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- [00:02]
A
Hey, it's Sam Alai here, founder of my legal academy, where we help lawyers scale and automate their law firms so they could send up more clients and reclaim their precious time. If you're looking to grow your practice while working less, click the link in the show notes to book a free call to discover a radically different way to grow your law firm. Enjoy the episode. We are live. Charlie, great to have you here. We have an action packed and value packed episode today. Law Firm Marketing Secrets. Charlie, if that's not a clickbaity title, I don't know what is.
- [00:34]
B
Hey, look, people should look at that right away and like throughout this play the metagame, see what Sam's doing here in terms of trying to get attention. It's always worth looking at what a good marketer does and why they might be doing it. Now, be careful about trying to like, duplicate too much because we don't want to give it away too much. Sam. But sometimes we're like, what's the minimum viable maximum outcome option here? That works for us, knowing our audience. So be careful. Too much about the copy and paste stuff. We actually talked about that when you were on my podcast. I know it's something that you would echo. Sam is careful about copy and paste, but, like, learn from the overarching principles of what we're doing.
- [01:11]
A
Exactly. And what we like doing, both of us, Charlie, is we like being transparent and raw. So let's be as raw as possible. And I have some very polarizing questions for us today when it comes to marketing.
- [01:20]
B
Sweet.
- [01:21]
A
And we're going to pray to principle it. We're going to tackle the top one number one answers for these top questions. You know, if there's only one thing, one answer that you have to give for that, what would it be? And I think it'll be a really good conversation. If you're tuning in, please give us a like if. As soon as you get value from us and share away, I think it's going to be probably our. One of our best episodes yet. All right.
- [01:44]
B
Not like you're putting the pressure on or anything.
- [01:46]
A
Not at all. Charlie, for those very few people who don't know you, what is your number one expertise?
- [01:54]
B
Law firm growth. And actually, you know what, let me redefine it. Law firm growth patterns. I will say that that is my number one expertise. I've become a student.
- [02:02]
A
Yeah.
- [02:02]
B
Of the patterns of law firm growth. And it's interesting. I was just writing about this for members of my program about monitoring numbers like revenue per employee. So it's like taking some of these growth metrics that you can observe over time. If you've worked with enough law firms like Sam, I know you've worked with tons of law firms and you've developed your own patterns within your multiple businesses of seeing like, okay, if I'm dialing in this percentage at this level, I'm probably within the range that allows me to achieve X level of growth over this next year. And so over the years, looking at the patterns of, say, dialing in percentages and marketing strategies for firms under half a million dollars, then once you hit half a million dollars, what usually changes in your resources? And then like, there's a range between 600 and $800,000 that I call the. I don't. I'm not going to swear on this show, but it's called the S H I T T Y Valley. And at that range between 600 to 800, for example, every firm owner is going to feel a squeeze on profit growth at that point. But once you then get from 800 to a million, you're going to see that profit release for you. So those types of patterns are what I would consider myself, that would be the highest level expertise that I provide.
- [03:14]
A
So that must mean you must have a high iq from what I understand from IQ tests. IQ tests are just finding patterns. Did you ever take an IQ test, Charlie?
- [03:23]
B
I have taken. Why are you making me admit this, Sam? I have taken a couple of online IQ tests, and I'll tell you the actual reason why is that my brother, sister and I are extremely competitive, like extremely competitive with each other. And so we did IQ tests to see who had the highest IQ test score. And so, yes, I have taken a few of them. The results make me happy. But I'm sure that an online IQ test is designed to give me results that make me happy.
- [03:53]
A
If you would like to level up and take the more comprehensive IQ IQ test, then you have to just have to pay 1. 99.
- [04:01]
B
Yeah. Honestly, I thought about. Have you ever taken an IQ test?
- [04:04]
A
When I was in fourth grade, I believe.
- [04:06]
B
Wow.
- [04:07]
A
And the cool story behind this was I was. When I came from Iran, when I was nine years old, I got placed in third grade and I didn't know how to speak English at all. And I was dropped in a class that had nobody that spoke Farsi. So I was literally just dropped in a bucket of English speakers and I didn't know how to speak to anybody. And then I was good in math because apparently in Iran they're two years ahead when it comes to math education. I was learning fractions in kindergarten, as weird as that sounds. And then the teacher noticed after a year that was kind of a little bit advanced. So he. I went from ESL program and then randomly I got pulled out and there was like three people that got chosen to take an exam. They didn't give out any instructions. I remember they just like handed me the booklet and I'm like, what is this? And the kid started filling it out. I'm like, okay, I guess I don't have no idea what this is. We filled it out and that was an IQ test. And then later on, my parents got a call that day and I got straight from esl straight to honors.
- [05:06]
B
There you go.
- [05:09]
A
So, yeah, that was a cool little story. Charlie, what's currently the number one best way to generate clients for law firms?
- [05:16]
B
For law firms? Ooh. Oh, you've asked such a difficult question for a one answer piece. Look, I do always default back to referral marketing because it's so reliable, at least. And look, I will offer the tiniest qualification. I tend to work primarily with personal injury, criminal defense, family law, and estate planning firms. Right? So these are a lot of B2C localized firms and they all have very strong referral opportunities cooked into them. So literally at any level that you're at, you can scale up, add on, and improve your referral marketing. Which is why I put it at my default number one. It's also one that you do have way more control over than people perceive. Because it's not just a do good work in the cases will come, right? That's part you need to do good work. Otherwise eventually people will either not refer to you or stop referring to you. Right? You do need quality work done for sure. But there's a lot more that people can do. From sending a text messages to writing the handwritten note, to grabbing a copy of a book and writing a note to someone on the inside of it and dropping it in the mail to build relationships all the way up to email marketing, everything that's done on social media. So I default to referral marketing because of that. Now I'm curious. Sam, you're a guy who, you have very high level digital marketing that you do. So I would ask the same of you. What do you see as the number one channel?
- [06:42]
A
For me, it really stands out as ads, social media ads. With number one being at this point Meta, number two being TikTok and number three being YouTube. As concrete as that, those are found to be the most lucrative, the most blue ocean opportunities Trackable, scalable, all the good perks versus anything else. For referral systems, I think the system matters, right, because everybody will like referrals, but it's all about being proactively building that referral system. So, Charlie, what's the first step to building a referral system?
- [07:18]
B
Having a list that is well curated and that you are constantly adding to. Before you can start the outbound communications, you, you need that golden list for yourself. That's usually the hardest resource for people to get started with, right? We can ascribe the email marketing, we can do the print newsletters, we can do all of that. But if you aren't starting right now, and I don't care if it's a spreadsheet that you go through, and every day you go, can I contact 3 more people on this spreadsheet with a personal note, that's fine. But if you just don't have that list, we can never get started with it. And from there it's all amplification. So that for me, number one tool that is just simply missed in referral marketing.
- [08:00]
A
So step one, hit list. What's step two?
- [08:03]
B
Yep, step two, get that list into a system that allows you to do outbound communication. I like to do a weekly email. That's my default starting position on email communications for a law firm. I think most law firms do the, when I feel like it, email communication and they're missing a ton of opportunity right there. Consistency and frequency breed affinity. And I know all the law firm owners. You want affinity, right? You want to be the person that people think of, but you can't shy away from owning that role. It's the hardest thing. It was interesting, Sam, Recently I was talking with a bunch of people who are in the law firm support and success space. And of course you're a crossover law firm owner and in the law firm support and success space. And it was someone who works with law firm owners. I'm going to avoid identifying information because I don't want to, you know, put them on notice. But essentially what this individual was saying was they were afraid of, like putting themselves out there, which is so fascinating to me to hear someone who provides such a high quality service that I would gladly recommend saying, I'm just afraid of getting like, I'm afraid of putting myself out on social media. I'm afraid of sending the email. And Sam, I don't know, like, for people like you and me, I don't know what it is that either went right or went wrong for us in our heads where we Go. I'm going to be part of the conversation. Not just part of the conversation. I'm going to try and make the conversation at times like when I think of you. It's not just what you do with my legal academy, it's not just what you do with your law firms. It's not say, click funnels, It's I think about what you talk about with cryptocurrency, for example, about some of your success quotes about like literally because you do it so frequently. I can imagine some of the like drone style footage videos that you put out there that have text over them with like a motivational phrase or verse on it. I know you have become associated with some of those concepts. So like for you, you're. You are clearly willing to put yourself out there. What was it for you that clicked in terms of I'm going to be fearless about this, I'm going to get myself out there?
- [10:10]
A
I think everybody has gifts and specialized knowledge and information and hobbies and interests and everybody's born different, but everybody has something and you gotta be willing to share that with the world. If you don't, one is you're missing out on making other people's lives better. And two, actually when you go through the motions and you start sharing it with the world, you enjoy it. You enjoy the process. Also you level up in your, when it comes to those fields and also becomes. Acts as a daily affirmation and daily thing that stays top of minds for you. For me, you know, the first example you brought up the person who didn't want to put the psalms out there. That for me is just a symptom of, I think, introversion, you know, being introverted. I'm introverted, naturally introverted. Charlie, you seem like, really okay, come back.
- [11:01]
B
I'm actually deeply introverted.
- [11:03]
A
Yes, but you gotta get out of your, you know, get out of your skin and put yourself out there. And over time, as you build a habit, actually you enjoy the process. So Charlie, every single one of those posts, I do those because I enjoy it. And then I know when I step out to the real world and I go out and people see me, my own friends, my own colleagues in Los Angeles, I cannot express the amount of compliments and positivity that I get back. Sam, I love your stuff. Keep at it. I love the way you think. Yeah, I keep at it and it feels good. So you gotta enjoy the process and you have to get out of what's comfortable for you in order to grow.
- [11:41]
B
It's funny, I was doing a Consulting day for someone who came into my area just outside D.C. and we were talking about LinkedIn strategy for him, like needing to layer that in being involved on there. And he's talking about, oh, you know, there's. I don't really know what to put up there. He's getting really in his head about it. And I point out to him that earlier on in the day he had referred to a post that I had made about my experience running a marathon and it had created like connective tissue. It created essentially a heuristic that allowed us to accelerate the work that we were doing together. I said if I don't put that out there, that moment doesn't happen and we don't speed up this process by having this common language right here. That's what you're doing. You're allowing the opportunity for people to feel invested in you, get to know you and boy, oh boy. And I'm sure you've experienced this like you go to conferences or even local things like you just talked about. It gives the opportunity for depth of discussion early on rather than just surface level conversations. And that's what I really love about putting myself out there because for me that's the real introversion thing. I don't want to talk about the weather, I want to talk about in depth serious discussions. Minute one, right away that for me the introversion makes me anxious about the surface discussions, the in depth discussions. I get excited about that. Like that's why I'm looking. I look forward to doing this type of discussion right here that you and I are having, Sam, is prioritization of depth rather than just the surface level.
- [13:10]
A
Totally great points. There's a couple of tangents that could probably take off that but. Oh yeah, but I want to bring it back to the referral system because I think it's very valuable and I know you're an expert in this. What's first of all, how often did you mention is that once a week email newsletters that should be sent out to your referrals and if so, what should the emails say?
- [13:27]
B
So we have a couple of types of emails that we can send. One type of email is the personality based email. The other is what I would consider a curation or a magazine style email. The personality driven email is exactly like it describes. Think of it very correlated with what you might post on social media. It's designed to create a lot of connective tissue. It really identify with the personal brand. If you are a strong writer who has strong opinions and is willing to share and give of yourself. Personality driven emails are great overall when you're writing.
- [14:02]
A
What does that mean when you say personality driven?
- [14:04]
B
Personality driven is like, this is from Sam. It's specifically from Sam's point of view. This is Sam's idea that he is sharing with you. These are his original thoughts. Uh, it goes into say, the hobbies. It maybe you would. I mean, email programs sometimes flag it too often, but it might be the cryptocurrency stuff. And you're trying to figure out always, how am I looping in some of these personal items back into what my practice does. Uh, so like Kevin Deeb down in Florida, his estate planning and real estate firm. Kevin does a fantastic job of these personality driven emails. And they read. And this is good, they read like a poem rather than prose. And it just flows. And he's talking about, you know, Cuban coffee or he's talking about this interesting experience on vacation and he loops it back into an estate planning principle that is amazing that he can do. Now if you have trouble with that, and I would argue it is the more difficult version, we go with magazine or curation. So this might be. And actually if my own email marketing for law firm alchemy, I kind of combine these two strategies. So most of my emails are personality. But every week on Sunday, I send an email that is the three weekend ideas email. And it's partially a piece of curation or magazine style email. First off, it has multiple points to it. Personality driven email. We're doing one thing with this thing, right? Just one, the curation or magazine email. We might share a couple of stories. For example, we might share a national story of general interest with some light editorializing. But mostly we're kind of just reporting on the information. This is a superpower that most people don't realize they have accessible to them, which is the power of curation rather than always creating. I mean, how many times do people feel happy about being associated with Sam because you recommended a book, right? And they now associate Sam with that, with recommending buy back your time or, you know, unreasonable hospitality. You know, those are two that are always on my mind these days. That's curation right there. I didn't have to create original ideas to associate myself with a positive relationship with that other person. I curated that information. If you're a local firm, you might curate a local event that is happening. You might curate a recommended charity that is operating in the region. You might, you might even curate just sharing a movie or a TV show that you're enjoying. And that Magazine style email. We try and just have three, maybe even just two simple parts that we repeat. Let's do one national story, let's share one resource directly out of our firm, and then let's do one pop culture reference. And voila, we have our magazine style email. Send it out once a week.
- [16:51]
A
Amazing. So that's. And what's step number three? Because you're sending out those weekly emails.
- [16:58]
B
Yeah. What was that?
- [16:59]
A
What's step number three?
- [17:00]
B
Oh, step number three. We're sending out weekly emails. I love print. I love the mail, Sam. I like putting things in the mail. And I'll say this. I know print newsletters are not exactly in vogue today, but we all understand getting something in the mail still counts. The worry that a lot of folks have is this is going to cost me money. And let's say, I mean, you have, say, significantly sized firms, you have a lot of clients that you have worked with. If I were to tell you, launch a print newsletter tomorrow and actually I'm curious, do you use a print newsletter?
- [17:33]
A
We don't use a print newsletter. But just a couple of months ago we started getting into mailers.
- [17:37]
B
There we go. So is it like, I'm curious. I promise we'll loop back in and I'll close that loop. But what do you do for mail.
- [17:44]
A
Mailers directly to direct prospects who are that need our services? And yeah, it does pretty, pretty well. And it's trackable and high intent and pretty good results coming in.
- [18:01]
B
I love hearing that most people just completely ignore it. Dan Kennedy coined the idea of the shock and awe package. And it absolutely works. Putting things in the mail absolutely works. For these law firms, it's putting in a mailed monthly something. And the reason I'd like to use the word something, even though I've mostly used the word newsletter, is I want everyone to get out of their heads about what it needs to look like, what it needs to feel like. Let's just strip it down to its bare bones. Can I put something in the mail every single month, especially to my current and prospective referral sources? Okay. That's really my focal point. So if we're talking about concern of cost, going to tell me I have to send out 2,000 newsletters every single month, that might put me back 2,500 to $3,000, to say nothing of design costs on it? Yeah. That might be a bridge too far for a lot of folks. But can I get you to put together a list of 250? And some of my clients have gone as high as 600 other lawyers, professionals and community leaders, especially focusing on other lawyers and related professionals and put something in the mail for them every month. It could be a postcard, it can be a simple letter, it can be a self folding newsletter. I just want you to touch them in the mail every month. Because if we do mailed monthly newsletter, we do a weekly email, we're up to 64 touch points with past clients and referral sources over the course of a year and none of your competitors are doing that. And if you layer on, oh, also I'm publishing on my YouTube channel, I'm taking some of my long form videos, moving them into short form and I'm doing YouTube shorts. I'm doing work on TikTok as well. I'm publishing via X, via Instagram, via Facebook, LinkedIn. Now you generate omnipresence. And omnipresence is another powerful, powerful factor. As long as it's done with a level of intention like Sam, doesn't it kind of drive you crazy when you see people getting started with this and they're copying and pasting? The same thing that they would put on Facebook is like the same thing that's on LinkedIn is the same thing that's on X. And you just go. If you shifted 30% of what you're trying to say, it would work for the algorithm. Instead you're getting one like across seven different platforms. And you'd be better off figuring out how to get 7 likes on one platform and then moving on to the next ad gone it. I see head nodding. So take that idea farther for me, Sam.
- [20:27]
A
Going all in into one platform versus diversifying across multiple platforms. I've been calling this out ever since like five, six years ago. Stop trying to do a little bit of, you know, a lot of things just go all in into one platform and just get good at one. Right? Because it requires there's nuances. Social media is very nuanced and there is a game to the madness. There are little things that you could learn and you get better and better. If you don't believe us, look at people that are like, with big audiences, you know, they don't get there magically or you know, it wasn't by luck. No, there's actually science to this. Charlie, let's switch over to another polarizing question. What's currently the biggest scam in law firm marketing?
- [21:07]
B
Ooh, biggest scam in law firm marketing.
- [21:11]
A
Or something that maybe a little bit less aggressive but very low ROI and.
- [21:16]
B
Very likely for the roi, something that's very low roi.
- [21:20]
A
Yeah. That people. It's a little bit easier question.
- [21:23]
B
Yeah. So I think what I think one of the things that frustrates me that I've seen a lot of is in the last six or seven years, most of the websites that I look at for law firms are pretty good, minus some design tweaks. But oh, anytime that a. Oh, this. Actually, you know what, this became very easy as I started talking myself into this. Sam, the biggest issue that I take with anything is hefty gatekeeping of digital assets. That is one of the worst thing the. You know what? We're going to set up your Google Analytics profile and then we're going to own your Google Analytics profile. Lawyers, do not let that happen. Law firm owner, do not let that happen. You own your Google Analytics account, you own your website. Look at those contracts. Because if that contract has their ability to essentially pull the rug out from underneath you, that's not a space you want to be involved with. Because there are good, reputable players in this space who will gladly make you high quality websites, high quality digital assets that they're more than happy for those to be yours rather than theirs. That Sam who Boy, oh boy. Even simple things like being able to go in and add content to your own website, being able to update a headline. How many websites. Oh boy, how many websites have I reviewed recently that the title tags like SEO not even acceptable for it to be 101. Like that's the remedial mathematics course that you take when you go to college and you bombed out on math in high school and they're like, technically we're going to graduate you, but you got to take like a Level 0 class in college on math. That's what title tags are, SEO wise. And yet I still see law firm websites that cost multiple four or even five figures that don't have correct title tags drives me up a wall. The digital marketing website development space, because there are good reputable players, but there's a lot of folks I know I'm not allowed to have a secondary complaint, which is why I'm going to go really, really fast and drop this in here right now, which is people who almost electively choose to not try and understand how law firms actually work as business models. That also really bothers me.
- [23:38]
A
That's a whole episode. Yeah. What's the.
- [23:44]
B
What about you though? Like, yeah, I feel like you have to have something in mind for sure.
- [23:47]
A
And it's a very controversial, but I might be one of the very few people to kind of call it out. And I also share it because I'm on this side, I'm on interesting side. I'm as a law firm, owner of five law firms, active law firm owner, pretty active, as active as it gets. And at the same time being on the other side of advising, consulting, helping, whatever you want to verb, you want to put in front of it to hear the feedback of what they're, what law firm owners are doing, what's working, what's not, and over time picking up on some patterns. Over the years I've seen that SEO is a big trap, you know. Yes. Could there be one out of ten SEO company that's stellar? Yes. But nine out of ten, they're eating your money. And instead if you just take that money, put it into a higher roi, more direct roi, things like ads like Facebook ads, Google Ads, you know, TikTok ads, YouTube ads, that usually the ROI is significantly more and also gives you an opportunity to scale up from the ROI and not just get a flat rate ROI and then also rate what should I, you know, should I spend time and money on SEO or should I just go try to get 10 more reviews per month? And I know If I just push 5A system and I push my team to go get 10 more Google reviews, that's a lot higher value than spending $3,000, $5,000 a month in SEO. Literally. If you're not, I'll prove it. You know, let's both build a, you know, law firm website. You go do SEO, I'll just go crank out, crank out as many Google reviews as possible. And let's see in a year which one it gets more clients.
- [25:24]
B
So it's interesting in our Catalyst program, month one, we focus on getting more referrals. Month two, it's local SEO with the biggest thing being going to get more reviews. I mean, I'm with you on that. There is a point in time where you can see some of these very high level SEO vendors. When you can afford that super high level and you're not heavily reliant on that SEO. That's always the thing that makes me nervous is over reliance on SEO as opposed to it being one of your many channels, then it can be worthwhile. I was just reviewing for a client a $68,000 a year SEO contract. And what I, what we got to is we don't know how success is even being measured. This will be the third year that he has paid for it before. He's already paid for it. Right. So that's fine. That's a resource that money has now been spent. If it's going to be spent though, let's hold him accountable. And so he's going to be going to this SEO vendor and saying, great. How are we measuring success on this? Obviously it's qualified leads. Cool. What are we doing on like, what other things are we measuring and what's the process for getting to success in those measurables that this money is being spent on?
- [26:30]
A
And Charlie, I'll put it out there. There's two things that any law firm owner can do to be able to future proof their law firm when it comes to SEO. And with ChatGPT and AI affecting things with SEO, number one is make sure you have a About Us page that's very comprehensive, as comprehensive as possible. Like ideally a thousand to two thousand words About Us page. Most people's About Us page is just a couple of paragraphs. That's not enough. You want to feed AI and ChatGPT as much information about you. So when, let's just say somebody goes on Gemini, which is Google's AI or ChatGPT to ask about, you know, what's the best law firm? That's the second thing is have a page that explains why you're the best lawyer in best this type of lawyer in this city. Have a page about that and again, make that as comprehensive as possible. Have those two pages make sure it's very thorough. Even if you have to use ChatGPT to come up with the content, do that, you know, put in and then putting your own revisions in there, have those two pages. If you just do that, that's a lot more important and a lot more valuable than spending again, again, money on SEO.
- [27:35]
B
That's really smart. Yeah, actually I hadn't given consideration to that About Us page, but that is exactly where it pulls a lot of that information from. So yes, I hope everyone who's listening just please go, just go and do that. That's such an immediately actionable thing to go and add to that and to create. So are you suggesting for clarification for everyone, are you suggesting you weave in the best, you know, best option in town language on the About Us page, or is that a second page that you should develop?
- [28:00]
A
Yeah, I would probably do a second page. So About Us page would just be about your law firm and then the second one would just be about why your law firm is the best type of debt lawyer in that city. To give it more context. Again, there's just more context. You know, you could probably combine if you really, really wanted to, but might as well, just create two very comprehensive.
- [28:18]
B
In our mastermind group, we've had multiple people now report clients saying that they found them on ChatGPT. There we go.
- [28:25]
A
And also another trick and I know Charlie, you've been starting to tap into it is building GPTs, right? Correct. The referral system that you explained to me. Have you built a GPT for that or are you going to go do that later today?
- [28:37]
B
I love how you did that, Sam. Well played. No, interestingly enough, I do not currently have a GPT for that. Partially because when that was. Yeah, I will go and fix that. Yeah, I have several GPTs built. I have a Charlie style copywriting GPT. I have a couple of design GPTs that are built for me. I created one for intake, assessments, etc. I mean, the referral system was created right before the release of public GPTs, so I just didn't go in and do that one. But you're right, Sam, way to, way to put me on blast. No, I appreciate it. That's actually a good idea.
- [29:11]
A
Thank you. You know, the first day that GPT got released, I released 30 GPTs that same day.
- [29:17]
B
Nice.
- [29:18]
A
Yeah, nice. I came up with the. It's. Once you and I know you have a program that teaches entrepreneurs how to build their GPTs, I'll try to put the link to your website and hopefully your website will link it out to all these things pretty much easier than.
- [29:31]
B
People expect it to be. I mean, they really did make it pretty intuitive overall to set up some guardrails, give it its specific objective, and to upload a lot of information if you have existing information to refine, empower the GPT. Like I have clients now who have taken a lot of their own writing and put it up chatgpt as a way for, or to create a GPT for say, team members to get trained on about how they do certain things within the firm. Right. And it's just if you're the type of firm owner who has already created a lot of systems or written a lot of content for your website, whatever it might be, you can always repurpose these ideas. It's one thing that I wish more folks would do is understand when you wrote all of that, when you shot all the videos, when you created the white paper, the playbook, the book, et cetera, you created an asset. And you should always look at your asset catalog and go, what's next for what I already made A lot easier than building a new thing most of the time.
- [30:33]
A
Charlie, we have a question coming in from LinkedIn by the way, if you guys, you guys are watching us live on YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, whatever we are, we got a question that says I increased my budget in Facebook ads, number of leads did not grow. By putting more money in the ads, should I add more labor force? Charlie, you want to give your answer? And I'll try to give my insights too.
- [30:54]
B
Wait, do we know what practice area it was?
- [30:56]
A
No, we do not.
- [30:57]
B
Okay.
- [30:57]
A
But we could probably, yeah, we could probably tell some from some, some signs from the question where the mindset is kind of wrong. So I increased the Facebook ads budgets. The number of leads did not grow. And the question is, by putting more money in the ads, should I add more labor force? That's the question.
- [31:14]
B
At least in my experience, there's not a linear relationship between directly adding money into digital ads and being able to exactly say double, triple, quadruple most of the time. And again, I'm speaking from my experience, what I have seen in most law firms and everything should be contextualized with there's high levels of variance. Sam, you're going to have great ideas coming in on this as well. I would first look at am I actually getting people to show up at the page? Am I getting opt ins on the page? So if I'm not getting people to show up on the page, I'm going to assume that my ad copy is bad. Now we probably should reverse it out even farther and ask about the practice area. Because look, in my experience, say for personal injury, Facebook has been, aside from retargeting campaigns, not a high value digital ad space compared to other opportunities in estate planning you can make. And again, I'm going to speak mostly from those core four that I talked about for myself. Estate planning is a place that we can see them work in terms of direct advertisement to a colder list. In family law, I've at least experienced a mixed bag in that area. And in criminal defense, because of the really rapid turnarounds, it's often better as a list building tool, which I do. That's one thing that I think is missing for many firm owners. If we're going to go into Facebook ads, what is the short term gain versus long term gain of what we're doing? So all of that considered, the baseline is increasing budget does not automatically give you more results. It is am I actually driving clicks? And by the way, it would be worth like learning from someone like Sam what you should be expecting to pay per click and then pay per lead and then you can start doing your calculations of cost of acquisition. For each one of these clients, if I am getting people to click, but they're not opting in to whatever it might be, maybe it's a consultation or it's a book or it's a webinar or whatever. Now I need to look at my sales or squeeze page and upgrade the copy on that, upgrade what the offer might be on that. And I think a lot of people fail to think of it as an offer and make my offer really powerful and absolutely irresistible. You can do value stacking, bonuses out the wazoo, or offer to fix a very specific issue that they are likely experiencing. I love specificity as a marketing strategy. And if we are getting people then to opt in, it's still not paying off. I want to know what the quality of the people opting in is. Is it a bunch of garbage leads, is it just a bunch of bot leads, et cetera? There's so many things we have to look at here. But as a baseline question, will raising your budget automatically raise results? I say so.
- [33:57]
A
My answer is a little bit more technical. So specifically for Facebook, first thing is you want to test with Facebook lead forms. Facebook lead forms doesn't require a landing page or a funnel. The funnel is pretty much just captured instead of Facebook. So that's the first thing to look at. Number two is it shouldn't take you long, it shouldn't take you more than a day to know whether Facebook ads is working or not. As rude as that sounds, you want to spend enough, which is, let's just say $200. $200 should give you, let's just say 10 leads, $20 cost per lead. Let's just say from 10 leads, your first thing you want to look for is what percentage of these leads are qualified from Facebook. If you get any of them, from 10 to 20% of your leads to be qualified, great, you're onto something. If zero of them are qualified, then what you want to do is go back to the ads. Make sure that your ads are calling out your ideal clients in the ad copy, in the image or the video. That's usually what's missing. Usually if you're missing some kind of call out, you want to adjust that. Second thing you can do is to make your lead form qualification questions more specific to be able to decipher who is qualified or not. You adjust that relaunch, see how that goes. If you get about 10% qualified leads, you're on the right track. Then at that point, this is about generating enough qualified leads to see what your conversion rate is. From those qualified leads to get them to sign up. So you take a very systematic step by step approach. First I'm generating qualified leads and then from that am I setting up clients from this and you from there, you scale up. Charlie. I've probably entered over my years, you know, 40 different practice types, 40 different niches that I've tested out different things over time. I found out that things are a lot more universal than I then, you know, I could imagine. And over time you pick up on these frameworks, you know, that, you know, for marketing you always targeting certain types of people. So you need to know who those people are. Then they have qualifications. So you need to know what your qualification questions are. Then you need hooks which are different messages that you're going to be testing out. And you also want to be mindful of what your prospects or clients are going to be getting on the back end. What's the result basically? And then you try to incorporate some social proof in your ads. All these things doesn't matter whether you know, immigration law. Immigration law or personal injury or whatever you want to say. It's the same exact kind of things as I kind of mentioned. Good news for you, Amain. Immigration should be very easy to generate.
- [36:25]
B
I'll double thumbs up that I know people who actively get leads. Tons of leads on immigration, on Facebook.
- [36:30]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It should be pretty easy. It just takes a little bit more understanding of the whole system if you are a lawyer that our program is made tailored just for, you know, running a lot of ads. So I would highly recommend just going there to mylogicalacademy.com to book a call and speak to us.
- [36:45]
B
Yeah, and by the way, I'll second that. Go check out what Sam's doing with that stuff. There's, it's all that technical stuff that you just heard Sam talk about. It's not. It used to. Facebook used to be a little bit more approachable and they've done stuff to make parts of it easier and parts of it a little bit more complicated. I remember when you could just upload a big old list, you could kind of click on like other pages that to advertise towards and it was off to the races and we were buying leads, you know, back at the company I was with previously for like a buck 50 a pop of decent leads and not as easy these days, but that's the good news. If it's not as easy these days, most people are doing very sloppy advertising on there. And if you get, you know, a little bit more intentional, listen to some of the stuff that Sam's talking about. Especially, you know, if you combine what Sam's talking about, you also start studying some of the Russell Brunson, the Alex Hormozi of it all, which I know that you're a student of as well, Sam, and layer in those concepts with Sam's framework, like you're increasing your odds repeatedly of success. And then it becomes a question of, do I have the stomach to stay in the game, look at my data and get better at this over time, or are you just hoping for a quick cash out in the first week? Because if that's the case, I mean, I don't. That's going to be trickier.
- [37:55]
A
Yeah. And Charlie, you mentioned personal injury and Facebook ads. The nuance is you got to know what you're doing. For people that know what they're doing, they're killing it with Facebook ads, generating car accident clients. And it's something that I started sharing about three years ago and our members have killed it over the years, you know, hundreds of clients generated from Facebook ads.
- [38:14]
B
And that's why I always say, like, in my experience, because I am always open to being proven wrong. Right? Because at the end of the day, I want law firms to succeed if it's by finding out new information like this right here. Fantastic.
- [38:29]
A
Charlie, what's the most common mistake the law firm owners make?
- [38:34]
B
Not being consistent with marketing. Exactly what we were just talking about there. You know, they, they look at it as a, oh, I'm going to do one LinkedIn post and it's going to get a hundred thousand impressions, it's going to get a thousand likes, I'm going to be the next viral sensation and all the referrals are going to come to me. No, you're going to press post and a little puff of smoke and dust is going to go and it's going to fail. But we know that it works over time. The first time that you press publish on a video, it's going to get five reviews and three of those are going to be from you watching your own video. Are you going to keep doing it over time? It's actually why it's important to start up front. You know, the pick that platform that you're going to focus on if you know that it is strong for your potential audience and you have a strategy behind it. Stay in the game. The weekly email. I was joking with a client the other day. I was like, look, the two hardest emails to press send on are the first one and then just about the seventh One, because you get to number seven and you're like, ugh, can I skip this week? And as soon as you skip that week, it's all over. And then you're like, email doesn't. Email marketing doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't often work in the first six weeks. It's a longer play than that. So consistency, that's my number one thing. What about you?
- [39:46]
A
I want to. I'm going to add to your point. 80% of the result that you get is just the fact that you're doing it. And then 20% is how well you do it. So might as well just do it then. It's Brandon. Perfect kind of mentality. What was my own question, Charlie, what's.
- [40:01]
B
The number one mistake that you see law firm marketers making?
- [40:05]
A
Overthinking.
- [40:06]
B
Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, truly. And that goes into the consistency thing. They really do. And it's not only a law firm owner thing. I mean, I know that you and I both are sort of multidisciplinary people and we've seen it in other businesses as well. The person who I talked about earlier, part of the reason they won't press send, it's not only fear of putting themselves out there. It is, okay, but like, what's the message supposed to be? How exactly do I write this? I'm like, I don't know, just write it, Press, publish, and then start studying your results. That's the beauty of social media. You get to run tests on messages every single day. And when one pops, now you rotate it into an even higher level marketing system for yourself. And when it continues to perform up there, now we're going to put ad dollars behind that as well. I'll also sneak in here. In some cases, if you want to get results fast, you just go straight to ad dollars. You put money into it and you create your rapid fire test engine. But for those who need the ramping up process, you can do what I just talked about.
- [41:05]
A
Nice, Charlie. What's the number one trait that the most successful law firm owners share? These are good questions with it, right, Charlie? Am I thinking.
- [41:14]
B
They really are.
- [41:15]
A
I was telling. By the way, while you're thinking, I was telling Charlie earlier that you're the best interviewer in our space. By the way, just a shout out to your podcast. You want to give yourself a shout out for your podcast? That'd be good.
- [41:27]
B
Absolutely. They don't teach this in law school. Go listen to it. Sam has a recent episode that's up there that I Think is just absolutely killer in terms of talking about that copy and paste marketing that we discussed earlier. And actually in terms of the trait, I'll look at a trait that I know that you have, which I have a question for you about which the number one trait is the. And I'll say openness to adopt an entrepreneur first identity and mindset. That would be what I put as my number one trait. And I start from the point of openness because openness doesn't guarantee that it will happen, but it at least allows for the opportunity for it to happen. So I see some head nods right there, Sam. So I mean, do you agree, you want to layer on, build on that?
- [42:15]
A
If I had to give an answer that'll be the same, same answer to open mindedness, basically all starts from there, as you were saying, starts from there. You gotta be open minded for you to learn, for you to grow, for you to be able to network with other people and be able to learn from each other and rub from each other. But if you don't, if you're closing yourself off, and I think ego is the issue probably, right, the ego. Right, the, you know, whatever. And most people don't admit it's ego. It's very deep. Like you gotta go really deep to realize all of the, you know, what prevents us from growth. Ultimately, I think is, is the biggest thing is ego. But once you get over that and you just let go basically, then that's where you tap into the infinite of possibilities. Your mind expands, the abundance mentality kind of opens up. Then you realize that there's a lot to do, there's a lot to achieve, there's a lot to grow to, there's a lot to adapt. And then also being, as you said, being able, being willing to adapt on the go on a daily basis, be willing to reinvent yourself, be willing to let go of your past and continuously being continuous minded, basically there's so much.
- [43:24]
B
More in our control about our future than most people believe. At the start of any one of these entrepreneurial journeys. We think that, oh my God, we're going to put ourselves out there and hopefully the market is willing to accept us. And yeah, just go do it, make the market for yourself, be present, show up. No one is waiting around to go. Sam, you are now allowed to enter this marketplace and you will be successful because I have said so. Now I will say, I think sometimes the bar association wants to paint it that way so that way they can keep the existing, you know, ivory tower powers in control. But the truth is no one. There is no actual gatekeeper right there. It is entirely incumbent on you to say, I'm allowed to control my future. I am allowed to communicate with people. I am allowed to market myself. I am allowed to provide a level of quality in my services that seems of an absurd degree of value. You get to make all those choices. And of course, throughout it all, number one thing you have control over is how you respond to all of it as well. During the adversity first off, yes, it's okay to feel down. It's going to happen throughout life. You get hit with moments that are bigger emotionally for you than any you have ever experienced in the past. And you will be brought down in those moments. The question is, how do you respond there? Can you refocus and say, you know what? How do I approach this as an entrepreneur? Not just as a lawyer, but I'm an entrepreneur. I have this wide open world available to me of what I can do for myself to the benefit of myself, my family, my team, and my clients. What can I do today to turn that around? There's at least one thing that I can control. So I'm gonna do that, gosh darn it, and I'm gonna fall back on that for today. And today's still gonna really hurt because it was really tough. We had a terrible quarter that I didn't see coming because I haven't been tracking my numbers as well as I should, and I didn't see the operational hiccup that was going to end up costing me 50% of my expected revenue. How do I deal with that? I'm going to fix problems today, and it's bigger than anything I've ever dealt with. Here's the good news. Next time you deal with that won't be as bad. You'll be able to get through it easier. But then something else is going to come along to kick you right in the teeth. Right? Isn't that the fun of entrepreneurship, Sam, is we're always finding out what's going to kick us in the teeth.
- [45:45]
A
And after a couple of years, you just. Nothing will phase you.
- [45:48]
B
Yep. Oh, right. This again. Okay, cool. I'm about to learn a new lesson. As in the maker space, there's this gentleman named Jimmy Diresta who's called the godfather of makers. You know, woodworking, leather, craft, metalworking, et cetera. Really interesting individual. He's had shows on Netflix, hgtv, all these other networks. And he. The phrase he says is, you go to school on the first one, you learn your lessons, right? You go to school on the first ones, you're going to learn your hard lessons. That's your tuition to get better at the game. Going back to consistency, a lot of people hit that first point of needing to pay their tuition, which is often an intellectual and emotional tuition, and they're like, you know what? Cash out my chips, I'm good. I don't want to go any farther into that deep, deep abyss. So I'll stay where it's safe. Just keep going. It gets better.
- [46:37]
A
Amazing. Preach. And Charlie, what's one thing they don't teach you in law school?
- [46:44]
B
Oh, one thing they don't teach you in law school.
- [46:47]
A
Don't tell me that that was a surprise for you.
- [46:50]
B
So here's funny part. I think I've only had one other person try and ask that question back at me. And whenever I hear that question, the debate that I have, Sam, is like, do I go with really, really obscure? Like what they don't teach you in law school is the difference between full grain and top grain leather. They don't teach you that in law school, Sam. And the truth is, well, top grain sounds better. Full grain is actually the superior leather full. So what they do is full grain leather is the whole hide. It is the actual leather, the skin of the animal tanned etc prepared, all that top grain leather actually technically takes off a bit of that top shell in order to have this perfectly even smooth layer. And while that is still really nice, if you want the OG unbreakable, this is what they made saddles out of and your bag, your wallet, etc last forever. You go with full grain leather and none of that suede. Oh, related to that genuine leather is a marketing term. Genuine leather just means that they took a lot of leather scraps, basically shredded them up and remade it into a leather composite.
- [48:03]
A
Anything else about law firm growth?
- [48:08]
B
Yeah, I mean the one that I love to go to is they don't tell you that you are now starting to adopt an identity as a lawyer more and more as you go throughout law school. That will be your best friend and your worst enemy depending on where you are in your journey. And they don't specifically talk about how to be expansive in who you are and how to learn new skills and how much going outside the realm of law will benefit everything that you do within the realm of law. When I see a lot of incredible, say trial attorneys, et cetera, while they are committed students to law, then oftentimes the number of hobbies and even deep interests and hobbies that they have are also to A pretty high degree because they are extremely curious person people who round themselves out and construct additional components of their identity that feed back into the core sense of self. So they don't teach that in law school.
- [49:12]
A
What's the first step for that?
- [49:14]
B
The first step for that is honestly, it's the old a thing you have to know you have a problem, you have to accept that that's the issue. And you have to start looking at some of what you do, some of the decisions that you make and ask yourself, am I making the decision because I'm a lawyer and therefore that's the decision I'm supposed to make because I'm a lawyer, or am I making the decision against other principles and ideas that I have pulled together in my life from sources that I know trust and respect. When you start making decisions from a high principle level continually, that will help you rebuild your identity into a person who I believe truly can be an even better practitioner at law, at least in the experience I have in working with my coaching clients. Those who are, say, well read of stoicism is kind of the one of the most popular ones, but they're well read on stoicism. It allows them to potentially be an even better representative for the client because they don't get phased by what the other side does. Right. Kind of a cheap example there, but a good one. So if you make principle first decisions rather than reactive, I make this decision because I'm a lawyer. And within our field we've been told this is how we make the decision, that's how we start. And it's tough. It's a conscious process. Right. We're taking what is normally a subconscious reaction, it's a heuristic response and saying, wait, let's add like the tiniest pause here and ask why did I make the decision that way?
- [50:41]
A
Once you fully accept yourself completely, that's when the world starts, you know, fully accepting you for who you are.
- [50:48]
B
Yeah.
- [50:49]
A
Really. What's the best way for people to reach out to you and who are your ideal clients that should come and book of time to be with you?
- [50:56]
B
Absolutely. So if you are a law firm owner who is between about 300,000 to $900,000 per year in revenue, go to lawfirmalchemy.com and depending on where you are in your journey, you either want to grab one of our free resources like the referral marketing playbook, or you'll be prepared to go, you know what, I'm ready to be a high level person. I'm already a student of Sam's and I'm going to stay a student of Sam's in my legal academy. But I'm going to layer on the Catalyst program over here and combine these ideas together. By the way, I have a rule and you don't do something like drop Sam's program and start, oh, let's see what Catalyst about. You do multiple at the same time. I'm a multiple student. You know, look, I'm saying that for real, my best clients are folks who are participating in other spaces as well. If you are someone who is, say a million or above, first off, jump right into Catalyst. You're ready for it. But also reach out and see if I have any openings on private coaching. At the very least, it's an opportunity to get on the wait list. I am fully booked right now. There is an active wait list and it is first come, first serve if you are in Catalyst. So that's my recommendation to everyone listening.
- [51:58]
A
Amazing. And I highly recommend Charlie's and I can attest to Charlie's long term kind of mindset and his heart is into everything that he does. Charlie, I look forward to meeting you in person and having some drinks together. Thank you so much.
- [52:10]
B
Back at you, Sam.
- [52:11]
A
Appreciate you.
- [52:12]
B
This has been amazing. Thank you, my friend.
- [52:15]
C
Thanks for listening to the law entrepreneur. If you found value in the show, please rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you're listening. And don't forget to share the episode with a friend. It could help transform their life. To get access to a treasure trove of exclusive free resources for Lawyers, go to joinlawyerclub.com Again, that's joinlawyerclub.com we'll see you on the next episode.