Turn Calls/Inquiries into Signed Retainer
Agreements and Cash in the Bank… Remotely
interviewer Another thing I’ve heard from probably every single attorney I’ve spoken to, is that they’ve been burned in the past by marketing companies. I have some insight as to why that’s happened and I’ll ask you yours. But I think that a lot of attorneys have the attitude that marketing is also a service. That they pay someone for it and they go do it. When it doesn’t work for them, they get mad and kick the cable box and they kick over the trash and say “They didn’t come and clean the office. The cable’s not working”.
They think of marketing, again, as this service they’re not involved in that should just work for them in the background. I get the feeling that’s why it sets people up for being burned by unscrupulous companies and the individuals that offer it. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.
Robert I agree. That’s always been a big part of it. For so many lawyers, they thought their marketing was spending 15 minutes before the Yellow Page ad rep came in to try and tell them they needed to buy a bigger ad for the next year. Once they settled on what size ad, something awful that says “I’ll fight for you” and something that tells them nothing, nothing that distinguishes them, that they were done.
So many lawyers think “If I come in, I’ll meet with this website company”, or, even worse, and I’m sure you see this, too, Richard, is “I’ve got a cousin who just graduated from college. He’s unemployed. He’s going to go out and put up a WordPress site. He knows nothing about SEO but he’s going to set this site up there”. So he puts you up this useless site that’s invisible to search engines and you think “I’ve got a website off, check”.
That is exactly what people need to realize is that, you always have to keep marketing and you always have to be keep things going from a number of different areas. One of the things I heard initially at one of these big marketing events, which I really think is true as a mindset and for what I’m telling people, is that I don’t know one way to get you an additional $100,000 a year but I know 100 ways to get you an additional $1,000 a year.
Basically, people have to be committed to blocking off time. In our marketing program, not only do we spend a lot of time talking about mindset, we really hit people over the head about how they manage their time. That is another huge step for me. If you talk to most lawyers, and you mentioned it exactly in the beginning, most lawyers would say “What are the most important things to me? If they’re married and they say “family first, then my health, then my practice”.
Yet, what did those guys tell you in their survey? They’re working seven days a week, crying to get out, missing family events, coming home exhausted and feeling they’re not getting rewarded for the amount of time they’re putting in. Again, with all that, I think they’re not finding enough time to pay attention to their health.
Really, one of the things we try to do is really break people down. The biggest thing is taming the email and listserv beast. If you have done everything else first and your priority is to do someone else’s legal research for them. But the reality is that I don’t have a picture of the listserv lazy guy who wants me to do their research for them, who is the one who charged that person money. I’ve got my own wife and kids sitting on my desk.
I’ve also got a sign on my wall that is the thing I look at in deciding whether or not I’m going to respond to this or get distracted. It’s a little sign that says “Perspective: is this person, activity or thing that wants in on my life something that will be beneficial to my goals”. That is very important.
When I think, “Hey, maybe I’ll go do this person’s research” I say, “No, that’s not helping me toward my goal. My goals are this”. It’s the same thing with whatever different thing – random emails or Facebook is a huge time suck, as well. So many people who are working those hours, a lot of them are fooling themselves. They say “I’m working 11-hour days”, well, you spent an hour-and-a-half on Facebook, you read People Magazine, you read a couple other things, made a couple personal phone calls. One thing I tell people to do is they need to have time integrity to themselves.
interviewer One thing I noticed at the conference is that all the more successful people had lots of kids. I guess that’s a funny way of saying they’re more relaxed, more spare time. They all spoke about their families and were happy they were able to spend a lot more time with them. Actually, they all had outside interests that they spent a lot of time on. Some were marathon runners, you do stand-up comedy, some of them did volunteer work. That seems to go along with the success. They actually had more time to do everything they wanted to do.
Robert Absolutely. Once you have that “sleep at night business,” once you have the money coming in, that’s exactly it. You prioritize. Another big thing you talked about is how I came to choose the DUI reckless niche. Another big thing people need to look at, in a lot of facets what they’re doing with their life and their time is the 80/20 principle. It’s also known as the Pareto Principle: 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients, 80% of your aggravation comes from 20% of the people you represent.
Basically, one of the things people need to sit down and think about, which I did, is “What cases do I have that are causing me the most aggravation? Which cases, per my amount of time put in on them, get me the greatest return”. That’s another good reason in making the decision to niche things, but also because you can market yourself and be a specialist.