How 2 PFL Firm Leaders Have Built Their Practices Using Free Marketing

Ali Katz:
Here's what I can promise you. If you do not love to deliver on your service, nothing I'm sharing with you today is going to work because you are not going to go out there and market. Whether it's free marketing or paid marketing, you're not going to go out there and deliver marketing for a service you don't love to deliver on. Period. End of story.

Ali Katz:
Hello and welcome to the new Law podcast, where we guide entrepreneurial lawyers to build law practices into businesses they love. I'm Ali Katz. If you're anything like me, you love to hear from people who are doing what you want to do, and you have that. If they can do it, I can do it. And so let me hear what they did. So you're going to hear from two lawyers in this episode, Deirdre and Will, each of whom made a transition that you may be considering yourself. Deirdre from her own firm that is kind of like what we call a door lawyer firm, taking whatever walks in the door. Though I think she focused on four different practice areas.

Ali Katz:
And you'll hear about her journey from four practice areas to choosing just one and building a successful business around that. And then you'll hear from Will, who made the transition of working for someone else to work for himself. You will hear where they found the money, what marketing strategies they use, their path from. Oh, gosh, I'm going to do this to yes, I'm so glad I did this. So let's have a listen, get inspired, and I'll see you on the other side.

Ali Katz:
For your free marketing, you want to have a lead magnet and follow up system to build relationship. And then of course, the high value, high converting offer in our case, like we've been talking about, that's the family wealth planning session that has a 75% to 80% for some lawyers, 100% engagement rate at average fees of four to $6,000. And that intake and engagement system leads into a family wealth planning session and then a whole process for delivering on a service that clients absolutely love. And really that you as a lawyer will love to deliver. And that's really important. Here's what I can promise you. If you do not love to deliver on your service, nothing I'm sharing with you today is going to work because you are not going to go out there and market. Whether it's free marketing or paid marketing, you're not going to go out there and deliver marketing for a service you don't love to deliver on. Period. End of story. You have to love to deliver on your service.

Ali Katz:
Okay, so let's hear from two of our current new law business model member lawyers. We're going to start here today with Deirdre. Hi.

Deirdre:
Hi, Ali.

Ali Katz:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. And perhaps, Deirdre, you can let us know where you are calling in from and how long you have been a member lawyer with us.

Deirdre:
I am in mid Missouri at the beautiful lake of the Ozarks area. It's a big recreation lake. In fact, most of our folks here retire here at 65, 70 years old because they want to boat and play golf and fish. So we have a real active, newly retired community. It's a lovely place to practice, and it's just a beautiful place to be.

Ali Katz:
It sounds great. I bet this time of the year is the best, right?

Deirdre:
Yeah. And it wasn't hard for me to decide who my avatar was because of that. I have been a new law model member, I think, about three years. I associate it with the beginning of COVID I may be off a little bit, but probably close to three years.

Ali Katz:
And what were you doing before you came to us?

Deirdre:
I had opened up my own office about five or six years prior, having left a slightly larger firm, six to seven member firm, and was a general practitioner, mostly doing family law, probate, criminal defense in federal court. So it was, I would call it a litigation practice. I mean, I didn't try cases every day, but certainly was preparing for trial. It felt like all the time calendar that was largely controlled by judges and clients that were in crisis. Beating down my door. Yeah.

Ali Katz:
And so when you left the general practice firm, were you in general practice in your own practice as well?

Deirdre:
Initially I was, yeah.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. We call that, by the way, being a door lawyer, taking one door. And I'm curious, how many of you here on the line are currently door lawyers taking whatever walks in the door because you think that you have to. And were you doing any estate planning before you found us?

Deirdre:
I was. I've always done estate planning as one of the eight or nine practice areas that I did. So, yeah.

Ali Katz:
I'm assuming that you found us and decided to focus and just focus on estate planning. Is that right?

Deirdre:
Absolutely. So by the time I found you, and by the way, I had been watching your newsletters for probably four years before I made the call. Yeah, I was watching you closely. Before I joined, I had scaled down to four practice areas, and then around that Covid time, just made the decision to go exclusively with estate planning. And I remember that moment. I mean, it was kind of like lightning going off in my head, and it was. It just had to happen because life trying to master that many practice areas was just tiresome, and I just didn't want to do it anymore. So, yeah, yeah.

Ali Katz:
So in that. In that lightning moment, talk to me a little bit about the fear that you felt, because we have somebody asking that they're doing family law right now. How do I let go of the existing to step into the new? How do I know that the income will be there if I switch? Was it scary for you? How did you let go of that to step into something new?

Deirdre:
Yeah, it was really a culmination of things. My staff was probably more burnt out on the family law than I was because, you know, as much as my hair was on fire, I really lit their hair on fire. Cause, you know, you can just delegate all the stuff you don't want to do. So they were in crisis, and I didn't want a mass exodus, so that was brewing. And then, you know, when Covid hit, money became available to help. So I certainly took advantage of the PPP funds and the idle funds that gave me a level of security. And then I had a 401k that wasn't going to be large enough to sustain me into retirement. And I thought, what better way than to invest that now in a business that can certainly generate a lot more security for me? So I just shifted my mindset that it was okay to tap into that.

Deirdre:
And I did so those things, and then I just faded out gradually. You know, I still had money coming in from probate cases that hadn't settled. And so it was just, I was lucky, actually, that all that came together at the same time. Not that Covid was lucky for anybody. I don't mean that, but the money being available helped.

Ali Katz:
Well, and you made the choice. I see many lawyers who don't make the choice to take advantage of the resources available to them because we're scared. We're taught, don't take, absolutely don't use your four hundred one k. And yet, I don't see any better investment for a lawyer than learning to build a business around a service that they love to deliver. So let's talk a little bit about that. You learned life and legacy planning with us, and now, is that all you do today?

Deirdre:
It is. I have got maybe three cases that I'm still wrapping up years later, but I don't take any new cases other than estate planning.

Ali Katz:
Great.

Ali Katz:
And today you are doing some paid marketing because you got your free marketing in place. You've built on that but I want to go back to when you were doing just the free marketing strategies that we talked about today, the four different strategies, and you might have more. Maybe you were doing things or still are doing things that I didn't mention today. Where were you able to get to with just the free marketing before you built in the paid marketing?

Deirdre:
Again, I have to bring it back to the community that I serve. There are a lot of groups here, and of course, there's the chamber and the B&I and all that. But beyond that, there's social groups, women groups, newcomer groups, and in addition to making close friends in those areas, it gave me an opportunity to sit down and, you know, play cards with a large group of women on a regular basis or go to happy hours. Local magazine launches were always associated with a big blowout. You know, tons of people, happy hours. So just really planning out my calendar, making sure enough of those got on every month that I'm, you know, meeting people and getting out there. That was a huge, still is a huge strategy for the free marketing.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. I love that you're doing fun things that you might like to do anyway.

Deirdre:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
And that's marketing for you.

Ali Katz:
Would you love direct support to help you grow your law practice into a business you love, go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years plus to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.

Ali Katz:
That's marketing for you. We're going to hear from will. It's the same for him. And I noticed we are getting towards the top of the hour, and I want to make sure we get will in before the top of the hour. So let me just check in here with you. How many clients a month did you get to consistently using just the free before you started the paid?

Deirdre:
I would say around six.

Ali Katz:
Yeah.

Deirdre:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
And then that gave you the confidence to know that you could invest in the paid.

Deirdre:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
And it would pay off.

Deirdre:
That's right, yeah.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. Great. Okay, so, Deidre, if you'll just hang here for a moment. I am. Oh, and Erin is asking, how long did it take you to get to six consistently? A month. With that free marketing, would you say?

Deirdre:
I would say about a year. I had been practicing in the area for a long time, so I had some name recognition and some people that were already referring to me, but I would say about a year.

Ali Katz:
It wasn't much longer than that consistently.

Deirdre:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
And would you say that any part of that was because your calendar was full with other activities that you were still juggling the prior practice areas, or was it just that it took time for your, you know, consistency?

Deirdre:
Oh, it was both, yeah. My time was difficult to have enough of as I was phasing out and trying to phase in. So the number of appointments I could have available, Washington, was certainly limited as well.

Ali Katz:
Yeah.

Deirdre:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
Right. So we're going to bring Will up now. Hey, Will.

Will:
Hey, Ali.

Ali Katz:
All right, well, let's go ahead, will, and hear from you. So maybe start with where you were before joining us and when you joined us because you had a little bit of a different background than we heard from Deirdre.

Will:
Yeah, definitely. Thanks. So I spent the first eleven years and change of my career as a corporate attorney. I started with a big Amla 100 firm doing big M&A deals and securities offerings deals, and did that for a long, long time. And I found myself a few years ago at a medium sized firm, 50, 60 attorneys. And I was doing a lot of smaller corporate work, small business owner work, and then also that firm did a lot of estate planning. And so I started to get pulled into some of their estate. And at the same time, my grandfather passed away.

Will:
And Ali had a personal situation that was very similar to yours where my grandfather had been an attorney here in Texas, and he had practiced for almost 70 years. He died when he was 99. And he practiced right up until just a few years before the end when he couldn't quite make it up the office anymore. But not the kind of person that I think most of us would have expected to leave a bit of a mess behind. And yet we ended up with a bit of a mess on our hands. And while my mom and uncle went to work sorting out the mess, I went to work trying to figure out what went wrong and had already been talking to NLBM a little bit. So I knew that there was a better way to do this. And I kind of put it out there to the partners at my firm at the time and said, I think that we can do this a better way.

Will:
What if we change this? What if we change that? The response I got was basically like, we'll go back to your office and shut up.

Ali Katz:
Why do you think that was their response?

Will:
Well, I think they kind of felt this is the way we do it. We make tons of money. You're new to this. You don't know what you're talking about. Go keep making us money. Which in their defense is fine. They don't have to do anything they don't want to do. But that was the day that I decided that I was going to leave and start my own firm.

Will:
And that was the day that I called you guys up and said, all right, send me the invoice. We're good to go. And this was right at the beginning of COVID so early summer 2020, when I signed up and did the boot camp and then went straight into membership and spent the last few months of my time there at my old firm in the evenings putting my own firm together.

Ali Katz:
So you were still in, you stayed in your job. So I just want everybody to really get this here. You know, that we're mid Covid, scary time. And will says I'm out, but continues to work to wrap up matters at the firm and start his own law practice on the side. That's 2020. What happened in 2021?

Will:
So January 21 comes around and my firm paid bonuses. And the next day I walked in and quit. And the next week I started my firm. And so my firm has been open since mid January of last year. So about 18 months. And we hit the ground running. And all of that was thanks to NLBM giving me the resources to have everything ready to go. So the day I publicly said staff or law firm is open for business, I could just press a button and we were ready.

Ali Katz:
And you were ready. And in the beginning. Are you doing paid marketing now 18 months later, or are you still just using free marketing?

Will:
Very little.

Deirdre:
Very little.

Will:
So we are. I would say 90 plus percent of our clients are still from unpaid free organic marketing.

Ali Katz:
Amazing. And how many clients are you seeing each month and engaging each month?

Will:
So right now we're around seven to eight.

Ali Katz:
Yep.

Will:
And I think we may, we've kind of plateaued. So I think we've kind of hit the ceiling of what the organic marketing is going to do for us. So we actually literally within the next week or two, have several different big campaigns that we're launching.

Ali Katz:
Yes.

Will:
At the same time, kind of just turn it up.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. Great. But it got you here to this eight, just using these intentional free strategies. And one of the things that you said that we, you know, before the call started was, that includes talking to people at your kids' ball games.

Will:
Yeah. What I was saying before we got on the big call was that there are a lot of things that you don't think of as marketing because you do them every day. They feel very natural, they feel very gimmick, but if you do them intentionally, they become marketing. One of the best things you can do is make sure that everyone you know knows what you do and you don't have to make it weird or hit them in the head with sales conversation. But just when it comes up naturally in conversation, just don't be afraid to kind of take the conversation there and just say, like, oh, that's really interesting. Like, have you ever thought about doing, like, have you ever done any thinking about how you're going to plan for your kids if something were going to happen to you? Just kind of, like, lead them gently into it and have a conversation. And I can't tell you how many not necessarily friends, but acquaintances we've have who have come become clients simply because I stuck one sentence in the middle of an organic conversation, and it started a two hour long conversation between, like, maybe just Tiffany, my wife and I, and, like, another couple, because we were at a school event or we were at a charity event or whatever. If you don't do it intentionally, that's just around.

Will:
But if you do it with intention and you understand why you're doing it, so you have to truly believe in what you're doing and that you're really helping people and that by asking these kinds of questions, you are helping people improve their life. That's marketing. Marketing is not a bad word. Marketing is helping people.

Ali Katz:
And it really helps, I imagine that you have a service that you truly love to deliver and that, you know, is really helping people.

Will:
Oh, totally. I would never be able to have these conversations with people when I was doing, like, big corporate mergers. Right? Like, oh, I'm really going to save your life by helping you do a reverse triangular merger, No, not really.

Ali Katz:
Right. Or even, even just the estate planning that I think so many of us have learned to do that, you know, that your grandfather had, that my father in law had.

Will:
Yeah. Like, I ask all the time, you know, if estate planning comes up, because people know what I do now, pretty much like, everyone knows, but if it comes up, they're like, oh, yeah, you know, we did that. Like, we have our wills. And I'll just say, like, oh, that's great. That's great. What about, like, what did you do for the kids? Like, who's going to take care of the kids if something happens to you? And they're like, oh, well, like, you know, my mom did take care of, and I'm like, are you sure? That's usually what I'll say is like, are you sure? And just sit in the silence because nine times out of ten, no, they're not sure.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, there's holes.

Will:
There's always holes. Even in the best plan on earth possible, there's the possibility for holes. Right. But the goal is to think through as many of the contingencies as possible and make sure that if there is a hole we can imagine, we plug it. Are there holes we can't imagine? Yeah, probably, but you're not going to get out the door of my office if I can imagine a hole without it getting f****d.

Ali Katz:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
And that family wealth planning session is really designed to identify where the holes are so that you can help the clients to choose the plan that's going to fill those holes. And that's why that's the very first thing that we teach. Right. It's the very first thing we teach because without that family wealth planning session, without the ability to engage the clients, to help them see where the holes are, to help them choose to fill the holes, they really don't have anything to build a business on.

Ali Katz:
Right.

Will:
Yeah. So one thing I wanted to make sure I mentioned about, you know, the topic of today, which is like, free marketing is the most impactful high return on time and investment. Free marketing you can do is pick up the phone and call your former clients. Call your former colleagues. Call your friends, family and acquaintances. Call, call, call, call and do it with absolutely no motive. Call your former clients, even if it was a family law client or a criminal law client or a reverse triangular merger client. Right.

Will:
And say, hey, Bill, it's Will Stafford. I know it's been a long time since we chatted, but I was doing x the other day and it made me think of you and I just really wanted to pick up the phone and see how you're doing, what's going on. And then just like that's it, just call and let them know that you're thinking about them and that you care about them and that you're interested in their life. Don't turn it into a sales call, don't turn it into a pitch. Don't even necessarily tell them what you're doing unless they ask. Trust me, they're going to figure it out. When you call them out of the blue, they're going to go check your Facebook and see what's going on. Because now you're top of mind.

Will:
But the more you do that, the more you show people that you're thinking of them and that you care about them, the more top of mind you stay. And then either they're going to call you to do some work or they're going to tell a friend about you to do some work, and you never know how it's going to come back to you. But I promise you, that's the most impactful thing anyone can do from a free marketing perspective is just pick up the phone and call people and tell them that you care about them.

Ali Katz:
And care about them.

Will:
Yep, exactly.

Ali Katz:
That's it. Care about them. Now, I do want to say that what's important when you do that, to have that actually work is that your, for example, Facebook page is built out so that when people go check you out, they do know what you do and then that does lead into your intake and engagement system. So yes, there are some things that you want to have built out on the back end to making those calls, to make sure that those calls are valuable for you.

Will:
There's a million things you can do to, like, make them more valuable, you know? And certainly ours are more valuable because we have a really good website and we post constantly on social media across all our platforms. By the way, that doesn't have to take a lot of time. We plan the whole month out in advance or the whole weeks out in advance, and then it just happens automatically. We don't spend more than about 30 minutes a week on it. And yet if you look at our social media, you think we're posting like every 30 minutes. It feels like. Doesn't have to take a lot of time to saturate your organic community with your message.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, as long as you're not trying to do it all yourself, because that will take a lot of time.

Will:
Don't do it yourself.

Ali Katz:
Don't do it yourself. No.

Will:
Go check my social media. You'll see hundreds and hundreds of posts and then try to figure out how many of them I wrote myself and I'll, Spoiler alert, it's zero. I wrote zero. NLBM wrote the vast majority of them.

Ali Katz:
Amazing, Will. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your experience. Thank you for being so awesome.

Ali Katz:
If you are as inspired as I am by Deirdre and Will and their experiences, and you want to take the next steps, too, without having to reinvent the wheel or go it alone and have the full support that you need to make your next transition and turn your law practice into a business you absolutely love, and consider the path to PFL. Go to newlaw.co/show whether you are just starting out right now or you have your own practice, taking whatever comes in the door or even a few or more practice areas, or you're working for someone else and ready to go out on your own. We are here to serve you at new law business model as long as you want to serve families and or business owners with life and legacy planning. A service model, a differentiated service model that cannot be competed with by AI, legal tech, financial advisors, or cheap legal we're here to support you to turn your law degree into your highest value asset. Simply go to newlaw.co/show and book your call with a law business advisor and I'll see you on the inside.