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Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
412. Intake Hacks & The LinkedIn Machine: Simple Systems for Scale w/ Tim Semelroth
00:23:52
Turn one LinkedIn post into a referral machine and learn the zero-cost intake hack that commands instant respect from prospective clients.
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- [00:01]
Tim Semmelroth
Enough smart people started saying, hey, there's a real opportunity here on this platform. If you act intentionally, if you act strategically.
- [00:10]
Chris Dreyer
We all know content is king, but constantly feeding the beast is exhausting. What if you could take a single piece of content and squeeze every single drop of value out of it to dominate your market?
- [00:20]
Tim Semmelroth
So you're getting a print newsletter in your mailbox, you're getting two emails a month. And then if you're actually on the LinkedIn platform, you're hearing from me at least once a week.
- [00:31]
Chris Dreyer
When you run the largest personal injury firm in your state, you're showing an ability to both execute and iterate. Today's guest just posted the two best months of his entire career. And the crazy part is how he did it. He's using smart, practical systems that don't require a million dollar budget. These are actionable tactics you can take and deploy in your own firm today. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris dreier, founder and CEO of Rankings IO, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. Today I'm speaking with Tim Samleroth. He's a board certified trucking attorney and the driving force behind the largest personal injury firm in Iowa. He's helped build RSH Legal through a relentless omnichannel content machine and brilliant operational tweaks. We're talking about how to turn a single LinkedIn post into a massive referral network, a zero cost psychology hacks for your intake team, and why you need a strict AI policy right now. Let's get into it, you know, before we dive in and talk about what you're doing for Iowa and your clients. And let's talk about a recent win. What's something that comes to mind? Something happening you're excited about?
- [01:38]
Tim Semmelroth
Well, we just had our two best months of new client signups in January and February. And you know, that's a big deal for a firm that's been around for over 30 years.
- [01:54]
Chris Dreyer
So we gotta ask the follow up, right? Like, what do you think contributed it? Is it compounding you do a different channel? Like what contributed to the two best months?
- [02:03]
Tim Semmelroth
Well, it's multifactorial. I mean, if you look, it's attorney referrals and SEO. Those are the two channels that provided most of the growth. But as you know, what makes those channels work is not a flip that I switched, you know, last month. They are things that we've been doing for the past couple years.
- [02:26]
Chris Dreyer
Yeah. It's so interesting when we talk about marketing, I've had other guests, they talk about Broadcast television, like, hey, just commit to a year. Don't expect anything in return for your first year. You talk to other channels. It's like a lot of people are in and out, but, you know, certainly SEO, it starts to build over time.
- [02:43]
Tim Semmelroth
Yeah, well, I'm a big believer in the Warren Buffett investment strategy theory that, you know, only investors invest in things that you understand. And so luckily, I understand our strategy behind how we get more attorney referrals. I understand what we're trying to do online, and that's what we focus on. And I recognize that, you know, in both of those fronts, roam isn't building a day.
- [03:11]
Chris Dreyer
Love it. Love the conviction that mindset Roam wasn't built in the day, and neither is a top tier referral network. But Tim has engineered a system to speed up that process. Instead of throwing random content at the wall, he treats his LinkedIn profile like a testing ground. It's a masterclass in omnichannel marketing. He finds what resonates, then pushes those winning ideas through email and direct mail to his own referral market. Yo. So starting off, we get, we gotta tee it up with the attraction. Everybody listings like, you know, wants to know about the latest tactics and different tactics for attracting leads. And. And you have a different approach that this kind of cohesive from your omnichannel approach. You write these detailed posts on LinkedIn and then there's this analysis you do that turns them into other assets. So maybe you could break that down for the audience listening. It's a little, it's different. And I really love the, the strategy behind it.
- [04:02]
Tim Semmelroth
Sure. So first of all, it's funny to have somebody ask me about LinkedIn because four years ago I would have said, I think I have a LinkedIn account, but I never used it. It's someplace you go to get a job to hire somebo. You know, I haven't needed a job in 28 years, so why would I be on it? But what happened was enough smart people started saying, hey, there's a real opportunity here on this platform if you act intentionally, if you act strategically. And so I'm a slow learner. It took like three people telling me that before. I'm like, okay, there must be something into it. And so what I realized is LinkedIn can be a very valuable channel if you pick your audience carefully. So my audience is other lawyers. I want to be interesting, informative, entertaining to other lawyers. And so that is my North Star for whatever I post on LinkedIn. And my message is pretty simple. My name is Tim. I'M from Iowa, I'm a lawyer. And then the next step is I personally do truck accent cases, but I have the largest injury and disability firm in Iowa. And if you need anything in Iowa, hopefully I'm the one that you call. So because of that, when I write a post, what I decide to post on LinkedIn is with that message in mind. And then what I do is I track, okay, well, which, which posts are being read, which posts does the algorithm like? Are they pumping out to extra people? Which ones are getting comments, feedback? And then what we do is we take those posts and it's not just me. Now the great thing is I've recruited other lawyers in the firm and we take the best performing posts each month and two times a month we turn those into e newsletters that go out to every lawyer in the state of Iowa whose email address we have. Then we look at, okay, well, which, you know, because that's clicking the links and things like that. Then we look and see, okay, which ones are people actually clicking on and reading through the newsletter? And we turn that into a print newsletter that gets mailed out. Just a one page front and back newsletter that gets mailed out to every member of the Iowa State Bar Association. And we do that, you know, so you're getting a print newsletter in your mailbox, you're getting two emails a month. And then if you're actually on the LinkedIn platform, you know, you're hearing from me at least once a week.
- [06:39]
Chris Dreyer
You're also certified trucking attorney.
- [06:42]
Tim Semmelroth
Yes.
- [06:42]
Chris Dreyer
And so you have a lot of depth and expertise there. And I imagine that's just another their method of getting referrals. And I know there's the academy of trucking and how do you utilize that from attracting case perspective?
- [06:58]
Tim Semmelroth
About 10 years ago, I really decided to take an inventory of what I loved about practicing law. And what I realized was there are all these cool tools that I was learning about, you know, whether it was when I went to the trialers college and I learned about psychodrama and how useful that can be in trying a case. When I learned about how to effectively use focus groups, when I learned about, you know, the way that you could do really cool things with courtroom exhibits, you know, visual aids, that sort of thing. And, and then just a very simple thing of, you know, how much better prepared you are when you can drive to your client's house and sit at their kitchen table and really see, you know, where they live and what makes them tick. And I ask myself, when do I get to do Those things. And you really only have time to do those things when, when you have a big case. Right. And so I looked at, well, what type of cases, you know, in my career up until that point was able to use those tools most regularly. And it was in my trucking cases. So I just made a commitment at that point. Okay, I'm going all in. I'm going to go to the best cles. I'm going to associate with the best trucking lawyers in the country. I'm going to learn from them. I'm going to ultimately, you know, go to truck driving school, you know, and, you know, drive a semi. I'm going to get board certified. You just have to announce to the world this is what I'm going to do. These are the only cases I'm going to handle. And I know it's scary for people because they're like, oh, but you do this and you do this. It's like, guess what? Those cases still come. You know, it's like nobody, nobody has not called me on a case in Iowa because they know that I'm Iowa's truck accident lawyer. They'll still call me. It hasn't taken anything away from our practice, but it is added to it because when people do any sort of research online or they talk to anybody in the country who's in the truck accident world, hopefully they know who I am and they say, why don't you just call Tim?
- [09:15]
Chris Dreyer
Even up is a specialized proactive AI built for personal injury law firms. Personal injury is in their DNA. Visit evenuplaw.com to learn more. So you've got this incredible content engine driving referrals and you planted your flag as the go to authority. The phone is ringing. But if your intake process is clunky, all that marketing budget goes down the drain. Because Tim runs the biggest personal injury firm in the state, he had to get creative with intake. What he did next is as simple as it is brilliant. Talk to me. I kind of want to shift to intake. Because you have so many different practice areas. That complicates things. Yes, there's a lot more criteria. Does that necessitate an intake attorney? Does that necessitate having everything in house and no third party whatsoever? How do you build the biggest PI firm in Iowa and also do all these different practice areas and manage intake
- [10:18]
Tim Semmelroth
well in fits and starts? I wish I could tell you that we had figured it all out and everything was easy, but it's not. And so we have an intake team in house. We have outsourced our overflow and our nights and weekends. And I'll tell you, some things we're doing, other smart people have been doing a lot longer than us. So, like, we finally got to the point where we felt comfortable enough that we could tell our overflow. And nights and weekends, people, it's like, hey, if they meet this criteria, go ahead and send them the contract. Right? I mean, and that was tough for us because for years and years, you know, it's like, no, we're going to let our attorneys decide what cases to take. They're the ones that are going to be trying them. But what we realized is you have to, you can't have a attorney centric intake system once you get to be our size for multiple reasons. I mean, if attorneys, you know, they're going to have cases, they're going to have depositions, they're going to have trials, they may be like, just super busy one day. That is not the person that should be deciding whether you're taking a bread and butter car accident case. Right? Because you know, in their mind, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be up till midnight tonight getting ready for this doctor deposition tomorrow. They're not in the right head space to decide whether or not this is a good case. The only innovation that we've offered, I think that might be interesting to your listeners, is one thing we realized is when somebody calls in, whether it's fair or unfair, they don't think that the person who answers the phone has juice. Right. You know, and so particularly in the cases where you can't just sign up based upon, oh, you were, you know, red light, green light case. When you're talking about a medical malpractice case, a nursing home case, you know, a complicated piece of litigation, you gotta have a long discussion with them before you decide that's something you can invest in. And so one thing we realized is by changing the name of a certain part of our intake staff from to investigator. That way the person who answers the phone can say, oh, you have a case where you need to talk to one of our investigators. And so the caller feels like they're being elevated to a higher level. You know, they feel like they're being respected, you know, that, that they're talking to somebody with some juice. And so that way when they're talking to that person, they're not like, hey, I need, you know, I can't be bothered with you. I need to talk to a lawyer. You know, it's like they're much more satisfied when they're talking to somebody who isn't just the person who answered the phone.
- [12:57]
Chris Dreyer
If you do happen to turn them down, it's like they've went through the investigation process, not just, you know, top layer, like you actually gave them that time. That's fantastic. What a great piece of advice there. You guys are heavily involved in AI and you have some different opinions on this. You have a strict no free AI rule. So maybe you could talk to our audience about that and maybe talk to them about your use of Notebook LLM as well.
- [13:24]
Tim Semmelroth
Okay, so first of all, the no free AI rule is, you know, what I tell people when I speak about AI and I talk about it all over the country, is that I view use of AI, sort of like I view the sex talk with your teenager, which is you can't assume that if you don't talk about it, they won't do it. And so I urge every lawyer I talk to, you have to have a discussion about AI with the people who work for you. And you have to have a written AI policy, because even if you don't, they're still going to be doing it. Right. Like we, we are a business that uses words and uses documents, and if you aren't teaching your people how to use AI safely, they're going to be doing it on the side, and they may be doing something that will put your law license at risk. And so one of the things that you know when you have that AI talk with your staff, that the bright line rule that in our office and I urge other people to follow is no client information goes into a tool that we're not paying for because you can't control where that information goes. You can't control how it's going to be used. And so if you have the urge, you know, if you hear about a tool that you want to use that involves AI, you know, every employee knows they have to go to our office manager. And, you know, if the office manager thinks that this is a tool that they, you know, that they should be using, then, you know, the firm's going to pay for the subscription. And then obviously, you know, we have, you know, we use, you know, Supio right now as the product that we use for most of our casework, you know, which obviously, you know, we're paying for. So that's the no free AI rule.
- [15:16]
Chris Dreyer
I think that's smart. I think, I think the written policy and, and yeah, they're especially, I think, all these tools, ChatGPT, and they all have these connections and APIs and they can just get in your now, you can sync up your emails and they could get it right into your CRM. And it's like, it's the danger zone if you don't have that conversation.
- [15:39]
Tim Semmelroth
Yes. Honestly, I was telling people two years ago that I'm probably not going to have to do this part of the discussion anymore when I, you know, speak at CLE programs about AI, because I'm like, your malpractice care carrier is going to require it. And frankly, I am shocked that that is not a standard thing that you have to sign off on whenever you renew your malpractice insurance, that you have a written AI policy and that it has certain things in it.
- [16:08]
Chris Dreyer
Agreed. All right, so Notebook LLM.
- [16:11]
Tim Semmelroth
Okay. So one of the things I love most about being a lawyer, about being a business owner, is, you know, you learn something new every day. You know, there's always something to learn. It's like I never feel like, oh, you know, it's like I'm here to, you know, to, To. To, I guess, reveal my age. You know, it's like, you know, time to make the donuts. You know, it's like, I never feel that way. Right. And so Notebook lm, which, you know, as you know, is a product, you know, that Google has, that you can access when you have a paid Gemini account, is this amazing tool that can help you learn things. And one of the advantages is that you can create a closed universe of information. So, and I know you know this, and I'm just saying this for the audience, but it allows you to upload PDFs, it allows you to include particular websites, you can upload YouTube video links all into this closed universe which you can then chat against. Just like, you know, you can ask it questions like you would, you know, chat, chatgpt or whatever, but then they have this studio suite. And the reason I'm doing this is because there's one column where you can put in sources, you have one column where you can chat with it, and then they have this evolving column called its studio. And obviously, the sexy thing that got everybody's attention almost two years ago was that it can generate a podcast based solely on the information that you have uploaded. And it sounds like two people talking. It does not sound robotic at all. The first time I demonstrated it to a group of lawyers, they thought it was magic. I mean, it's just. It's that good. But then it has other things like it can do. It can auto generate quizzes, it can auto generate flashcards, it can auto Generate mind maps, you know, all this, all these different things you can do. And so what it is, is it's this amazing tool to help you learn. And so, you know, the story that I tell people is in August of last year, I testified as an expert witness in a case. I had to testify based upon a couple thousand pages worth of documents. And so when they hired me, you know, of course I reviewed those documents and I wrote my report. And then I was waiting to get deposed to kind of find out what they're going to come at me with. And I kept asking the lawyer who hired me, and they said, yeah, I'm not going to respond. So finally they gave me a response that said, yeah, we're not going to post him. We'll just see him at trial. And so then I had a vacation right before trial. I went to South Korea, in Vietnam with two of my kids, and we had a great time. And I had like a week where I got back and I was going to testify later that week. And so I just threw my report and the direct examination outline into NotebookLM and I had it generate potential cross examinations, which reminded me of documents I needed to look at again. And I just kept doing that and kept doing that. And then eventually what I did, because I'm an auditory learner, is I had it created podcast based upon that case file. And as I drove to the courthouse every day, I would listen to that podcast and it just, it brought everything in the file back to me. And it was just a great way to get prep to testify.
- [19:46]
Chris Dreyer
I got two things here on this for Fletch. Fantastic. I love that I was just an expert witness on a trial, and I'm like, oh, man, I should have done that. That would have saved me a ton of time. Tim, this. This has been absolutely amazing. Iowa's biggest personal injury law firm. You know, for our audience, listening has questions about how you're using AI, about maybe some of your marketing tactics or anything on the pod. What's the best way to get in touch with you?
- [20:12]
Tim Semmelroth
The best way is LinkedIn. I'm there every day, so just look me up on LinkedIn, send me a direct message. As long as you are not offering me an amazing business opportunity or a chance to redo my website, you know, I'm happy to respond. Otherwise, my firm's URL is fightingforfairness.com and my email is t semmelrothightingforfairness.com and I'm happy to talk about any of the things that we talked about today. As you can tell, I'm pretty excited about them.
- [20:41]
Chris Dreyer
Amazing. Tim, thanks for coming on the show.
- [20:43]
Tim Semmelroth
My pleasure.
- [20:47]
Chris Dreyer
Tim's approach is an absolute definition of working smarter, not harder. He tests his ideas on LinkedIn and and the winners get deployed across this entire marketing ecosystem. It's a masterclass in efficiency and that one simple tweak, changing intake into investigator, is a pure psychological hack that costs absolutely nothing to implement but completely changes the tone of the conversation. If you want to stop guessing, start executing and squeeze every drop of value out of your marketing. You need an elite performance marketing agency that delivers proof over promises. Head on over to Rankings IO to see how we help personal injury firms sign more cases. I'm Chris Dreyer, and we'll catch you next week on Personal Injury Mastermind.