Marketing in December:
How to Go for It and Have the
Best Year of Your Business

Ali Katz:
Any of you that are thinking that December is a dead month, or frankly even that, you know, the summer, the summer is dead. Oh, nobody, nobody wants to come to meet with me in the summer. Nobody wants to come to my events in the summer. It's just not true. The truth is, is that people want to learn throughout the year and people want to work with you throughout the year. It's really just up to you to show up for it and to get the support that you need so that you've got your benchmarks.

Ali Katz:
Welcome to the NewLaw podcast for entrepreneurial lawyers. Here at Personal Family Lawyer, we want to help more families and business owners make eyes wide open legal and financial decisions. But we cannot do this without you. Which is why we started this podcast to find those of you ready to offer a better way to serve your clients. So if you are a legal professional who wants to help improve the legal and financial wellbeing of your clients and offer a service model that differentiates you while meeting the needs of your community, and rest easy knowing that you are running your law practice like a real business, then join us on this journey by subscribing to the show and find out how you can use a new law business model to love your life as a lawyer.

Ali Katz:
Hello, everyone, and welcome. We have a very special podcast episode today because there is great belief in the business community and certainly in the legal entrepreneur community, that December is a dead month for marketing. You should just give up. Just don't focus on marketing in December. Sometimes we hear the same thing about the summer. The summer's dead. But it is these kinds of beliefs that are hurting your business. They're hurting your income.

Ali Katz:
They're keeping you from having consistent income. So I have with me today one of our senior law business advisors, Kim Rockwood, who was a Personal Family Lawyer Firm leader before she decided to come in house with us at New Law Business Model. And I have Kim with us today because she transformed her entire law practice, really, into a business by what she did in December. And she cracked the code with our support. And as a result, she discovered December is in fact, not a dead month at all. It's actually a very powerful month to be marketing your business and your services. So welcome, Kim. Thanks so much for being here.

Kim Rockwood:
Hi, Ali. I'm glad to be here. This is a fun talk.

Ali Katz:
Yeah, it's so fun. Had you also heard in the past that December is a dead month?

Kim Rockwood:
All the time. And in fact, I had proven that true in my mind in my litigation practice because a lot of, you know, court dates were canceled in December or whatever. So in my mind, which I like, carried over into my estate planning practice for a while, that was true.

Ali Katz:
Yes. And then you were working with one of our law business success coaches. I think it was Jess?

Kim Rockwood:
Yes.

Ali Katz:
Was your coach back then. And Jess persuaded you that maybe this was a false belief, that maybe actually you could do something different, and you decided to listen to her guidance. And what did you do?

Kim Rockwood:
I did, yeah. After a lot of resistance, and Jess really was great at challenging my limited beliefs, I finally just said, all right, you know what? I'm just going to try it. I'm just going to not overthink it. And I'm going to schedule a webinar for December.

Ali Katz:
Great.

Kim Rockwood:
That was really all it was, was just a challenging of that limited belief that I had.

Ali Katz:
Yes. And you mentioned having resistance. Do you remember now, like, what was the resistance? Why? Why, why not do it?

Kim Rockwood:
Yeah. The resistance was, it's going to be a waste of time. I'd rather spend my time with my family. Nobody will come, so I don't want to bother people with the holidays. I had that resistance, too. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it was just. I thought that it would be a big waste.

Ali Katz:
Got it. Okay. But Jess said just, you know, she really worked with you, helped you to move through all the resistance. And this is, by the way, one of the reasons that we give each one of our PFL firm leaders a private coach. It took a lot for me over the years to put that in place, but I saw that it was so critically important, because if we don't have a mentor and a coach that is really holding our hand and guiding us. And this was the case for me, too, throughout my entire business career, that I would just often find reasons to get in my own way, not do the things that I should do or could do, and then not have the results that I wanted. And so we give every Personal Family Lawyer Firm leader a private coach. You had that benefit.

Ali Katz:
Jess supported you through the resistance. And you held a webinar in December, specifically what date?

Kim Rockwood:
December 30th.

Ali Katz:
December 30th. And that's such actually important time. So for so many years, I did a webinar or a call before we had webinars on December 31. That was my big, actually time of year where every year people would be used to knowing, oh, Ali's going to do a call on December 31st. You did yours on December 30th. It's really the same. Same that week between Christmas and New Year's that many people think is a dead week for business is actually such a powerful week for business for a couple of reasons. One is that people actually have a lot of free time that week and they're starting to think about the next year.

Ali Katz:
And so your webinar had a title. What was the title on December 30th?

Kim Rockwood:
It was "Finally get your ducks in a row in the following year", 2021, I think. Yeah.

Ali Katz:
Yes. And your webinar was "Adulting 101".

Kim Rockwood:
That's right.

Ali Katz:
Which is one of the presentations that we now give to our PFL firm leaders to run in their. In their own communities. We, I think you originally created that from the resources we had given you. And then we have since upleveled it even more. And so that is now a resource that we give to all of our PFL firm leaders to use one of the assets they get to license. And Adulting 101 is how long is that webinar?

Kim Rockwood:
The one I used is. It was about 45 minutes without questions that people ask.

Ali Katz:
Got it. So on December 30, you ran this 45 minute webinar. You advertised it. A lot of people say, don't advertise in December because it's the holidays. It's more expensive. But you advertised it. And how many people registered?

Kim Rockwood:
I had about 130 registered.

Ali Katz:
Great. And about half of those people showed up?

Kim Rockwood:
That's right. We had just over 60.

Ali Katz:
60 showed up. And then you made a call to action for people to book with you for a planning session. Maybe that at that time it was a family wealth planning session. We now give our lawyers a choice. Family wealth planning session or life and legacy planning session, which is also our branded term. And you ended up filling how much of your calendar as a result of that?

Kim Rockwood:
I ended up filling the next six weeks. So through half of February, just from that one event that didn't include, you know, other marketing that I was doing.

Ali Katz:
Right. So now you're booked out really six weeks, which to me that's the goal. When I was walking down the halls in my office and praying and praying for consistency, that was what I was praying for, is I want to be booked four to six weeks into the future. That would allow my nervous system to say, okay, great, I know that I'm going to have income coming in because I know how to engage the clients. I know how to make sure they show up for their appointments. And then you were booked that six weeks out. That's about the farthest that we want to be booking people out. Otherwise they start to drop off and have more no shows and cancellations.

Ali Katz:
And that way you can then use, you know, that four weeks, six weeks in advance to really get them ready for the meeting so that when they come in, they engage you for your services because you're following the script that we taught you for the planning session. And the next thing that you did, which really transformed your practice, I would say, into a business, is you actually mapped out your entire year. So tell us about that.

Kim Rockwood:
I did. So what I did was I would take that week between Christmas and New Year's and I would not schedule any appointments. That was my focus on the business. Prepare for the following year week and I actually had a paper calendar then that I would start with because I like to, you know, see it all at once. I took the calendar for the next year, and I wrote in when I was going to have my webinars and when I was going to have my events, my live events for the entire year. I made that commitment to myself so that in my mind, the decision was already made.

Ali Katz:
No matter what came up, you're doing it, you're planning it. It's happening that way you can also book in the number of planning sessions that you're going to schedule from each of those, because one of the big mistakes that we see lawyers make is they kind of have an open schedule. I'll just schedule whenever, or I'll just schedule as many as I possibly can. But that's actually one of the pieces that hurts your business the most, is when you don't have your calendar structured in the way that, that we teach, where your. Your calendar actually becomes the tool for consistent income. And so if you schedule your webinars and your live presentations and then just the exact number of planning sessions that you need based on your conversion rate, which ideally our benchmark is a minimum of 80%. Where did you get to in terms of your conversion rate when you were taking on planning sessions?

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:
Where did you get to in terms of your conversion rate when you were taking on planning sessions?

Kim Rockwood:
It was usually between 80 and 90%.

Ali Katz:
80 to 90% of the people that you met would engage your services. And some of our lawyers even have a hundred percent engagement rate, depending on really, you know, a number of factors, but primarily how they're preparing people for the planning session and then what they're doing in the planning session. So 80% is the minimum benchmark. So once you know your conversion rate and you know exactly how many clients you need, and you know exactly what your average fee is, you can map out your calendar for the entire year based on the growth plans that you have, based on your cash forecast, your hiring choices. And we call this having a cash flow forecast and a calendar to match. And so that's really exactly what you did, is you created a cash flow forecast and a calendar to match. And then as a result, what ended up happening that year?

Kim Rockwood:
Yeah, I ended up having the best year that I ever had that year. It just completely transformed you. One of my stories is that the year before, I had a month where the revenue for the entire month was only $500.

Ali Katz:
Gosh.

Kim Rockwood:
And then a year later, which happened that following year, after I gave this December 30th webinar, I was hitting a consistent 35 to $40,000 every month in just 12 months time. So I had a real business.

Ali Katz:
You had a real business. Yeah. So this is the power of commitment to yourself, to your calendar, to your cashflow forecast, knowing what your goals are, setting your goals, setting your tools of your calendar and your cashflow forecast to match each other. And also really the power of mentorship. Because without Jess's support, you wouldn't, there's, you just wouldn't have done it. You would have found all the reasons not to do it. And so I wanted to just have this time together here so that for any of you that are thinking that December is a dead month, or frankly even that, you know, the summer, the summer is dead. Oh, nobody, nobody wants to come to meet with me in the summer. Nobody wants to come to my events in the summer. It's just not true. The truth is, is that people want to learn throughout the year and people want to work with you throughout the year. It's really just up to you to show up for it and to get the support that you need so that you've got your benchmarks of a minimum 80% engagement rate, average fees that are high enough. We like to say average between 4,000 or 4,500 and 6,000, 6,500 or so because you've got a system for pricing your services and for helping your clients choose their own fee. We don't even believe in fee quoting per se. That's you just saying, oh, here's how much it's going to be. Nope.

Ali Katz:
We have a whole system for helping your clients choose their own fee. That's part of what lens to that nearly 100% engagement rate. And then really getting the mentorship to hold you accountable, to mapping out your calendar, to really looking at it with somebody and to hosting the events that you need to host and knowing how to make those events so that they convert. Right. Because otherwise you're just educating your community and nobody actually does anything. Nobody actually takes any action. And you want every hour that you spend on your marketing to be really effective. And that's what this December 30th event was for you, Kim.

Ali Katz:
So I'm so glad that you did that. I'm so glad that you had that mental transformation. For anybody that's listening to this that might be thinking, oh, I can just go it alone, you know, I don't really need to get the support. What would you say to them?

Kim Rockwood:
I would challenge them to say, well, you know, what if. What if there was someone out there who either had done this before or could challenge my limiting beliefs? What is possible? That's what I found was, you know, a lot of lawyers I know are like this. We overthink and kind of get in our own way. And we really need that outside trusted person to help us get out of our heads and see what really is possible. So I would say just do it. Just get the help. You'll never know how great things could be.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. And I want to say that that's the case for all business owners. Whether you're just starting out or you're at that, you know, 5, 600,000 a year, and you're like looking towards your seven figures and you want to get there, or you're at seven figures and now you want to go to the next level. It is always the case. Currently, even myself, I am working with multiple coaches, consultants, advisors, always. Because I know that if I leave it up to myself, I'm going to get stuck in my mind. I'm not going to take the actions that I know that I need to take. And it's really by having that outside advisor who's already been there, already done that, that can guide me, support me each step of the way and help me see what I'm missing. In the same way that Jess helped Kim to see exactly what she was missing that transformed her life in business. So, Kim, thank you so much for joining us here today. I appreciate it. This is very, you know, short, direct, potent, gives everybody a clear strategy that they can take. Whether you're listening to this in, you know, November or December and you're like, okay, I'm going to do it in December. You can, it's not too late. Or if you're listening to this any other time of the year, just recognize that this is applicable to every single month. You don't have to just do this at the end of the year or the beginning of the year.

Ali Katz:
You can start right now. It's never too late. They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now. And that is the case for you as well. If you're turning your law practice into a business you love, the best time to start getting the support that you need is right now. And if you want to get our support, you can go to newlaw.co/show and book a call with one of our law business advisors who will let you know exactly how you can get access to the private coaching support that we offer. But even more importantly, the tools so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel like the Adulting 101 presentation, like the cash flow forecast and the calendar to match, like all of the follow up materials that you need after you have a webinar.

Ali Katz:
And now you need to follow up with the people who didn't come, the people who came and didn't book, the resources that you need to get people on the webinar, the specifics of what to say in the webinar. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. For any of that.

Ali Katz:
If you were trying to go it on your own. It's just going to cost you so much more time, energy, attention and money. And here at NewLaw, we're all about you using your team resources. That's what we call time, energy, attention and money. Team resources as efficiently and effectively as possible so that you can serve as many people in your community as possible and serve them in a way that truly creates planning that works for them, that makes a real difference in their lives and that makes you the go to lawyer in your community for the families and or business owners that you serve. So Kim, thank you again. I so appreciate you and I'm sure that those who do join us will look forward to working with you and getting your support as well. All right, thanks everyone.

Ali Katz:
All right, bye bye. For now.

Kim Rockwood:
Bye.