We just don't post about them by like a, like of other, a lot of other attorneys. But I want you to imagine for a second, you see. And how about this? When you see someone else post about a big verdict, let's just use verdicts for a second. Or a big settlement, what is your initial reaction? Be honest with yourself. What is your initial reaction? You don't like it. I get 99 of you don't like it. If you're the 1% that says, okay, that's great. And I, and I am the good for you. I absolutely, hey, that's great for you. But the average person, right, the average person that's not an attorney, okay, they see that there is no shared experience with that unless you're the rare person that's also had a settlement that you got with that was massive. Okay. That's extremely rare. Okay. But there's no shared experience, so there's no connection. So you have no connection between that client or that potential client, the person looking at the post and you. There's none. Okay. But what they do connect with is our, our stories that about, you know, how you help a client maybe get out a really tough situation. So you don't make it about the money. Right. You make it about, okay, what have they been able to do since being injured and how did you help them get the treatment that they needed? Because it was. There's a lot of people that have been hurt before. A lot of people that have been hurt before had to go through some sort of medical issue. And getting through that, talking about that part of the story, that creates a connection. The dollar part of it does not create the conn. So, so try to focus more on the stories part of it, not on the me, me, me was look what we did. Look what we did. This is amazing. We're awesome. That's not to say that you shouldn't have some sort of authority. You should definitely build authority. But a lot of times just being an attorney in your market is all the authority you need. You're already professional. All right. They're already, already looking at you a profession as a professional. So, for example, like doctors, I mean, a lot of people look at doctors like attorneys. Like, I don't, I get referrals from, from other doctors or other attorneys to a doctor. And it's not like I go and look up their credentials. I, I don't, I go and I use that doctor because I, I trust their, their opinion. They're experts in that field. That's what a lot of people view attorneys. So you already have some built in authority there. But that's, that's a, that's a part of this community thing, right? Is, is, is actually focusing on the stories of the, of, of people that people can relate to. That's a big part of it. All right. I'm, I'm starting to run short on time, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna push ahead on some of my, my notes here. I've got a lot of notes. I've been kind of going deeper on some of these than I thought I would. All right, so engineering community on purposes. Okay? So a big part of what I think they do at the gym, it's, they've, they've built this community as a system and it, without it being Obvious. I. There's some things where I'll kind of like kind of sit back. Oh, that's kind of clever. That's interesting because I think a lot of people think though that community has to be an organic thing. I don't think it does. I think you can manufacture a community. I'm not saying be fake. I think you should still be authentic and everything, but you can totally engineer the community. Okay. The gym I talked about, it's got its consistent touch points, right? It's got events, it's got shared challenges that it does. It's got these accountability systems built in. They've got their kind of own internal language when it comes to things. They've got their own processes when you go and when you go into the gym and. And how many of you though have those things in your firm? Okay, so you have these consistent touch points and where we like, we have things that we do when it comes to like the touch points. Like we have the, like the fact finding calls, the injury impact calls, deposition, like all these things, like have these consistent things within your firm when it comes to events. We put on events in the past. We've done like the, the, you know, giving away bikes for Christmas and all that kind of stuff. We've done lots of things like that. We've done challenges online that those are some things that we've done. So shared challeng accountability systems now, accountability systems, we don't really have that built in to our firm. I guess you could do that. You could gamify things for clients. That's a way you could do it. Where you need, you know, these, you know, list of 1, 2, 1 through 10 from the client whenever you're. It could be an estate plan, it could be a family law matter, could be a person, drink a. Whatever. You need these things. I need them to do these things where they're kind of graded on that. You could totally gamify that. We, in a way, we do gamify our deposition training because we do know their completion percentage and so do they. So it knows, it shows them what their percentage is when it comes to that. And then we have our, we definitely have our own internal language. So that's part of, you know, building that community as well. Excuse me. So you internal language is a big part of it. I did that presentation at Max Lawcon a few years ago about the Disney realities and that was a big part of Disney is like they have their own internal language, right? The way they communicate with each other, that's. That's A big part of it as well. All right. And then the, I guess the next part of it is once you've sort of built this community is then you, you're using these clients to then become like these advocates. Dan Kennedy, I believe he's the one that calls them raving fans. Like creating these raving fans. Because the thing is like, like when you get these people that they, they like you, they feel like they belong, they don't just stay like they will, they'll bring others in. And that's where like that growth, you get to see that growth compound. So remember that part of it too. It's like, because there's this, there's a difference between like a satisfied client and a connected client. Like I'm sure you, a lot of you like satisfy clients. But how can you turn them into like a connected client. Sending those birthday cards or sending them a handwritten note at the beginning of the case or at the end of the case or in the middle of the case. I'm sending those things. Someone dies, like sending them flowers, things like that. All those, all of those really, really matter. Those matter a lot to lots of people. So you should, should really try to think of unique ways of connecting with them. But that's all I have this week. Hopefully you got something from it. I know that I was kind of all over the place but this is one. It was just kind of interesting thing where I was observing this over the weekend and then I've been thinking about over the last few days. But remember to check out Maxlock Con go to maxlockcon.com get your tickets. Those will not be on sale for a whole lot longer so make sure you get those tickets. Maxon.com if you've not gotten yours yet, check out Becca's list. Becca's List co that where that's where you can rate and review legal vendors. And also if you're interested the association, go to Maximil.com and check us out there. See everybody, have a great day.
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Max.com is this October in Atlanta and early bird tickets are live right now. If you've ever wondered what we actually cover at this event, it's nearly everything that goes into the business of running a lot of firm because at this level it's about putting all the pieces together the right way. If you've got a vision for your firm that's bigger or just better, better systems, more organized, more profitable or more self sufficient, this is the room that helps you make those shifts and build momentum in the right direction. Go to maxlawcon.com and grab your ticket today.