Simple, Sustainable Marketing for Referral-Driven Firms (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Chad.

[00:00:02] Speaker 2: And I'm Stephanie. And welcome to the Lawyerist Podcast. One of the ways we help lawyers build healthier firms, better businesses, and more sustainable lives. Today, Chad's going to talk with Aaron Thomas about marketing for people who don't do marketing.

[00:00:18] Speaker 1: And today's episode is brought to you by Posh. And you'll hear Zach's conversation with them in just a bit.

[00:00:24] Speaker 2: So Chad, we just closed our company down for the week. This recording is going to come out in a few weeks, but we were gone the whole week of 4th of July, everybody got off, we shut the whole place down. And I think both of us did a pretty good job of not really working.

[00:00:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was pretty well unplugged, went to Puerto Rico, caught a little bit of a cold towards the tail end of it. But yeah, I had turned my notifications off for the most part, even though I did go in and check it every couple days just to make sure I wasn't missing any emergencies. I probably wasn't supposed to do that, bad on me, but no, nothing burned down, no emergencies. But no, it was great.

[00:01:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, same. We actually went on a cruise. So we were kind of out, I mean, we do like now, like most places, even the cruise ships have internet. For a long time, it was kind of expensive and hard to get internet on cruises, kind of like airplanes. Now it's available. I did a pretty good job of unchecking. Even my husband was like, wow, you're not really working. Like this is great. You did good. I was like, yeah, I mean, we had like a small thing that I got done early in the week. But really, for the most part, I was completely also checked out, unplugged. And I don't know about you, but by like Thursday or Friday, I was like, okay, I'm kind of ready. I'm ready to go to work.

[00:01:47] Speaker 1: I was bored. Once I started feeling a little bit better, I was really nothing to do. My wife was still working. So yeah, I was kind of bored. I was like, I'm ready to go back to work now. That was enough time. Because it was really, because I took Friday off before we left also, because that was the day we flew to Puerto Rico. So I had like 10 days off.

[00:02:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, same. And it was nice. And, you know, I wrote in the blog for the week that we were off, if anybody wants to go to our website and check it out, I write a blog every Wednesday. And you know, kind of one bold idea. And you know, I was talking about when you exercise, like a lot of people forget that they think like the exercise is actually when you like tear your muscles, and it's during the rest and recovery that the muscles rebuild and get stronger and better. And I use that to kind of explain, you know, that's what one of the reasons that we need unplugged downtime, we need to take time away, we need our businesses to shut down, like we don't really plan for that in a business cycle. But it's so healthy. And we don't realize it, but we all got stronger last week.

[00:02:50] Speaker 1: It's always so interesting when I have that conversation with our labsters, like, hey, by the way, you know, we have a call next week or in two weeks, and but we're our office is closed. And they're like, Oh, that's so cool. You guys do that. It's like you got you could do that. I mean, you don't have this, you could don't have to start with the whole week. I mean, you could. But I mean, you could do some form of that. And they could do that in their business, whether it's that week or a different week.

[00:03:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, we have lots of labsters who've taken our lead. They've been intentional. A lot of people will close now the week between, you know, at the end of the year between the holidays between Christmas and New Year's, that doesn't work for our business. We tend to be very busy during that time. And so a lot of people do take plan time off then, but it's just hard for us to do a complete shutdown then. But if that's a slow time for the law firms that might work, you know, one of the things I challenged firms with, so if you're listening to this and thinking that could never work for me, you know, take some steps. I mean, it's the summer now, Labor Day is coming up, and most people close on that Monday. What if you closed on Friday as well so that, you know, maybe even Thursday, Friday, so then you're giving yourself, you know, giving the team Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, like four day, five days off. That would be a great start, right, in a plan. And you do it intentionally. We don't just shut down one day. We've let our clients know for months. And we plan for it, and we work around it, and you too can do it. It is absolutely possible. And that recharge is so, like you and I said before we started recording, we're both like, all right, we're excited. We're ready to get back to it. Let's go. That's a good feeling. It feels good to be ready to come back.

[00:04:29] Speaker 1: It is. It is a good feeling. I think all firms, all employees need to have that feeling.

[00:04:36] Speaker 2: Absolutely. Well, let's check out Zach's conversation with Posh, and then we'll head into your conversation with Aaron.

[00:04:44] Speaker 1: All right. Sounds good.

[00:04:46] Speaker 3: Hey y'all, it's Zach, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist. And today I have Nate Stallings with me from Posh Virtual Receptionists. And we are talking, you guessed it, virtual receptionists. Nate, thanks for being with me today. Hey, thanks for having me. So we're talking about something a little bit different, or maybe not obvious when people first start thinking about virtual receptionists and services like that. But virtual receptionist services can really boost your client's services, not just getting clients an intake, but repeat clients and how much, how they're, how satisfied they are. Talk to me a little bit about that.

[00:05:37] Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's all about referrals at the end of the day. And I think we all have that personal experience where we've referred somebody and that there's reasons for that and why we do those things. But at the end of the day, that's a great way of bringing about new business or having repeat businesses, being able to, you know, create a generation of referrals. Four out of five people depend on referrals according to Clio when they're searching for new attorneys to work on their behavior. And Nielsen has done a study that says 84% of people trust reviews over other marketing channels, right? So you've got billboards, you've got things like that. But at the end of the day, that might just be the entry point to where someone comes into your lead funnel. And then from there, they're looking at reviews and they're deciding, okay, am I going to go with you? Or am I going to go with somebody else? So it's really important to have that word of mouth referral and to have people willing to talk about, you know, your practice and how you're making them feel and how not only did you just win the case, but, you know, did you actually, you know, take care of them and those kinds of things.

[00:06:35] Speaker 3: Well, so bring me into how having a VA, a solid VA company, boost this referral process

[00:06:42] Speaker 4: then. First piece of kind of any business is pick up the phone, right? If someone's calling you, making sure that you're picking up the phone and you're helping with those lines of communication, right? So if you try to call someone and they don't answer, well, that's a strike against you. Let's say you call them multiple times because you're an existing client and they don't answer. That's strikes against you again, right? And they'll move somewhere else. I think you've had a recent experience around that.

[00:07:07] Speaker 3: Yes, actually. Thank you for the segue into there. I just changed internet service providers because they wouldn't answer my call. They wouldn't connect with me. There was no way to get a hold of a human to solve my problem. I was having an issue and there was no way to get a hold of a human to, or, or any, honestly it wasn't even a human. It was anything, any sort of nobody answering my calls. And I think I said to you last time that we talked is that I will give people a significant amount of grace provided their customer service is good. And in this scenario, their customer service was bad, couldn't get a hold of them. And so I just, you know, yanked the rip cord, switched internet service providers in a matter of two days because they were irritating in that sense.

[00:07:54] Speaker 4: So yes, huge. So that's really the first part, right? Because at the end of the day, we're busy in our professions. We're doing the things that we want to do or that we're good at answering the phone. Isn't necessarily something that we want to do, but it's necessary, necessary to continue that flow of business. So the first part is having the virtual receptionist answer the call to make sure that, that it's not missed. And that doesn't have to be answering every call. It could be only the ones that you're not able to get to, but that's the first piece. And then the second piece is obviously going that step further and helping with being empathetic and understanding why they're calling, what they're calling about, not just, you know, yep. Okay, got it. Slamming them in for the next one. And they're just another number, you know, right out of the ticket puller. So yeah, you want to have that extra bit of empathy and provide a level of customer experience. So those two things together really help elevate the referrals. And if we go back to just referrals in general, like you said, you give people more grace, you know, that business that you're now referred to, you're going to give them more grace because you've got a shared experience that someone has provided to you that says, hey, this is a good person. So you're not going to have them, you know, checking off every little box. You're going to kind of work with them, make sure things kind of go smoothly because you've got someone telling you, hey, trust me, they were good. Right. And so that, that friction is reduced when you're trying to enter into that, that new practice or that new business that you've never been in before.

[00:09:18] Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and I think this can also affect the flip side. It would, it would, you know, go against getting negative reviews. It would keep you from getting reviews of, uh, yeah, they were great. They were fine, but they wouldn't answer their phone.

[00:09:33] Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, that's the one thing that people complain about the most of everything is poor communication, right? The attorney is not available, whether it's, you know, they are not answering my calls, they're not returning my emails. That's probably the thing that we see most. And I think if you just go in general, look at firms reviews, that's probably one of the biggest things. Other things are lack of trust and transparency or lack of empathy and understanding. And if you can nail those four things, then, I mean, you're really going to generate more referrals. You're gonna generate more business, repeat customers, and it's not hard to do those things, right? Yeah. We empathetic. We all want to be treated that way when we're dealing with a situation that, you know, is personal to ourselves. And especially when we start talking about the legal realm where, I mean, that is so different from everything else for most people, you know, the common folks are a little bit frightening or daunting to go into that. And so then having somebody that they're, they're expert in their field, but they also are just a good, compassionate human. And they're trying to help walk you through the process that brings a lot to that client. And they feel safe, they feel warm, and they will gladly tell other people about that versus someone that's just an expert. But then they're, you know, a complete prick the whole time, it's not going to go over very well. And yeah, you might have won. But at the same time, they're like, yeah, hey, if you don't want to deal with this kind of person, you're not going to go there.

[00:10:50] Speaker 3: So yeah, Yeah, that's true. Well, before we wrap up, talk to me real quick about why posh, then why why posh as the virtual receptionist?

[00:10:58] Speaker 4: Sure. So posh is is a virtual receptionist company, we're what you would call a boutique, we're not massive, we've got two offices, everybody's in house. So that right there alone kind of helps us defend against the Oh, well, no one knows about my business. Right? That's, that's a common thing that a lot of people get upset about or frustrated about is, well, I want someone that can act like they're the front desk receptionist and know a little bit about my business, right? So it helps being a smaller service that isn't this, you know, mega, giant, thousands and thousands of agents. So that that's a good piece. And like I said, we're all in house. So that really helps from a perspective of being able to walk over and talk to someone here, somebody on a call is having trouble, you know, and and work with them right away, get them additional coaching or additional help to make that call or the next call better.

[00:11:43] Speaker 3: Love it. If people want to learn more about posh virtual receptionist, where can they where can they contact you guys?

[00:11:49] Speaker 4: Sure. They can go to posh.com backslash lawyerist. That's the first place to go. But if you want to give us a call 833 get posh and let us know that that you heard about us on lawyerist and we'll give you a 14 day free trial.

[00:12:01] Speaker 3: Oh, love it. Love it. Well, Nate, thanks for being with me and talking to me about, you know, virtual receptionist and how that can enhance the client experience in our offices. I appreciate your time.

[00:12:12] Speaker 5: Thanks. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Aaron Thomas. I am a family law attorney and founder of prenups.com. I've been practicing law almost 25 years now. And somewhere along the way, I went from someone who says, Oh, I don't do any marketing to now someone who who can't shut up about it. So maybe you could call me a recovering marketing skeptic.

[00:12:38] Speaker 1: And you know what I what I love is anytime because you do workshops inside lab all the time around marketing. And there's some of our most popular workshops that we offer. I mean, people tend to either come to them, which is usually the case, or they make sure they catch the recordings.

[00:12:54] Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's it's been great. And I'm learning as I'm as I'm teaching, as well. So yeah, it's helping me too.

[00:13:02] Speaker 1: So what does it mean to be a marketing skeptic? When you said, you know, I'm a recovering marketing skeptic? What is what does that mean?

[00:13:08] Speaker 5: I think, you know, anyone who has spent some time around lawyers, and you mentioned marketing, there's always going to be a significant number of people in the room who say, Oh, I don't do any marketing, or we don't have to do any marketing. And almost like a humble brag, right? Like the, the implication is, I just get referrals. And those referrals are sufficient to sustain my practice. And I'm not one of those types of lawyers that has to go out and chase clients with with marketing. And you know, my first response to that would be, one, you are doing marketing, you're doing what we would call a referral marketing. And you're probably doing it passively, you're waiting for people to send you cases, maybe you go to networking events, or you're part of a bar section or organization in your town, but you're not actually, you know, are you checking in with your referral sources on a regular basis? Are you checking with your clients on, you know, a regular cadence? Can you even name who your top five referral sources were for the past year? So, you know, I would tell most people, if you are doing marketing, you're not above marketing, maybe it just looks a little bit different than you know, what you imagine marketing to be.

[00:14:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, because what you just described is what we would call a nurture campaign, right? So whether you've even though you're not doing traditional marketing, and you're not sending out nurturing emails, you are nurturing those referrals. All the same, right? It's just, it's the same, but it's different.

[00:14:47] Speaker 5: Yeah, if you're if you're bringing in clients, you're doing some type of marketing, you're nurturing the referral sources, or you're maybe naturally staying in touch with the people that send you cases, maybe you send them cases as well. That is absolutely a form of marketing.

[00:15:05] Speaker 1: So when you say, you know, yeah, I heard you say that oftentimes you hear lawyers will say, Oh, you know, I don't do more, I don't do any marketing, or I have to do any marketing. What are they missing there? You know, if they're only doing referral marketing, or only focused on referrals, you know, what might they be missing?

[00:15:21] Speaker 5: I think one thing that I would say is, there are people out there who are likely a perfect fit for your firm, they need your services. They want someone that practices law, the way that you do. And you're not serving them, because they don't know you exist. Even for lawyers who say, I have, I'm happy with the size of my practice, I have a good enough practice, I'm not trying to hire any additional lawyers, I would say, what's wrong with more of the right type of clients, you know, if you have a roster of clients, there are absolutely some who you gel with, you job with, you love working for them, maybe the type of work you do for them is very interesting. And if you get more of those types of clients, and maybe refer out some of the types of clients that are not a perfect fit for you, or don't energize you with the type of case, what's wrong with being able to do that and an effective marketing campaign can help you do that. And yeah, it doesn't have to be advertising. I think that was the other big thing that I used to think of myself when I first heard about lawyers marketing, I'd say, Oh, well, I don't, I don't run any ads. And sometimes we'll equate advertising to marketing, right? And I would suggest that advertising like paid advertising should be way down the list of things. If you're starting a marketing program, it should be way down the list of things that you consider, there's a dozen other things that you can probably do before you get to the level where you are paying for advertising in the traditional sense.

[00:17:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, because advertising, oftentimes, the majority of those leads coming in are not going to be great. And so you have to have a team and be able to field those those leads and sift through them and find find the good ones. And so yeah, it's not, it's definitely not where you should start, especially when you're just getting going, right, or still semi early in your marketing journey. If you're speaking to a law firm, about marketing with intention, where where should they start? Where is the where's the best place to start? They're already doing referrals. But now they want to dip their toe into some of these other areas. Where do they start?

[00:17:44] Speaker 5: I would recommend that law firms start with the people that are closest to them, and then kind of slowly work your way outward. So there are people that already like know and trust you. And that's going to be your former clients, and your active referral sources. So starting with a way to stay in touch with them, that could be the in the form of a newsletter. Typically, I would recommend at least monthly. But if not, you can start with a quarterly newsletter. And it doesn't have to be a fancy design. In fact, a lot of designs can get caught by spam filters more often than not, it can literally just be text in an email, something that you write to tell people, hey, I'm still around, I'm still in business. These are the types of cases that I'm doing. Here's the scope, here's the things that I take. Here are the types of cases that I don't take. And just let people know what you're up to. And remind them that you're around and you're still practicing law.

[00:18:48] Speaker 1: If you're writing a newsletter, say quarterly or monthly, and you know, so that all sounds great. You're providing, you know, this is what I do. This is the kind of cases is what I've been working on. Outside of that, what kind of value could they add to those newsletters to really, you know, because I'm a firm believer that when you can add value to people, you can differentiate yourself from everybody else that's just out there trying to sell you something right or trying to get a customer, but what kind of value could they add in their in their newsletters?

[00:19:19] Speaker 5: I think a good goal for a newsletter is to make it something that people want to open, even if they don't have an active legal issue at that point. So particularly if you are an attorney and your clients are local to you, it could be something general interest, events that are going on in your area. For example, if you're a family law attorney, and you represent a lot of parents for custody cases, you could have, you know, five things to do with your kids this spring, or events that are going on in your area, you could have TV shows that you're watching something that shows your personality, anything that allows you to say top of mind and get people to open it. When I was doing when I first started my newsletter, I would make any kind of reference to the type of law that I practice, maybe 20% of the newsletter and the remainder of the newsletter would be we put a trivia question in there people love to you know, to try a trivia question. We do events, I'd maybe talk about a book that I was reading or a movie that I just got done watching. It doesn't have to be 100% black letter law. And in fact, a lot of times those kinds of newsletters are not the best performing anyway, because your clients may not want to read a legal treatise every month.

[00:20:40] Speaker 1: It's a good point. And even, you know, current events, not political events. But if you if you can tie, there's this thing David Merriman Scott always taught about it's called newsjacking. Right? So if you can find interesting topics around that you can connect to what you do, or that would be relevant to your ideal audience, that's always interesting and good get people to open your newsletter and actually read it.

[00:21:01] Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I think that's a great point.

[00:21:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So what are some, you know, firms want to stay visible, though, you know, they don't want to feel salesy, or wanted to feel feel forced, you know, what are some realistic ways that they can, that they can do that?

[00:21:16] Speaker 5: There are other ways to move out into the marketing world that don't require being super salesy. networking, you know, after you hit your kind of initial orbit of people who are close to you very close to you, you can network and I use that that in quotation marks for people listening to, to this on audio with other people in your profession by finding ways that you can be helpful to them or setting up some kind of back and forth referral network. If you know, a lot of times you are in an area of law where there's someone adjacent or there's an area of law that's adjacent to you, right, maybe some of your clients or even your friends or your community, they always come to you and ask you, can you help me with this type of legal issue, and it's something that you don't do. You can be intentional about finding someone that does that type of law. So for example, I practice family law. And you know, a lot of times I assume everyone knows what family law means. No, they probably don't know where it begins and ends. A lot of people will come to me and ask, can you do my will? Can you prepare a trust? I don't do that type of work, but I can establish relationships with lawyers who do specialize in that type of work. And the idea is you send someone enough business, people like reciprocity, they're likely going to want to send something back your way. And they may be the type of attorney where you did my trust. You did my will. You're handling me with helping me with family issues. What about a custody situation? Can you advise me on child support? And now that attorney has an opportunity to send something back your way. So you've never sold anything. You've never pressured anybody. You never maybe even directly asked for referrals, although I think there's nothing wrong with that either, but just setting up ways to be helpful to other people's businesses. And often they're going to want to do the same thing back for you.

[00:23:12] Speaker 1: Right. And to your point, right, you don't want to get too comfortable in that, in those relationships that you have, because business is built on relationships and especially when it comes to referral marketing. And so you always want to be constantly sourcing new people. It's like building a bench, right? It's like a sports team. One of your star players gets hurt or makes a new relationship and they start sending business to somebody else. You want to make sure you have referral sources on the bench that you can pull from and be able to keep your business humming. And that also kind of ties into those other marketing channels as well. You know, the, the newsletters and, you know, emails and, you know, whatever it else is that might make sense.

[00:23:53] Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's right. You don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket. And I think that naturally extends to maybe the next step that I think some of these firms can take, which is making yourself easy to find. And one way that you can do that is by creating some kind of helpful information for people who have the problem that you can help them solve. So for example, it can be anywhere from writing a blog to filming a video to creating a short ebook or PDF or download a checklist. If you're a estate planning attorney, you know, here are the things you need to think about when you get married, when you have a child, when a loved one passes. Again, you're not going and being salesy, you know, you're not doing anything but sharing your expertise in a way that can be helpful to people. And that is naturally going to one, make you easier to find by your ideal clients. And to position yourself as the expert. So when someone reads your ebook, they read your content, they say, Oh, this person knows how to solve this problem. I think I need to go a step further. This is the person I'm going to reach out to and see if they can represent me in my case.

[00:25:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a good point. It's back to that adding value piece, right. The, the one thing that I always tell people when it comes, you know, like we had said, you know, people don't want to feel salesy. But if you're educating on something that you know about, you're really just teaching, right. And then the sales, if you do it, if you teach well, and you add value, the sales will naturally happen. I think we put this taboo energy around the world sales, putting that in air quotes, fear if you're listening to this, but you know, and it doesn't have to be this forced sales thing, right? It's you're educating, right?

[00:25:46] Speaker 5: A lot of the best content. There's not a single pitch in it. You're literally just spelling out here are the steps that you take. Here's how you get started. Here are the top three or four things that you need to know. And the sales happens naturally. It happens because someone wants to work with someone who, who knows what they're talking

[00:26:06] Speaker 1: about. Yeah. And a lot of people are maybe afraid of giving away that knowledge for, for free, right? Because there's the thought of, Oh, well, if I give it away for free, then they're not going to pay me. But the reality is like, well, actually, let me let you answer that. What would you say to people that maybe have that mindset? Because I think a lot of, a lot of law firms maybe do have that mindset.

[00:26:28] Speaker 5: I used to think the same thing that if I'm putting all of my best tips in writing either one other lawyers are going to steal it, um, or two that the client's not going to need me because I just, I just gave away the whole, the whole shebang. And what I found is we're all willing to pay for convenience. Just because I know how to do certain things around my house doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer to pay an expert who can mow my lawn better and faster than me or clean my house better or faster, more efficiently than me. They know the things to look for that I don't. And it's the same thing with, uh, legal work. I've even told clients from time to time, you know, you can do this on your own if you want. The forms are online. Here's where you go. Here's how you fill them out. Here's how you file them. People are willing to pay for the service to have it done by the expert. I think that sharing your knowledge makes them more likely to come to you because they're going to say, I don't know what I don't know. Yes, I know steps one, two, and three, but if it runs into a hiccup, I don't know where to go from there. I would prefer to have someone come in and then also advise me on the other things that maybe aren't even top of mind, even if I know the basic steps of getting this done.

[00:27:43] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's like people love to learn, but not necessarily do.

[00:27:48] Speaker 5: I think that's right. I think that's exactly right.

[00:27:50] Speaker 1: Right. I will soak up knowledge until it's pouring out of our ears. But we're not likely going to go and execute on a lot of that knowledge, especially the things that we're not an expert in.

[00:28:02] Speaker 5: Yeah. Even even with legal issues, myself being a lawyer, when I want something done right, I go and I hire another lawyer to do it for me. So why would our clients be any different?

[00:28:13] Speaker 1: I mean, this is probably a stretch, but, you know, my car battery went out a couple of weeks ago and I had to go get a battery and I went to this. Not a plug for advanced auto parts, but I went to advanced, even though the battery was $20 more because I knew they would install it for me. I mean, I could install it, but I want to let them do it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, marketing oftentimes feels overwhelming. And I know, you know, the law firms that that we work with here in lab, you know, they come to us and they don't have a marketing plan and don't really know where to start, you know? So what are what are two or three simple things that they could start doing right now this

[00:28:52] Speaker 5: month? I would say, number one, a a newsletter and and even that I would I would I would use that loosely. It does not have to be a planned out campaign. It can be an update on what you're doing, a little general interest and a list of here are the types of things that we help our clients with. And you can send it out to the people who already will be happy to hear from you, your former clients and your your active referral sources. A second thing I think for people who are law firms who are they're swamped, you're already busy, you're barely, you know, keeping your head above water with the amount of work that you already have. There are tons of talented marketers out there. You can find someone online. You can go to one of these, you know, Upwork or Fiverr or, you know, one of these platforms that have people that perform specific functions and search for exactly what it is that you need the same way that people don't want to do their own legal work. You may not want to figure out how MailChimp or Constant Contact or one of these newsletter platforms work. And you don't have to hire a full time marketing associate to your team. You can have someone that works for you just a few hours a month and they take this marketing task off your plate so that you can maybe write the newsletter or communicate what it is that you want your clients and referral sources to know and have that contractor perform the task. You can do a final check on it so that you're taking what may be five hours a month down to maybe 30 minutes of your actual time per month. And I think that's going to be a lot more digestible and it's going to happen on a regular basis if somebody else is performing that function rather than, oh, it's been three months and I finally have some time. I guess I'll get back to the newsletter. No, if you outsource 80% of it that can be done by somebody else, then it's much more likely to go out every single month like clockwork. And that's going to work better for what you're doing it for, bringing in clients.

[00:31:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that last tip is huge because that's always the drop off, right? It's always, it's new and it's fun and it's exciting when you first start the newsletter, but after two or three issues of it, it's not fun and exciting anymore and you need another person involved to keep it rolling.

[00:31:22] Speaker 5: Yeah. One little anecdote that I'll share is when I was first trying to really grow my family law practice over a decade ago, I had a coach that came in and helped me. And one of the pieces of advice that they gave me was to hire someone to do marketing. I couldn't afford someone to just do marketing for my firm, but I hired someone where they were going to do some admin, help answer the phone, some other things that I needed to help with, and they were going to do marketing as part of my job. And I was so terrified about not being able to afford their salary and it wasn't even a huge salary, but I said, you know, what if, what if I hire this person and I don't bring in enough business and that type of thing. And I brought in this marketing help. They were a full-time employee. They helped me with admin. They took over my newsletter. They started updating the website, started helping me prepare content, started editing my videos. And within three to four months, I needed to bring in another attorney to help me with the amount of work that we were doing. Because so few attorneys are doing, I think, even the basics of marketing and may not realize how much of a boost it can give you just to make yourself a little bit more visible, just to stay top of mind with your existing clients and referral sources, just a little bit more, just to be that first name on their lips when they think about the service that you offer. I think it can be so game-changing just to take that first step of marketing for a lot of law firms.

[00:32:59] Speaker 1: Yeah. And that first step is the hard step, right? Once you make that first step, you're like, oh, this isn't so bad. We can do this.

[00:33:06] Speaker 5: It's totally doable.

[00:33:07] Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. Totally doable. And like you said, good problems to have. Now you have to bring in another attorney because you can't keep up. That's the goal.

[00:33:16] Speaker 5: Yeah.

[00:33:17] Speaker 1: That's what we're going for. All right. Aaron, thank you so much, sir. It's been a pleasure. And I'll see you on the inside. Thanks for having me, Chad. All right. Take care.