Redefining Leadership: Clarity, Accountability, And Sustainable Growth with Marilyn Jenkins

In this episode of Advice from Your Advocates, Elder Law Attorney Bob Mannor interviews Marilyn Jenkins, a digital marketing expert and founder of MJ Media Group, LLC, and Law Marketing Zone®. They discuss the importance of mentorship, delegation, and adapting to changes in the business landscape, particularly in the wake of COVID-19. Marilyn shares insights on optimizing Google Business Profiles, the significance of customer reviews, and strategies for reactivating past clients. They also explore the future of leadership in the age of AI and the importance of work-life balance. Key takeaways include the need for effective delegation, listening to your team, and focusing on business growth.

Episode Takeaways

• Understanding the journey and culture is crucial for leaders.
• Mentorship plays a significant role in leadership development.
• Delegation is essential for effective leadership.
• COVID-19 reinforced the effectiveness of remote work.
• Optimizing Google Business Profile is vital for local businesses.
• Customer reviews impact user experience and business reputation.
• Reactivating past clients can lead to significant business growth.
• AI will enhance efficiency but not replace human jobs.
• Defining what you want in life is key to work-life balance.
• Listening to your team is essential for successful leadership.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. 

Host: Elder Law Attorney Bob Mannor

Executive Producer: Savannah Meksto

Assistant Producers: Samantha Noah, Shalene Gaul

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to Advice from Your Advocates, a show where we provide elder law advice to professionals who work with the elderly and their families.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome back to Advice from Your Advocates. I'm Bob Manor. I'm a board-certified elder law attorney in Michigan. And today we're changing things up a little bit. We've got Marilyn Jenkins, who is the has the podcast Leadership in Law, but she does a million other things too. So she has uh she's the founder of MJ Media Group and Law Zone Marketing. She specializes in all aspects of digital marketing, including paid advertising, SEO, Google Business Profile Optimization, Review Management, and database reactivation to drive business success. Marilyn, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Leadership Growth And Letting Go Of Ego

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I'd like to talk a little bit about your career and what you've learned, specifically some of the things that you've learned from interviewing leaders.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Absolutely. Oh my gosh, it's just understanding the journey and creating culture and really taking a very inclusive stance with their businesses. And I think mentorship was huge when in a lot of the stories that I've been hearing through my podcast. Always starting, you know, being teachable and then becoming that teaching spirit.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

You know, I was talking to a friend just yesterday about how when you become a leader, when you become a manager, sometimes you have to let go of some of your previous understanding of yourself or some of your previous ego, because there is some growth that's necessary once you move into a role that you didn't have before. And so I think that that's a universal thing that if you're gonna do a good job as a leader or a manager or administrator, sometimes you have to let go of previous thoughts about yourself. And sometimes there's humility, sometimes there's becoming a little bit, you know, more demanding. It, but whatever it is, sometimes you have to kind of change your outlook on life if you're gonna fulfill that role successfully.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

I absolutely agree. And I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to ego. We all have the drive to be more. And then when we get to the point where we're managing and taking on more, we can't be the only one doing the work. Delegation comes into it. There's a lot of that, and I think that's what a role of a coach or or mentor has helped in a lot of people is teaching that okay, you want to be more, you have to be allow m other people to be more. You know, you're not sailing the ship yourself.

Mentorship And Delegation Mindset

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Right. So how do you think your podcast, and we'll get into some of the other aspects of the many roles that you have, but how do you think your podcast has influenced the other works that you do?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

I think it's hearing other stories, hearing other opinions, and basically building my network. You know, we don't it it's I've been doing this business since the late 90s. There's been a lot of growth, a lot of learning, but a lot of changes. And so you have to stay with that. And I think doing the podcast, I've got to see from different perspectives, things that I do and things that I help people with. And it's also helped me grow as a person. You know, you get new, new resources to read and learn about. And it's just been an overall very positive, positive learning experience.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I, you know, as business owners, I know that we know it's constantly changing. And then we had the tsunami of COVID, and everything changed, it seemed. And didn't my I have a coach, as you mentioned, and his analogy was it's not like a rubber band. If you if you you know, if you have a little rubber band, you just stretch it a little bit, it'll go back to shape. But and this was his analogy for COVID. He said, But if you stretch the rubber band uh far enough, it's not gonna go back to its original shape. Adjusting to those changes, how do you see that leaders and business owners had to adjust to all of the small changes all the time, but sometimes very large changes?

Podcasting, Perspective, And Post‑COVID Shifts

SPEAKER_01 4:03

I think uh one of the things it did is it helped reinforce that you can have remote labor and still be a really effective net leader. And I think before COVID, we didn't really, you know, those of us in tech, we've been used to doing Zoom and different things like that for so many years. Now so many came on. But I think it proved that you can still have a very productive company and good customer service and just great team members and not all have to be in the office underfoot. And you can still delegate in a remote environment.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

So I know that a lot of what you do is help others drive business success. And and part of that is through all of the things that we talked about with regard to online, being strategic about your online presence. What setbacks do you see leaders face when trying to grow their businesses?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

I think one of the things they do is don't take advantage of some of the free things that are out there. Many of us know about the my Google Google My Business, which was kind of used as a place just to store reviews. And when it was upgraded to Google Business Profile, it's so much more. It's a way of being seen locally. Keep telling by updating it frequently, you keep telling Google the types of searches you want to be found for. It is so much more effective if you think about it as its own, like having your own separate website, right? You have a website, but this Google Business Profile, you are in Google's belly telling them exactly who you are, what you do, who you serve, and what types of searches you should be found for in your local area. I think it's absolutely integral for any local business to claim, optimize, and continue to post on their Google Business Profile on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

When you talk about the Google Business Profile and optimizing it, is that something that you think that most people really could delve into on their own and figure out and do it effectively, or is that something that you really might need, a professional that knows how to do that?

Remote Teams And Productivity

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I think it depends on the amount of time that you have, right? If you are a busy CEO or administrator or owner of a company and you just don't have the time to do it, it would be beneficial to have someone else do it. It's something you can do on your own. It just takes a little bit of a learning curve. They've got a really, really easy to understand management portal. And it just comes to creating content on a regular basis. Because Google's the number one search engine because of the user experience. So if you continue to provide information to your Google Business profile, as well as responding to your reviews and all of that, you're showing Google that you care about their user experience, and those simple steps can get you higher rankings than your competition because you are consistently providing them the information they need to give their visitors better response uh.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Other than the Google business profile, what other things, whether it be something that they can do themselves or something that they should just consider uh getting help with, what other things would you are do you suggest are very important for either just maintaining the business, making sure it doesn't deteriorate, or growing the business?

Local Growth Hurdles For Leaders

SPEAKER_01 7:13

A couple of things I would do as a local business is if you're involved in the community in any way, whether it's the Chamber of Commerce, charities, any of those types of things, is make sure that you trade backlinks with those. Because it goes into the authoritative building strategy that uh Google and the AI platforms are looking for. And let's not be confused, the chat GPTs and the answer engines are all pulling from Google's data, right? So we want to make sure we provide as much information. I would make sure I was listed in every local directory, whether it's city pages, the yellow pages, your chamber of commerce, anybody you're in communicating with or involved with. And if you do any charity work, offer or ask to buy a link or or get a link back from, even if it's a little league team that you're sponsoring. Any of those types of things, it shows that you are relevant in your local community. Those things are very important, and that's what I would suggest for anybody to do that in addition to their website.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

So I think you'd agree with me on this that they have to be legitimate backlinks, that this is something that there is a connection, that there are legitimate backlinks. I get daily probably four or five spam emails trying to sell backlinks, and I would assume that we both agree that that is be careful of that.

Mastering Google Business Profile

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Exactly. I mean that will undermine your authorities. So say you buy a hundred backlinks on random sites in random countries. Well, eventually every Google, every search engine and AI engine is going to look and say, nope, those aren't any good. So you want to make sure there is a relevant, you know, if you are in an industry that has directories, associations, any of those, you want to make sure that you're back you get a backlink from those. That's again more authority.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

So just so that we're not getting too into business jargon, can you describe for those that aren't really all that sophisticated with their online presence, describe a backlink?

SPEAKER_01 9:10

It's where if another website puts a link or your website address on there and links where it's clicked, it goes to your website. So if you're a member of the chamber, they probably have a directory on site. And then that directory is gonna have like the name, address, phone number, and website address for everyone, uh every business or every member. So that would be a backlink. So that's that's what we want to do is we want to make sure that we get other relevant websites to link to your website. And then everything you post, like say posts or articles onto your Google Business profile, will also link back to your website. All of these build your authority, doing it slowly, and it just improves your positioning online.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Can you talk to us a little bit about the importance of customer or client or family, you know, patient reviews?

DIY Vs Hiring For Optimization

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Reviews are incredible. Now, again, we get back to what Google it's the user experience, right? So if you're getting a review, whether it's good, bad, or mediocre, you still should reply to it. Professionally reply to it, and in that reply, you should use your keywords where you can. What that shows is if it's a negative review and you've responded professionally, future clients are gonna see that and they're gonna say they care. Okay, look how they replied. They weren't grumpy or anything. Everybody has a bad day, and we know it. So those types of things, and it shows Google that you care and that you're paying attention. You know, Amazon taught us to read reviews before we make a decision. So I read the negative ones as well. Some are valuable, some you can tell they're having a bad day, but your reply to those tells your future customer how you feel about them being your future customer.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

I'll tell you, and I think a lot of people are like this that when I'm doing some research on a company or a hotel or anything like that, the first thing I look at is the bad reviews because I want to see what, you know, what what you know, and there's always going to be bad reviews, and there's always gonna be people that, you know, a lot of the bad reviews are people that never even stayed there. They just didn't, you know, like the phone interaction or whatever it was, or they never used that company, or they never hired that lawyer. But I and so when I look at the bad reviews, even if there's 5,000 reviews and there's only 10 bad reviews, it tells me, you know, okay, number one is how did they respond? And number two is does, you know, what does my gut tell me about those reviews and whether they're actually legitimate or not?

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Exactly. I mean, it could be just a disgruntled disgruntled past employee or something. Or again, like you said, they had nothing to do with it. Maybe they chose the wrong business. A mistake, you know, just be clear, be honest, don't be emotional. Yeah, be professional, and that's what people look at.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yeah. There's one term here that I am not sure I'm familiar with database reactivism.

Authority Building With Local Backlinks

SPEAKER_01 12:02

So that's like we all have a database of people that's come through our business. Hopefully, if you have a CRM or some the way that you are managing a CRM being a customer relations management software, somewhere like that. So if you have a list of past clients and you're a one-purchase type business and and you have a potential of doing business with someone again, um database reactivation could be as simple as doing a monthly newsletter. It could be as simple as sending an email saying, Hey, haven't heard for you in a while, wanted to know if there's anything I can help you with. Right? Just saying, hey, I'm still out here. That sort of thing. And when you do that, we have seen in instances of doing that where in the beginning, in one call or one email sending out or text message if you have that approval, a turnaround of forty to eighty thousand dollars in case value coming from one, because you know, people know people.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

You know, do you do you or anyone you know, you know, need any assistance? You never know. These people are already, it's like almost like preempting a referral. They already know you, they've done business with you in the past, or they've communicated with you in the past. So reach out periodically and see and build your business. You know, referral scan, that's icing on the cake.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

I think that's really smart. A lot of times, even for those folks that never hired you, they're in your database and they didn't need maybe they didn't need you that time, or the pain that they were in suffering, or the thing that they needed to fix wasn't hot enough for them at that point, wasn't important enough. But then if you're not top of mind awareness, if you're not top of mind on their mind, they might forget about you. So having that where you kind of reactivate that when they do need you, we see this all the time. I I do a bunch of classes and we'll get occasionally I'll get a flyer or uh or some paperwork from a class that I did in, you know, 1999. And they call us up and they said, Well, you know, we came to this class and now we need your help. And it's just one of those things that uh not everybody needs your services at the initial time that they they contacted, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

I have old contacts that I just I keep in a regular email newsletter type thing that our original contact was in 2021, 2022, and in 2025 they came forward. Now's the time. So you're right. It just helps to be in touch, stay top of mind. It's an again another way of local marketing. Just stay in touch with your past leads or clients and see how you can cultivate and be top of mind. So when they do have a need, they think of you.

What Backlinks Are And Why They Matter

SPEAKER_00 14:37

So I'd like to kind of get back to the leadership conversation. I think the world and especially technology is changing so fast. And like you said, the remote work, but also artificial intelligence and all of that is going to streamline a lot of things. Sometimes when I say AI, people get afraid of that. But in reality, at least in business, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to replace jobs. It means that we're going to be more efficient in those jobs. We can be more productive. We can provide better services to our clients. And so, what do you see as the future of leadership?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

I think it's examining exactly how you can be more efficient and more productive. You hit the nail on the head right there. I don't think AI is going to replace people anytime soon. I think it may replace people with people who are better at AI. But it just comes down to you're still going to need someone, like say you have it write a letter for you or draft a document for you, or draft an article for you. You're still going to need those English eyes, those human eyes to look at it and go, this doesn't really make sense. You need it for a first draft. Imagine writing, you know, you need to write a series of emails or an article for a publication. Instead of you spending two or three hours doing the research, making your decision, writing the article, have the AI do it based on a very good prompt, which is the typing out of what you want it to say in the tone, to end your prompt, say, ask me any questions, any clarifying questions before delivering. Then you can get a really good uh draft and go from there.

Reviews, Responses, And Trust Signals

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah, I agree with you. I think the prompts are everything. So if you just ask the AI to say, write a letter about this, it won't be very good. But if you ask to say, what things would you include in a letter that is about this? And then you pick and choose what things you want to, and then you say, Well, could you expand on on this one? And I usually try not to give it too many uh tasks at the same time. So I don't say expand on these 10, I expand on this one. I look at that, maybe revise that again. And I think it's a matter of being very skilled at those prompts. And so I think that's where some people get frustrated with AI, thinking it's not as effective or it's just not that good. It's because you've got to really focus on that. I've seen job postings for AI engineers, which is basically a lot of it's going to be being very good at those prompts.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

And no, you know, also out of the box with no direction, say ChatGPT, Gemini, any of those, they're designed to be an admin assistant. So if you want someone to do like a copywriting, perhaps you'd start your prompt acting as an expert copywriter in this subject. You know, it does come down to the prompt, but once you get a good prompt and you get the content you want, then it's updating that prompt periodically just to when you change your content. And again, this is not going to be the end result you submit. Right. You're going to still take that and then make that human.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yeah, I always try to give it the tone, you know, in the tone of an elder law attorney that with 30 years of experience or, you know, those types of things. When my colleague asked, this is early on, a couple of years ago now, but there's a very complex uh tax law, I'm sure you're familiar with it, the Secure Act. And she said, well, ask it to explain the Secure Act to a second grader. And the results were actually quite interesting. But the whole point of it was that's not the tone that you would normally use. But if you you have to kind of define the tone so it knows what is the audience, who's the deliverer of the message, all of that.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yeah, exactly. And knowing your ideal client if you're if that's who you're speaking with. So say you're having it help you write that database reactivation or a newsletter, then you can always say, say it from my perspective, your tone, to a whatever your average age client is.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Right. So with leadership, what have you found with your research and just talking to all these leaders that you've had an opportunity to have on your podcast and others? How does how do leaders and managers and administrators achieve that work-life balance?

Database Reactivation That Converts

SPEAKER_01 18:47

I think a lot of it is being clear with with what you want, which is, you know, it it could be keeping up with the Joneses and maybe it's not. But I think the bottom line comes with what do you want? And how can you get there by using your entire team so that everybody benefits from the move forward? You can be everything you want in life, but what level of that do you want? Right? So do you want to work a four-hour work week and do you want to make seven figures? You probably can't do both on your own. It defines defining what you want, would be the most important part, and then using your team and defining a way of getting there.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah, that's a great answer. Yeah, and I think that for for me and for most, the use, you know, working with your team is so important. There are, especially lawyers. I think you'll probably agree with me on this. Uh, there's a lot of lawyers that just and it might be ego, it might be other things, but they really feel like they have to do everything themselves. And that uh that they when when they assign tasks, they're always assigning sort of lower-end tasks. Well, the reality is a lot of the work that we do can be trained, and you don't need to be a lawyer to do it. So a lot of the high-end things that we do is initially done by a non-lawyer. We have for so we do Medicaid in our office and veterans benefits. That department is run by a non-lawyer, and she probably could run circles around a lot of the lawyers that do their own Medicaid and Veterans Benefits because she's been doing it for so long and she's very effective at it. And she's got her own team of paralegals and social workers and such. And so I think one of the things that lawyers kind of get stuck on is they feel like they have to do it themselves, and that's not going to be great for work-life balance.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

No, and I think a lot of business owners feel that way. You know, I can do it better, I can do it faster, so I might as well just do it. You're not you're not helping your team grow, and you're not helping yourself get a work-life balance out of that. I feel like when it comes to delegation, you have two additional things. You have responsibility and accountability. So if you've got someone that can make 80% of the decisions that you would make, that's good. Take that, let them run with it, and then make corrections and train along the way. You need to be open to the fact that you want a work-life balance. And the way you can do that is to help those people strive to be better leaders among themselves.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

So, Marilyn, thank you so much for being here with us today. Can you tell us any key takeaways that you have for successful leadership and just trying to advance your business?

Staying Top Of Mind Over Time

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I think listen to your team, know what you want, define your ideal customer, and literally in all your marketing, speak to that and make sure that your entire team buys into that vision. Again, responsibility and accountability. Be prepared and start stepping away from the main day to day so you can work on your business. And I know that's you know, said over and over again, instead of in your business. It's very important.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Well, thank you, Marilyn Jenkins. I if you want to get more information about Marilyn, uh she has the Leadership in Law Podcast. You can find her online at LawmarketingZone.com and her YouTube channel, which is very educational, is at Law Marketing Zone on YouTube. So thank you so much, Marilyn.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

And if you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe. You can find us at any place that you listen to podcasts. Or you can go to our website at mannerlawgroup.com, or we also have a YouTube channel at Manner Law YouTube. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Thanks for listening. To learn more, visit MannerLawgroup.com.