Ben's delivers his opening keynote at this year's Great Legal Marketing Summit"
Topics:
1. why the established bar has this all wrong.
2. why this tribe is so important to the profession
3. overcoming resistance before and after the conference
Lawyers came early and stayed late.
This is about a movement.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
Ben's delivers his opening keynote at this year's Great Legal Marketing Summit"
Topics:
1. why the established bar has this all wrong.
2. why this tribe is so important to the profession
3. overcoming resistance before and after the conference
Lawyers came early and stayed late.
This is about a movement.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
Great legal marketing is about building a life for yourself by deliberate design. As our friend, mike Agugliero talked to our group this morning. It's about building something that puts you first, your family first, and making a great life. Figure out how to do that for your teammates, because when you solve for you, your family and your teammates, your client's going to be well served. What the legal profession does, which is wrong, which puts a client up at the top and it makes you a self-sacrificial lamb, and that is the root cause of lawyer misery. And this is a meeting and this group is a meeting that should be happening all over the country, because every state bar, everything they say about the profession is that it's negative, you get what you signed up for, it's miserable. The default is misery. We just had a case in you've seen, brian, I ran about this federal court in Northern Virginia. A judge, so a woman trial lawyer representing indigent defendant her mother gets diagnosed with breast cancer, metastatic breast cancer. So we know that's bad right. She says, lou, I've got to stop, get me out of this case, there's other lawyers in there. Give me out of this case, judge, so I can go care for my mother and be with my mother. Metastatic breast cancer judge says no four circuit court appeal says that's fine. I'm like what the hell? We have all this stuff coming from the state bar about lawyer wellness and then we have judges and I have challenged the Virginia State Bar and Kellan, you're here and I think you're still connected. You guys got to take a position on this right One way or the other. The membership needs to know is this panel right? Is that decision right? We want to know. Anyway, it's not about the marketing.
Speaker 1:Many years ago the story chat didn't tell you, I left it out in Phoenix. We took a mastermind group out to infuse us off and we did. They had some presentations for us and then I got stuck in a snowstorm. You might ask how could you get stuck in a snowstorm in Phoenix, arizona? While I was on Phoenix, a big blizzard hit the East Coast and I couldn't get back out. And so we're there for a couple days, going to the laundry, finding where the laundry mat is, finding the clothes, buying the clothes. I said, chad, can I just hang out with you? And we knew each other a bit right? He said absolutely, so. He let me follow him around, infuse us off in meetings. And he said hey, remember the surprise birthday party for one of my, I think, nine, nine children? Chad, yeah, like I'm nine, he is nine, his are a little bit younger. Come over to our house, we have 77 pizzas, lots of kids. Just come over and he let me hang with with he and Cassie. So Chad and I go, we go way back.
Speaker 1:But, as Ryan said, two weeks ago we were in Orlando. He was more human than it is now at an event and I was taking some video of the MC because Chad, chad brought energy today. But this other event, this guy was like 10 times more energetic former hip hop dancer. I said Chad, can you do this? He goes. Where are you? I said I'm down here in Orlando at this marketing commerce. He goes this is Ben. Why are you at a marketing conference?
Speaker 1:On the paraphrases, you know everything. I said Chad, let me tell you something. I said you're right. There's probably now listen, there's probably not a lot of new marketing, right?
Speaker 1:The market, the principles of marketing have not changed since cavemen. It's all about influence of human beings. Those principles don't change. The strategies of marketing don't change much at all. What has changed is all this technology went from yellow pages to digital ads, to almost anything you can imagine. That changes.
Speaker 1:I said Chad, I'm not really here for the marketing so much. I'm here because I have changed. I'm not the same person I was a week ago. I'm not the same person I was a month ago. I'm not the same person I was a year ago. So, even though I'm hearing many of the same principles and strategies and tactics, ben Glass has changed. My family is different. Our practice is different. We have more money to go spend on things. I've got a wonderful team at Ben Glass Law that allowed us to fly down here on Monday and basically not worry about what's going on, even though we also have our marketing director, lauren and Lisa. One of our attorneys is in the room here somewhere.
Speaker 1:Here we go up front and we have changed and I'll tell you that and we discussed this the last two days in our mastermind groups is the number one thing that if you come back a year from now, or you look back a year from now and you look back to this date and to this weekend and you have changed and I hope that you have changed it won't be because of the marketing. It'll be because you have grown in some way. You have changed Mike of Google arrow and Bill Big, so Bill will be up here after I am Mike speaking tomorrow. You need to be, you will want to be in the room to listen to these guys. Like I said, the biggest barrier as he has built and sold to multi-million dollar businesses the biggest barrier to growth of any company we're talking law firms here is the owner, is the person who started and founded a law firm and thinks that they're a leader, but maybe they're not really a great leader, and so we had some good back and forth this morning about self-reflection, about challenging yourself, and that's gonna be the biggest thing.
Speaker 1:So the cool part we always joke about this is hey, come for the marketing. People come in the door and the reason you have people that have been with me for 15 years and over a decade and keep coming back is because of the mind growth stuff that we talk about at our highest level mastermind meetings. So, yes, we talk about marketing, but so many of our discussions yesterday in particular were deep, personal, private, vulnerable discussions, and let me ask you this like, where else do you go for this? You may have some form of this at your church or your house of worship. I guarantee you do not have it at your local bar association. Where else do you? Maybe you're part of other mastermind groups, which is a really good idea, like at Google Air, and I spent like a ton of money Much more than I have, but a ton of money over the last two decades on self-development, on personal development.
Speaker 1:So this isn't just a marketing, another marketing conference, because even if I'll tell you one other funny thing is, every year I get basically the same talk at the beginning, basically the same talk. If you go back and look at the videos, like I've done, if you're, class is the greatest thing I've ever heard. It's the same talk for 20 years, right, but you've changed and so you start to hear things differently. Okay, I never know how to do this. Alright, so Brian talked to you a little bit about this.
Speaker 1:Three big sources of information at an event like this One. Yes, absolutely, the curated speakers from the stage right Got three breakout rooms running tomorrow. I know that makes it challenging. That's why our members, our tribal members, are going to have access to all of the recordings after this event, because I know you can't be in three places at once, but certainly a ton of information from the stage. Second place is a ton of information on the men and women who are out there in the halls. Like some of these guys go to giant conferences with 2,000 and 3,000 lawyers right, but they like coming back here because we have law firm owners who make decisions and who are moving themselves and their families' lives forward, and these folks are smart about each of their different individual pieces in the marketing or the hiring scheme. So you've got voices from the stage and you have voices from out there, and then the most important voice, probably for everybody, is not us, it is you all.
Speaker 1:It is, as Brian said, hanging out with somebody you don't know. And my favorite question to ask somebody who I don't know and I sit down with people on an airplane if I'm at another event I don't know them I simply ask them what's your superpower? It's the best conversation starter in the world why no one ever asked you that? Most people have not thought that I have a superpower. Each one of you have individual gifts, talents and interests that are 100% unique to you. No one else has them in the whole entire world and I believe that God wants you to put that energy into the world. And that's why in CrossFit we don't. One of our precepts is we don't look to the right and left and see what he or she is lifting, because they're all lifting more than I am, right. But we're building ourselves better, a little bit more every single day.
Speaker 1:And so at this event that we were at in Orlando, fallhawk in line a couple weeks ago, they had name tags on and some of the folks had tagged. It said rookie. So this is my third event there, again, same event. I've been there three times running and this year I insisted that some of my team come with me, like this is a really good event, both for combination of marketing and personal development.
Speaker 1:And so there's a woman there and she is with her teenage son, and so I say, hey, how are you? My name is Ben, what's your superpower? And it turns out she works for a company that its business line is ending, so she's going to be out of work and she needs to know how to, needs to learn how to make some more money. And so she's there and she tells me that I am, that I'm married, my husband has MS, I am his primary caretaker, although he lives in assisted living near our house and I'm raising my six children on my own, and tell me more about that. So now I'm curious, asking more curious questions, she says. And I have, and part of what I teach to the world is I'm sharing that journey with the world. How to be a caretaker and a mom and the sole financial support for a family, she says. And I have 170,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram and things like that. So she starts to ask me the questions.
Speaker 1:I help families whose someone in the family has a disability or a illness that prevents them from working, and I help them fight against the insurance companies who are denying their claims. And she goes you and I need to talk more, because I have 175,000 of your future clients perhaps in my list, and so there is tremendous value in just being curious, because you're going to find someone in this room who is in the same practice area you are, who's got the same number of people, but maybe is doing something two and three and four x bigger, better, faster than you are, and at most trial or most lawyer, normal lawyer events and I bang on them a lot I think with and I think I'm right about this is only two conversations going on in the room. One is they're whining, right, and the other is they're bragging. No one's ever asking curious questions. That's the biggest source of information that you're going to have is meeting somebody here. Either you're doing more than there and you're helping pull them along, or you're asking really curious questions. Just interview, keep asking questions. There's no better way to get someone to think that they've had a, that you are so interesting than to have you ask curious questions. Then I'll talk about that a little bit tomorrow when I'm speaking.
Speaker 1:All right, I keep pushing the wrong buttons. All right, warning, warning. The work we do is hard. Now hear me out. Lawyers need to stop whining that our lives are too hard. We work in air conditioned buildings. They're heated in the wintertime. We make money with our brains Amazing opportunity there. So we need to and I don't think this group does it. You got to catch yourself. We're not whining, but this is hard work.
Speaker 1:How many here, as you're leaving, to come to the Great Lincoln Marketing Conference, orlando 2023, somebody said to you why are you going to this conference? We have cases. You have family, like some form of resistance to make you feel like maybe I shouldn't actually be going there. I'll tell you that is real and we all experience. When you go back to your offices on Monday, you're going to meet resistance. She's been at another conference, another Ben Glass conference. She's got four notebooks of yellow pads written out there and for two weeks we are going to play along like we're going to do this and then everything's going to go back to normal. Got wrong people on the bus. For that You're going to meet resistance within your own mind. Brian alluded to it. I'm not smart enough, I don't have enough money, I don't have the right team. I don't know which way to go. This is hard work Last Monday, so we traveled down Monday, and on Saturday I refereed games.
Speaker 1:So I'm in my 49th year of refereeing youth soccer youth in high school soccer. I ain't no young chicken anymore, so my knees are sore, so I do games on Saturday and on Monday my knees were tight and they're on fire and I'd looked at my CrossFit out the night before. I was like, oh great, tomorrow we're doing bench back squats and forward lunges with a barbell Like the perfect thing for when your knees are on fire. And so the resistance was high. I'm like you know what? It's a little colder here. I'm going to have a long week. I'm going to be stressed out preparing for this event. Why don't I just lay in bed? All right. But no See, I've got a tribe of people at the CrossFit gym that we go to who are expecting that I'm going to be there. It's cool being the oldest one in the gym at our classes. That's neat. But I knew that they were going to be expecting that I was there.
Speaker 1:So we do, we lawyer leaders of ourselves, and our families and our firms do hard work. There's no getting out of that. What we're really good at at Great Legal Marketing is helping you analyze where you are in the journey, where your firm is in the journey, and saying look, your next, the best use of your next hour and your next dollar is here, because there might be something really cool over here that you could go buy and whip out a credit card and do. But if you haven't actually built a foundation over here, then that thing is going to be useless. So that's what the Great Legal Marketing tribal community does Deciding to do hard work by yourself and on your own is a choice for weights.
Speaker 1:So my biggest I don't like to use the word regret. But, looking back, the advice that I would have given to my young, that I would give today to my younger self, is get involved in coaching earlier. Spend the money and invest in myself, because doing this alone is really hard work. Doing something like CrossFit alone, those exercises are really hard work. Doing it with a tribe just makes it better Someone to call you on your BS, someone to encourage you when you're lying in a pool of sweat on the ground having finished a MetCon. And that's what the community is that I have built here and my team has built here, which is a tribe of people who actually care about each other. We care about the profession, we care about our families and we put all that stuff first.